"Halloween 66 "
by John OrleanskiDisclaimer: This story is provided for the entertainment and sole enjoyment of visitors to this site, and is not for profit. No copying or reposting of this material for dissemination is permitted or authorized. The Avengers © 1961-1969 CANAL+ IMAGE UK Ltd and © 2000 STUDIOCANAL. All characters herein, except for those wholly invented by J. Orleanski, are the property of the respective copyright holders.
Mrs. Emma Knight Peel was irritated. It was Monday, October 31, 1966, and it had been a very irritating day. But it hadn’t started out that way. But as the day progressed, things just began to add up to a mostly irritating day.
For one thing, Emma had not seen Steed for ten days. And ten days was a very, very long time for Emma to be away from Steed. She missed the sight of his sartorial splendor, and his gentlemanly elegance. Emma longed to hear the pleasant, sometimes rumbling, and very much male voice of him. Emma wished for the banter they shared when together. She pined for the exciting places they would visit.
But most of all, Emma Peel just plain needed, and very much desired, the physical contact she shared with her partner of more ways than one, John Steed.
He had called her once during his time away. Emma, of course, couldn’t, shouldn’t, and wouldn’t ask him what he was up to because she knew better. Being a gentleman spy… oops, agent, as he corrected her, or as she reminded herself, meant that discretion was a matter of Life and Death indeed!
Emma reminded Steed of the costume party they had been invited to, and which Emma was very much looking forward to attending. Keeping her tone light during their phone conversation, she asked Steed about his costume, and about hers, which he said he was planning to get for her. Steed said he would be back in time, and not to worry.
But then Emma received word from Steed’s A-list notification service. She thought it was a telephone survey, or someone with a weird sense of humour, playing twenty questions. But after they had learned enough to reassure themselves they were talking to Emma Peel, they told her who they were and why they were calling. After she had regained her heartbeat, her breath, and her wits, Emma learned that Steed was merely to be out of contact for a while longer. So Emma shrugged it off as perhaps a fancy dress party that she didn’t really want to attend. But it was still irritating. She missed partying with Steed.
She returned to work that Monday, having spent the weekend alone, and prepared herself for the presentation she was giving the Knight Industries Board Members that afternoon. Her secretary came in twenty minutes before the meeting started with new slides and viewgraphs for the meeting, and Emma was irritated that she wasn’t informed of them last week, when she had reluctantly agreed to the meeting since Steed was going to be absent from her social, and her espionage, life.
Quickly scanning the new material, Emma was just starting to become comfortable with the changes to the requirements from the project’s bidder, when another thing happened to irritate her. The presentation had barely started when all the room’s lights went out. And it was not only the Boardroom’s lights that went out.
When Emma telephoned her secretary from the meeting room, she learned more to irritate her. Not only had a good section of the London City proper experienced the storm related blackout, but the Sir John Knight Building’s back up generator had also failed. Emma, maintaining her legendary composure, shrugged her shoulders and proceeded with her presentation by means of the emergency safety lighting in the Boardroom.
However, the blackout and the storm situation had distracted the attention of the Board of Directors. Unable to fully understand all the details of the proposal Emma had presented, they voted to adjourn and continue the next week. Emma was once more irritated.
Deciding to call it a day, Emma left before her normal workday ended, and was escorted down the fifteen flights of stairs from the executive level of Knight Industries by two of her company’s security guards. As luck, or the seeming lack of it today, had it, some of the safety lighting in the stairwell had failed, and one of the guards misstepped and fell, hurting his ankle. Rather than call for more guards to escort her, Emma and the remaining guard carried the injured fellow to Knight Medical Offices, and Emma was more irritated over the loss of her guard, the loss of time, and the failed building equipment.
By the time she arrived on the street, traffic had grown to such proportions because of the blackout, with everyone stuck from the non functioning Tubes trying to hail taxis, that Emma decide to leave her little Lotus Élan in her company’s car park and walk back to her flat.
She hadn’t gone more than two blocks when the gusty wind turned her umbrella inside out, breaking several of the vanes holding it together. As she paused in a doorway to try to examine it, another gust blew it from her hands and down the block. Emma’s irritation level was approaching overload.
When she reached her neighborhood, Emma now had to contend with the groups of children, making their round for “tricks and treats”, as it was Halloween after all. Grumbling to herself about old Christian holidays and superstitions, Emma tried to contain her irritation but failed.
Reaching the building her flat was in, just before the full fury of the storm hit, Emma learned that her block was also without electric power. Another fifteen flights of stairs to navigate, she thought. Is there no end to today’s irritation?
