Lucky Numbers.

Every Saturday morning, Sam Norton would leave his flat, near Pinner Green, and go to the superstore just around the corner; well round the corner and up the road; a very busy road, even though it wasn't a main thoroughfare; but it had traffic lights, a little island and a kind of slip road to the store. On the left hand side there was another little street which led to a block of council flats, a halfway house for ne'er-do-wells and some kind of shelter.

The Jewish delicatessen, on the other side of the street, was a mystery to Sam as it always seemed to be closed. Sam ventured in there one day, as he loved all kinds of Jewish food, but found their bill of fare offered little more than pre-packed produce from big chain suppliers.

Sam's mission, on Saturday mornings, was to buy a lottery ticket. He would use the same numbers every week which were, 1, 7, 14, 21, 28 and 29. He knew that if he ever won the jackpot he would have to share it with many others as they must be popular numbers; but there again, other people might be like him and know that they were popular numbers and not choose them and there again, he was sure his double bluff would mean he might be the only winner after all.

Sam knew the numbers by heart but, every Saturday, he would give the clerk at the lotto desk a MyLuckyNumbers card with a bar code, which would automatically print the numbers on the lottery ticket.

That was the way he liked to do it as he thought it would bring him luck; he knew too that if he changed his numbers one week they would come up the following week. 

His wife would know the numbers in any case as number 1 was his birthday, number 7 his wife's, 14, 21 and 28 were the birthdays of their three children and they were married on the 29^th.

One Friday evening, when coming back on the Tube train from Baker Street, he noticed that The Evening Standard had not been delivered to the supermarket by the station so after a beer, and looking at the latest news on the television, he went out to the superstore around the corner to pick up a copy of the newspaper.

As he walked away from his building, the light rain hit him in the face; it didn't seem to be coming down heavily so he carried on walking for a while but then had second thoughts so he called his wife and asked her to throw down his hat.

This she did and when he caught it she suggested that he might buy the lottery ticket to save going the next day.

'No' he said 'I don't want you throwing down the card; it'll blow away.'

'You know the numbers' she said 'just fill them in.'

From the brief description above, you will know that that wasn't Sam; he would only buy his lottery ticket with the little card he used every week; he even kept a copy of how many times he had done the lottery, how much each ticket cost annually and kept it in his little drawer; he never thought to multiply the number of weeks in the year with how much each ticket cost.

So with his hat on, his ratting hat, as he called it, he wandered up to the traffic lights on Pinner Green, went around the corner and, as soon as he was passed the road restrictions of the traffic lights, he saw a man lurking around a parked car. 

He looked a bit suspicious, although Sam couldn't figure out why, but why was he messing with the lock? Also the man reacted when he saw Sam.

As Sam walked passed, matey boy walked behind him and as he walked, Sam slowed down to let the geezer overtake him. But he wouldn't pull away. He kept looking at Sam. When they were about to pass the fish'n'chip shop Sam suddenly walked in. The place was empty and the woman, who owned it, came out from the back to serve Sam.

'I just thought I'd come in and say hello' he said 'I've been away!'

'How nice' the woman said 'how are you?'

'I'm fine' said Sam 'I'll see you soon.' and he left.

He could see on the slip road, about one hundred yards ahead, the man, standing looking at the people passing.

Sam didn't look at him as he passed. He was going to pick up The Standard and go straight back home but decided to walk around the store first to give the man a chance to disappear.

On the way back there was nobody on the street; nobody at all. The man had gone and Sam walked back to Pinner Green.

It must have been about 10.00 pm when the police knocked Sam's apartment door. His wife had fallen asleep in front of the television and the knocking gave her a start.

She didn't know the time and as she went to the front door she called 'Where's your key?'

But it was the police she saw as she opened it.

The woman from the fish'n'chip shop had identified Sam when the police came in to her 'chippy' – identified his body by his clothes, more than anything else, especially his 'ratting hat.'

She told the police which apartment Sam lived in but she never knew his name.

The police weren't sure as Sam had no I.D. and it took a lot of organising and diplomacy to ascertain that Sam lived with the woman who had answered the door and in fact she was his wife.

There were no witnesses to the murder and it took a lot of red tape and extensive permissions before Sam's body was even released.

The television company called her one day, in conjunction with the police, to see if she would take part in a reconstruction programme called Crimewatch; she didn't want to have anything to do with it as she thought it would upset her.

So they filmed the programme without her but she was right about being upset especially when she saw the actor who was to act as Sam; he even wore Sam's ratting hat.

As she watched she saw the reconstruction and it showed CCTV of Sam going to the Lottery Counter to buy his ticket.

As far as she knew Sam didn't buy a ticket. There was nothing on him at all, the murderer had taken his wallet and even The Evening Standard.

She couldn't remember the lottery ticket for the week Sam died and, in fact, she hadn't even looked at the lottery since. She was with their eldest son and he wondered where the ticket was – maybe it was a winner.

There is a web page with all the results and their son looked on line to see if there had been a winner with Sam's number and sure enough he found the numbers 1, 7, 14, 21, 28 and 29 four weeks after his father had died and Sam had been right all along – there were seventeen winners.

The rest was easy – Sam's DNA was on one of the people who had claimed the prize; he lived in Wembley - or he did before they locked him up.

Journey to Oblivion.

It was a funny old journey on the tube a few minutes ago. I was reading the book I had started concerning how the brain stays active for ten minutes after your heart stops beating. It takes that long for the blood to stop circulating.

I was leaning against the double doors which slide open to let people off and I got so comfortable standing there, reading my book, that I actually felt I was in the location of the book; Istanbul.

The two red doors - above.

