♠ Albatross ♠

“Kak, boet. I spoke to the doctors. That’s why they wanted to keep you in for observation, make out? They said you’d be in pain. You’d be disorientated. Maybe even delusional. But you’re going to be fine.”

Mick smiled his blackened smile. “Ye can’t trust doctors, man. They have to tell ye that, don’t they? But it’s alright. Ah’ve made mah peace with it. Just one or two things to sort out before Ah go.”

“Shit, Mick. What happened to you in there? You haven’t been the same since you came out of prison.”

Mick sat silent for a while, slumped in the passenger seat of Dirk’s Dodge, eyes tracking a bird that hopped and fluttered between the flattened bushes of the flowerbed.

“Ah grew up during the Troubles in Belfast. Did Ah ever tell ye that?” He didn’t wait for a response. His gaze never shifted from the scene outside the car. “Death was a daily companion. Death doesn’t scare me. Death is easy. It’s living that’s hard.

“Ah resigned mahself to dying years ago. But things can happen to a man when his freedom’s taken away. When he’s isolated. Cut off from his mates. Locked in a cage with other wild animals.”

Dirk found his eyes drawn to watch the bird hop and fly in the street, catching bugs without a care in the world. No fear. No limits to its movements.

Then it was gone, shooting straight up into the air with a graceful swoop of its wings.

“All that’s left, at the end of the day, are the stories told of a man’s life after he’s gone. How he’s remembered. If he’s remembered at all.”

This was too much for Dirk. “Look, let’s go back to the club. You need a drink. And after listening to you all morning, so do I.”

Mick sat up. “Nah, this is it. Mah legacy. Scores have to be settled before Ah can rest easy. So people have something to remember me by.”

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Cheers.