I stood at the bathroom door of The Shield waiting on Francis. It had been a long Friday night like most of them had ended up being. This old place had been standing longer than we had but somewhere along the path between here and the hospital visits it stopped feeling that way. But we were alive. More than can be said for our beloved Shield.
Red ribbons floating on the water. A hand sticking up from the deep. A cold plunge into nothingness. The sky so large, and he so small upon the summer lake. The rise and fall of a voice calling out for help…
The dark descending; too little comfort in the night…
It all started when that fat fucker moaned about having to give me change. I don’t ever say ‘Fat fucker’ as I am a rather large person myself but honestly, ‘Jabba The Fucking Garage’ really annoyed me. ‘Is that all you have got’ he enquired with a sneer and a sarcasm that I just couldn’t ignore. I advised him that I would look further. I exaggerated looking through my pockets and this was also lost on this fuck wit, he
She said ‘Don’t leave me alone. I can’t cope on my own.’
I promised to stay. We drink tea, converse about nothing. She says she’d like to sleep.
I watch over her.
Professor Tomlinson was a disappointed man. He had recently achieved his life’s ambition, and already he could see it beginning to crumble.
He turned in his seat, and shouted across the laboratory to his assistant. “Hargreaves! Give me those figures again.”
Hargreaves was sitting in front of a luminous screen, looking at a series of diagrams that were filled with information. He was checking through each one in turn, collecting and collating the data. He pushed his spectacles back into place on the bridge of his nose, and repeated exactly the same numbers that he had read out a few minutes earlier.
She knew that when it came time to count the money she’d be found out. The afternoon had wound on interminably and the first crime had been followed by the next and the next and the next. Now she was so heavily committed to the misdeed that there was no way out.
Of course, as with so many of these things, it wasn’t her fault. If you really thought about it the one to blame, the one who should be standing here now on the brink of disaster, his stomach churning and heart flip-flopping was Mr Stevens. Her old boss, Stinky Stevens, he of the underarm white stains and the halitosis from hell. If he hadn’t been such a stupid, incompetent business man then his little caravan re-fitting business wouldn’t have folded. If the firm hadn’t folded then she, Lorraine, would still have a job as book-keeper, a proper job with a wage, a coffee mug and a finishing time.
It’s Sunday afternoon. There’s lots of time before the game. My husband gets up and turns off the TV. ‘Let’s go for a ride.’
‘Yeah! It’s stuffy in here. Take me to the ocean, honey. Let’s catch some breezes.’ I will take a drive to the ocean any day to get out of our dreary rental. Its gray color, both inside and outside, makes it cheerless to say the least.
I was still sweating the beer out and already paying for the pains of the night before. Ten men together. Add beer. Square the testosterone levels and what you’re left with is three broken ribs, no medical insurance and an urgent care facility that looked as though its better days had not been seen by anyone still top-side of God’s green one.
“Get your head down and try and sleep.”
“Have you ever murdered anyone?”
“No.”
“Then you’ll not be able to appreciate how difficult it is to ‘Get your head down’.
He left the room and shut the door nodding as he walked along the corridor.
“Fair point!”
The rapids collided with rocks in the water and the moss was warm. The logs formed a nest in the river and a piece of bark rushed by. From the treetops the sharp vision of the falcon saw the ant which carried a pine needle, the inside of a falling cone and the white paws of a wood mouse. Three moments later the falcon sailed home with the prey, in the evening sun.
“Now that I’ve got you here, would you…” A stick crunched under my feet. “Would you mind giving me an answer?”
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