sky to heaven - the invisible life.

My father was a rich man, and I was his rich son. He was a very powerful businessman, and apparently he had very many businesses. But I did not know what they were, for he never talked about business, and kept those things secret from me. And long ago I had stopped asking, because he was a stubborn man and never gave in. I suppose he wanted me to live my own life – but I suspect he was too busy living his.

Running his business came at a price, for he spent so much time taking care of it that he had little time to spend with his family – and that didn’t seem to bother him one bit, since he received nearly all his personal satisfaction from his businesses. He enjoyed his business, and he enjoyed the respect, power, and wealth it gave him. A long time ago, he had probably started the business just for the sake of financially supporting his family, but we had already passed the point of exceptional wealth a long time ago. Now he stayed with the business because he wanted to, not because he had to. He had no thoughts of retiring or doing anything else. The business had consumed him, and he had become the business. I don’t think he would have ever left the business out of his own free will. So even though he was my father, I didn’t know him very well, and I guess he didn’t know me very well, either. He lived his life, and I lived mine, and we never shared our lives together. We were never close, and we hardly ever saw each other – much less talked.

Until the day he found out he was dying. He took me to the basement of the mansion where he worked, where none of us were ever allowed to enter. He showed me into a conference room, where the walls were all black, except for the back wall, which was made from red glass. And two bodyguards standing near the back wall, wearing black suits and sunglasses. There was a large marble black table in the center, with black chairs. One silver ceiling light shone upon the table, and on the table there was a sleek, black automatic handgun. My father took me to his chair at the center, and sat down. And he told me that he was dying, and he wanted me to take over his businesses, because he could trust nobody else outside the family. And he said, “Before you say yes, I have to tell you what I do.” I waited for him to go on, because I knew he would.

And he said, “I make money by creating problems and resolving problems - and then creating them again.” And he proceeded to tell me how he manufactured problems in communities, mostly crime-related, and then sold various products or services to solve those problems. For example, he would create a crime problem in a neighborhood by hiring some thugs to commit some robberies or murders, and then sell guns so that people could protect themselves. He also had side businesses in assassination, corruption, and defamation. If you didn’t like somebody, or if somebody was in your way, you could pay my father to resolve your problem. Planting evidence, spreading rumors, set-ups, framing, and other various methods my father used very liberally to make money. His organization was literally Evil, Incorporated. And I thought, “No wonder why things never get better in the world.”

I was sick. I wanted to throw up. I couldn’t believe that my own father had been doing this for a living, and that for my whole life I had been living off the fruits of his labor. My own father. And I said under my breath, “No, no, no…” I turned away, because I didn’t want to look at his face. Not ever again. And he could tell that I wasn’t going to voluntarily take over his business, that I literally had no stomach for it. And so, from his jacket, he took out a silver and gold-plated gun. “Promise me you will do it. You have to do it. I am your father, and you are my son! If you won’t do it for me, then do it for your family – your mother and your sisters.” He grabbed me and made me look at him. “Look at me!” He pointed his gun at me and said, “Now that you know, you must do it – because no one can know.” How easily he said those words, but I was hardly surprised, since we were never close. Because he could not tolerate any dissent – not even in his own family. Especially in his own family. I suddenly realized, I was probably just only an asset to him – or a liability.

I could have said, “Then kill me,” but I didn’t. Because at that point I didn’t really care very much anymore about my life or my father’s. It seemed as if it had all been a lie. I don’t know why, but instead of leaving my fate in his hands, I took up the black gun on the table and pointed it at him. At least I will try to do something to make things right.

And then my father put down his own gun, sat back in his chair, looked into my eyes, and said with a smirk, “Then you do it. You kill me then, if you can.” No wonder he had left the black gun on the table. He knew how I was going to react – he had set it all up. He actually enjoyed proving how smart he was, and seeing everybody react as he thought they would. And now he was daring me –as if I could not, would not kill my own father. He saw me as a soft-hearted, weak, coward. But I no longer saw him as just my father, for he had been the source of so much evil in so many people’s lives. He needed to be stopped before greater evil could be done. So I pulled the trigger.

There was a click, but nothing else. And he smiled and said derisively, “You can’t even use a gun.” I pulled the trigger again, and there was another click, and nothing else again. One more time, and nothing again. But I was not too surprised, since evil nearly always had the upper hand in this world, and I no longer cared for my life. It was worth nothing to me, since it had been grown from the fruits of evil. My father laughed sarcastically and said, “You really want to kill your own father?” And then his face boiled into rage, and said, “A son who would kill his own father? Then I’ll show you a father who would kill his own son!” And so he grabbed his gun and pulled the trigger… and nothing happened. And there was a shocked look on his face. Since there was nothing else to do, I once again calmly pulled the trigger of my gun… and this time the gun went off. How, why, I don’t know. But in my heart, I knew that it only worked because my father had tried to kill me, and some unknown force had been protecting me. And that is how I killed my father – and that is when I woke up.