George and Spider - The Execution

 George left his bed much earlier than usual. During the course of the night he'd occasionally dipped into the shallowest fathoms of sleep only to be hauled right out again by the relentless thorns of anxiety which prick, prick, pricked at his consciousness.  He quietly put on the clothes which he'd prepared the night before and kissed Maxene gently on her forehead, pressing his lips into the soft cushion of tissue which protected her skull. She didn't stir. His eyes were sore, unrested. He grabbed his little torch and opened the flat door,  there he paused as he felt the warmth of Crystal at his side and they went down together, through the empty shop and out into the night air. The Koi were quiet, ticking over in the dark like silent sleeping shapes; they didn't come up to greet George or even rise to eat the little brown pellets which he threw into the water for them.

Inside the shed it felt damp and freezing cold. He turned on the electric heater and with a smelly cloth wiped the condensation which had gathered on the windows. Then he sat, warming his hands between his legs and thinking hard. I must be calm, controlled, he thought and reached for his CB radio. Annoying it wouldn't tune into the local police force; he fiddled with the controls, his pulse rising, then he banged it hard upon the wooden panels of the shed but all he could get was static fuzz, white noise, the familiar echo of The Big Bang. He kept it on nevertheless since it drowned out of the nagging in his own head; Have you done enough? Will Spider come out of this unscathed? What are you doing with your life?

George put his head in his hands. The buzzing sound appeared to be getting louder, second by second it filled more and more of the space inside his brain until it felt as if all the energy in the whole universe was contained within the wooden walls of his shed. The truth was he'd been stressed for a long time but he'd been quite unwilling to acknowledge it, believing, as he did, that he knew everything and could do anything. Now his anxious mind, having foregone sleep, was desperate for an outlet. The white noise provided a sort of hammock which his exhausted soul slipped right into. All ablank now, he stared out of his shed window. A light went on up in the flat. Seconds later he saw the silhoette of Maxene through the thin curtains. She had her dressing gown on, George could tell by the bulge at her waist and the faint outline of her tied belt. He watched her bend down to plug in her straightening irons and he began to feel very odd. It was as if by some super-natural means he was still lying in bed and having some sort of out of body experience, one which involved being up unusually early and sitting in the shed listening to static fuzz, watching Max get ready for work.  

Crystal got up from her bed of cushions in the corner. She stared hard at George then returned to the corner and spun around a few time, only to get up again and continue to stare at him.

He turned to her and said weakly, 'What you looking at Crystal, what's the problem?'

She lifted her wide head and let out a single short sharp bark, it echoed into the night. Crystal rarely barked, something was wrong.

This isn't real, George thought to himself, there's something about this which simply isn't real. Perhaps he'd given this day too much momentum, more than was necessary. I've over-egged it, he thought, I've bloody over-egged the pudding, upset the status quo. Briefly an image of Francis Rossi's feeble pony tail hung in his mind, he shook it away, no good could come of it. I need to be cool, reclaim the balance of my mind. He began to take deep breaths; in through the nose, out through the mouth. The buzzing sound streamed relentlessly out of the radio creating a sort of safety film which George feared would pop if  he was to reach out to the switch and turn it off, perhaps exposing something dangerous underneath. The light went off up in the flat. Maxene would be heading out to work now but George was still picturing himself in bed, perhaps waking now, waking from one of his killer whale dreams or some other bizarre phantasmagoria of the latter seconds of deep sleep. He knew something was wrong. Then he heard the voice.

To begin with it was faint, and it melded seemlessly with the white noise from the radio. Then it grew louder, closer, as if somebody was slowly turning the knob which controlled the volume of his life. It was that old, familiar voice, internal yet detached, uncompromising in its approach as it spoke, or rather sang the usual phrase; The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson, warped and twisted; 'I I love the colourful clothes she wears and the way the sunlight........'.

George slumped and fell from his seat; he collasped in on himself and was gone, hurled temporarily into an internal no-man's land.