Free The Road to Hell by Peter Cawdron Page A

hotel where this all began to see if we can pick up the trail.”
    Brains wasn’t really listening. He was staring at a cave bug crawling slowly across the rock wall.
    “ Do you know why I came down here, Harry?”
    “ No.”
    Harrison hadn’t really thought about it before, but most of the inhabitants of the Underworld had been born there. Not Brains. He was a topsider that found refuge in the freedom of the Underworld.
    “ We all tell lies, Harry, whether it’s for convenience or to save face or to hide our true feelings, we're all liars. As much as we try to deny it, we can’t help ourselves, it’s in our nature. We lie, Harry, we lie. We can no more stop lying than we can stop breathing.”
    “ That’s just the liquor talking,” replied Harrison, trying not to take the old man too seriously. Like all great men, Brains had his share of quirks and idiosyncrasies. And when he was drunk, his tongue tended to be pretty loose.
    “ Maybe, maybe not, but the worst lies,” the ageing man continued, raising his finger in defiance. “Are the lies we tell ourselves.”
    Harrison was silent. Now was not the time to let his mouth run. Even with a bit too much liquor, the old man could still hold his own.
    “ We have to justify ourselves. It’s in our blood. It seems the more petty the action the more vigorously we fight to defend the right, or at least, what we think is right.”
    Susan stirred a little, rolling over on the couch. Harrison was surprised she hadn’t woken as Brains became more and more animated.
    “ Awe, come on bartender, just one more drink,” yelled the old man looking around, looking for someone else in the darkened room. Silence was the only reply.
    After a few seconds, Harrison added softly, “The bar’s closed. It’s time to call it a night.”
    “ A night?” said Brains somewhat quizzically. “No, it was a day, I remember it well. It wasn’t at night at all. I was heading to the office. Just another day in utopia. Following the same route I’d flown for twenty five years from the suburban towers into the city. Some young punk cut me off on the airway, cutting in front of me without looking and I became indignant, as though I owned the sky road. I yelled out, calling him an idiot or an asshole or something like that.”
    Brains was yelling, his arms waving about as he acted out the incident. All his gestures were amplified, magnified by his drunken stupor.
    “ But that’s when I realised it was a lie. I was lying to myself. I was lying so I could justify my anger, my pathetic indignation.”
    His manner changed abruptly, softening as he added, “I looked at the kid in front of me and saw myself a quarter of a century before. That’s when I knew I had to leave the new world. That’s when I decided to seek out the Underworld. That, Harry, is when I stopped lying to myself.”
    Brains laughed, picked up the empty liquor glass and knocked back the few drops that had pooled at the bottom.
    “ Most people are so arrogant they’ll tell you they don’t lie,” he said, pointing a finger at Harrison and staring down it like it was the barrel of a gun. “They’re so in the groove they don’t even know any more. They can’t tell the difference.”
    He slammed the shot glass down on the table.
    “ Come on bartender,” he yelled, his voice echoing through the open cavern above. “Where’s your sense of humanity and compassion?”
    Harrison just sat there trying not to smile.
    “ Oh, when they were ten or twelve, they knew,” Brains continued. “But now, now it’s a hazy blur. They think lies are malicious, that if it’s not spiteful it’s somehow not a lie so it doesn’t really count. They have no idea, the bastards.”
    “ Hey, take it easy,” said Harrison. “You’re among friends. No one’s questioning your integrity.”
    The old man’s head rested on his folded arms, leaning forward on the table. For a few seconds he just lay there on the table as Harrison wondered