Monday, January 21

Future Boy

My friends have all gone and left me. So I decided to come here and see myself as a baby.

I keep a place hidden. It's inside myself, deep inside the fortress. It it I keep all the old versions of myself, all the old layers of innocence. It's here, in the dark, where I keep everything I've had to lose to survive.

It's not often I come here. Only when the whiskey bottle empties, and I have little other place to go.

Fate plays its cruel games. I find myself wrapped up in the swirling currents of the job and the neverending chasm of lust. A day in the office running background checks on insurance companies. Long stares out of the window. Longer shots of whiskey.

I look at myself in the past, and myself now. I speak to myself, I say to myself, "I'm still the future, boy". I know that I will always be what I've become now. But I wonder if it's what I'm supposed to be.

And somehow, out of nothing, I see it. I see what The Scotsman wants me to do. I see a way into the case, into the job. I cast Charlie out of my mind and try to see through the whiskey fog.

The insurance company provides insurance for lives. It values people. It reduces the worth of a life, of a soul, to a number. And when the candleflame goes it, it pays out.

But something doesn't add up. People die all the time, but there's never a payout. The company always has a get out clause. It's always something minor, something no-one would cause a fuss about. But somehow, the dice always roll in the company's favour. The house always wins. The dead don't get their worth, and the suits get to keep their cigars.

The Scotsman was right - something is wrong here.