Twelve Lights Before Dawn

George pondered how it was we could send humans into space, eating powdered food and drinking recycled urine, then return them safely to earth, but we couldn’t invent an outside light that didn’t get triggered by a snow flake. Maybe if the sensor could be calibrated to detect body heat it would only light up when an intruder walked near it. That would be one way to solve the problem. Thermal sensors, he thought.

💡Eight.

George had been counting. Propped up on his pillows, wisps of thin white hair clinging to the headboard like cobwebs, he sipped lukewarm tea from a flask.

It hadn’t woken him–the light–he was always awake hours before dawn, and always wondering why he was awake. He had a soft, comfortable bed with cleanish bed sheets and he kept the bedroom cool. He followed all the advice, yet still found himself awake.

He’d been retired for twenty-five years and had no—what did they call it—stress or anxiety. They ought to bring back National Service, he reckoned. Didn’t do him any harm. That would sort them out, these young ’uns with their screens. Never had anxiety and stress in his day. Didn’t even know what they were.

💡Nine.

Of course this wasn’t strictly true. When George was seven, his grandad—who’d survived World War One and finished his days in a special hospital for veterans who couldn't speak—hit him so hard with a leather belt he had a mark on his leg for a month. All George had done was pinch an apple from next door’s tree. And his school master, whom the boys lovingly referred to as Bogey, once locked him in a store cupboard for the afternoon for answering back in a history lesson. He also received thirty strokes of the cane across his knuckles. It wasn’t even George who had called out the wrong answer. It mattered not to Bogey so long as he got to cane someone. That might have been quite stressful, you would think. Might have even caused a little anxiety, too.

But George, now ninety years old, had slipped into the way of picturing those days as golden: Britain was great, you didn’t have to lock your doors, everyone stood arm in arm on the white cliffs of Dover singing Vera Lynn songs... Compared to that, thought George, today’s world seemed, well, terrible.

💡Ten.

That bloody light was going to drive him potty. Maybe he should take the fuse out. He wrestled with the idea of getting out of bed to go to the toilet. It required a lot of forethought and planning. Everything, George had come to realise, required a lot of forethought and planning at ninety. If he stopped drinking tea, maybe he could stay in bed a little longer so the bathroom visit could coincide with the journey downstairs for breakfast. Better than two separate journeys. It was a dilemma he would need to consider carefully. He wasn’t ready for breakfast just yet as it was 4.36am. If he had breakfast now–porridge and prunes on a Friday (It was porridge and prunes most days)–then he’d be ready for his lunch (boiled eggs and soldiers) by 8.36am, which would be no good at all. If he had his lunch at 8.36am then he would have to have his dinner (fried liver and onion) at 1.36pm. That wouldn’t do at all, because if he had his dinner at 1.36pm he would have to have his supper (toast and jam and a chunk of cheddar washed down with a small glass of bitter) at 5.36pm. And shortly after supper was when George climbed the stairs to bed. This was going to need some thought.

💡Eleven.

It had occurred to George on many wakeful early mornings that if he were to lie in bed all day no one would know. He had come to this conclusion last Tuesday when he fell over while putting his socks on. Not dramatically, just slowly slumping between the bed and the radiator under the window. He was there for eight hours, like a rabbit in a trap. What a predicament. He eventually managed, after much huffing and puffing, to get himself onto all fours where he remained until he could find the strength to get himself back onto the bed. He was so exhausted, he stayed in bed until the following morning, awaking at dawn with a bruise on his face the size of a saucepan lid. He realised that if he were to lie in bed for two days, no one would know. And if, in fact, he never got out of bed again because of the fact that he couldn’t get out of bed due to the fact that he had–in fact–as he was ninety years old, passed away in bed, would anyone know? He wasn't altogether sure how many days would pass after he passed before someone would realise he’d passed, unless everyone was past caring. And who would find him dead in his bed? It wouldn’t be his wife as he'd never married. It wouldn’t be his children as he didn’t have any. It wouldn’t be the couple next door as all they did was work and argue and slam doors and put empty wine bottles in the wrong bin. It wouldn’t be one of his friends, as all but one of them had died, and the only survivor was in an old people’s home shouting obscenities at nurses while attempting to complete a five hundred-piece jigsaw of Buckingham palace he had started in 2014. It would probably be a fireman, he thought, or a policeman. They had the authority to break the door open if George had died in bed. George wished he’d been a fireman or a policeman. In the end, George decided this was not in fact something he should be concerning himself with as he would be dead by that point. He’d often wondered what dying would feel like. Probably like falling asleep. That would be nice, he thought.

💡Twelve.

George had never been a man for stepping on the cracks in the pavement or walking under ladders, but he decided to get out of bed before the light came on for the thirteenth time. After all, he’d made it to ninety, so there was no point in tempting fate now. He recalled Bogey hitting his knuckles, telling him over and over with every strike that he would never amount to anything in this life. Many years ago, someone told him Bogey had died at the age of sixty-two. A brain aneurysm, apparently. Although George didn’t have any particular feelings about this, he had enjoyed a nip of scotch before bed that day.

Actually, he thought, there would be no need for a fireman or a policeman to break his door down today, because he was ready to go to the toilet. After pausing for a moment on the edge of the bed before carefully putting on his socks, he got up, stopping at the window on the landing to rub away the condensation. The snow was falling heavily. He pulled the cord tight on his dressing gown and remembered that today was Friday. He liked Fridays. Friday meant porridge and prunes for breakfast, even if it was only 4.45am.