Author: Alexander Fawn

He and his younger brother were always getting caught up in the business of comparing one another.

It was an ongoing ritual between them while they were growing up. Now, spending time together, he could explain how ridiculous all those silly arguments were.

He sighed heavily and said, “Me being successful didn’t mean that you were a loser. Me being a man of the moment didn’t mean that you were a wallflower. Me being positive didn’t mean that you were negative. Me being healthy didn’t mean that you were sick. Me being clever didn’t mean that you were stupid. Me being good-looking didn’t mean that you were ugly. Me being cashed-up didn’t mean that you were penniless. Me being strong didn’t mean that you were weak. Me being admired didn’t mean that you were despised.”

He paused to look around at the place. He laid his hand gently on the cold marble.

“However, it is true to say that me being a careful driver did make you a careless one.”

The large sitting room at the front of the manor house was empty.

The owner entered the room, he was a big man in his fifties. Maybe older, the author wasn’t sure. As he brushed by the slender table, the Monumental Russian Imperial Cut-Crystal Vase wobbled. It may fall; it may not. He lowered himself into a leather, or perhaps faux leather armchair and picked up the newspaper. It may have been a magazine; the writer would decide that later, depending entirely on whether or not it became relevant. Hardly had he picked up whatever it was, the phone rang. He struggled up, crossed the room and answered it. It was his brother, or his brother-in law, either way he was ringing with bad news. The voice was saying that there had been a terrible traffic accident…

He stopped scribbling. He laid his pen down carefully and stared out into the garden. As a dramatist, he wasn’t sure how the story should develop. He would scribble a note about it later. As for the crystal vase, it didn’t fall off. In the whole scheme of things it probably wouldn’t have mattered if it had.

He wasn’t sure.

An hour ago he wouldn’t have believed that he could do such a thing.

He was sweating. He looked down. He was still holding the heavy mallet. He had been considering the possibility of doing it for some time. Today, when he got home, something had triggered him into action. Maybe it was the thought of having to put up with the ongoing unfinished business every time he came home; came home to the same old thing. Her continual harping on about how useless he was. He wondered whether it was stopping at his local with a workmate; having a couple of beers before coming home, had anything to do with it? Could this had given him Dutch courage? He didn’t think so, knowing how to go about it was hard enough, without being drunk and messing it up.

The rubber mallet slipped out of his sweaty hand and bounced on the carpet. He wasn’t much of a DIY man, but he stepped back further and admired it. She’s going to be so pleased when she gets home, he thought.

A new bookcase for that corner of the room was exactly what she wanted.

He enjoyed what he did, it made him a good living.

He sat fingering the tiny, beautifully hand-carved figure, bought while on holiday in Russia. It was an Amur Leopard. He felt that he and the cat had a lot in common. They were both rare; not many left world-wide. He gave regularly. This was unusual, because he didn’t give often, he was someone who took. He took a lot. Not all at once but moderate sums, regularly. Some might say he didn’t have to work for it, but he did. Research was important. Arranging kickbacks for the guy in the bank, the social security worker, and a couple of others took care of that. It was all about dossiers. Scam targets need to be selected with care. You could say that he needed his targets to be well off; cash poor, but well off. Out of the public eye was good, and of course, greedy enough to take the bait.

He put the figurine back on the corner of his desk and picked up a folder. It was time for some action. There’s one born every minute, just waiting to be fleeced. He opened it and selected the first of three dossiers. At first glance it was the most likely one to go ahead with. He began leafing through what had been gathered.

Respectable city gent, no convictions, large house, family vacation apartment, two cars, two mortgages, mutual funds, some blue chip stock, a number of credit cards, charge cards, store cards, club memberships…

Then he saw it, right near the bottom of the form. Regular donations made to the Save the Amur Leopard Foundation!

The dossier went into the shredder. He picked up the next.

Even a scammer can have a conscience…

He couldn’t believe that he’d landed such a lucrative contract.

The public’s demand for the repair of domestic appliances had dropped off of late, so the job couldn’t have come up at a better time. As a rule, electrical appliances were his thing and this job was a long way from fixing hair dryers and toasters, but if it was electrical, he could fix it. The morning he started at the observatory, one of the chief scientists was on hand to explain what was needed. The recently purchased Blue Beam guidance system required recalibrating. Apparently, it had been knocked about a bit during its transport from overseas. The astronomer said he was heading up a specialist group of cosmologists that were currently studying globular clusters. He said that a cluster is made up of a huge number of stars all tightly bound together.

He went on to describe how there were well over a hundred of these clusters spread across the Milky Way. This system would allow them to accurately target a specific cluster, rather like a laser beam on a rifle, it would provide them with a very accurate visual reference point. He said it was similar to a laser beam, but different. Like the laser it stimulates molecules to emit light, but this blue beam has a far greater range of both wavelength and amplification.

