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Lazy people cause problems to the people around them. They let others do their own work, and get used to it. When they don't they tend to think they are mistreated and get angry easily with the people who usually favor them. Judge Robles was one of these people, but he learns eventually that nobody else came to the world to serve him.

This is my third short story written directly in English, the first one being The singer's complaint, and the second Lust, which belongs, together with this one, Sloth, to a larger project called The Seven Deadly Sins. I hope you like it..., when I finish it. I am now in the process to write it, and I hope I will finish it after a few months. If you would like to be told about its publication, just let me know a word on it.

Here you have a fragment:

In fact Robles was atheistic, but he wanted a solution, so he went to a church and sought relief in a curate's words. After all ghosts were not supposed to exist...

“Well, my son”, the priest  said, “it seems as if you felt guilty of your misdoing and you are sorry you did not do something else”.

“Well, father, yes. But my guilt came after I met that poor man's scepter”.

“Scepter! Well, my son, I am not ready for that. Maybe his soul talks to yours...,  what were you doing the first time you met that scepter of yours?”

“Well, father, I was sleeping”.

“Hum”, said Father González, “then you are right: maybe we should exorcize your ghost...”

“Father, can you do so?”

“No, I'm afraid I am not very good at exorcizing. But we can pray together”.

For the next minutes or so Father González was praying silently, saying no words, his eyes shut, in deep meditation. Because his eyes were shut he could not see Robles' puzzled face, nor how anxious he was, looking everywhere, mostly away form the priest. Judge Robles had never prayed in his whole life, and in fact he could not remember the time when he asked anything from anyone, as he was among the people who were always in command. Till now, that is. This was the first situation he could not control in his life for a very long time. At the end of the priest's prayer, he said:

“Well, I can see you did something wrong, son, and there's someone who has not forgiven you for that”.

“So?”

“So he can't go on, and he's attached to you”.

“For how long he'll be like that?”

“I don't know, son. Maybe till you correct what you did, if he does not give up first”.

“Did you talk to him?”

“No, I can only see him, son. To talk to him you need a medium, which I am not”.

“Well..., my God. Don't you know another priest who can help me?”

“Father Collins is an excellent exorciser, but he retired last year and went to live in his native country, Illinois, in the United States of America. He used to be here, in this church”.

Robles looked very disappointed.

“So what can we do, father?”

“Nothing much, son. Just try to pray and ask God to take him out of your life”.

Robles went for a long walk. He was thinking very hard for the whole evening. He went through the city center and then into a picture house. He saw Woody Allen's Sleeper and laughed a lot, as he found it so amusing.

But when the lights went up again, he heard that hateful word again: Incompetent! He turned back and saw old Mr. García pointing his finger at him. He  looked round and saw that some people were looking at him, not at García, whom, he concluded, they could not see. He went outside even more worried than before.

He came back home to find Garcia sitting in his favorite chair:

“Aren't you ashamed of your sloth, Robles?”, the old man said. “You've been lazy all over your life, and if it had not been for your father's friends, you'd be jobless now. Your life is a ruin because you are so stupid and so lazy. And that may cost the life of innocent people like myself. Aren't you ashamed of your life, you lazy bastard?”

“Oh, piss off!”

But Orlando García was there no longer, so Robles saw himself talking to no one.

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