2 october 2024, @mariannewest's Freewrite Writing Prompt Day 2533: sympathetic ghost

Image by Christian Dorn from Pixabay

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“I am a iron-bound, dyed-in-the-wool, loyal-to-my-Confederate roots type of Virginian, and I'm still sick of the name of Lee – he's got to go!”

“OK, but since your name isn't Grant, are you going to be the one to turn the Angel of Death into a sympathetic ghost? Hush – you ought to know of anyone that Lees are clairvoyant and can see and hear through walls!”

Two blowhard bigwigs in Lofton County were done with the idea of Henry Fitzhugh Lee … making him a police officer in Big Loft had started a process in Lofton County, VA that had blown up so much stuff that they had gotten fat and comfortable on that they really wanted the colonel killed, but … .

“Look, you can't even talk to the locally available assets about putting a hit on this man,” the more sensible one said to the more upset one. “One third of them know him from the Armed Forces and are going to get you snatched up for suggesting it, and you don't know who they are. Another third is just going to laugh first, name some dumb sum we can't meet even together, and do the same thing while we are trying to get the money together – and the other third he's just going to outwit and dispose of, and then come get us. You are trying to make us history in three different ways! Hush!”

“But can we lean on some family members of his?”

“Look, the last time anybody even thought about threatening this man's family members, 750,000 people died – you oughta know that's called the Civil War! Hush!”

“But there's got to be something we can do!”

“The only thing we could have done was back in last January when Orton Thomas wasn't listening – we just should have put him out to pasture then for not caring about Lee's record, and then leaned on his replacement to not hire the man. It's 20 months later and everlastingly too late. The best we can hope for, since he is married and taking care of his little Ludlow relatives now, is that his Lee family man genes kick in and never kick off again – that nobody comes to ask him to get back involved in county matters.”

“You think the new state superintendent of police might make common cause with him?”

“Maybe – and this is why this conversation can't go any further. You and I just need to stay very, very still, collect our extras where we can, and tip on out of here in 2021. Don't do or say anything stupid about anything to anyone. know you are frustrated. We all are. But there's as much to be done about Lee as there was about his uncle if your name ain't Grant! Just hush, and we can outwait the colonel! Let him get settled into his new life! Just stay still and hush!”

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