I'm not one of those who wears head phones to block everybody out in my travels in fact I quite like the noise of the rhythm of the train as it goes over the tracks. Sometimes the train goes round a bend when the track bends and then straightens up later. I never hold on to anything as I like to judge whether I can stop from falling by tensing the muscles in my thighs and I think it's good for those muscles.

I knew a fella once who told me if I want to get fit and keep fit I should get to know what each muscle is called and work on it and I got to thinking about that and it occurred to me that you don't have to know anything of the sort; I mean the crow doesn't know it is a crow does he and what could be more knowledgable about crows than the crow itself.

I noticed that the train was full and all bits of space were covered by people. In this situation I don't like to sit down; I can't stand the distance between me, when I'm sitting down, and some man's arse. I know it's a strange thought but just imagine how you'd feel if that arse farted.

So I was miles away leaning against the doors when, for some reason, they parted and threw me out on to the track. The only sensation I felt was a big blur and a kind of deafness in my ears which started with a big wind and then silence.

I knew I was a gonna before I hit the track and what seemed to make it really real was the fact that I didn't feel any pain – not one little bit. I couldn't see but I knew my brain was going to tick over like a hot electric two bar electric fire that suddenly gets switched off; it stays warm for a while. I wasn't sure what I could do besides think so I tried my hardest to figure what I could do. I remember reading something about telekinesis where certain people could make things move by using their brain but I knew, or thought I knew, that I would only have memory so it was a surprise to me when I discovered that my brain was trying to fool me by flooding my thoughts with memory so I wouldn't notice when it 'ran out of fuel.'

Telekinesis! That was it I had to think hard in the ten minutes I had left to see if I could contact my loved ones and let them know that . . . . what? 

That I was all right?

But I wasn't all right.

And are they loved ones?

My body no longer had anything to do with me and I didn't even know where it was as I could no longer hear. But if I really concentrated really let my mind try and move something somewhere something near my loved ones in Manchester that somewhere in London between Baker Street Tube Station and Finchley Road I had expired. At least they wouldn't be searching for me in all corners of the earth because I had nothing on me to say who I was – really was – so there had to be some way of letting them know.

What could I do with my mind – how powerful is it?

I thought of Vernon Street in Manchester a street in Hightown which may not even be there any more. Other streets there Bellott Street, Waterloo Road, Brideoak Street; all in Manchester 8.

What good did it do me to think of those streets?

How could I ever even try to contact them in such a short time – and to say what?

In Bellott Street there used to be a large piece of waste ground and it was black. It was obviously bombed during the war and one day, as a child, I fell off the top of a car which had been dumped. I cut my wrist quite badly and had to go to hospital. There was blood all over the place even on the black earth and nobody had cleaned it away.

But what does that have to do with anything?

I thought about it thought what happened to my blood, the blood of a child and that blood because it was from a cut was the kind of healing blood with antibodies which would mend the wound, make sure my wrist wasn't going to get infected with something nasty.

In fact the blood did do its job and I had no infection but . . . . . my blood was spilled on to the black earth; what did it do for the earth did anything grow in it or from it?

What was I thinking?

Where was I going with this?

My brain continued filling my mind with nostalgic thoughts; maybe this is what they mean when they say as you die your whole life flashes in front of you – but how would they know if they hadn't died?

At the eye hospital, when you have a sight test they have a thing in the shape of a Halloween mask which you hold over your eyes. One side is plain and the other is full of tiny holes. So if they are unsure about your sight they test you with that little mask. Looking through the side with holes you will find that things become clearer which gives them a better idea about your sight. This is because it cuts out all peripheral vision.

Many a time when I have been standing on the platform of the tube station I can see in the distance the information about the next train; where it's going to and what time. But as it was so far away I couldn't make out the detail so I would close my fist, slightly, leaving room along the palm of my hand to make a little funnel that I can see through and the information becomes as clear as a bell. The reason: the peripheral sight has been cut.

All my life my brain has been looking after the whole of my body, sending messages to get my legs to move, to tell my finger to scratch my head and telling me to duck when a snowball is thrown at me which is something I always hated. I went through the whole of my life without every having a serious falling out except the time someone threw a snowball at my face. My brain didn't see it coming so I suffered.

My brain, at the moment, doesn't have any jobs to do at all apart from trying to keep the fact that I am about to die out of my thoughts.

It does it to everybody every day of everybody's life. It tells its host that the 'thing' never happens to people like you; you know winning the lottery, getting run over by a bus or that the cancer will really kill you. It's a shield.

So I will try and take that duty away from my brain, all the peripheral stuff, just like the eye test, will go and I can concentrate on telekinesis – but what should I try to move?

Maybe my imagination maybe some kind of virtual reality but what good would that do me even if I could achieve it.

There are two tall buildings one is the shard near London Bridge in London and the other is the Empire State Building in New York City. Each of those buildings charge visitors to get in the lifts, or elevators if you like, to go to the top. But each of them take a photo of the guests in front of a photo of each building then when you get to the top of the shard there is a man with a virtual reality mask who charges people to wear it; why don't they just go up and look out instead?

Right back to the planning: Stephen Hawking, Professor Stephen Hawking, would communicate with a little piece of equipment attached to a muscle in his jaw. This muscle would enable him to speak. He chose the default voice even when he could change it so that's why he spoke with that monotone.

I'm not sure what that piece of information is going to do for me I really don't.

I don't even know how long I have left as the oxygen in the blood must be running out soon. I suppose planning for the future when you are already dead is the height of optimism but it saved me thinking about the terrible orphanage in Manchester gave me hope and – oh dear it's going. It's going fast and I can feel it!

© 2019 Chris Sullivan