6:00pm
In the Company of Demons | 6:00pm
There were a lot of things I had seen over the years. Most of them would probably edge on the side of pleasant, or, more accurately, not fall into the offensive to the eye category.
The situation I was caught up in now was definitely on the side of the unpleasant, even if nothing could be seen.
I had lost count of the times I had looked at the clock, which had a certain irony, as it was blinking away my moments and clearly hadn’t lost track of time.
The punishment I was envisioning was getting worse by the minute. There would be a beating, certainly. But would they get rid of him? Surely, Chaz would have some form of loyalty to an old mate, if that was not too strong a use of the word.
There were massive odds stacked against that, sort of roulette table, house always wins type of odds.
My thoughts turned back to the possibility of death and what would happen.
My old man had once said to me, “What you have to remember, son, is that everyone wants to go to heaven, but hardly anyone wants to die to get there.”
This was a philosophical aberration from a man who smoked sixty a day in a bid to get there a bit quicker.
The afterlife was of no interest. Dead was dead.
I just didn’t want to join that particular throng in the next few hours.
Not that I was brave. Not particularly. I could hold my own, but only when told to.
History, though, told you that if you scratched the surface of many a battlefield, you would find the bones of the brave.
Those who advocated and acted with a tad more caution would come home and get to cut the grass on a sunny Sunday afternoon.
Not that caution could help me here.
I was effectively trapped by fate.
A fate put into motion by my actions and my lifestyle for the last thirty years or so.
