The Bodyguard ("Freedom" story #89)

FREEDOM
by Michael Kroetch

The bodyguard’s mother is still in the hat shop. But she’s changed her mind. Not about the ponies. And obviously not about getting within six feet of any of the red hats in the place. It’s her pair of identically-clad prize-winning homosexual photographers. She has decided to stand her ground on their trophies and launch her thousand-fold fleet of wedding photographs from there. Archbishop be damned!

The ceremony’s documentation will be perfect even if she has to exert a little more force than might seem, at first, ladylike. The long term is what is most important now and it’s why she can’t let herself fret too much about whose toes get flattened for things to be as they must.

It’s something she learned from her Eternal Redeemer. He’d smiled down at her once from his correct and legal position on the nice silver cross in her kitchen—nodded at his palms—and whispered that perfection always has a cost. Somewhere. It’s never for free.