Ben sat in his new, reclining leather armchair and tapped aimlessly at his laptop. The home-page of his latest web-site was sitting there staring at him, refusing to fall into place. His previous site was all finished and ready to go as soon as Ben got the phone put on. His boss would be very relieved to see it, Ben thought. In the meantime, he was working on a bit of freelance work he'd started before he left Sydney.
The site was for a new little online comic book store who wanted a home-page that showed what they were about but didn't turn away adults or people who weren't into comics. Ben was bashing his head against a wall trying to arrange all the elements of a comic book into something that looked like a really cool movie poster.
Originally, he'd commissioned a mate to do a nifty flash animation for the site but had changed his mind after paying him for it. Animation might look cool, but it slowed the web-page's loading time down dramatically, and Ben didn't want to give surfers time to think they'd be better off at some other site.
It was three o'clock in the morning and he was too tired for this shit. But he was too wired up to sleep. That freaky shit at the club had psyched him out, especially seeing his old neighbour there. What the hell did that mean? Was he trying to tell Ben he was somehow responsible for Dwayne's near-death?
"Bullshit," Ben said into the silence of the house. His voice came out cracked and shaking and didn't make it any less true.
And there was Kath's injury that he'd seen earlier. Every time he thought about it, he felt that red curtain descending across his brain, threatening to block out all reasonable thought. There had to be something he could do to help Kath out of that mess. There had to be.
He was about to connect to the internet and realised he still didn't have a phone connection. "Shit," he muttered. That would be something he'd definitely need to correct with all due haste. For now though, he was going to crash. Try out his new bed and see how good it was. He figured at this stage it was probably going to be pretty damn comfortable.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR