Bobbing down the steps two at a time, the crumbling man jostled his way back to the street and called an Uber. Minutes later, he picked up his phone and spoke to his daughter as his Uber pulled out into the street, telling her how much he loved her and did actually want to catch up for dinner next week, after all. Keeping one hand on his phone, he flipped down the sun visor to prevent the last splash of the setting sun from blinding him as they drove.
There are many rooms in which people can speak freely and out of turn, but in this awfully wooden hall, the man in the absurd black robe was staring through the requisite silence at the little tweed-clad man he beheld. “Mr. Abernathy, in the name of justice you leave these halls without your driver’s license or car. Yet, in the name of some cruel providence I leave these halls to an empty home and a distraught son-in-law. Count yourself as very fortunate indeed.”
A lone plume of befouled smoke rose and disappeared into the night sky. In the car that careened off into the water lay trapped the drowned body of a young lady called Jane, who had been drinking. The papers would report with furrowed brow and melancholy that she was the daughter of a local judge. In the car that swerved and now sat crumpled around a tree, sat shaking a very shocked old man called Abernathy.
Distilled Orthopraxy 