The Western Gate

The studio lights were startling, she had not been prepared for the glare and the clinical atmosphere of the television studio, set within a repair shop. Squinting and firmly grasping her partners hand, they heard the director call, “And action !”
As rehearsed they walked towards the central table to be met by the television host and another elderly gentleman. The host was a lot smaller than she had imagined, thinner, he smiled at her and her husband and asked, “and what have you bought for us today?”
At once her breathe was short but her husband squeezed her hand, she handed over the box she clutched to her chest with her other hand and began, hesitantly at first, and holding back the tears that would come, ” this is the coveted teddy bear that my youngest daughter adored, we find it difficult to look at, she used to hold it so tight and much of the stitching and fabric has worn away.”
The host took the box and asked if she minded it being opened in front of her, she nodded.

Inside the box a sorry specimen of a teddy bear looked outwards, had it been bestowed with life its eyes would have been blinded, it had been shut within the box for years, the fresh air caught its musty odour and the host, at once recoiled a little before feigning an expression that he was, literally taken aback .Next to him the elderly gentleman position his glasses and looked over the toy.
“You say,” said the host, “that she loved the teddy bear, can you tell us what happened.”
The story was tragic, just short of five years old her precious ‘Bo’ contracted an overwhelming chest infection that baffled the medical fraternity, despite their best efforts the pneumonia and then sepsis took her life. The story was relayed with sobs and tears from both the wife and husband. The teddy bear, was her most coveted possession that was with her at those final moments, as it had been with her since she was gifted it on her fourth birthday, itself a tragic tale of the last meeting between what was her grandmother, who herself succumb to a dread virus.
As for the Teddy, sorry thing, it was in a state of disrepair, stitching busted, stuffing knotted and missing, one eye grotesquely hanging on a thread from the socket where it should have been firmly fixed. both ears were matted and sticky.
“I will endeavour,” said the elderly expert at last, “to bring this Teddy back to the shape it was when Bo’s grandmother first gifted it.”

With many thanks the mother and father turned methodically as the cameras zoomed in to their still watering eyes, “and cut!” shouted the director.

The next scene shows the expert carefully picking at the stitching, the stuffing of the bear showing through, a sickly jaundice yellow, much of the stuffing crumbled as the expert carefully picked at it. “We’ll have to replace all this,” he said over his glasses to the camera just to his left, “it has deteriorated quite badly, I will use a much better substance that doesn’t biodegrade as much, it will also be softer, as with time this material goes hard and then, look…” The camera zoomed in as the expert rolled some of the stuffing in his fingers which at once flaked and became as a clod of dust billowing into a spurt of spores that drifted into the air. The expert turned on the small benchtop extract fan and the wisps and flakes were drawn in and away from the nose of the expert already now recoiling at the musty and dank odour his nostrils were overwhelmed with. “Poor thing,” said the expert and then adding for the sake of the cameras, “but we”ll get you better, I’ll make sure of that.”
As the scene was finished the expert, off camera remarked on the awful smell, he felt slightly embarrassed with the young child’s prized and adored companion beside him, at once regretting to have said such things in the earshot of the other experts busying away at other neglected and failing prized possessions.
He sat down upon the chair to gather his thoughts and looked into the box that Teddy had been home to for many a year, inside were some polaroid photographs, the beautiful young child, and in each of the 8 or so pictures, each one, she had firm hold of teddy.
The voice of her mother in his head, “how much she loved that Teddy,” “the last thing my mother gave her before she died, it means so much to us, to remember my daughter and my mum.”
He shrugged and dismayed and set again to work, knowing perhaps, his words, unkind, insensitive, such a lack of respect. Imagine of the cameras had been rolling. The awful fear had him at once searching for each camera but the crew were busy outside with refreshments.
He needed some air, he couldn’t repeat his thoughts but he felt he needed fresh air, that poor… well… it had been hidden away, and was enamoured with the young girls tears, and kisses, hugs and sweat, and perhaps every nosebleed or grave, the oils from her skin…. it were… well, fresh air first….,
As the expert opened the barn door into the outside world dizziness overwhelmed him, the fresh air was as an onslaught, the camera crew by the catering hut became blurred, he felt as though he were on a ship in a stormy sea, his stomach muscles retching, his eyes beginning to stream and his lungs, his lungs now burning. the world span and then went dark.
 He died three days afterwards, hyperbaric oxygen therapy failed, no amount of antibiotic intravenously delivered could save him. The saving grace, since Covid was that post mortem knew what to look for, the cell slides and lung tissues and blood samples all came back with the same conclusion. It were a severe and aggressive infection caused by a strain of Anthrax. The contamination of where it was hosted was so dangerous that the area was sealed, in the midst of that sealed off area sat the Teddy bear, the spores from its guts permeating the air as the breathe from the angel of death.