Mr Snatch fell…
…and was completely surprised when he found that his hands, which he was
holding out in front of him as a last futile gesture towards self-preservation, made contact with the thick pile carpet of his own office.
His momentum caused him to still hit the floor with a bit of a thump
which rather took his breath away, and he lay there for a moment, slightly
winded, and let out a long, relieved deep breath.
So it had all been a dream after all.
He realised that somewhere a telephone was ringing, and he staggered
over to the desk to retrieve it from where he had thrown it earlier on that
night, or whatever night it had been. Time was playing tricks on him and
everything seemed to be acting in a rather fluid manner, and he hadn’t quite
worked out what day it was as he stumbled about believing that he was still
half-asleep.
As he picked up the telephone, he winced as he cut his hand upon one of
the shards of glass from the broken picture which he had never had the
opportunity to clear up because of his unusual diversion. Sucking in his breath
to stop himself from inadvertently exclaiming something more unpleasant, he punched
the “receive” button and listened as the message which he had failed to pay any
attention to earlier was finally relayed to him.
At the end of the message, he pressed the required number after the
ghostly voice told him that he had several options from which he could choose;
“To receive further information, press one. To dismiss this once-in-a-lifetime
chance at redemption, press two. To tell…”
He pressed “one” and waited as a strangely familiar yet unfamiliar
harpsichord ditty tinkled away and another ghostly voice apologised for the
fact that they were busy and that, if he was patient, they would answer his call just as soon as an
operator became available.
Eventually, an actual voice interrupted the music and Mr Snatch was able
to ask a very important question, in response to which there was a distant
unseen shrug and an absent-mindedly muttered “Who can tell?” before an attempt
was made at forwarding his call on to a colleague whom he assured Mr Snatch
would be able to answer any and all of his questions about that particular
matter before putting him on hold again.
After making a less than original observation to nobody in particular
that they might want to update their music, something with which Old Marley
actually concurred, Mr Snatch clicked the “end call” button on his telephone,
but it refused to be switched off and the tinny little tune played on and on
and on.
Mr Snatch sagged dejectedly and defeatedly onto the floor, and started
weeping quietly to himself at the realisation that there seemed to be nothing
he could do to change anything.
After a moment, he noticed that the tune had, in fact changed to
something slightly more modern, and, even though it still seemed to be a tune
dredged up from the bowels of hell, the mere fact of its alteration made him
stop and think. Then he stood up and wiped his eyes, before heading across to
the little ensuite cloakroom with a view to “freshening up”.
When he switched on the light and looked into the mirror, he was rather
surprised to find that he looked to be in an absolute state, standing there
wearing a ratty vest and a rather battered looking old overcoat. Then he looked
down at the tattered remains of his once immaculate designer suit, and the
battered non-matching pair of boots on his feet and realised with a growing
sense of dread that it hadn’t been a dream after all.
And then he had another thought.
He grabbed a pair of jeans, some socks and a pair of trainers from the
cupboard and threw them on. Hanging next to them was his overcoat, which he
grabbed and roughly folded under his arm as he was dashing towards the door.
Then he dashed back to the cupboard and grabbed a thick sweater which he then had to put on because the version of the coat he was now carrying had made the tattier one he had been wearing just seconds earlier inexplicably vanish from his body as it would now never make it back into the trunk
from which he had first retrieved it.
He was delighted. Things could change, and he could change them.
Which is how, acting in a manner which was against everything he had
ever previously done in his life, he then dashed off into the night in search
of Olive Scrimp and, to a lesser extent, Mitsy.
It took him quite some time to find them, as the streets of the city are
many, but when he remembered that he’d met her in the park, he soon found her
walking around and using the last of her energy in an effort to keep warm.
She was very suspicious of him at first. Her evening had already been
full of strange figures offering to show her various alternative notions of
their ideas of what a “good time” might be, but when she finally recognised
that the enthusing and caring face which was trying to help her was a variation upon the same, sterner face which had flung her out into the cold just a few short, but potentially
deadly, hours earlier, she accepted his invitation to put on the very welcome
overcoat, and was soon warming through whilst gorging on abandoned party food
in the upper banqueting suite of the SnatchCon Tower.
In the distance, the chimes of Big Ben struck the midnight hour and
drifted softly across the river to where they were just sitting and chatting in
a pleasant and casual manner which Mr Snatch had seldom experienced before.
Because she couldn’t help herself, she wished Mr Snatch an almost
whispered “Happy Christmas” and, after a moment’s confusion, he actually
returned the greeting, before sitting back in his chair and realising that he
had an awful lot of thinking to do.
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