Hair Of The Dog (A glimpse at The Women of Cho)

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It had been raining off and on all evening. The side streets glistened with street lamp light and wet pavement, sparkling with broken glass in the gutters. John Stell, wearing his trench coat, staggered loosely from side to side trying desperately to keep his balance. A bottle neck stuck out of his trench coat pocket as he swaggered down the sidewalk, veering intermittently into the street. He stubbed his shoe at a transition between pavement and cobble stone and came to a halt, full stop, in front of the abandon Won antique shop. His memory would not be denied as it traced his every move that fateful day when his life, and everybody close to him, changed forever. John had an immaculate visual of the horrified look on young Rayman Stell’s face - watching through the fogged window as he staggered toward him with a bullet in his shoulder. His shoulder would never be the same. It always ached. Always.
A car screeched to a halt and honked. John stood still and sloppily waived the car passed. The car veered around him and continued on into the night. John took a draw from his bottle and walked defiantly down the middle of the empty street.            Some time had passed before John looked up and saw an entrance to Hyde Park. Car tires lapped up the rain in the streets as they drove past. John entered Hyde Park looking for a bench where he could sit quietly. He transfixed his eyes on a bench near a small group of sculpted shrubs and lost his balance, swerving off his chosen path into the bushes with an agile roll and surrendered on his back. Grey formless clouds slowly shifted over head and created an image of his brother, Robert; his dead withered body in a heap, followed by his funeral pyre burning on the beach, Won Ji Tun Stell’s lifeless body lying on the living room floor, the Un Jangdo embedded below her sternum, baby Monica uncontrollably crying in Ji Tun’s  unresponsive arms. Monica’s young childhood face appeared as he dropped her off at boarding school. He was leaving her, for her safety. John’s tears bled into rain as he helplessly wept with his memories.

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