The End

By Greg Curtis

In a time some years after the second coming, when the world has fallen into ruin, and when the divine can be seen flying through the skies, Garrett, a damaged soul in a broken body must face trial as he is charged with crimes he did not commit, and that in front of the cameras as his is possibly the last televised court case the world will ever see.

Burnt, broken, bitter and desperate, with the evidence stacked against him and the prospect of dying a painful death in a prison cell, he has only one final roll of the dice left open to him.

But you'd have to be truly desperate to ask for the judgement of an angel!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Greg Curtis
• Release date: Dec 2, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465980700

Greg Curtis

Greg Curtis is the name of a hopelessly boring, middle class, sci fi loving nerd. He was born in New Zealand, land of the long white cloud and small flightless birds and grew up in the city of Wellington, renown for its high winds and the almost magical ability of rain and sleet to be lifted off the street and blasted into one's face. After eighteen years of suffering the cold and wet, he was finally blown away in a particularly bad storm to settle far away as a student at Massey and Otago Universities. He was intered there for more years then most would ever admit to. Then when the universities finally pronounced him done he became an overqualified and underpaid worker in the health sector - aren't we all! Greg has lived in the city of Rotorua, one of the very few places in the world where people have actually chosen to reside beside active geysers and breath air that reeks of sulphur, for the past seventeen years, working by day for his daily bread, and toiling away by night on his books. When not engaged in his great passions of reading and writing science fiction and fantasy, drinking strong black coffee (some call it tar), and consuming copious amounts of chocolate (dark naturally), he lives a quiet life of contemplation as the high priest to his two cats. Greg worships them with regular gifts of food, occasional grooming and by providing them with a warm dry place to sleep. They in turn look down upon him with typical feline disdain, but occasionally deign to bring him gifts of headless vermin - as a warning. In a desperate bid to understand the meaning of his life, he has recently started studying philosophy, particularly metaphysics, and has finally come to a startling conclusion. God must be a cat! Cheers and be good or don't get caught.

Book preview

The End.

Greg Curtis.

Copyright 2011 by Greg Curtis.

Smashwords Edition.

The End.

The courtroom was already packed by the time Garrett and his lawyer arrived, and he was briefly tempted to ask if perhaps they should be excluded from it due to a lack of room, but only briefly. It wasn’t a very funny joke and he doubted it would be well received by the audience. This was a show trial, and he was there to be judged and convicted and if possible condemned, not to amuse.

The defendant’s bench was still empty, waiting for them, and they slowly and awkwardly made their way down the aisle between the packed rows of gawkers, and past the television reporters and cameramen. It was strange seeing them, they were possibly the last of their kind, a dying breed, just as his would probably be the last show trial they covered. Garrett’s crutches made a tapping sound on the wooden floor boards, as they crossed the thirty feet or so, a painfully long journey, to the plain looking wooden table and took their places. At least while he heard a few gasp at the sight of his ruined face and saw several more look away hurriedly, no one said anything. He wasn’t always so lucky.

Is this normal? He asked Griffin the somewhat foolish question as they sat down, or rather his friend sat and he somewhat awkwardly tried to position himself in a less then torturous perch on the side of a chair, surprised by the turn out, and somewhat disturbed by it as well. Not that they shouldn’t be there or that he hadn’t expected some coverage, but he hated having to show off his infirmities in public. He hated having to walk on crutches, he hated the fact that his legs no longer worked as they should since his hip had been shattered, he hated being in pain twenty four hours a day from his burns, of having only half a face left which caused people to gasp in shock and look away when they weren’t expecting to see it. But he really hated having people stare at him, and the walk to the court, passing the seemingly endless numbers of people jeering at him, the cameras and their flashes going off in his face, people sticking microphones in his face and asking inane questions, had almost destroyed his soul. The doctor’s as he recalled had warned him about that, about the prospect of becoming a social pariah with injuries like his, amongst many other things, and in the end it was a relatively minor pain compared to everything else, mostly.

What?

The people? The cameras?

Griffin just shook his head almost imperceptibly, and Garrett believed him. In this brave new world since the arrival court cases had dropped off markedly as he understood it, as had the people with the time to watch them, or for that matter people who lived close enough. Lansing he understood, according to the sign on the post as he had driven in to town, had a population of less then ten thousand, well less. The rest of them, a hundred thousand or more people were now like most of the rest of the world, living somewhere out in the country, filling up the small towns surrounding the city and overrunning the farms, as they tried to grow enough food to feed themselves, and find enough wood to heat their houses or tents or whatever they now called home. Those who remained in the city where those who either couldn’t move, or were simply too stubborn, and they had to find other ways to do the same.

He himself had only driven in from his grandparents’ old cabin up by the lake the previous afternoon because he’d had no choice. He had to face the agony of a trial and the condemnation of his peers. If he’d had a way out he wouldn’t have come, but