Guilty
January 13, 2010 in G
By Rik Brown
He sat at the kitchen table, smoking nervously. He thumbed through the small pile of photographs and tried to collect his thoughts.
These pictures had the power to destroy a man.
A friend.
He’d always meant to get rid of them but now he found himself tight up against it.
Bad decisions had a way of seducing him.
Now blackmail?
When he’d arranged the meeting he believed he could go through with it. Demand the money, hand over the photographs. Problem solved.
But this whole thing had a stink about it.
He took a big slug of whisky and caught his reflection in the glass. It held him for a moment. A prisoner to his own self loathing.
As he placed the glass back on the table he knew he couldn’t go through with it.
They were friends.
Fought side by side in the war.
He would hand over the pictures and say no more about it.
As he heard the kitchen door opening behind him he felt strangely euphoric. The unusual sensation of having made the right decision.
Followed by the even more unusual sensation of a blunt object colliding with his skull with fatal force.
Dead before he hit the ground.
The Colonel stood over him, spots of blood on his otherwise immaculate mustard-coloured suit. He placed the candlestick on the table, collected the photographs and calmly left the kitchen, plausible alibis already forming in his mind.
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