Played: “Sometimes you never know who is playing who, until the damage is done." by Bad-Boy Storyteller Read Free Book Online

No he has to die. Today he will die!”
    “You cannot be serious. I’m a police officer. I can’t…I can’t just let you beat this man to death—whether he is a pedophile or not!”
    “Yes, you a can, and you will, and I want you…eh…to remember: I will beat this cockfucker! You can only arrest an old man to jail.”
    “I will have to take you to jail and your sons along with you. Is that want you want?” he asked, raising his voice, raising the tension in the room. Sergey answered with his stare, pleading with him—threatening him.
    “We’re not going to any stinking fucking jail, officer!” Jorge said, pointing his gun in Cools’s direction.
    “No, you hold it down; we do not kill the police, nor do we have to kill this officer. I see it in his eyes. He only needs…eh…some time to make this choice…this only one choice.”
    Cools opened his mouth, but nothing came out. There was no point to argue. He returned to the bottle, studying the flowing solution. Like the brown liquid, the moment rolled in slow motion. He could sense Jorge lowering his gun behind him and a slight humming in his ear. Are you actually considering this? Another drink, another cigarette, as he surveyed the room again, trying to get a fix on the situation, but nothing had changed. It was still a dark, empty bar with one child rapist bleeding in a chair and two other guys standing by with guns, all opposite an old hopeless man somehow making sense of it all. Then, more ringing in his head—this time an old television commercial slogan, he couldn’t recall what product only the catchphrase: “It sells itself.” It sells itself. Sergey wasn’t pushing any product; he’d simply made his pitch then set back to let it sell itself. Cools turned for a long look at Reuben, estimating his value. The man had dead eyes, no soul; and the gruesome imagery of him raping the young boy ran briefly in the young officer’s mind. What if it was my sister’s kid? My grandson? He was under no real pressure to make a quick decision; he was being fully respected and given all the time needed to process everything. Cools took one more look into Sergey’s hurting eyes, seeing his pain was genuine, his truth was real, and his intentions were justified. His thoughts began to scream. Fuck this guy! If he did this to anyone in my family, I would want to do the same—I would do the same! He now looked about the room through new eyes. All the men saw his transformation. Koladiva and Jorge knew they would soon return to their business, and Rueben slumped even farther into his chair, deeper into hopelessness.
    “I was…” He pulled in a cleansing breath. “I was never here.”
    Sergey nodded in confidence, reached out, and held Cools’s hands, saying, “We share this occasion for life.”
    Then, with true clarity, Cools cleanly rose to his feet. He took a last look at the soon-to-be tortured to death child molester in the chair, who’d abandoned every wishful thought of being saved. Then, for Koladiva and Jorge, he slowly holstered his weapon. The deal had been struck: the simple notion that justice is far greater than any law had won the day. And there was nothing left for him to do except to simply walk out of the bar, back into a sun-shining world, with nothing except the occasional shoplifter to worry about.
    A few days later, he returned to the bar. He couldn’t ignore the realization adhered to the memory of that day. It was calling him to revisit the place where he had become a man—a man of courage, of nobleness, a man who could make the tough decisions for the right reasons, one who had passed the test. He didn’t experience any guilt or remorse, only a warm sense of backdoor justice. It was a philosophy he would carry to his end.
    When he walked into the dark bar, Sergey welcomed him as family, with a long embrace and an esteemed kiss to the cheek. He then led him to a round table near the back, facing the spot where just days before a