Edmund was a shortish, brainy-ish, happy sort of chap. Friendly and immensely gregarious, he was slightly overweight, somewhat out of breath, bespectacled and secretly balding. In a side wind his head resembled a sparsely feathered sparrow chick hiding under a ski jump.

Edmund did like to organise a party. His favourite venue was his generously proportioned back garden and he invariably spared no expense when laying on the party treats. On this particular June Saturday there were two barbecues, a ten piece band playing bluegrass music, a dance floor with a mad laser light show set up. There were several bouncy castles, a temporary but large swimming pool, replete with water slides and super-soakers. There were jugglers, clowns and magicians. There was Gipsy Lil, Edmund's trusted fortune teller, professors of philosophy, investment brokers, actors, authors, musicians and artists. Three different bars supplied various cocktails, wines, spirits and beers. A sharp looking type was there to provide for other less legal chemical perquisites.

All in all, everyone from age nine weeks to ninety was having an absolutely splendid time. Edmund was delighted that he had, simply by digging into his vastly deep pockets, enabled everyone to have such a wonderful experience. He looked around propriatorially and noticed a cadaverous stranger in an infinitely black cloak and black hood who was standing stock still at the pool side. Edmund didn’t know who this stranger was, but with his usual bonhomie he made his way over to welcome him. The stranger stood silently, alone, caliginous, insubstantial and fugacious.

As Edmund approached, the stranger turned towards him. An ice cold wind blew across the garden and the sky darkened with blue-black cloud. The biting cold chilled the hooting revellers in the pool to sudden and unexpected silence. Edmund stopped in his tracks opened his mouth to speak, but as he did so the stranger pointed a long skeletal finger at him. Edmund saw the stranger’s ice blue eyes glimmer for a moment in the darkness of his ragged cavernous black hood and then melodramatically clutched at his chest and fell silently to the wet grass. He was deathly pale. Cold. Deathly. Dead. The gaunt stranger, so ominously present just a moment ago was now nowhere to be seen. The sky cleared and the sun returned to shine.

The hooting revellers in the pool resumed hooting, the bar staff continued serving drinks, sausages sizzled, bouncy castles swayed to the boisterous jumping of excited children and the bluegrass music picked up from the exact semiquaver they had paused at when the sky darkened. The professors talked to the actors, the authors talked to themselves. Jugglers juggled while the magicians freed numerous white creatures from improbable hats.

Gypsy Lil, the fortune teller knelt by Edmund. She deftly picked his pockets and then on his mobile phone she called an ambulance.

“I did try and tell you,” She said. She took a star spangled blue cloak from a passing magician and laid it over Edmund.