The blue light off the television screen was the first thing that his heavy eyes registered upon opening; it washed his slender hand almost silver, the hand that hovered in his vision from where it lay propped against the deep plush of the sofa's arm. He couldn't remember what he'd been watching when he fell asleep. That seemed to happen a lot these days. He reached for a glass on the coffee table, brought it to his dry lips in hopes of washing the god-awful taste from his mouth. It was empty of course; he'd drained its contents at some point earlier that night. A faint smell of liquor drifted up from somewhere, but he wasn't entirely sure if it was from the glass, or the still uncorked bottle on the table, or even if it was only rising from his own body.
He set the glass back at the edge of the table and shifted his sleep-heavy body. Fragments of a less-than-pleasant dream played about the edges of his consciousness and he rolled onto his stomach, pulling a pillow over his head to block out the images. It didn't work. He knew it wouldn't, but made the gesture all the same. At least it shut out the light of the television.
Gene Starwind, dead.
Fred couldn't think about anything else, hadn't been able to think about anything else since he'd heard the news. Over and over, he'd watched the explosion in his mind's eye.
Gene, sent into an abandoned warehouse on a phony job by an outlaw with a chip on his shoulder. Gene, picking up a crate supposedly loaded with some valuable nonsense or other and triggering the assassin's trap. Gene, who had survived near-death encounters in so many outrageous ways, only to be killed by a third-rate assassin who'd set up enough explosives to completely incinerate the entire warehouse. There had been no remains.
He'd even hired his own investigators, the best in the galaxy. They hadn't found anything. Why had Gene done something so stupid? What had happened to his policy of only accepting the very best, and when the best didn't show up coming to his ol' pal Fred for money Fred knew he'd never repay and yet continued to loan?
In a fit of frustration over Gene's innate stupidity and his own exhaustion over the same tired circles of thought, Fred threw the pillow. It knocked over both the empty glass and the not quite empty bottle. The smell of alcohol grew stronger as the liquor splashed up from the mouth of the dark glass bottle before settling. The bottle rocked a little on the table and then teetered to the edge, barely retaining its balance.
His tears were long since worn out, but at night he still lay in bed for hours, thoughts racing and racing along the same lines, until he could no longer bear the agony of imagining the explosion again and got out of bed, wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and padded into the dark lounge of the house. Once there, he collapsed on the same soft, plush sofa and turned on the television. It didn't matter what he watched. He simply turned the volume down to the bare threshold of hearing and stared blankly at the screen until he fell asleep. Sometimes he drank, when the mindlessness of after-midnight television alone wasn't enough to lull him into oblivion.
But when he used this supplemental approach, he didn't come near oblivion. His sleep was haunted with nightmares, and when he awoke in a cold sweat he could only recall vague images and sounds. But the feeling of terror didn't go away. He always remembered that.
And when, as now, he'd awake on the sofa, television still glaring over him and playing soft sounds, he would drag himself back to his bed and sink into fitful sleep for the rest of the night.