Once

By James White

Ramon is a small-time gangster with a gat and a ton of 'tude when he meets a stranger who gives him the power to see the future of anyone he touches. Strange as that may seem, it's far less strange than who the man is, and why he gave that power in the first place.

Short story. 5,700 words.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James White
• Release date: May 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458158765

James White

Dr. James White is Professor of Plant Biology at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA. Dr. White obtained the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Botany and Plant Pathology/Mycology from Auburn University, Alabama, and the Ph.D. in Botany from the University of Texas, Austin in 1987. Dr. White specializes in symbiosis research, particularly endophytic microbes. He is the author of more than 400 articles, and author and editor of reference books on the biology, taxonomy, and phylogeny of microbial endophytes, including Biotechnology of Acremonium Endophytes of Grasses (1994), Microbial Endophytes (2000), The Clavicipitalean Fungi (2004), The Fungal Community: Its Organization and Role in the Ecosystem (2005; 2016), Defensive Mutualism in Microbial Symbiosis (2009) and Seed Endophytes: Biology and Biotechnology (2019). He and students in his lab are exploring diversity of endophytic and biostimulant microbes and the various impacts that they have on host plants.

Book preview

ONCE

by

James Michael White

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2000

James Michael White

Cover art traumatic memories.

Copyright © 2011

by Silvia Pelissero

a.k.a. agnes-cecile

http://www.agnes-cecile.deviantart.com

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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ONCE

THE DREAM

There is no greater sorrow than thinking

back upon a happy time in misery.

— Inferno, Canto V

My torment is knowing that, once, I was an angel.

I was made to bring to man the messages of Heaven — first in the Garden for which I was later despised by those two who heard — next in aromatic halls of Babylon where Akkadian kings knew and invoked my name, only to later curse their association which they blamed for their own ruin, cursed the very one from whom famed and conceited Hammurabi obtained his Code, a Code sprung of my own mind, sprung from my own desire to avert the barbarism to which these short-sighted creatures were