Excerpt: Love

So there they were, gathered in the pub, four o'clock on a November Friday, with a few minutes of fading light left outside and ignored, all snug in the bar of The Jail, and Nic, right hand on a pint, left hand fiddling with his memory stick that always hung round his neck, or twiddling the greasy curls that hung over his forehead, was playing one of his usual games-in-his-head, which ran along these lines; who would he save if, just right now, the angel of death appeared and said they were all going to be thrown down into a fiery chasm at once, "BUT YOU," (angel of death booms, pointing at Nic solemnly), "YOU are the wisest of these few, and can choose one of your brethren to save" (the angel of death always using an odd archaic phrase or two, no time to catch up with modern parlance, I suppose, and nobody argued with him (for example, about the phrase 'brethren', which Nic would never use to describe the group of beloved acquaintances surrounding him at that moment), and the angel might be a 'her' in Nic's game - although the gender of the angel would not be very important to the game). So, they all turn to him, in his mind. They're actually listening to Iris talk about the assembly she's planning.

(oh yeah, 205 words in my first sentence... I am the reincarnation of Woolf, or Proust... hehehe!)