It Felt Like Candy

 

On the third road down, to the right, Sean Wilson was told that he would find the house with the candy.  Well, maybe not candy, but sweets.  He was told this by three Irish looking individuals standing in a doorway.  Sean had never been to the city before, not a city like this one anyway.  This was a big city, and the men laughed as Sean walked away.

“My cell phone doesn’t seem to work here”, Sean had said to them. 

The men looked at each other.  One took a flask from his side pocket, unscrewed the cap, and took a swig.  He handed the flask to another of the three, who also took a swig, but, instead of swallowing it, as the first man had, he swished it around and about his teeth before spitting it onto the ground beside.  “That’s a damm waste of good liquid”, the third man said.

“No it ain’t”, the second had said, “it done fixed my teeth for a half hour”.

The three looked at young Wilson, and then they had given him directions.  “Can’t miss it” they had said with a laugh that was slightly dirty with age and derision. 

Wilson walked away, nervous, under a type of pressure he had never experienced in all his days under blue skies back home.  He heard them talking but did not dare to look back, for in truth he feared for his life.  They acted as if they’d never heard of a cell phone, but that was not it.  They reminded him of the streets down where he seldom had been taken, where he seldom was allowed to go, the dark recesses of the legendary seedy side of crime and passion where anything could happen and probably did.  Wilson had been born to a higher life, a life with which he had learned to roll.  His was the world that had a Vice President’s ring and daughter by the age of twenty five; a world where people would go far if they stayed inside when it was raining.  The only rain in this twilight in the city was the reign of fear that was running through his limbs as he walked away from the strangers. 

There was nobody else on the street.   The solitary condition did not seem strange to his mind, as there were so many times in his hometown when the streets were silent and void of people even during daylight hours, but this was the city, the big city and it was unusual.  He heard their voices, kept walking, and had a hope that they were where they were going to stay.

He felt he should not have stayed at the hotel.  He should not have offered to walk to the meeting.  He should, he should walk faster.  Electricity was burning through his heart as he could still hear their voices, their laughter behind him, but he would not look.  He thought he heard more voices now.  They were a gallery, and loud.  He thought he heard, and then he felt a harsh mettle heat rush through his ribs, and his heart started thumping and then ….

The laughter seemed to grow farther away.  “I done smoked that shot fellows didn’t I”, he heard, and the voices rose like a circle above him as he felt the warm liquid surround him.  Wilson thought it felt like candy.