It wasn’t the best first meeting that ever happened in the long history
of mankind, and it rather surprised at least one of the Messrs Snatch that it
turned out to be that way. He had, after all, believed quite reasonably that
someone living such a lonely life as his descendant appeared to be doing might
actually be rather more grateful to find that he might have any kind of company
at all, no matter how unusual the circumstances of how that meeting might have come
about.
And, after all, family was family, wasn’t
it…? Even if ancestors long-dead don’t usually make a habit of turning up in
people’s lives and having a bit of a chat, and, quite literally going over old
times, perhaps over a little drink of something or other.
What he had utterly failed to consider (because, after all,
consideration of what other people might be feeling was not, as we have already
witnessed, something that he was well practiced in) was that during his long
endurance of extreme loneliness, Mr Snatch had had plenty of time to brood and
ponder upon how his situation had come about.
Quite reasonably, at least from his point of view (which was, after all,
the only one that really mattered any more), once he had finally managed to forgive
himself for having clambered inside his shelter in the first place, he had
turned his attentions to the sources of the conflict which had led to him
making that most wretched of choices, with the certain knowledge of what the
family archives had already told him when he had read them as a small boy.
Buried
deep in the archive was his family’s hidden shame and guilt, the great secret
which they had tried so very hard to keep to themselves, but which, when it did
finally seep out and become more general knowledge, had meant a sea-change in
people’s attitudes which had escalated and escalated until it could no longer
be controlled. It had been a moment which might have seemed rather
insignificant in the great scheme of things but which had had devastating consequences
for the whole of humanity.
And
here, delivered to him by the fickle finger of fate, and in a manner that was
so very unlikely that he simply had no choice but to accept it and learn to
deal with it, was the perpetrator of that very wrong, hoping to have a little
chat with him over a nice cup of tea.
Standing
right there, on his own stairwell! Right in front of him! As large as life and
yet only half as ugly.
Well,
to say that all of his pent up anger, rage and frustration boiled over at that
moment from inside him where it had been bubbling, would be something of an
understatement. The surviving photographs from the family files did not do
justice to the sheer arrogance and audacity of this man, even if they didn’t
really do his natural good looks all that much justice either. He was simply one of
those people who do not photograph well.
Setting
all that aside, however, it appeared that it was indeed most definitely HIM,
and the lonely little man who had
spent so much time alone was willing to believe that any manipulators of events
who were able to conspire to bring about the end of the world were just as
capable of shifting the jigsaw pieces of time around enough to bring about this
visitation, and he seized his moment and lunged at this despised figure at the
first chance he got.
There
is little point in discussing what was said between them as they fought their
way up and down and all around the tower, but we can be fairly certain that
there was little in the way of seasonal greetings being flung back and forth.
There might have been some discussion as to whether one or the other of them
was being unreasonable, or there may have been something in the way of a sharp
(and perhaps slightly biased) history lesson, or there might just have been the
pointless outpourings of blind rage that occasionally are then to be regretted
in the cold light of day, but it is unlikely that we will ever really know.
And
it wasn’t much of a fight, to be honest. Viewers of “Pay-per-view” would have
been switching off in their droves at such a disappointing spectacle. Neither
of the combatants had ever really been built for indulging in the less-than-gentle
art of fisticuffs, nor were they really in the best of physical shape after
their diverse recent experiences. So, in general, this meant that, whilst there
was much huffing and puffing, and considerable quantities of ducking and
diving, there was little for a connoisseur to appreciate, as they generally spent
most of their time trying their very best to keep out of each other’s way, and
not much else.
They
covered an awful lot of territory, in all directions, but made very little
actual physical contact. The “present day” Mr Snatch spent much of the time
pleading with his descendant as to whether they might not be able to just talk
about things, and trying his level best to summon up the negotiation skills
which had served him so well in his business life, in order to remind his
assailant, time and again, what a dreadful thing it was to be lonely, because
he genuinely believed that reminding him of this might actually help him to
bring him to his senses.
However,
as time went on, this strategy was obviously failing to have any impact, and
instead he found himself backing his way higher and higher up in the rickety
tower until he found himself standing upon a ramshackle and rather hand-made
looking platform, upon which there seemed to be standing little more than a
brass telescope, and about which there seemed to be a great deal of what he
could only describe as being a howling and rather icy wind.
Surprised
as he was to have run out of places to run, and desperate as he was to keep
away from the flailing fists of a person who might once (in another reality)
have more lovingly referred to him as “Great-Grandpa” (or something), he was
most shocked when the railing that he was clinging on to gave way, and he found
himself unexpectedly plummeting to the ground from the top of the remains of
the very tall tower he once built to carry his own name into the bright new future.
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