Being waved past by the doorman, Emma headed for the stairwell, searching in her bag for her little pen torch. She found it, and attempted to switch it on just as the stair well door slammed shut behind her. Completely in the dark, as the pen torch’s batteries had been worn out, she cursed herself for not replacing them after she had last used it on an assignment with Steed. Another irritating consequence.
As she climbed the stairs above the first level, windows here and there in the stair well let in whatever illumination the raging storm’s lightning provided. Emma could hear the wind moaning, the rain pelting down, and the crashes of thunder outside. Shadows flickered on the walls and steps from the lightning, and Emma was now forced to deal with her imagination as she thought she envisioned something or someone lurking in the stairwell.
“Heigh-o” she sighed out loud to herself. Emma, keep your wits about you, your imagination from running away with you, and keep your irritation level down. At least she could enjoy a soak in her tub, sans the electric powered whirlpool jets, and Steed, for she remembered the water heater was natural gas powered. Unless the pilot light had gone out, and she’d have to use a match to re-ignite it. And assuming the water hadn’t gotten too cold. More irritation.
Having climbed all the way to the top of her building, where Emma’s penthouse was, she stepped out into the vestibule outside the door to her flat. Up here, the wind and rain and thunder sounded louder still. Well, seek refuge away from the street noise, Emma thought, and you sometimes have to contend with Mother Nature.
And Mother Nature, just for Halloween she reasoned, was having a real go at it. Thinking back to some childhood storms that had left her frightened, before she understood what Nature was up to, Emma fumbled through her purse, feeling for the keys to her flat. She was sure she had found them, only to end up dropping the bunch of keys to the floor.
Stooping down to feel around in the dark to find them, Emma thought she heard a noise from inside her flat. What the devil, she thought. Who would be in there? Who should be in there? Emma’s heart started to beat a little faster, edged on by her association with Steed and his espionage assignments, and just because of Emma’s own sense of caution.
Emma stopped patting her hands on the carpet, and silently passed her fingers over the floor, hoping to touch the keys without rattling them. The storm sounded louder still outside, given the lack of noise inside. Emma was sure the only other sound was that of her own breathing.
Having obtained her keys once more, Emma carefully felt for the lock and inserted the door key into it. Praying the noise of the tumblers clicking could not be heard over the noise of the storm, Emma slowly turned the key. The click was barely audible.
Crouching down, Emma was to the side as she carefully pushed the door open half an inch, and then when no gunfire erupted, another half inch, and then an inch, and so on, until she could peer sideways along it’s edge into her flat. Ghostly shadows played along the far wall, where her sideboard contained her liquor, television, and radio receiver.
The lightning flashed and Emma almost jumped when its startling brilliance cast a grotesque shadow upon the sliding door leading to her kitchen. Someone had opened the curtains looking onto her roof top terrace! Thinking quickly, Emma realized she had left them that way this very morning. Irritation briefly replaced her sense of alarm.
Until the lightning flashed once more and she realized one of the shadows was moving very slowly. Emma dropped quickly to the carpet, and on all fours crawled in the direction of her kitchen. She swore her heartbeat could be heard above the storm’s rage.
Having reached the door to the kitchen, she paused and watched the shadows cast upon it by the next lightning display. Satisfied nothing moved this time, Emma very slowly slid it open, prepared to fight or to run should anything out of the ordinary happen. Humph, she thought to herself, anything out of the ordinary. As if being the talented amateur partner to a top professional spy… er, agent, was not anything out of the ordinary.
When she had opened the panel far enough to slip inside, Emma headed directly for the drawer where she kept her cutlery. A sharp enough knife should even any odds, particularly in quarters as close enough as one’s own flat. She constantly kept her eyes on the doorway back to the living room, since she didn’t want her escape route cut off. And didn’t fancy going out the window to escape, especially during this storm.
As Emma probed the drawer with her hand, never taking her eyes from the living room, all she could feel were the spoons. No knives, no sharp pronged serving forks, not even a butter knife! Then she felt something that had a dry, rustling feel to it. Picking up the piece of paper, she brought it near enough to read in the flickering light of the storm. A particularly well-timed flash of lightning made the words written on the paper all too clear.
“You won’t be needing these,” it said. A shiver ran through Emma, and she didn’t know if it was because of her damp clothes, wet by running through the rain, or the fact that someone knew where she might keep anything to defend herself with. Emma, annoyed more than irritated now, felt around the stove for her little kitchen fire extinguisher. In its place was yet another note. “Not this either,” it read.
Emma was beginning to get very concerned at this point. Who knew when she might be home? Who knew where she kept her domestic items? Silently crawling back to the living room, Emma quickly went through what to do next. Another flash of lightning made her decision clear for her. Someone was moving around in her bedroom.
