PART 3

HERE IT IS...ENJOY.

C

 

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Wednesday 9.17am The Terracotta room, 10 Downing street, London SW1A 2AA

 

                Prime Minister Gavin Lightmore had received the news unexpectedly the night before whilst on a prestigious trade visit to Vienna. He got the call in his suite at the Imperial hotel, Vienna at 10.27 pm and immediately took the unprecedented decision to cut short his visit and fly back to the UK forthwith.

                This should not be happening now, this wasn’t the time, and it's too early. Lightmore probed to himself after ending the call. The flight home was uncomfortable as concerns, personal battles and flesh crawling fear began to overcome him and traverse his body with clean unbiased purity. His personal Medic lost count of the number of times he attended to Lightmore as he desperately struggled for breath throughout the flight. This could be my downfall, this could be the end of everything Lightmore mused to himself aggressively.

                Having taken sleeping pills to enable his beating heart to rest a while overnight and declining a hospital check up, he was now up and about and had paced restlessly around for the last hour before deciding upon what must be done. He’d cancelled all his schedules for the day, and after seeing his dear children off to school and his dear wife off to her daily high-powered job, he instructed his bodyguards to give him an hour alone in the Terracotta room.

                They obliged but under protest given his frail state, but nevertheless stood resolutely outside.

                The Terracotta room was a huge room filled with exquisite, exotic and very famous works of art that formed part of a very vast, and very expensive secret government owned art collection. Lightmore reluctantly sat on the chaise lounge adjacent to the huge 18-carat gold-framed portrait of her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and looked out towards the huge ornate draped windows and the silent street beyond. It was now or never, he had to do this no matter what he’d been told to the contrary, he just had to do this.

                He sighed a heavy, meandering sigh then took his favourite gold encrusted pen from his top left jacket pocket. It was an exquisite antique pen, passed down from PM to PM and originally belonged to the old Bulldog Churchill himself. Given it had gone through many repairs since, having been presented to him on the day of his inauguration, along with a very absolute and imperative admonition.

                Unscrewing the bottom of the pen, he delicately removed the ink capsule from within, and then tapped the hollow end of the separated top half. Out popped a small round metallic, silver globe - about the size of a small bead - into the palm of his hand. Carefully taking it from his left palm and holding it between his right thumb and forefinger the tiny globe reacted immediately. Recognising his fingerprint, it began to resonate a low-pitched vibrating hum, like far, distant rumbling traffic on a sunny, hazy day. It began to grow, as it did so he swiftly paced forward and placed it gently upon the ornate gilded table in front of him…then waited.

                Then it defied logic, vibrating and gyrating violently upon the table, growing and growing, twisting and turning.

                He stood transfixed.

                It began to rise and levitate, and slowly rose maybe three of four feet above the table and continued to gyrate and swirm in an unbelievable display of jaw dropping awe. Suddenly without warning it spew forth millions upon millions of tiny, shimmering rays of gold dust that seemed to fill the room and light up the whole earth for one brief mind smattering moment. They seemed to hang there in the air, weightless and motionless, fiery and full of light. Then abruptly they were reined in by some kind of invisible force. Swiftly coalescing together and returning towards the hovering metallic sphere. It all happened in the space of eight or ten seconds, Lightmore couldn’t tell. He watched transfixed as the last speck of gold was vacuumed violently into the sphere before exploding viciously with a brilliant, white flash and an ear splitting Fizzzz.

                He rubbed his eyes like a child in the dark after finding the light switch. At first, he thought it was a trick of the light, but gradually his senses began to register what he now beheld before him.

                “Who…What…Who are you?” Lightmore demanded hazily.

                Before him stood an immense grotequely disfigured male. Hugely imposing at a touch under seven feet tall and clothed entirely in black cape and hood, Lightmore spied a lonely, forlorn face beneath a grey ragged hood. The face was grey, wrinkled and heavily scarred with heavyset eyes that glowed an intense, almost sun-like shade of orange. The figure opened his mouth to speak revealing a hideous spattering of dull yellow, black, broken and crooked teeth. A lone cockroach crawled out from the corner of his mouth and scurried away around to the side of his dull grey cheeks, towards the back of his hood.

                Lightmore winced and wanted to vomit.

“Who…are...you…and whatttt do youuu wanttt my friend?” The figure slowly drawled in a soft, but deep foreboding tone.

                His arms were crossed over his chest.

                He did not wait for an answer.

“COME ON…WHAT DO YOU WANT. DO NOT WASTE MY TIME OR TOIL WITH MY PATIENCE YOU PUNY LITTLE FOOL.”

                Lightmore tried to pull himself together and wrestled hard with his palpitations and feelings of revulsion. He’d seen many things in his eighteen months of PM, things that would make your mother squirm and your sister vomit. Things that chilled him to his very soul and secrets he thought could never, ever be possible. Here now though was the biggest secret of all, in all it’s glory right before his tired, disbelieving soul.

