Pain and Life

"You will meet your destiny on the road you take to avoid it."
Anon


He was escorted unceremoniously outside the police tape and given a stern warning along with threats of complaints to his employers. All in a day's work, he thought, as he turned his phone back on. They could see he didn't care what they said, and this infuriated them more. He saw the patterns forming on the phone screen, took in the bedlam that was the scene in front of him.
And dialed his boss.
Nothing was ever easy with that woman.
I couldn't answer you, I was inside the building, he said. Austin's dead, or badly wounded.
Chief Personal Conduct Officer Austin?
The one.
Jesus. And you saw him?
Yes.
Jesus.
For once the contempt was blown out of her voice.
I'll send someone else down to help. A photographer's on their way. Stay where you are.
The click told him she couldn't be happier.
She was never happier than when she could settle into her chair and declare: this looks like the day from hell.
The death or injury, even just the explosion, meant there would be no agonising over what was going on the front page the next day.
Other media were arriving now; radio, television, the news crews. He recognised most of them; and the police media officer was already doing her best to corral them safely out of the way.
There was still smoke coming from the top of the building; and in some strange way he couldn't be happier. Destiny had placed him here; to tell the stories that weren't being told; to show that things were not the way they seemed; that beneath the democratic surface of their country, all had been lost.

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