Reality Bites Read Free Page B

magic.  Tamar, who had lived in a bottle for thousands of years, thought he was insane.  He wasn’t an ordinary person any more, she said.  He was a champion of the weak and oppressed now. Ordinary rules did not apply, besides he had no apparent objections to living in a magically transformed home or travelling by teleportation.  That was different, he said.  But she couldn’t help feeling that hanging on to his job was just an excuse to get away from her sometimes.  It probably was.  Some men have a shed, Denny had a record store, and like a shed, Denny only went there when he really had to.  Bo, the manager, never noticed when Denny did not turn up for weeks at a time.  As long as he made sure that he was there for stock takes and pay-day, he had that job for life.
     
    Tamar went out; Denny decided to stay at home.  He went into the garden she had created; he thought it might help him think.  The dream he had been having had been preying on his mind.  What he needed, he decided, was more information, like who was coming, that might be a start.
     

~ Chapter Four ~
     
    T he time had come; the shadowy figures had been gathering about Stiles in ever-greater numbers, as the man in the smoky room had predicted.  The hooded figure, who had been watching, followed the man to the pub. He was depressed, surrounded by raucous, happy drunks. He was drinking orange juice, only there at all out of custom, and a reluctance to go home to an empty house.
    The watcher knew all this; it was the perfect time. Silently, like a shadow, the watcher waited behind Stiles’s chair.  When he put his glass, the hooded figure reached inside the long robes and took out a bottle of vodka and poured a large quantity into the nearly empty glass, then slipped the bottle into his coat and glided away unseen.
     
    Later the hooded figure slipped into Stiles’s office.  It was nearly midnight, and nobody was about, but the watcher was cautious, silent as always.  The desk was unlocked; there was a drawer that Stiles often reached into automatically, it was empty; the watcher placed a bottle of whisky and left silently feeling a pang of distaste for these shady manoeuvrings.  Still it had to be.  Nobody could be on the watch all the time, not even the best.  Perhaps it was time to recruit some help.
     
    Detective Chief Inspector, Jack Stiles was sat in his office, feeling tired.  He ran his fingers through his hair and rubbed his stubble wearily, he then patted his pockets for his cigarettes; he lit one and then leaned back, wearily.  He had just dismissed a distraught young female officer who had had a bad reaction to her first brutal case, a serial killer.  He had thought she had handled it well; she had brought the man down herself.  But when she had been faced with his grinning un-repentance, and even delight, in his evil, she had broken down.  ‘I didn’t know anyone could be so evil,’ she had sobbed.  ‘How can a human being act like that?  I’m sorry sir, what must you think of me?’
    ‘I think you’re human,’ Stiles had replied.  ‘It’s okay to be upset, what kind of a person would you be if you didn’t cry the first time you see the evil that men are capable of doing to each other?  I did.’
    She had blinked in disbelief; he knew what was going through her mind.  Jack Stiles?  Famously tough and unfeeling at his work, the archetypal hard-bitten cop, had once had feelings just like everyone else?  
    ‘You did ?’ she had said, incredulously.
    ‘It was a long time ago,’ he said.  ‘You toughen up, learn to cope, but you never stop caring.’  He had smiled at her.  God was I ever that young?   ‘You’ll be okay,’ he told her.
    She had left, almost smiling, comforted.  Another good one who might have thrown it in, was saved.  She would make a good cop in the years to come , he thought.
    It was late; he really should go home, but he did not want to.  Yes, I had feelings once, and look