                “Ok, ok please I didn’t know whether to summon you or not. I am the new Prime minister and I was told only to summon you when all else had failed. Well all else has kind of failed as I believe you have something of ours.” Lightmore gently pressed.

                “AND WHAT IN MY NAME WOULD THAT BE...COME ON DO TELL QUICK MAN.” The figure raged as another lone cockoach scurried out from beneath his cape and wandered aimlessly away towards Lightmores feet as he gulped, caught his breath and kicked the cockroach aside as a whole brow full of clammy sweat dripped across his cheeks.

                “I believe you have two very important objects…or should I say children that do not belong to you.” Lightmore gingerly pressed.

                The figure began to cackle and laugh, violently and hideously. Lightmores ears began to hurt at the sound as the figure continued to screech and crow rising in tempo and crescendo until…

                With one swift, direct flow of his outstretched arms to the front and side in a rancid, crazed arc Lightmore took off from the floor. He flew effortlessly back over the chaise lounge, twisted and tumbled in the air towards the far wall, then slammed chest first into the noble portrait of our monarch hard, fast and with a combined crunch of molecules, bone, canvas and plaster.

                Lifelessly his tangled body slumped raggedly to the floor.

                His ribs smashed loudly on impact and dull grey, shards of hardened calcium acted as an ironic self-destroyer as they effortlessly pierced his subtle grey-pink lung sacks with a slow menacing pop. His left leg shattered as his kidney and spleen caved inwards and ceased their daily routine and purpose, and his puny neck hung to his chest like a lifeless Christmas turkey waiting to be plucked.

                Such was the force of the impact and the insidious figures wrath of power that he may never have felt a thing, but no one would ever know. Lightmore could never tell because at this precise moment he was deep within the most insidious bowels of Hell...waiting to be judged..

 

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SORRY MY SCAREFESTERS. THIS IS THE LAST EXCERPT OF THIS STORY THAT I WILL POST HERE FOR YOUR ENJOYMENT.

MY MOST HUMBLE THANKS AGAIN TO EVERYONE. WITHOUT YOU ALL I COULDN'T WRITE, AS IT'S FOR YOUR PLEASURE I DO THIS MORE THAN MY OWN. I ENJOY WRITING, I LIVE AND BREATHE IT AS MY HANDS ARE IN PERFECT SYNC WITH MY IMAGINATION AS I TYPE. BUT THE ONLY THING THAT GIVES ME MORE ENJOYMENT THAN WRITING, IS KNOWING THAT MY ALL TALES ARE ENJOYED BY SOMEONE OTHER THAN MYSELF, I.E ALL OF YOU. AND FOR THIS I THANK YOU ALL.

FEEL FREE TO LEAVE ME ANY COMMENTS, I VALUE THEM ALL AND VALUE ALL OF YOU ALSO.

 

 

OH YEAH YOU MAY HAVE GUESSED IT BY NOW...HERE'S ANOTHER LITTLE CHILLING THOUGHT.

NEXT TIME YOU SEE A LITTLE, BITTY DEAR OLD CREEPY CRAWLY INSECT REMEMBER THIS.

SOME OF YOU MAY SQUIRM AT IT, SOME OF YOU MAY SQUISH IT FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER.

OR SOME OF YOU MAY PICK IT UP AND FEEL ALL SENTIMENTAL AND MARVEL AT THE FACT THAT THIS LITTLE TINY THING CAN, AND HAS SURVIVED ON THIS BIG OLD PLANET FOR THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF MILLENIA.

BUT I BET YOU THE ONES THAT SQUIRM AT THE LITTLE BEASTS DO SO BECAUSE THEY FEEL THAT AGE OLD FEAR DEEP WITHIN THEM. THE FEAR, THAT ONE DAY WHEN WE'RE ALL SIX FEET UNDER THERE'LL BE CRAWLING, SLITHERING AND MEANDERING IN AND AROUND OUR EYE SOCKETS WITHOUT A CARE IN THE WORLD.

NEXT TIME YOU LOOK UPON AN INSECT...REMEMBER ONE DAY IT MIGHT BE UPON YOU. AND MAYBE INSIDE YOU TO.

IF NOT THAT ONE...IT'S OFFSPRING MIGHT.

 

HAVE FUN. SLEEP TIGHT AND TRY TO WAKE UP TOMORROW.

YOU WOULDN'T WANT NOT TO WAKE NOW...WOULD YOU?

THE LITTLE, BITTY SCURRILOUS INSECTUMS ARE WAITING FOR YOU!

 

 

 

WHO PAINTED THE MOON BLACK?
Copyright C.Anthony Boot 2012-2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the Author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.

All characters contained in these tales are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.