Free The Poison Morality by Stacey Kathleen

feel the need to respond.  “Agh…you don’t need anyone, just hop a train and go anywhere.  Start off with a short trip, dip your toes in and next thing you know you’ll be walking the Great Wall of China.”
    “You make it sound so easy,” she chuckled, nervously hiding her smile behind her hand; the pages of the book blowing in the breeze, carrying the smell of rain.
    “If I had married, I would have taken her anywhere she wanted to go.  The world is small, only the difference in humanity makes it seem big.”
    “You never married then,” Sophie asked genuinely curious.
    “No,” a look of regret shown on his face.  “No wife, no children, no legacy but the country I served.  When I die there will be no one to cry over me and that’s fine,” he shrugged.  “No one to hurt, no one to disappoint.”
    “Do you regret it at all,” she looked at him waiting for an answer.
    “Every day.  It’s too late for me now, I’m dying,” he looked at her face for the first time to see her reaction, “Cancer.”
    The wind was picking up, making her eyes tear up from the cold but he misread it as sympathy, “Don’t feel sorry for me.  I’ve lived a long life.  I’ve done a lot that amounted to very little.  In the Royal Navy I saw and did unspeakable things and saw and did some amazing things.  Trying to find happiness in the darkness, not just during war time but in everyday life, that’s all there is.”
    “Did you,” Sophie paused wanting to ask the question, the subject being a delicate one, “kill anyone?”
    “Oh yes,” he stared across the lake, leaning back, his arms outstretched on the back of the bench, one ankle rested on the knee of his other leg, “I’m sure I did.  But only from a distance, you see.  I never had to look the enemy in the eye because if I did, there would have been no way I could have pulled the trigger.  I would have been the dead one because I couldn’t watch the enemy die.  They were young men like us.  It was easier to launch a torpedo on another vessel than to aim a gun at someone’s head.  That’s why I chose the navy instead of the army.”
    “I can imagine,” she understood completely what he was saying.
    “How can you, love?  Fortunately, you will never be burdened with such a decision because even still, the guilt is a heavy cross to bear.”  That’s where he was wrong about her, she knew all too well.  “You can’t let the guilt get to you or the fear will.  I justified it by thinking that I was doing it for someone else not just for my own survival.  For King and country, for the countless millions that was imprisoned for their beliefs, and not just those of us young men fighting on our side but the ones on the other side as well.  Not the Nazi’s I mean, the ones who fought because of the terror of what their own country would do to them if they didn’t would be worse than dying in war.”
    Not knowing what to say, Sophie just sat in silence for a while and then said, “You sacrificed your youth and peace of mind so generations could go on living the life you wouldn’t have?”
    “I could have had that life but I was too messed up and I thought what woman would have me, little did I know that everyone is some kind of crazy,” he looked at her again, this time she met his gaze, “Don’t waste the sacrifice someone made for you by looking at a bloody book.  Go live, it’s my little gift to you,” he smiled and patted her shoulder. 
    They both lived through some traumatic experiences and both have chosen lonely lives because of them but he was old and dying and she was young and alive feeling completely unworthy of the chances she was given. 
    Her mobile rang, it was Oliver again, he was relentless.  She nodded and smiled, “I have to go, now.”  There was a job planned in a couple of days she had to prepare for and the air turned chilly when the sun faded behind dark clouds. 
    “Sure, sure,” he waived her away, “If