Her bedroom! The thought really irritated her now. How dare they! Invade my personal space. Take any defense items away I might have. And now prowl my bedroom!
This was too much for Emma, for her bedroom was her inner sanctum, her holy of holies. No one saw her bedroom! No one was permitted in her bedroom!
Except of course Steed. And that was not in violation of any of Emma’s edicts. It was just something that had to have happened. There was no need to rationalize this in Emma’s mind. Steed was simply an extension of herself. And what’s more, as his partner (she allowed herself a sly smile over that thought), Steed would have rights to her bedroom.
As she did his. (Another sly smile.)
Not quite throwing caution to the winds, but summoning up more courage because her rights had been violated, Emma picked up one of the less expensive and rare porcelain figurines along the back of her sofa that faced the free standing, conical fireplace, and flattened herself to the wall.
Sliding past the front door, she stealthily crept past the storage room, cum darkroom she had set up. On past the second door to her bathroom, Emma slowly progressed. It seemed her heart beat louder than the storm outside.
Yes, shuffling noises were to be heard inside her bedroom.
Bracing herself, Emma, who had reached her bedroom door by now, carefully crouched and took a quick peek just past the bedroom door. Yes, there! Someone was behind the door to her computerized wardrobe closet.
Emma sidled around the wall separating her bedroom from the living room and quickly dropped to the level of the bed. The intruder was still inside her closet, unaware of Emma’s approach.
She had reached the end of the bed, and waited by the chaise lounge at the foot of it. The thief inside the closet suddenly stopped. Emma cursed herself for making even the tiniest of noise by allowing her foot to thump against the lounge’s own foot. It’s now or never Emma thought. This is it!
Rising up from her last hiding place, Emma proceeded to charge the closet door, uttering a war cry, the statue raised in one hand, the other becoming stiff fingered, preparing to administer a karate chop.
At that moment a suddenly violent flash of lightning, accompanied by a very loud crash of thunder, entered her bedroom through the opened curtains and blinds, piercing the gloom. As the light faded, a match flared, setting an orange candle aglow.
Directly in front of her was a hideous creature! Clothed all in black, a redlined cape draped over its shoulders, this horrific wolf like being leered at Emma, its frightening fangs casting grotesque shadows on the opposite wall of her bedroom, protruding down from its long snout.
As Emma struck out with the porcelain piece, the creature ducked the opposite way. Emma quickly brought down her other hand to deliver the debilitating blow. The creature feinted left, and threw up its fur-covered hand to deflect Emma’s attack. Tossing the porcelain piece over her shoulder, where it safely landed on her bed, Emma raised her now free hand to strike at the monster’s neck.
As her hand made contact, the being moved away to lessen the force of the blow. Emma thought something was wrong here. Bringing her right hand back up, she grabbed at the opposite side of the fiend’s neck. And felt rubbery plastic. Plastic! What happened to fur and flesh and bone? Emma quickly pulled the mask off her prey and stepped back.
“Mrs. Peel,” Steed said, holding up something, “You’re definitely needed.” Emma’s attention shifted to what Steed had on a hanger. It was her costume. The cheeky devil she thought.
For the French maid’s uniform that was on the hanger was nothing short of scandalous. The skirt, if what little there was of it could be called that, was ridiculously short, barely larger than the brief little white apron in front of it, and the uniform’s bodice and sleeves, of diaphanous black nylon, was indeed see through. The most startling thing about it was the second hanger holding the undergarments to be worn with the costume. The panties were of the most sensual, briefest, tiniest black lace that Emma had ever seen, in French lingerie shops or anywhere, and the pushup, demicup brassiere was also made of the same exquisite lace. A black lace garter belt with straps and a pair of black nylons, seamed at the back, hung there as well. Steed held up a pair of strappy, very high-heeled shoes in his other hand.
Pointing to the get up Steed had obtained for her Halloween party costume, Emma gave him a smirk. “Tricks…” Steed offered in an innocent, plaintive voice. Emma tossed the werewolf’s mask she had been holding in her hand onto the chaise lounge at the foot of her bed. She brought her hand to the neckline of the silk blouse that she had worn to the office, and hurriedly began undoing the buttons with her nimble fingers. Emma assumed a terribly seductive look, leaned forward, said “… or treats”, and with a throaty sigh blew out the candle.
FIN
© John Orleanski 2005
No aspect of this story may be used elsewhere without the expressed prior written consent of the author. These stories may not be altered in any way or sold; all copyright information must appear with this work at all times. Please read disclaimers and warnings on top of each story. Feel free to send constructive comments to the author.. :o)
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