The Ghost of Clothes
Copyright © 2015, David E. Gates
Cover Artwork Copyright: © Bruce Wagstaff
Published by Shelley Show Productions
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means - whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic -without written permission of both publisher and author.
Unauthorised reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Also available from David E. Gates
Access Denied – A True Story
The Roots of Evil
Omonolidee
Dedication
For Everyone
Special Thanks to:
Graham Wheatley
The Ghost of Clothes
Times were hard. Harder than they’d ever been for me. Some poor life-decisions over a long period and a frivolous life were to blame. No-one else’s fault but my own. Gambling, drinking, child-maintenance and some poor purchases like two motorcycles on credit and a wealth of other things I bought without having the money to buy them, contributed to the state I was in now. I was, it has to be said, not good with money.
I’d been on a debt-management plan for years. It got the creditors off my back but I’d instigated it too late. If I’d done it earlier, I wouldn’t have lost the house and would have been out of debt by now.
Hindsight, such a wonderful thing.
But then I learnt. I learnt to live within a budget. Shopping at discount stores and only buying what I needed instead of what I wanted. Every decision was thought through. Even down to having a coffee from a local coffee-shop.
“Tea is free at work and home.” I’d tell myself. It stopped me spending money frivolously, even down to that level.
And things weren’t all bad. I rented a nice place and had just enough money from my job to pay all my bills and have a little left over for some minor luxuries. It was short-lived though. There was always something that would come along to deny me those.
Car tax, insurance, unexpected household bills. Just when I thought I was getting back on my feet, or things were improving, something would come along to thwart my brief excursion into a “normal” life.
Then the taxman came and wanted his pound of flesh too. I’d been employed all my life yet, somehow, he’d determined that despite being on Pay as You Earn, I had somehow incurred a huge debt for unpaid tax. I was already paying back a debt to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs when I got the bill for the year before. The figures seemed to match up but, not being an accountant, tax expert or mathematician, I had no true idea whether it was right or not. I couldn’t afford an accountant to take a look either, as I simply had no money left to pay for the services of one.
I tried arguing with them but despite them taking some things into account, like my pension contributions, the total amount didn’t change by much.
The money was due. And the taxman doesn’t fuck about. If you owe it, they want it and double-quick too. I worked out that repaying the debt at the current rate I was paying the other money owed back would take me six and two-third years. 6.66 years in other words. It suggested the taxman was an agent of the devil.
A belt, already tightened to the point of strangling what it held within, had to be tightened further.
I’d already sold most of my surplus belongings to bridge the gap between my previous salary and the slightly improved one I was on now. There really wasn’t much left. A few bits of tat that I might be able to get rid of at a car-boot sale. I’d given boxes of DVD’s and PlayStation games and accessories to my parents to sell at those. I should have gotten around a hundred quid for the lot. My parents “gave” it all away for twenty pounds.
Someone was laughing at me. Though I wasn’t finding it funny.
I was at the lowest point, financially, that I’d ever been. Even as a student I was still able to spend every night in the pub. Now I couldn’t even afford a pack of beer. All my money was “consumed” by bills or other living costs. I was living on the very basics, especially food-wise. I tried the “value” goods at the supermarket. Man, some of that shit is foul. Raw sewage probably has more of a flavour than the bland shit they put in some of those packages.
Something had to change. I knew if I went back to the profession I previously worked in, I’d burn out from the pressure before I would earn enough money to be comfortable again. I’d done it once whilst in my current role but had the safety net of being able to return there within six months if things hadn’t worked out. I wasn’t sure, and to be honest thought it was very unlikely, that they’d let me leave and return again.
It was a hard decision as I really loved the job I was in. Chase the money and be comfortable again or do something worthwhile and enjoyable with good people but for half the money? Enter the rat-race and put myself under intense pressure to sell, sell, SELL or have an easy nine-to-five, and be well, well, WELL? It has to be said, I enjoyed my Monday-to-Friday work/life balance which gave me every weekend off. It was a relatively happy existence I had in my current job and it was going to be difficult to give that up.
If I were to make the leap again, I’d have to be one-hundred percent certain that the new position was right for me. I’d previously made that mistake and, despite my efforts to overcome the situation, found myself very uncomfortable with that job. I’d always worked for larger companies - the size of this one and the people they employed were so different to what I had become accustomed – that it was impossible to get anything done. People didn’t engage with each other or with the workload. They’d brought me in to improve their processes and procedures but then continually ignored any suggestions I’d made. When any kind of emergency reared its ugly head, they even disregarded the procedures already in place! And the commute was awful.
I left after four months, having tried to stretch it out as long as I could to make the most of the money they were paying me. I was “called in” for a discussion. I knew that I was due to be dismissed but was able to resign before they had the chance to sack me. It would prove to be a wise decision in the end as, had I stuck it out for another two months, I would have lost my right to return to my previous job. The company was likely to have suffered shortly after anyway, due to its main business supplier going bankrupt. Eighty percent of their business came from one company which was shut-down just five months after I left.
Everything happens for a reason I guess.
So, here I was, thinking about chasing another job. I uploaded my Curriculum Vitae to the various job-search websites. The initial response was great though most weren’t relevant to my skills – did agencies ever read what you sent them when “matching” you to a job? It didn’t appear so.
And then I got referred to what was, on the face of it, the perfect job for me. A discussion with the agent around terms and conditions and whether or not I was actually suited to it followed and I was selected for interview. I always did well in interviews and it appeared there were few candidates, if any, that were so perfectly suited. It was a shoe-in, surely?
A date and time for the interview the following week was set. I began preparing.
I retrieved my best shoes which actually turned out to be somewhat past their ‘best’. Holes in the soles and the upper showing severe weathering on the surface made them look a sorry state. Broken or worn, tattered, frayed and split shoelaces and eyeholes completed the suggestion they should
have been thrown away a long time ago.
“You can tell a lot about a man by his shoes.” I recalled someone had once said. If anyone saw me in these, they’d think I was some kind of vagrant. I tossed them in the bin.
Upstairs, I checked if I had a suitable shirt and tie and to see what condition my suit, which hadn’t been worn in years, was.
I pulled open the doors to the tall-boy. A relic of times past, antique almost certainly, a large wardrobe with drawers set into the base. It had been left in the house I now rented and it seemed a pity not to utilise it. Despite being dilapidated, with peeling veneer and a musty smell that was almost overpowering when the wardrobe was opened, it was functional. If it had been in better condition, it would have been a contender for the Antiques’ Roadshow! My current job enabled me to wear t-shirts and jeans rather than formal office-wear and so I hadn’t needed to open it in a long time – I was struggling to remember exactly what was inside!
A thin coat-hanger pole that ran the entire width of the wardrobe portion had sagged downwards with the weight of the items suspended from it. There were a number of shirts and my suit in its protective bag.
I swept my hand over the tops of the shirts, to remove the gossamer-like threads of spider-web that
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