My Grandmother Had To Die

I had decided that enough was enough, my grandmother had to die. I sat alone in my room contemplating my next move; a knife, a bottle, the table, next doors dog – all compelling to my mind. My intellect raced as I thought about it for some time, as the tracks on my iPod drifted slowly from one melancholy beat to another. If I tried hard enough I might perhaps even be able to create a persuasive accident with the kettle and her notoriously awful cookies. Grimacing at the thought of her sitting down stairs, decrepit and drinking my good tea from my remarkable cups only made my deliberations more nonsensical. I remembered there was a zoo near by, with elephants…My eyes wandered to the perfectly sharpened pencils before I realised that her demanding skin would only cause them to break. I cursed wordlessly in my head and pressed skip on the iPod, silently pleased that Beethoven's Piano Sonata Number Fourteen was now playing.

I got up and attempted to float from one side of the room to the other in time with the music, calling it a success even though it was clear I was clumsy and heavy. Looking in the mirror, I straightened my tie, aware of it being too short and wandered back to the bed sitting on a copy of Coraline by Neil Gaiman. I noticed a month old lottery ticket stuck up on the wall and checked it quickly – it was, characteristically, this weeks winning numbers. Sighing as I heard the sound of something break in the room below me, I collected my runaway train of thought. I wasn't ready, there was too much to do.

"Joseph! I've run out of tea!"

I shuddered as her prehistoric voice was pitched through the air into my ears. Sitting on my bed, already accustomed to the mess that was the floor, I turned off the music. This moment was no place for Debussy's elastic piano strokes. I glanced out the window where the sun was shining maliciously and dazzling and wished for rain. I liked rain. Its little droplets of water invigorating your psyche whilst getting you wet. I put Debussy back on and waltzed out of my room and down the stairs.

"What tea did you want?"
"Oh….that good tea you had last time…"

I was not surprised and continued to foxtrot into the kitchen, discovering the source of what had broken – the tacky glass thing that resembled a vase but was closer to a transparent sculpture of a volcano, given to me by Aunt Jan last year. Remorselessly I continued on into my little cookery and pulled open the first, tinted wood cupboard on the left. I pushed a few jars back and forth meaninglessly as I debated whether or not Rat poison would be effective against a harrowing hellion.

I noticed the music upstairs had changed to Chopin as I was preparing the tea. Stirring it tediously, I momentarily wondered what it would be like to be Chopin. I put the striking china tea-pot, with its swirls of porcelain blue on a battered, chrome tray and wondered out of the kitchen back to the living room, with ruthless violins arresting my head. Setting it down on the table, I poured some of the tea into her cup and passed it to her, where she sat and stared at it for while.

"Something wrong?"
"The tea, dear – it's blue."

The swirling froth on top of the royal blue liquid was indeed, blue. This was odd considering the rat poison had been green.

"I'm sure it's nothing."
"But it's blue!"
"Drink it anyway."