Create a Story - Week 5

Unlucky draw on the prompt. This was meant to be action adventure but turned rather contemplative. Perhaps I should rewrite it, but the topic was too close to home for me and I'm just glad to have gotten it done. (prompt is pg 139)

Next week might get skipped (or I might write it this weekend so I can just post it when the time comes). I have a medical procedure Tuesday that is going to wipe me out for most of the week.

Judgement in Fear

He hated being in the public eye. That wasn’t his place. Jerome Evans preferred quiet contemplation to the world of conspiracy and money that his position on the international criminal court lent itself. That the quiet isolation and invisibility of a man in a business suit reading a newspaper gave him a measure of safety was a false comfort.

The list was in his inside jacket pocket. His was not the only name, just the one that made his trust in law and order falter. That he had been assigned the case was premature. Everyone knew it. Everyone wanted something to be done. They wanted an order. They wanted it known and loud.

Jerome understood the drive. How could he not? The Americans had burned up their democracy with the same frantic brashness that they’d wielded with such desperate fervor to free themselves when they’d declared themselves independent.

Now they were not, and the world bore witness. It was a heartbreaking testimony to witness remotely. More, he was sure for those poor souls trapped there, helpless to do anything against the war machine of the traitor president.

The international court didn’t yield to threats. Even the sort of pressure to act that had gotten him assigned to the case was rarely acceded to. The world wanted action in the face of crimes it had seen too often before. More to the point they wanted to bind the country before it withdrew. Only member states were subject to the court. And for all that it was burning, that formal withdrawal hadn’t happened.

It was useless of course. The threats had already started. Attempts to stop the process before it was even public. The wiretap on his phone. The list in his pocket. They were just the beginning.

They were trying to hold a man to task who knew nothing of grace or forgiveness, and who wallowed in the delivery of revenge. He lived for vendetta and the checks on his power failed, one by one. Already the world feared him. He didn’t have any great skill. His oratory was inconsistent. But there were evil, skilled people behind him.

That was the other reason. They wanted it public—the accomplices named. Not just the ones people knew, but the quiet dangerous ones that were always in the background in these cases. Jerome had stood in judgement over depravity before. He’d seen awful abuses before. He’d never thought to see it like this. Not from the Americans. Not from a country that had, in his youth, brought such hope to the world.

Now there would be a race. It wouldn’t be a comfortable one. Not for him, however invisibly he tried to live. The assassins would come. For him. For his family. And even if they didn’t and the threat was empty, just the man’s words would set certain elements of terror at work to push him into a life of worry and terror. His verdict could not come soon enough.

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So another story and another 500 words with the title. Seems I will continue with that trend for a while yet. No graphic this time, maybe I'll come back with one later if I have time, but my back was bothering me this week, so I'm just glad to get the story up.