Writing Practice, May 27 2015
Sid thumbed the envelope he’d just picked up after having dropped it in a violent panic, the sort of reaction you can’t help but make when they’ve found you, they’ve really found you, and there’s no more running, no way to escape it now because they’ve got you, oh man have they got you. Even if you’re an honest man, the most honest man on your block, and other honest men come to you for advice on how to be even more honest, you still know this feeling. The hair on the back of your neck is there for this purpose. They have no other worldly function but to raise and thereby alert you of the great danger, of the men who have found you and are approaching.
Sid picked up the letter and reexamined the seal. He’d heard of the feel of the thing, hot and charred, as if branded by a previous generations’ hot poker. The simple circle imprinted on a rectangle. Ominous as all get out. Life changing. Some people called it the duty. Some people called it the thing your country did to you. But Sid never called it anything out of fear it would find him.