Lost Friends


 * I hadn’t opened my curtains to look outside since I saw that crazy
 * mob and their bonfire last week. It doesn’t help that I keep hearing
 * that man with the megaphone delivering venomous speeches to get
 * the people riled. I wish someone would shut him up. Not me mind
 * you. I’m not one to stir the pot.


 * Eventually my curiosity got the better of me, and I drew back the
 * curtain just a smidge to look outside. This time I saw tons of people
 * just milling about, almost twice or three times as many as last week! I
 * didn’t even know there were that many people living in this part of
 * Kijuju to begin with. I don’t think they’re foreigners given Mr.
 * Sunglasses’ disdain for them, but God only knows where they’ve been
 * hiding. I wasn’t too focused on the individual faces in the crowd until
 * I saw one that made me shout out in surprise: It was one of my old
 * drinking buddies from work! I haven’t seen him since he and some
 * other guys were “transferred” to another work site. Every time I
 * asked my boss about them, he just gave me the old runaround. Now I
 * see one of them here of all places. I so wanted to open up my window
 * and call out to him and say, “Hey, let’s go get a drink – my treat!” but
 * I didn’t want all those other people tagging along.


 * At night the crowd dispersed so I thought I’d check out the old
 * watering hole we all used to go to on the off chance that he or any of
 * my other former drinking buddies would be there. The bar was in
 * complete shambles. I had no idea that fight a couple weeks ago had
 * completely demolished it. Now that I think about it, I heard that the
 * owner had been killed during the melee. Poor guy. That’s probably
 * why the bar had been ransacked as well. There wasn’t a thing left in
 * there that wasn’t broken. Every last bottle of alcohol had been
 * cleaned out.


 * I turned around to go home. You know what they say: Never fall in
 * love with a bar. I should have heeded that advice. Now I have no bar
 * and no friends and no woman. Worst of all, I don’t even have
 * anything to drink.


 * As I started to walk away, my foot kicked something hard. I bent
 * down to pick it up. It was my lucky day. I had stumbled upon an
 * unopened bottle of whiskey! Today turned out to be better than I
 * thought it would be. I’m sitting here enjoying the spoils of my little
 * expedition. Anyone else drinking as they read this?