Stare at the clock for the last five minutes of work. Let
those minutes, each one of them, individually stretch for as
long as they will. Forever. Then another forever. And
another, and another, and another.

At some point the hour mark finally comes around. An
amazingly short time passes with an excruciatingly slow
tempo. Time is finally up, but not after it feels like
every minute milked it's time for all it was worth.

Now multiply those five minutes by twelve. Then multiply
that by twenty four. The sum by another thirty. Then that
yet again by another ten.

That's a lot of eternities, and in spite of the time always
seeming fast in retrospect, Sean Irving felt like he lived a
lifetime in every one of those five minutes. What felt like
so many lifetimes spent in the same surroundings, with the
same people, over a ten month sentence.

The man who once wrestled as Archangel was never someone who
would be described as a thinker. He was a massive brute of
a man who rarely reflected upon a single thought before
going about whatever came to mind. He was hedonism
personified, living a life that would best be described as a
parody of the worst of rap music video stereotypes.

When his wrestling career collapsed last year under the
weight of incarceration for multiple drug charges, Sean
Irving quickly went from living one stereotype to another.
One moment living as he pleased, as only he cared, without
any thought about it at all, to everything crashing coldly
silent with the clang of a prison cell door. The man who
never thought at all suddenly found his entire life full of
time with hardly anything to do but think.

Now that he was out of jail, Irving mused, as he stared out
the car window at the house before him, he still thought a
whole lot about things. It had become habit.

He finally shifted into motion as he opened the car door and
stepped out onto the grass at the side of the road. A few
dozen feet from the car was a house, with some trees and
fields behind it that seemed to stretch into the
countryside. Sean patted his side as he stood, making sure
his gun was easily accessible. He was ready to do whever he
felt was necessary to even the score of ten months of
thinking time laid at his feet.

The thinking habit tried to rear its head as he stepped
toward the house. He tried to imagine what he would find.
He tried to imagine how he would react; what he would say.

Mightily, he fought off the thinking. He would sort out the
details when the time came. And the gun. That would help
him sort things out for sure, he thought.

He was about to make the first step onto the porch, when
something caught his eye off to the left. In the midst of
the trees, out in what appeared to be a garden, was a human
figure. Ignoring the house, he turned and stepped down the
path toward the figure and the garden. The closer he got,
the more sure he was of the man's identity. It was indeed
his old friend, under whatever new guise witness protection
had thrown at him. Calling him and old friend was being
charitable. What he was, and what he is now didn't matter
to Sean at all.

There was a good chill to the air, as the seasons had
turned, but it was still a nice day to be outside. The sun
was shining. A few puffy clouds seemed to drift lazily by.
It seemed like life itself was bound by the hills in the
distance on either side of the house, comfortably ensconcing
life in the valley from the entire outside world. Sean
Irving felt like a cancer descending into this home. A
virus coming in to cause death and pain in this priscine
place.

He fought off the thinking again. It did him no good. It
never did. It was just a survival mechanism from prison,
when it was all he had.

'Yo, Tommy.' He stepped from behind a tree, the last
obstacle between him and the man in the garden.

The person rose immediately, surprised by the voice, but as
familiarity traced its way across his face, his expression
descended further into horror.

'Arch...oh...'

Sean nodded slowly, pulling the gun from under his shirt as
he surveyed the scene before him. The man who used to be
Thomas Alze was now a withered shell of his former self.
The vibrant youth had left him sometime since Sean had been
imprisoned. While living the idyllic life, apparently, Tom
had begun to circle the drain. He stood motionless, staring
at Sean, before dropping his gardening gloves to the ground.

Maybe it was drugs, Sean thought to himself. He himself was
thinking about getting away from the busy life right before
he got nailed, and sure enough, he found the more time he
spent outside, the more alive he felt. The more he sat in
the sun and breathed fresh air, the better he felt in
general. Tom looked like he was twice his age now. Maybe
it wasn't drugs. Maybe it was guilt?

They stood for a moment in silence, before Sean spoke again,
quitely, as he stepped closer to Tom, still staring at him
over the gun.

'Why, Tommy? I gotta know.'

'Arch, it wasn't easy! They...they were squeezin' all of
us! You know that!'

'No one else turned, Tommy. I know it cuz half the crew
can't be found no mo'. They's hit the ground an' hard.
Hell, someone's tellin' me if I can find Messy out in
Montana I'd be the first, cuz he ain' showin' his face since
shit went down.'

'Look, Arch, they had me dead to rights. I was gonna spend
a lot more time in there that you did if I didn't talk!'

Damn the thinking, again haunting Sean. He fought the
thoughts away, before he drew the gun upward, lining up the
barrel right between Tom's eyes.

'I didn't spend that much time in, now did I, Tommy. That
means they didn't find the half mil.'

Something changed on Tom's face. The slight defiance
slipped away, as if he finally had nothing to stand on to
defend himself any more. His shoulders slumped, as his eyes
shifted away, down to the flowers at his feet.

'I'm sorry, Arch.'

'I know. I am too, but you know how shit's gotta go down.'

Tom nodded slightly, still staring off, while Sean lowered
the gun, tossing it into the dirt right next to the flowers
at Tom's feet.

'One of us ain' leavin' here alive.'

He sat down next to the tree beside the garden, staring over
the flowers himself now.

'I spent ten months in there, Tommy. All that time thinkin'
about things, an' you know, I don' think I wanna decide who
it's gonna be. I'ma let you decide. If it gonna be me,
Tommy, jus' tell me you gonna bury me over here with the sun
and the garden, a'ight?'

He could see Tommy slowly picking up the gun at his feet.
It felt like his body and mind wanted to tense up, wanted to
react to undo what he'd just done. Yet all the while he sat
calmly, leaning against the tree beside the flowers, staring
into the sun.

'I dunno, Arch. If I was you, I'd want to be buried down by
the river. Right over there, past those trees. Little
grove, beautiful little place I think you'd like.'

'There's a lotta pretty places out there, Tommy. I think
I'ma be fine right here...'

His words trailed off as a gunshot pierced the quiet valley.
Strangely, he felt disappointed at feeling anything at all
past that point. There was a loud thud as Tommy's body fell
beside the flowers.

'Damn it, Tommy.'

Sean spoke as he rose from sitting at the tree. He pulled
the gun from Tommy's hand and tucked it back under his
shirt.

'Guess we gonna go down to the grove past the trees, nigga.'

He was about to lift Tommy's body when he froze. A smile
crept across his face as he realized that there were likely
a half million reasons why he should dig down in the grove
to bury Tommy. He hoped it would be a pretty place, like
Tommy said.

Nah, he was sure of it.