Free The Grief Team by David Collins Page B

electric charge of being at the very centre of live TV; the atmosphere felt like sexsweat.  She was dying to suggest that they join the studio audience in Countdown to Horror next door, but there was the Mayor’s prestige to be accomodated.               
    Elias winked at Ferria. “I see Countdown to Horror is on next door.” He winked again, a thick fold of pink skin dropping over a deeply recessed blue eye. 
    Ferria grinned. “Darn your Parenting skills, Mayor!”
    Mayor Kraft shrugged. “Know thy child!  I used to like the slashers myself. I know it’s a Stage Five phenomenon. All 17-year-olds are 50% orgasm, or erection as the case may be, and 50% bloodlust. Mayor Dickie used to say that Stage Five’s were prisoners handcuffed to their sexuality.”
    “Mayor, you’re embarassing me!” Ferria glanced around the studio, but none of the television crew were paying the slightest attention. She looked again at the Mayor, his grin now replaced by a soft frown of contrition. Ferria waited, she knew the Mayor’s better nature.               
    “You can stay and watch the action if you like, I am going to my supper.” 
    Ferria watched, elated, as the Mayor headed for the exit. As always, movement near his person stopped abruptly and he passed through citizen statues like an heroic if overfed Greek ghost.
    Ferria was quick to take advantage of her great luck. How many other Stage Fives had ever been able to see this show  and live to tell about it? Ferria knew the answer: none she knew of. She’d heard stories of course but the fact was that no child below eighteen was capable of achieving access to the signal, controlled as it was throughout the malls by the Grief Team. 
    No one, until me!              
    She was instantly on her way to Studio H where, only thirteen minutes and two severed heads before, Countdown to Horror began beaming into TV sets across the malls. It was Thursday night and all Mall children were safely tucked into their beds and, as doors were promptly opened for the Mayor’s Executive Assistant by Mulls who bowed low with dignity, Ferria was already experiencing one hell of a thrill in anticipation of the events presently being enacted onstage for the (older) citizens of the malls. 
     
    It was 11:15 before Elias reached his bedroom in his apartment on the top floor of the E.C.  On his way across the plush broadloom, he opened the door to his son’s bedroom but Gabriel was not inside. Often, Elias knew, his son slept at his desk one floor below in the Grief Team’s communications centre. Mary Clement, their neighbour, who shared kitchen privileges with them, would already have sent down a sandwich and coffee. She had always made a habit of making sure that Gabriel had what he needed whether he knew that he did or not. When Mary decided to look after you, you were looked after. Elias, who still had sex with her several times a month at her request, had never asked but assumed that Gabriel did as well. Mary was a great friend.
    Elias opened the door to his small bedroom with its modest furnishings and pulled off his nightgown. He slept naked, a habit he was not above mentioning, usually when he’d had a skinful of Alf Barner’s Dark Lady cordial, that began when he was born. He would further enlighten those assembled by claiming that pajamas were invented by the old Catholic Church as a method of birth control. He always insisted that the temperature in his bedroom be maintained as that of a cool September evening in the Maritimes. Before he retired, he usually turned on his sleep enhancer, a gift from Gabriel on Father’s Day two years before and invariably set to the Sleep, Perchance to Dream icon. He often fell asleep before the crickets started.
    On this particular evening, however, the thoughts of Elias Macdonald Kraft were disturbed. Ranging far and wide on disparate topics, pressing items and half-formed ideas that flickered and flitted