The Road to Hell by Peter Cawdron

OK?”
    Susan turned and walked away. As much as she hated to be rude, there was nothing else she could do. She didn’t want the watch and no amount of refusal was going to placate the old lady.
    Behind them, the old lady screamed, “You stuck-up bitch!”
    Harrison grabbed Susan’s hand and melted back into the sea of people moving through the markets. Susan was stunned.
    “ I thought you said they weren’t pretentious?”
    “ They’re not,” replied Harrison.
    “ You said they were honest.”
    Thinking about it he added, “She told you what she thought of you, didn’t she?”
    “ Yeah, but…”
    Susan was still a little taken back at being verbally abused for not buying the watch. Harrison laughed.
    “ Would you rather she smiled and lied to your face?”
    “ At least that would have been polite,” Susan protested.
    “ OK. So if you’re going to be ripped off, you’d rather someone was nice and deceptive instead of brutal and honest.”
    “ I’m not saying that,” replied Susan, still on the defensive. “It’s just...”
    “ It’s just you’d rather your ego wasn’t crushed.”
    “ How can she be so rude?”
    Harrison smiled.
    “ Welcome to the real world, kiddo. WYSIWYG – What You See Is What You Get.”
    Rain pelted the sheet metal roof above the markets like a drummer hitting a snare. Gaps in the roofing allowed the overflowing gutters to pour down into the narrow alleyways between the seemingly endless rows of stalls. Susan was surprised to see how much merchandise could be stacked and packed into an area only marginally larger than her bathroom.
    Harrison stopped to talk to another old lady selling kebabs by the side of the alley. Susan kept her distance. A little more weary after her first encounter.
    The old woman had a row of skewers arranged over a thin metal grate, set above a bed of glowing hot coals. Spits of fat lit up the coals as the meat roasted over the heat. Susan couldn’t hear what was being said, but Harrison paid the old lady kindly, giving her more than the meagre two credits she was asking.
    “ You want one?” asked Harrison, turning to Susan.
    “ No thanks. I’ve had enough rat for one night.”
    “ Hey, don’t knock the rat. There’s worse things you could be eating around here.”
    “ Like what?”
    “ Bugs. Roaches. Some people consider them a real delicacy, especially when deep fried.”
    Susan shuddered at the thought.
    Harrison pointed at a stall selling plastic bags full of crickets and other insects, all still alive, with perforations in the bags allowing air to circulate.
    “ Or, if you’re really hungry, we could go get some live witchetty grubs. But you’ve got to be careful. They’ll bite you if you don’t bite first. So whatever you do, don’t swallow them whole.”
    “ I think I’ll pass.”
    As they walked on, Susan said, “You really love this place, don’t you.”
    “ I love real people,” replied Harrison. “Not everyone, mind you, but I love people that are genuine. See the old lady back there selling the kebabs. She lost her husband and her two sons in the war. Governments are always keen to have men fight for them, but once the dust settles and the bodies are buried, they’re nowhere to be seen. Sure, she gets a pension, but even that’s just a token gesture. I don’t like to forget. I don’t like to forget that people are real, that life goes on. You know what I mean?”
    Susan was quiet.
    Harrison bit off some of the kebab.
    “ Tell me about your sister.”
    “ Olivia,” replied Susan. “Well, she was always the mature one. She’s seven years older than me and always seemed more like my mother than my sister. I’d play with dolls; she’d just want to read, mostly romance, I guess. Dolls were too childish for her. I’d want to go to the movies, but she’d rather study. Just over fifteen years ago, she disappeared. We thought she'd been killed. There was so much chaos in those last days of the war. So many people