Smoking Hot

859 Words2 Pages

He was in flames, literally, and sitting right next to me.

I hadn’t noticed.

An individual sitting a couple of rows in front of me turned around. He noticed. He stated, “He’s smoking,” referring to the individual in flames. I ignored the man in front of me.

‘How could he be smoking,’ I thought, ‘ his hands were cuffed behind his back’ I placed his hands in those cuffs earlier in the morning when I found him hiding at a local motel. He was hiding for failing to appear in court on a criminal case for which I had posted a bond. When I originally bonded him out of jail, I became his bail bondsman. Because he failed to go to court, if I failed to produce the defendant in court, the court would have demanded payment in cash

Now here we were in Denver Drug Court, in the very back row, he on fire and I did not know it.

Denver Drug Court is a huge court room where upwards fifty people appear on current drug cases or while on probation. They are trying (Or pretending to try) to get their lives in order after being caught using drugs. This is where I brought my fugitive. Normally when making an arrest, I surrender the arrested directly to jail. This time though, due to lack of proper paperwork, I needed to surrender him in open court. This usually means a four hour wait until all the other cases have been heard. So… here we sat, he sending off smoke signals that I could not read.

A man in front and to my left began running down the aisle towards us.

To my right, two sheriff’s officers were approaching quickly. The man running down the isle on my left yelled, ‘He’s on FIRE!’

“What?” I thought. A bit irritated, I turned to look. And there was my defendant, his shirt in flames, the fire crawling up...

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And even as I sat next to him, he did not exist in the forefront of my mind. As my own thoughts paced back and forth, impatient at the wait, his thoughts were in panic mode. His thoughts screamed in terror. His thoughts reigned in fear and ruled his actions. Sitting next to him, I was oblivious to those desperations and fears. His silent flame of pain had to be noticed by others before I could take it in.

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In another courtroom, a young boy was set afire. However, his court was not a Court of Law, but a Court of Hate.

While held captive by a group of Muslims who had just finished murdering his parents, this boy was given a chance for freedom, to escape the fire that his captors had set. To escape a campfire of death.

The fee for his freedom was his conversion. If he became a Muslim, he could go free. If he

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