Tunnels 02, Deeper

succeeding in ramming her foot home into her slipper. "It's the person we all fear, deep down... the final curtain... the big sleep... whatever you want to call it. That Perkiss woman has had the sword of Damocles hanging over her for a long time... poor cow."
    "You mean..." the matron began, as she caught on to what Mrs. Burrows was suggesting. She gave Mrs. Burrows a gentle "pah" just to emphasize what she thought of her theory.
    Mrs. Burrows wasn't deterred in the slightest by the matron's reaction. "Mark my words, that'll be it," she said with total conviction, her eyes drifting back to the silent television screen as it occurred to her that Millionaire could be about to start any moment now.
    The matron exhaled skeptically.
    "Since when had death been a man in a black hat?" she said, and reassumed her usual businesslike manner, glancing at her watch. "Is that the time? I must be getting on." She fixed Mrs. Burrows with a stern glance. "Don't keep your visitor waiting, and then I want to see you go for that brisk walk on the grounds."
    "Of course," Mrs. Burrows agreed, nodding vigorously, but inwardly finding the whole suggestion of exercise quite distasteful. She hadn't the slightest intention of taking a "brisk walk," but would make a big show of getting ready to go out, then merely promenade once around the house before ducking into the kitchen to lie low for a while. If she was lucky, she might even get a cup of tea and some shortbread biscuits out of the cook.
    "Tickety-boo," the matron said, checking the room for anything else that wasn't in its place.
    Mrs. Burrows smiled sweetly at her. She'd learned very soon after arriving that if she played along with the matron and her staff, she could get her own way, well, most of the time, anyway, particularly since she wasn't much trouble in comparison with many of the other inpatients.
    These were a mixed bunch, and Mrs. Burrows viewed them all with equal disdain. Humphrey House had its fair share of "Snifflers," as she called them. There was a barrel-load of these miseries who, if left to their own devices, positioned themselves all over the place like lost, lonely waifs, usually in corners where they could mope away the hours uninterrupted. But Mrs. Burrows had also witnessed the quite startling change that this breed could go through, more often than not in the evenings. Without warning, they would undergo some form of transformation after "lights out," like a caterpillar wrapping itself in a duvet cocoon only to emerge as a completely different creature, a "Screamer," in the small hours of the morning.
    Then this normally nonviolent breed would howl and wail and break things in their rooms until members of the staff came to placate them or administer a pill or two. And, usually, they'd miraculously metamorphose back into Snifflers again by sunup.
    Then there were the "Zombies," who shuffled around as if they were clueless extras on a film set, not knowing what they were supposed to be doing or where they were meant to be going, and certainly never remembering their lines (they were mostly incapable of any rational exchange). Mrs. Burrows largely ignored them while they stumbled around the place on their random, senseless paths.
    But the very worst for her had to be the "Bagmen," horrible specimens of middle-aged, male professionals who had burned out from their overpressured careers in accountancy or banking or, as far as Mrs. Burrows was concerned, similarly inconsequential occupations.
    She loathed these pinstripe casualties with a passion -- sometimes, she thought, because their mannerisms and blank expressions reminded her so much of her husband, Roger Burrows. She'd seen the little danger signs that he was going that way just before he had upped and offed, disappearing who knows where.
    For Mrs. Burrows hated her husband with a passion.
    Even in the first years of their marriage, things hadn't gone smoothly. Their inability to have children together cast a pall over the relationship. And all the rigamarole associated with adopting meant she couldn't concentrate on her own job and she'd been forced to pack it in: Another dream stymied. After they had been successful in their applications to adopt two young children, a boy and a girl, she had struggled to give them everything she'd had in her own childhood, all the trappings, such as nice clothes and mixing with the right people.
    But it was impossible; after years of trying to make her family something it