Empire Day by James Philip

Author:James Philip [Philip, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-07-03T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

East Islip, Suffolk County, Long Island

From the stench I concluded that I had probably been sick on myself and pissed myself for good measure.

It was several more seconds before I worked out that I must have been revived by the frigid contents of a bucket of cold water. Initially, my head hurt so much I guessed I might have been hit by the bucket as well as its freezing contents.

My hands were cuffed behind my back, the chain looped through the back of the chair I was sitting in. Or rather, that I was slumped and generally lolling about in. I desperately tried to focus my eyes on something to make the nausea go away.

I am definitely getting too old for this shit!

SLAP!

I did not see it coming.

SLAP!

I felt my nose running.

Blood?

Or just the water still draining off my head?

“I’ve been wanting to do that for months!”

I blinked dazedly at my wife.

“That figures,” I muttered.

I thought Sarah was going to slap me again.

I knew she wanted to.

Oh well, at least we were not going to have to go through a protracted trial separation or divorce.

Every cloud is supposed to have a silver lining but this is going a bit too far…

I suppose that it is at times like this: that is, later, much later in a day that began with one being dragged out of bed in the small hours of the morning with a gun at one’s head, a day playing mind games with police which had carried on going down-hill, and reached an apparent nadir when I was drugged, had passed out and messed myself, and finally, regained consciousness hand-cuffed to a chair with my ex-wife conducting affairs with the flat of her right hand, that a chap is, quite naturally, liable to feel a tad hard done by.

I confess, I was a bit down in the dumps.

Sarah was dressed up in the green uniform of the CSS. She had captain’s crimson tabs on her lapels and I could tell that her calf-length skirt was tailored to flatter her figure.

I decided that the only thing to do was to imagine her naked.

Sarah was a lot less scary when she was butt naked.

Not to mention a sight for sore old eyes.

I gave her what I hoped looked like a lopsided grin: ‘Was it something I said, sweetheart?’

She obviously did not see the joke which given the circumstances – I was the one handcuffed to a chair in what looked like a disused changing room – lacked a certain style.

A changing room…

I could see where the benches had been along the white-tiled walls, underfoot there were a couple of drain holes covered by rusty grills and I thought I glimpsed the edge of what might have been the communal after match bath beyond Sarah’s shoulder.

I recollected that there was a derelict football stadium down by the estuary of the Connetquot River. Most of the locals would have translated the old Algonquian name as ‘great river’…

My mind was wandering.

“What in God’s name did you comedians put in my tea?” I inquired.

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