The Observer

Chapter 1 – day minus 5

Fear the beast with malice sitting in his cave

Programmed for a flat world, eyes ablaze

Truth frozen out from the picture of lies

Whilst atoms dream god, and prepare for the skies.

The Television in the flock wallpaper front room was black and white. They could not afford colour, such extravagances out of reach of their working class pocket. The screen flickered, a loose connection from the makeshift aerial. But still husband and wife watched it, him with a stern expression and her with tears rolling down her cheeks, her chest heaving with every contained sob.

Somewhere upstairs the floorboards creaked. Oblivious to his parent's misery, their only child, a son, played with his soldiers. He improvised with a cardboard box. It made a good fort and cheap too. Every so often husband and wife would glance towards the ceiling. They did not smile. It was impossible to smile now.

The man held upon his stubble filled face a hardened, determined expression under his ashen receding hairline, a tilted crown once full of dark grown curls. Besides him the woman sat forlorn, pretty much resigned to her fate, brown eyes had long lost their sparkle beneath a limp auburn mess, dashed with grey. It was hard to conceive that a little over a decade ago she paraded a rainbow of reds, purples and pinks, braids and dreadlocks of a beatnik child. Now she, along with her man, had become boring and insignificant adults.

Like neighbours upon neighbours they were controlled and entertained by their electronic window on to the world. And right now, on the device in front of them, a cartoony image played out, as it had done so several times that day, and the day before and the day before that. Monotone, sterile and ominous. The voice of authority droned on: it was the last voice.

Again the stylised picture of the house appeared; a shimmering effect, like tinsel, around it while a tinny music played. The announcer said they would need to hide in their refuge in the heart of the home. Then the announcer, lacking any emotion in his delivery, advised them on disposal of the dead.

By now every person in the land knew 'Protect and Survive'. How could they not when it appeared on their televisions, on their radios and in their newspapers every day? They called it civil defence, the biggest fallacy ever pulled on the people by its government. The husband knew it, the wife knew it but still they watched, just to remember the drill.

Except for one hard fact. They would not be together when the bombs fell.

Dennis sighed and rose to his feet as the service announcement finished. His knees clicked as they were want to doing. Not even fifty yet but age advanced regardless.

"That never gets easier to watch," he said with his deep chords and pain in the inflection of the words.

Margaret just stared at him, wiping those once captivating dark eyes with a small lace handkerchief. She nodded but it was a weak gesture.

"Keep it together girl, for the lad." Dennis continued. "It won't do him any good to see you like that. Not right now. He needs to trust you. There will come the time when the fear will be real. But not yet."

"Is that time really going to come?" she mumbled a reply.

"Fingers crossed, but..." the ominous word hung there and Dennis stood in the centre of their small living room, with his own thoughts and terrors in his mind. He let the images race around his mind, his lips chewed to potted flesh over these last few weeks. But it served him no good. He rubbed his legs into action and moved to the kitchen, stepping over, yet ignoring, a canvas backpack packed with supplies.