Out of the Ashes

He stepped out of the greasy spoon to be met by a grey sky sobbing intently for no good reason other than it was two days till Christmas.

He pulled the collar up on his long black Mac and sighed at the wave of the panic buyers trudging along prince’s street, Edinburgh the heart of Scotland.

Slipping his hand into his pocket he retrieved a packet of Marlbro lights, and a Zippo lighter that he had no idea who gave it to him, where he bought it, or how else he might have acquired it. Placing the cigarette in between his lips he raised the naked flame and inhaled. He felt the nicotine bombard his nerve receptors instantly; as he exhaled he spotted a young woman dragging by the arm a screaming child.

“If you do not behave....” she shouted “There will be no presents, Santa will put you on the naughty list!”

Ah! He thought Santa, a parent’s perfect excuse for dragging small children around every single shop they see in the pissing rain buying gifts that no receiver wants or needs. Santa the perfect positive reinforcer he ensures good behaviour from children for at least two days of the year.

He was half heartedly rooting for the child, and hoped that the kid had enough sense to stop dead in his tracks and announce that his parent was wasting money that she doesn’t have, buying gifts that she will still be paying for next Christmas, and the fact that she was dragging her child around in the rain on the pretence of a fictional man who leaves gifts under plastic trees, drinks all our milk and eats all our cookies, was bordering upon child abuse. No such luck, the young boy lowered his head and fell into step at his mother’s side without any more complaint.

Stepping out into the street he began to walk east heading toward Waverley train station. Meandering along to avoid the stream of shoppers he began to think about his own mother.

A bitter taste began to erupt on his taste buds. He hadn’t seen his mother in four years. She hadn’t come along to the court case to support him; she hadn’t visited him in prison, no birthday cards, no letters, no phone calls, no mother.

Four years because of a dodgy batch of bubbles that had taken keeley of in a Bubble of her own. Keeley was a panic buyer of a different kind, and like Marks and Spencer’s he provided his consumer with all the goods that she required.

Three days out of the slammer and he had received the call from his mother. An awkward hello, equally stomach churning pleasantries followed a guilty invitation. So it was arranged, like a good little boy he was going home to his family for Christmas.

Without him realising it and through some sort of in built satellite navigation his feet had carried him to the hill leading into Waverley station.

If Edinburgh was the heart of Scotland then he was most defiantly beginning his descent through the mouth and into the belly of the beast that is Scotland’s beloved capital.

Gazing up at the departure boards he realised that his north bound Arbroath train was running twenty minutes late. Bloody typical, you can’t trust the weather man, but you can count on British rail to always be late. He though that with time to spare he’d get a coffee.

It was as he turned to his right that he saw it. He wasn’t entirely sure he had never seen one in person, only in films, and on the cover of the books he had read while at her majesties’ pleasure. The glint as the light bounced of the black, smooth chamber however was unmistakable now that it was pointing at his head.

He had always tried to imagine what it would be like to face a 9MM shooter. As his mouth began to swell with saliva, the Chinese circus act he had seen as a child began to perform their acrobatic stunts in his torso, and a single bead of sweat began to roll down his temple he realised that imagination, and reality  do no co-exist in the same hemispheres of the brain.