FATAL DREAMING.

There was nothing more in life that Arthur loved better than a good murder. It didn’t matter whether they were fictional murders in crime novels or the real thing. He loved visiting the Tower of London where people had been tortured with gruesome instruments by unsavoury people and he’d muse for hours on the fate of Anne Boleyn etc etc. His wife thought him a harmless eccentric and his children wallowed with him in his sea of unremitting gore. His bureau was full of cuttings relating to Christy, Haig, Jack the Ripper and more recently Fred and Rosemary West. Myra Hindley and Ian Brady starred if that’s the right word in his “celebrity” murder cases. I think it was unhealthy and it eventually led him to his own death.

“Arthur dear”, Ursula called from the kitchen where she was cooking his favourite meal. When she used that tone of voice you could be sure she wanted something. His mouth watered as he cleared the stairs two at a time to get to the table for this culinary delight. “Oh wonderful! Home-made ratatouille and rice. None of that tinned muck the kids go in for nowadays eh!” His wife smiled one of her most fetching smiles as she seated herself beside him.

Their house was comfortable, their lives were comfortable but with Patrick and Nina now about to enter their teens they were anticipating troubled waters. Though so far their boat had been sailing in calm seas which made them think it couldn’t last much longer. They’d been lucky. This was a rare period of quiet in the house too as they were alone, their children being out with friends.

Now for the pay-off for the nice meal: “Darling!” Ursula said as she stroked his knee under the table, “Couldn’t we go to see that new film advertised at the cinema? Paula and Tim are going and I shouldn’t be surprised if there won’t be the odd murder in it since it’s an historical romance”. She never realised just how much she sounded like one of the children when she adopted that pleading whining tone. He needed to work late so he could keep her in the manner to which she’d very quickly become accustomed. Besides he didn’t much like Paula and Tim. “Couldn’t you go with them on your own”? He suggested, knowing as he did so what her reply would be. Ever the one to keep up the old conventions, Ursula vehemently protested that threesomes were “not the done thing”. “Well I hate Tim! He’s so loud and pompous. He’s full of self-importance and self-righteousness. No darling you really will have to go on your own”. “Out of the question. Paula’s bought four tickets.” She went on to explain that Paula can’t stand him undiluted by friends for an evening any more than they’d be able to, finishing by saying: “Beats me why she married him but then again loneliness and insecurity makes people do odd things.” She advised Arthur to tune Tim out and concentrate on the film and as he resignedly agreed, in order to save further conflict he knew exactly why he’d been sweetened up with his favourite meal and thought not for the first time how devious women can be.

Arthur and Ursula had met at school when Arthur was fifteen and she twelve. She thought him a pimply youth with a face like a blind man’s Braille book but he saw her potential even then as someone who could increase his social standing once they’d grown up and made up his mind to reel her in just as a patient angler does with a fish. After school they’d gone their separate ways, not meeting again till Paula had a house-warming party to which both had been invited. His pimples now gone, Ursula saw his potential too and realised that, as a financial wizard just how much money he could make and allowed herself to be “reeled in”. She’d always been grateful to Paula, feeling herself to be in her debt and was determined to support her tomorrow night by being with her and the ghastly Tim at the film come what may. Besides it would get her nicely out of another charity event she was supposed to attend. It’s surprising how “doing good works” enhances your standing in the community but she’d done her stint this year she felt so did not feel guilty about feigning a cold.

Arthur had endured “one of those nights.” He’d slept fitfully after his meal and had a twenty-four quarat gold headache. He felt ragged and stale as he stumbled off to work but knew that nothing short of an earthquake or floods would get him out of this wretched trip to this film. During breakfast he hardly spoke to anyone and stumbled out of the house having slammed the door and forgotten his key. “Dad’s in a mood”, commented Nina. “Sulking I’d say”, her mother commented while explaining that the children would be going round to Sally Armstrong’s after school. Sally loved children but had none of her own. The children loved Sally and to be going there on a week night was something of a treat. Their mother thought as she loaded the dish washer how lucky they were to have such nice neighbours.

The lights had gone down and the music had started. Indeed there were scenes of horror, blood and guts, that Arthur loved so much. However he found it hard to concentrate. His need for sleep making his eye lids heavy. He began to dream, to dream of the scenes of devaastation and destruction, of executions and torture, of cruelty and inhumanity which had been woven into his psyche all his adult life. Spinning, dancing imagery, ever changing and yet the same, was sweeping him up into the maelstrom, making him centre stage in his own weird and twisted plot. He was no longer an onlooker but the main character now. Suddenly an innocent finger touched him on the back of the neck The man in the row behind could no longer stand his snoring. Arthur fell forward- Dead. He clutched the long hair of the woman in front as he died.

The coroner concluded that the massive heart attack which killed Arthur was probably brought on by his dreaming of either a hangman’s noose or a knife blade which separates the dead from the living and that the man’s touch was interpreted by his brain as just such an implement, coming as it must have done in a crucial point in the dream. Be careful what you watch tonight won’t you and about what occupies your thoughts.