The Wake-up Call: Weakness

Most people are too weak to make a call on a moral or behavioural issue. The often-quoted truism is that you most detest in others what you dislike about yourself - which doesn't make me feel any better. I detest failures of judgement, the buttock-clenching fence sitting, the betrayal.

Most of all, I hate the blast of cold-air reality which accompanies the wake-up call: these "friends" of yours, will they stand up and stop the prison-camp queues forming, or will they just quietly stand by, hoping that their execution time will be delayed, their escape chances enhanced?

I awake with a jolt, a mere two hours after laying down to sleep, exhausted by the violence. My dreams contain struggling albino creatures of the north, rendered toy-sized, but still somehow threatening, long claws and beaks and fangs contained in silken fur.