Fade in: I'm sitting on a couch watching the weather channel. A hurricane that had hit Miami was in the Gulf of Mexico. The water was over highway 90 and there were predictions of a flood possible. The property had been purchased within 30 days. The two partners were there holding down the fort, the attorney and the confidence man. I was getting regular reports as the skies all along the gulf darkened with an unnaturally dark afternoon, the wind was picking up, the power was going out all along the coast.
Eventually the lights would go dark and everyone, the attorney, the confidence man, and every single phone along the coast from Dauphin Island to New Orleans would go offline, there would not even be cell phones. All that everyone would know for days on end was that there had been an enormous tidal surge followed by massive deaths and destruction, bodies would be found in the rafters of a large chain store drowned 20 to 30 feet off the ground. All my investments destroyed up to 10 or 20 feet.
"What about the girl? You haven't mentioned the girl since this started." Sally asked. She blushed at the look that the regular gave her. The look said, you're an inteloper.
The stranger was silent for a moment, looking as if he had just noticed that a small crowd had gathered. He looked as if he was deciding whether to go on or not. The regular tentatively refilled the glass in front of the stranger. The stranger turned red as if he were about to yell, then his face lighted and he gave a smile that might have seemed benevolent but it held something evil and teasing in it. He poured from the nearly empty bottle into the glass of the regular and said, "someone should order another bottle. One of the locals shot up, "I'll get it and disappeared towards the bar.
"So you want to know about the love of my life? She is, at this time, off sleeping with her boyfriend, one of a series, none in the series is me." He said with more of a sneer of anger than of self pity. He seemed ready to rant and then he said in a voice that would have been a scream if it had not been said so softly, "I am not where I belong."
He took another drink and in a voice almost too quiet to hear he said, "I don't have to worry about burning in hell, because I am burning in hell. In the last 30 years I have only spent 12 nights where I belonged. You want to know what burning in hell is? That is burning in hell.
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