Tig! Your It!

Tig, Your It!

The old man lay silently in the hospital bed. He could hear the general hubbub of a busy hospital going on just outside the door to his room. It was heavily muted but he could still make out the tannoy messages and the odd shout.

“Doctor Madraji to theatre, please!”  “Are we ok for a pint tonight, mate?” “Code red! Code red!”

James Barringer was dying. The nurses had made him as comfortable as they could and had left him alone with his thoughts and the silently moving sunlight that painted the walls of his room. James had been in this room for several months now and earlier he had sat in the window and looked down into a small municipal park where children played and people enjoyed the good weather. Later on as his condition deteriorated, he spent more and more time in bed. The weather had started to get chillier and he doubted whether any of the children, or the grown ups for that matter, would brave the cooler conditions to visit the park.

There was a little knock at the door and it swung open tentatively revealing a young woman wearing a dressing gown with slippers on her feet.

“Oh excuse me,” she said. “I didn’t realise that you were in bed, James.”

“Come in, come in Julia,” grunted James feebly. “Misery loves company.”

Julia Pendlebury was one of the hospital’s success stories. She had been admitted with a badly damaged heart caused by a childhood illness and had been very sick, in fact very close to death, when a donor had mysteriously been found. After a very intensive operation lasting several hours, Julia emerged a whole healthy young woman, with, thanks to the donor, her whole life ahead of her.

The hospital had insisted that she remain in the hospital for a few months to allow them to chart her progress, but the prognosis was very good, Julia had been given the invaluable present of Life.

Julia during her recuperation had visited all the patients in the ward. Each had their own private room as most were very ill. Julia would sit and read to them or run little errands to the hospital shop for them. She felt so grateful that she felt she must use her time at the hospital to make life a little easier for her fellow patients.

During the previous week, James had enjoyed his last time sitting at the window. He and Julia had watched the swallows winging south, the park attendant setting light to a bonfire of fallen leaves and listened to the wind sing its song of approaching Winter.

“Oh James,” she said, as she approached the bed. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“No dear,” croaked James. “I think it is about time for me to sing my swan’s song.”

“Nonsense, we’ll have lots of days to spend together,” laughed Julia.

Julia sat on a chair by James’ bed. They talked quietly about what they had been doing that morning and although the atmosphere was pleasant, James detected the odd look of concern on the young lady’s face.

“Something  bothering you?” he asked.

“Apart from you, no,” Julia replied, a bit too quickly.

“Oh, come on… We’re friends, can’t you trust me?”

Julia looked at her feet and was quiet for a moment.

“You don’t know much about my background, do you?”

James looked up at her and shook his head.

“Apart from knowing that you are a very nice person, I know nothing about. Is there something I should know/”

Julia then explained that her father was a high ranking M.P. who had been touring the Middle East. His policies were not being accepted by everyone in these countries and a few of the extremist groups had threatened his life on numerous occasions.

Julia had learnt of the death threats from reading the national newspapers that morning and justifiably, she was worried for his safety.

“He will have bodyguards with him,” whispered James, his voice weakening. “They won’t try anything with them at his side.” Julia nodded, but still looked worried.

Later that night James lay awake and wondered how much longer he had on this Earth. He had no family and friends had passed away many years before.

His thoughts turned to Julia. He wished that he could help her in some way to repay her kindness over the past days, but what could he do…?

Suddenly James saw the handle of his door move. Slowly it moved down and the door swung open silently. A dark figure slunk into the room, the moonlight gleaming off the gun he carried in his hand.

Joachim Schultz was a professional assassin who had been hired by God’s Sword, a terrorist group involved with several atrocities in their own country, Guislan. William Pendlebury M.P., Julia’s father had been visiting Guislan and had made a few enemies with his political issues. Joachim had been given the task of eliminating Julia as a warning to her father.

The assassin crept up to James’ bed unaware that he was in the wrong room. He gently pulled the sheet away brushing James’ chin.

The contact of flesh on flesh was like an electric shock to James. In an instant he knew everything there was about Joachim and his odious mission.

“You can’t…” he grunted

“Sorry old man,” whispered Joachim. “Sorry you’ve been disturbed. Go back to sleep.” He turned to leave.

Suddenly, using all of his strength, James sat up, leant forward and grabbed the assassin’s sleeve. Jerking him round, he slapped Joachim hard on the face.

Joachim’s fell to the floor and instantly the room was flooded with light. It reminded the assassin of being in an electrical storm where forked lightning danced all around him. He felt dazed and weak. He felt that he had lost all his energy. He collapsed backwards and found himself, instead of being on the floor, in bed!

James now stood where Joachim had stood. He wore the assassin’s dark suit and held the revolver. Joachim, on the other hand, lay in James’s bed, wearing James’ pyjamas.

“What have you done to me,” groaned the assassin.

“You have exchanged places with me. Now I am you and you are me,” replied James in a rich, baritone voice.

“How…..?” Joachim felt weary and he could feel his heart thumping.

“I am a member of a group of beings called the Wyyrex. We can live on this Earth as long as we can find some younger person to exchange bodies with. I have lived for several hundred years,” James replied. “At the beginning I relished the freedom, but as time went on I realised how iniquitous my continued existence was and when my last ‘take-over’ was a man who was so close to the angels, I was surprised that he lacked wings. As I took his body over he whispered ‘I forgive you’. In that instant I knew that would be my last ever life. I would die naturally as that holy man would have done.”

“But…what happens to me now?” wailed Joachim.

“Well,” said James turning to leave the room. “I am afraid you only have hours to live and eternity to regret.”

As James left the hospital and vanished into the night, Julia rolled over and murmured in her sleep. She had been dreaming of her childhood. Glorious, golden days full of happiness.

The old man lay quietly now, tears had coursed down his cheeks but he knew that he deserved everything he had received. Silence and the dark surrounded him and he lacked the strength to call out.

Two hours later his heart stopped and to Joachim’s eyes the darkness became total.

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