The sound of an air raid siren went off, piercing the room and the peace. Ted groaned and grabbed at the sound of his phone alarm, managing to press the Snooze Five Minutes button with one of his fingers, quieting the sound.

Another day. They seemed to keep on coming.

The air in the room was chill, frosty almost, and he withdrew his arm back inside the warmth of the duvet. Five minutes was enough to get himself mentally prepared for the day. He just needed a few more moments of warmth and quiet. Just a bit more peace…

The shriek of the phone went off again. It had only been seconds, but somehow it had also been five minutes. What a nightmare. He briefly considered another snooze. He probably had time for one more, if he rushed. Though that was what he’d told himself yesterday, and he’d received a serious telling off from the School Safety Officer, that useless arsehole, full of his own self importance. He didn’t want to deal with that again.

Ted threw the covers off and hustled his way out of his bedroom, grabbing the phone as he did so in order to turn the alarm off. His breath came out in clouds, the cool air crisp, and he shivered as he speed-walked to the bathroom, wondering if it was time to turn on the heating. Maybe tomorrow. The shower would help, and then he’d be out of the house for the rest of the day. No point in wasting energy. He wasn’t made of money.

He got into the shower and turned up the heat until steam rose all around him. He took deep breaths, inhaling the steam and the warmth for a few short minutes. Then it was time to go. Grabbing a towel and a toothbrush, he flew through his morning routine, drying his hair just enough to ensure it didn’t freeze when he left the flat, but letting it lie where it fell. The bed was left unmade, the room untidied. He’d fix that later. Or at the weekend.

He dressed warmly to protect himself from the freezing temperatures outside, grabbed an apple from the small fruit bowl in the kitchen, and then made his way out of the flat into the central lobby of the tower block of flats, shutting and locking the door behind him. A dozen doors lined the hallway as he walked down it towards the staircase, then making his way down the four flights of stairs to the ground. The cold air filled his lungs and burnt his nostrils with the scent of frost.

Outside, there were some kids already out on the concrete ‘communal area’; teenagers, either ready for school early, or getting ready to skip it. Ted didn’t make eye contact with them, not scared of the trouble they might cause, but not ready to waste time when he had somewhere to be. He was due to be at work at 7.30am, and he was already late.

Fortunately, work was a short walk away, just a half mile down to Alton Gate Primary. His uniform and gear was stored in one of the outbuildings on the property, locked up with a padlock that only he and the facility manager had access to. After his brisk stroll down North Street, shoulders hunched, the frosty atmosphere burning his nostrils, he made his way onto the site, unlocked the door to the outbuilding, and got ready for work.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Ten minutes later he was back out by the side of the road in full gear, a smile plastered on his face. He’d always heard the phrase ‘Fake it til you make it.’ and had figured that it probably applied to everything, including job satisfaction. It had to. He couldn’t do another year of this if it didn’t.

The first small group of children came up to the edge of the pavement and patiently waited. Ted dutifully grabbed his sign and strode confidently into the road, holding it up visibly to stop the cars nearing the junction, and signalling the children to cross.

‘Thank you Mister Lollipop!’ one of them called as they crossed. Ted smiled harder.

Just another day in the life of a lollipop man. Or as Mister Lollipop.

For the next half hour Ted walked back and forth, stopping traffic at regular intervals with his bright high-vis coat and 6 foot circular yellow sign on a pole to allow small children to safely cross the road, occasionally sharing very brief words with parents about the state of the weather, or teenagers about the skill level and qualifications required to wield a lollipop. Ted was not allowed to swear at them, but it seemed like they were allowed to swear at Ted. 

In the small bits of downtime between crowds of children, Ted reminisced about his life before the lollipop. When he’d been Theo, not Ted, and he’d lived an exciting life with risks and adventure and danger. Well, full of dangerous people at least. Too dangerous, clearly. It was how he’d ended up here. Once again, he found himself wondering whether it had been worth it. He reckoned that he would have done just as good a job hiding himself away somewhere abroad as the British authorities had done by sending him to Bristol. And it’d be warm and sunny, and he wouldn’t be working 20 hours a week walking in and out of the road as a lollipop man. Well, probably. They probably still had lollipop men abroad. But he damn well wouldn’t be one.

Another group of kids shuffled up to the kerb where he stood, six of them all under eight, and seemingly unaccompanied by an adult. He straightened up and walked confidently into the road, twirling his sign ever so carefully in his hands as he did so. He wasn’t technically allowed to twirl the sign; he’d been called out on it before. But you had to find fun where you could, and twirling the sign was about as fun as it got.

A car was driving up to the junction that he guarded; a beaten up Ford Fiesta, about as old as Ted himself, with one of the wing mirrors missing and a sun damaged bonnet. Ted held the sign up to indicate the car should stop; with his other hand he warned the children not to go into the road. 

The Fiesta got closer, and Ted quickly realised two things; the first was that the Fiesta was not slowing down. If anything, it was speeding up. 

The second was that the driver was wearing a balaclava, gloves and sunglasses that covered most of their face. The balaclava and gloves made sense; it was cold, and that piece of crap thirty year old car no doubt had terrible heating. But sunglasses? The sun had barely risen and it was cloudy. The driver would barely be able to see a thing, not even a highly visible lollipop man standing right in front of him.

A very vulnerable lollipop man.

It occurred to Ted that the driver of the car had no intention of stopping when the car was about twenty metres away, its engine roaring as loud as its 1.2 litres would allow. In the one and a half seconds he had to react, all he was able to do was raise his hands out, as if to block the car with his hands. With the lollipop in hand, it looked like he was trying to run a low budget re-enactment of Gandalf stopping the Balrog, a last ditch attempt to stop the speeding ton of metal that was heading towards him, now just a metre away. 

The Ford Fiesta hit Ted at 40 miles an hour, instantly breaking his legs and smashing his lower body, then throwing him across the road with deadly force. Ted was barely aware of pain as the air rushed around him while he flew, before he was crushed against the wall on the other side of the street. His eyes didn’t even have time to close as the lights went out and his brain shut down.

Moments later, Ted Brown’s world dissolved.