Henry had earnt the right to be a cantankerous old git. He’d worked his whole life as a bus driver on the number 57 and that meant he’d worked his whole life being grumpy with miserable people and screeching school children. He was not a fan of people which worked out fine because Henry lived alone. He was married once, but Martha had run off with her salsa teacher 25 years ago. His only son had buggered off to Australia 15 years ago and not called for the last five. He had thought about getting a cat but then he read on the internet about an old lady who died in her sleep and her twelve cats had eaten her before anyone found her. All that was left was a pile of licked clean bones and her rings. Needless to say, that put him off ever buying a cat.

Henry lived by a strict routine. He woke up at 6:30AM for no reason other than he could then moan about all the lazy sods that stay in bed past seven. He’d look out of his window to see the neighbours opening their curtains at ten past seven. His head would shake, his jowls would jiggle and he would tut for all his worth. They saw him some mornings, but that just encouraged the tutting. He shaved in the kitchen sink then ate a breakfast of cheap margarine on toast and tea. He washed it up straight away because mess bothered him. The plate would be tucked away at the back of the cupboard ready for tomorrow, and the tea bag would be saved for a second cup later on. He never did like waste and reckless, single-use of a tea bag was as bad staying in bed till ten past seven. He’d go out to buy a paper and something for his dinner. He lived a short walk away from the biggest, soulless hyper-supermarket and no one would talk to him when he walked up and down the air conditioned hellhole. The newspaper fuelled his discontentment with the world. It told him how everything would give him cancer; people would come from other countries and steal all the jobs he didn’t want any more anyway; and how the whole nation was going to the dogs since Princess Diana died. He wasn’t invested in any of these things but they made him irrationally angry all the same.

Henry was lonely, miserable, and irritable and that was how he liked it. He would carry on indefinitely like that until something stopped him. On Monday 30th April 2018, he was something stopped him.

He came downstairs at 6:37AM like he always did and that was the end of his routine. Sat at his table in the kitchen, in the only chair, was a well-dressed woman. She wore a black three-piece suit neatly tailored to fit her painfully thin frame. She matched it with a black shirt and black tie. The only flash of colour was a pin on her lapel, a red badge the same shape as an old fashioned scythe.

“Who the bloody hell are you and what are you doing drinking my tea?” Henry demanded, his fury rose when he saw the teabag sitting in the top of the bin. She smiled and Henry felt an icy blast rip through his body. It was like someone had tightened a belt around his chest and replaced several important organs with the frozen beef dinner he was going to buy later that day. He lent heavily on the table and the room swam around him. “What have you done to me?”

“You’ve done it to yourself, Henry.” She said. Her voice sounded melancholic and uncaring, a weeping statue carved from ice. He wished she’d let him sit down in his chair, his chest was tightening like the belt being cranked smaller and smaller. Pain shot up his left arm as he sank to his knees. “You’re going to give me a gift, Henry. Your time is growing short and I’d like to hear your thoughts on life. Tell me, what was life about?”

Henry flexed his left hand, trying to get some feeling back. His legs were going numb and his arms felt like lead. He accepted his fate and looked this morbid woman in the eyes. With a strength that surprised him, he spat his final words at an angry world.

“I should have got a cat.”

Henry closed his eyes and gave up. He thought he’d see a light, or a long fall or one of the things he read about in the Sunday supplement in his paper. I was more like someone was leaving the building at the end of the day. The lights went out one by one, the heater got switched off and with one final check to make sure everything was off, darkness.

“Idiot!” snapped the woman and she disappeared in a thin cloud of wispy black smoke that dissipated in seconds.