It was an early spring morning as Gordon Farkhars sat in his favourite chair, sipping Earl Grey and listening to the joyful singing of the happy birds outside his window. He liked the gayety of the bird song and the warm sun as it caressed his chrysanthemums in the window box outside, like a caring mother giving a good morning kiss to her new born child. It was the joyful kind of day that made you feel glad to be alive and a part of this beautiful god-blessed world, he thought happily and dreamily to himself……the kind of day for ice-creams and picnics and walks out in the park……

……it was not the kind of day one expected to die on!

But that was what was about to happen to poor unsuspecting Gordon Farkhars. Suddenly, swiftly, like a silent assassin, death would creep upon him unawares and bare away his mortal soul like some thief in the night. When it happened – poor Gordon Farkhars never stood a chance.

The clock in the corner of his living room struck three with a strange, resonating vibrancy. Gordon thought he recollected hearing the sound only a few seconds beforehand, which seemed odd. In puzzlement, he lifted his head to look at the offending timepiece and in that same instant he saw it materialise! It slowly took shape, becoming solid yet with a translucent quality that was not of this world. As the effigy glided towards him Gordon choked back a scream as he jolted unsteadily to his feet. Clutching his chest in agonised pain, he stumbled forwards and fell to the floor – dead! Gordon Farkhars had died of a coronary seizure brought about by the sheer terror of whatever his eyes had beheld.

Within minutes Gordon’s ethereal spirit-self floated from his corpse. It screamed, howled and cursed over the loss of his material being, his loss of life at the young age of only 32 years old. It didn’t really make any difference as there was no-one around to hear the eerie lament. Just then a very curious thing indeed occurred.

A surreal, white, tunnel-like vortex surrounded the spirit of Gordon Farkhars and vacuumed him into it’s centre. Time seemed to slow down, almost as if regressing into another plane or dimension. The vortex swirled around his ghostly image in a weird and lurid fashion. An opening spiralled grotesquely within the vortex walls and Gordon’s spirit seized the chance to ease itself through the strange ectoplasmic opening…

…Gordon Farkhar’s spirit arrived through the vortex opening two seconds after the clock struck three, frightening his mortal self to death. In an instant, the vortex surrounded the spirit of Gordon Farkhars and vacuumed it back inside, seconds before Gordon’s dead body thudded heavily onto the parquet flooring and his ethereal spirit-self floated from his corpse…

What an unfortunate and untimely piece of repetitive bad luck for poor Gordon Farkhars!