Death by Milk Bottle The plastic top was stuck solid, refusing to move. Try as he might the middle aged man’s arms just could not make that plastic cap twist off because it was glued in place by the tab of the plasticised paper tamper-proof protection underneath, the next security layer. A wrenching sound from his arm told him of torn muscles and ligaments that would take almost as many weeks to sort out as his knew had when in his skiing accident. Thinking that top security prisons were less secure than a milk bottle he tried to force it, holding the flexible plastic bottle pressed onto the worktop with one hand and trying to grip the top with the palm of the other. This ripped the skin off his hand so he rooted through the kitchen knife drawer looking for the thing with black plastic handles he had been given for opening jars of pickles. His eye spied it and he reached through for the handles, catching the skin between the thumb and palm of his right hand on the carving knife and cutting it badly. That didn’t hurt immediately and he pulled out the black and silver opening aid. With that in hand and blood now dripping down the side of the bottle from the deep gash made by the carving knife he managed to grip the blue plastic top. It refused to move, the grooves in the metal squashing and sliding around the grooves in the plastic. He placed the bottle in the sink to get better traction and with huge effort managed to get it to twist, wrenching open the gash in the hand even further. A gust of wind through the window reminded him the tea was cooling fast. In a flood of urgency, his hand now hurting a great deal and beginning to throb, feeling weak from the loss of blood he set about trying to remove the loosened cap again. When it came free the tab was stuck in the underside of the blue cap and the white seal sat impartial to his efforts thus far, keeping his milk safe from intrusion. He tried to pick at its frilled edges to no avail, his finger nails having all been broken down when he had spent ten days repeatedly trying to get his new smart phone open on instruction from the service supplier’s helpline. The shiny new mobile phone now worked. He hoped one day someone might phone him on it so that he would learn how to answer it. The milk bottle remained securely closed. In desperation and refusing to be beaten by a ring of paper he reached once more into the knife drawer and pulled out a serrated knife used for slicing tomatoes. Holding the bottle firmly in the sink he made careful aim at it, pressing carefully at first just to make a starter hole. He knew it would have been safer to take the task to his workshop, grasp the bottle in a vice and make that starter hole with an electric drill but this was a milk bottle, how hard could it be? He tried again to push the sharp point into the shiny plasticised paper but it slid off to the right. School mechanics lessons sprang to mind, forces and vectors in diagrams with angles marked and numbered, followed by the mathematics of the rate of cooling of a liquid in a cup being dependent on the temperature difference between the liquid inside the cup and the temperature outside it, and the heightened cooling effect of moving air. He reached up and closed the double glazed plastic window, observing the way it cut out the noise from life outside. He breathed deeply and aimed anew, holding the knife as upright as he could with his thumb turning black and useless. He focussed on applying increasing force. When the knife slipped he cursed, then saw it had gone through the forearm above his left hand that was now spurting blood across the bowl of the sink, swirling down the drain. As the knifepoint skittered across the seal it had sliced a narrow line through which a few white drops were now exuding as his hand squeezed the bottle. Sensing success he grabbed the bottle, but now too weak to hold a four-pint load his hands dropped it again, the top was pushed off by the forces of confined liquid under pressure and milk gulped out into the sink mixing with the flowing blood to make a sticky pink mess. Using both hands he got the bottle to the tea and got some of the milk to fall into the cup before dropping the rest of the bottle onto his foot, from where it bounced and lay on its side. The first of the milk ran out leaving a vacuum within until air managed to sneak past the outflow and temporarily release the force of vacuum and allow gravity and fluid mechanics to have more leap out. It made a glupping noise as it poured out onto the rug and the ceramic tiled floor as if escaping from prolonged confinement. He stirred his much needed tea but was barely strong enough now to pick up the cup and sip from it. Deciding he ought to do something about the severe blood loss that was mixing with the milk on the floor he reached for the cupboard where sticking plasters were kept, slipped on the blood and milk soaked rug and fell, hitting his head on the sink as he went down. Dazed, he knew that he needed to call for help so pulled himself across to the table where his new mobile phone sat inert, its screen completely black. He tried to get it to light up by pressing the tiny slit shaped white inset switch on the top of the stylishly slim device but the blood slipped over it and his thumbnail was too short to do it. He grabbed for the screwdriver on the dresser and managed to get that to do the job. It lit up, demanding he slide his finger from the bottom to the top in order to have it work. The blood pooling on its shiny surface made him feel faint and he was soon on the floor wrestling with the device, finally hearing the ping sound of success. He jabbed at the telephone icon but his bloody finger slid off with every attempt. Finally he managed to get that up and working, demanding to know the number required and suggesting a few options. He dialled 999 and fainted. When the emergency service arrived at the source of the mobile phone signal they found the house doors securely locked and the bloodstained kitchen window immovable. By the time the man with the enforcement gadget let them in the man had died of blood loss and tea deficiency.