Jacob quickly rounded on his brother as soon as the man was out of earshot.

  "He’s a bloody loon, Miller," he whispered in a sharp hiss.

  "You keep him occupied, while I'll ready Mr Bat in case it gets messy. It’s in the office, so I’m just gonna go in there and keep an eye on the CCTV. I'll lock the door too, just in case one of us needs to be able to call the police!".

  "You're leaving me alone with him?!" Miller wailed in disbelief. He knew his brother could be a knobhead, but come on, where was that sense of protecting family?

  "You'll be fine, Mills," Jacob soothed, with one foot already pointed towards the office door.

  "He's almost as little as you are!"

  "The little ones are the worst!" growled Miller.

  "They go straight for the nuts, like Rocky on a punch bag," and he began throwing some rabbit punches to demonstrate.

  "Look! Stop being a wimp,” Jacob demanded, putting an end to his brother's demonstration.

  “Just hold the front line, man up, and I'll go get reinforcements!"

  Before Miller could continue his argument, he was interrupted by the sound of the toilet door creaking open, followed by clomping footsteps on the sticky pub carpet.

  "Shit," yelped Jacob, and with that final encouraging word, he hopped into the office and slammed the door shut behind him.

  Miller stood dumbstruck as he listened to his brother first lock the door, then bolt it, then latch it, and finally, what sounded like a chair being scraped along the terracotta floor and being pressed up against it.

  Just before the man rounded the corner back into the bar, Miller held up his middle finger to the CCTV camera. He then quickly turned on his happy face to welcome the nutter back to his seat.

  As the man sat down, Miller quickly hatched his own plan. He knew no one would be coming to help. The pub didn't make enough money to afford doormen all week, and the fella hadn’t actually done anything wrong, so the police wouldn’t see any reason to turn up…though he supposed they might be interested in all that blood.

  Hopefully, Miller pondered wishfully, his brother would come to the same conclusion and would try and call the old Bill to entice them out. Anyway, for now, Miller had just himself to depend on and so he developed his plan.

  He would encourage the man to keep drinking as much as possible, and hopefully, just hopefully, he’d drink himself to sleep. Then, when their parents had returned from Birmingham in the morning, their fearsome little mother could deal with the weirdo, and God help him.

  “Sooooooooo,” Miller began, whilst pouring the man his…third pint? “What’s this all about then?”

  With the question asked, he flicked open the little brown bloody book that lay between them.

  “DON’T OPEN THE BOOK! NEVER. EVER!” the man roared, turning a puce colour immediately as he rose to his feet in fury. He quickly snatched the book up and clutched it tight to his chest. His eyes bulged with so much intensity that they almost popped out of his round face.

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  “Oh, I’m, I’mmm, errr… s-orry,” stammered Miller, taking a step back and once more feeling a sickness in the pit of his belly. He slowly turned his head to the office door, trying to telepathically urge his brother to do something quickly.

  Had Miller possessed the ability to view with his mind's eye, he may have been able to psychically see past the locked door and be dismayed to observe his brother hiding under the office desk, with a phone pressed firmly to his ear.

  He was on hold to the police, but instead of telling a Sergeant all about the potential killer in their pub, he was instead being presented with a million options.

  Press 1 if you are being burgled, press 2 if you have been offended, press 3 if you have been offended on someone else's behalf. Okay, these weren’t the actual options, but you get the point. Jacob wasn’t getting any help fast, so then, neither was Miller.

  The angry man very slowly transformed back into a mild mannered looking dweeb, albeit one that Miller was now noticing had little splashes of blood all over his drying, crumpled greying shirt. The alarming customer took a deep breath and his skin colour returned to its sickly paler shade once again.

  “Sorry,” he said quietly and with more than a hint of embarrassment.

  “I'm so, ever so, very much so, sorry. Please, I didn't mean to shout. It's been a very stressful evening. You see, the world is going to end tonight.” he informed Miller rather matter of factly.

  “O-kaaaaaaaaayyyyy,” Miller replied, whilst trying to scribble something on a bar mat behind his back.

  “Errr, do you wanna tell me about it, mate?” he asked reluctantly.

  Had Jacob been looking at the CCTV monitor at that moment, he would have seen on his fuzzy black and white screen that Miller was holding up the beer mat behind his back, pointing it at the camera. Scribbled badly was the message:

  “YOUR RITE! NUTTUR!! GET COPZ!!!”

  “It’s a long story,” said the man as he stared into his pint with haunted eyes, his mind miles away.

  “Well, you said we’re short on time, so you better get on with it I suppose,” replied Miller, hoping that by getting the man talking, he’d have less time to turn into an axe murderer.

  He would also spend more time drinking himself into a stupor as he babbled on.

  “I suppose you’re right. You might as well know why the world is ending. Only fair someone does, right!”

  “Right,” answered Miller with a weak laugh.

  “Well, I best start at the beginning.” said the man, and he sat up a little straighter, ready to begin his tale of woe.

  “No point starting at the end,” replied Miller with a smile as fake as a prostitute greeting her millionth customer of the night.

  “Quite, and that’ll come soon enough,” the man answered, followed by a big, sudden nervous laugh, which quickly caused Miller to lose the ability to hold up his smiling facade.

  He couldn't help but allow his eyes to yet again wander towards the tatty office door, large with desperate hope.

  On the other side of that door however Jacob had somehow fallen asleep whilst listening to the police options drone on.

  “Press 9 if you have witnessed littering. Press 10 if you can see a car parked on double yellow lines. Press 11 if you have witnessed someone failing to pick up dog poo, press 12 if you need advice on tackling crime yourself. Press 13…” and so on.

  Perhaps if Miller had actually helped Jacob throughout the day, then his brother wouldn’t have been so knackered and now in the land of nod beneath the desk, himself quite safe from danger. Alanis Morissette might call that ironic (or she would if she understood what irony actually meant).

  “Would you like another Sir?” asked Miller, alluding to the pint of bitter that the man had already mostly finished.

  “Oh, yes please, one to wet the whistle for the start of my story” he replied, looking almost chipper at being given the chance to unload himself of whatever was troubling him.

  “Indeed,” answered Miller, as he began pouring the man his fourth, overly frothy pint of bitter, happy to be putting his plan into action. He tried hard to prevent his hand from shaking, but one little tremor escaped, and with it, a splodge of brown liquid missed the dirty glass and splashed onto the floor, just as Miller couldn’t help imagining his own blood might, soon.

  He leant down to wipe away the spillage from the hard, brown tiled floor, and to gather his courage. He took a deep breath, then slowly rose to finish pouring the strange man’s drink.

  “Okay, well, today started out just like any other,” the man started, not noticing Miller’s nervousness. He was now ready to reveal, to Miller, his hamster, and the enthralled barfly why he knew the world was about to end.