When Jim Montrose turned the key in the lock of his front door he knew instantly that something was wrong. His sixth sense screamed at him to turn around but he entered anyway. At that moment it was too late to abort and too early to know. Jim Christopher Montrose, the moonlighting accountant, dangled on a flimsy tightrope between the safety of escape and the talons of unknown vultures. Below him, invisible crowds jeered and bayed for the blood of every vein.

 

Monday had been like every other Tuesday. The frenzied scramble to beat the alarm clock into submission. The water splashed across his bleary eyes. Cornflake indigestion. Clothes thrown on to the rhythm of Sky news. The final checks. A dash into the arms of a cruel world. A Costa espresso to go. Too few points for a free one. A smile from Sophie. Landing in front of a pile of paperwork that should have been dispatched on Friday. A Monday like every other Wednesday. The inquest into the inanity of the latest reality TV show. What was it? “I Once Dated a Reality TV Star in Rehab.” Discussions about stock prices. Distractions from life’s joys. Destruction of hope. The tea trolley. Like Groundhog Day. The bloody boss, “Yes, Sir. No, Sir. Fifty bags full, Sir, Your majesty!” Yes, indeed. Monday had been like every other Thursday. It even ended like every other Tuesday. The same walk out into the massed, suited flocks of office sheep that had escaped from their work pen, only to head aimlessly for the other pen where they lived. Shorn of freedom by the evil shepherd of normality.

 

When he saw the sight that greeted him as he walked through the gates of his pen, Jim Montrose knew that the shepherd of normality had deserted him, for surely no one had ever seen such a sight, nor smelled such fear. The pattern of eat, work, sleep, eat, work, sleep had been interrupted irrevocably. Terror’s blade was slashing wildly at the tightrope on which he swayed and frayed it to within a few threads of his demise. It was surely only a matter of time before he crashed. 

Monday had been like every other Wednesday. Clients had made various unreasonable demands on his life. The man who sat in the desk opposite had bored him into submission. To be fair it was a daily contest in dreariness. His life was hardly setting himself alight, let alone the world. It was ever darker at the end of his long tunnel. If he were to die today his soul would shuffle nervously towards a bright light, only to be snuffed out by the cackling of ravenous hyenas. Over an uninspiring, weak ham sandwich he was dragged down further by the relentless negativity of social media. The news cornered him, firing poisoned arrows into his breaking heart. Another boatload of refugees drowned in the Adriatic. A series of random, drive-by shootings in the next town. A frail pensioner robbed and raped by a delinquent adolescent. A new-born baby found in a dark alley. Not a single ray of hope filtered through the massed clouds of oppression and depression.

 

Jim Montrose’s legs wobbled uncontrollably as he surveyed the three figures that had made themselves at home in his living room. In silence, they looked up simultaneously, a venomous stare. The younger of the two men had evil intent etched across his brows. The woman was the colour of murder. The old man had seen better nights. This gang of three had a plan and Jim Montrose could not for the death of him think what it was. The young, grey man then stood up suddenly without warning and ran aggressively right through him. The icy wind of possession turned off the insipid spirit of Jim Montrose and he floundered in dead man’s land. The woman stood up, walked over and took hold of his hand, her bony fingers, devoid of flesh, hammering another nail into his coffin. The old man rose slowly and hugged him with the stench of death. Jim found himself unable to move in the midst of this ghostly triumvirate. He felt himself being transported against his will across his living room floor.

 

This was a day unlike any other day in the heart of the business district. It was certainly not a typical mundane Monday. Onlookers said that the body fell from the fourth floor and hit the pavement with such force that you would believe it had been launched by Satan himself. Police searched the building and found no evidence of a struggle and no DNA except that of the victim, said to be a manic depressive accountant going by the name of Jim Montrose. CCTV footage revealed nobody entering or leaving the building in the days leading up to the death. It also failed to pick up the three ghostly faces framed by the fourth floor window of Jim Montrose’s apartment.

 

©Cre8ivation