He pointed out that the staff there were really excited about the new piece of equipment and couldn’t wait to have a go with it. With that, the scientist handed him the maintenance manual and left, saying he’d make sure he wasn’t disturbed. He couldn’t help thinking that these people were like a bunch of children getting excited about playing with a new toy.

After looking over the various components and checking that everything was plugged in properly, he read through the manual. He went through the section dealing with recalibration twice. The written instructions were not very helpful. He tried to figure out where the manual had come from. Wherever it was, English was obviously not the writer’s first language.

After tinkering with the various controls for a while he decided to give it a trial run. Having selected a particularly attractive ball of speckled light, he double-checked the screen to ensure that the star field was lined up accurately. He pressed the large activation button and watched the monitor. There was a bright flash and that precise segment of the Milky Way he’d been looking at was now completely black!

Looking back at the digital panel for the cluster locator, he studied the figures he’d punched in for the beam strength and wondered whether he’d put the decimal point in the wrong place. Well, several places, actually. He had the uncomfortable feeling he had inadvertently vaporized one of their clusters. It was just as well he’d been told that scientists believed that the area in question was entirely uninhabited.

Despite that, he knew that the next time their telescope was swung round to look at that specific cluster, there’d be one hell of a stink!

In future, he’d stick to washing machines.

He knows that he’s perfectly sane.

In fact, he knows a lot of stuff that they don’t. He knows they are trying to find out about, you know who, him! But they won’t find out. They’ll never know where he gets his information from. He can see how amazed they are by what he can tell them in his sessions, but he’ll only tell them so much. He was only allowed to keep a few personal items in his room. Things they deemed were safe. Strictly speaking, the rules don’t allow their guests to have access to certain items, such as shoelaces, belts, neckties, and bed sheets. What they are most careful about is denying access to any sharp objects. Naturally this includes mirrors; glass can be broken.

Ha! They let him keep his grandfather’s old pocket watch. They never checked the back. They never even saw that it opened! They don’t know his secret. They must never find out about his secret.

They must never know about his doppelganger who hides in his tiny mirror…

This was the biggest medical trial ever carried out by the research company.

It involved providing packets of tablets to a great many sufferers for them to take as prescribed, over a set period. The tablets, based on a new formula, were painkillers that were developed to target backache. In this trial, half of the patients receive the new drug and the other half the placebo. This being a tablet of the exact shape and colour, with the same markings as the real thing. It’ll have no pharmacological effect whatsoever. The trial was being carried out at great cost to set it up and run it, with more than a million participating in the trial. Obviously, the security for this had to be one hundred percent for the trial to be regarded as proof of how effective the actual drug is.

For this reason, the file containing all relevant information, of which there was only one copy, was kept, password protected, by the company’s head statistician. This file contained the names and addresses of all the patients provided with tablets and lists indicating who received the drug and who received the placebo.

The trial was coming to an end and the statistician would collate all of the results and provide the relevant information at the company’s imminent board meeting. On the morning that saw the last results coming in from the administering doctors around the country, the statistician was busy preparing his report. Having opened the highly secured file with an extremely strong password, he was in the process of tallying…

…he sat staring out of his office window, thinking about the trip to Disneyland with his wife and children next year and how this was no longer likely to happen.

He was thinking about the extremely rare number of times he had inadvertently deleted a file that couldn’t be recovered throughout his entire lifetime.

He was thinking about attending the board meeting that was scheduled to take place during the afternoon.

He was imagining the look on the Chief Executive’s face when he was given the news.

He began to giggle.

An unhappy discovery, an absence of listening,

An apology not given, an awkward goodbye.

An aspiration giving way to a craving.

A decision made on the fly.

On and on, an endless list,

With an echo of something missed.

–

A moment that hangs unheeded.

A silence that runs too long.

Permitting the inherently sordid.

Gestures, where words belong.

–

The guilt from a pointed finger.

Accepting a wrong that’s discerning.

Blind to that which is noble.

Discovering a bridge that is burning.

A pretence that blocks one’s peace of mind.

Being suspicious of contentment.

Judging the solace of others.

Leaving litter behind.

–

Temporarily burying wisdom.

Struggling for some imagined refinement.

Maintaining a pause in a fleeting moment.

Everything out of alignment.

–

Ignoring one’s broken promise.

Fixing emotions on a rigid scale.

One’s attention is drawn to the obvious.

Allowing hope to fail.

–

A flash of unwanted hatred.

A dialect that brings sense to a halt.

Frittering away that of value.

Selling justice short.

Awkward moments; yet they persist.

Always, an echo of something missed.

The father and son met the neighbour in the shopping centre.

The two men hadn’t seen each other for a while and they agreed to sit in the coffee shop and catch up before the man did his shopping. The boy knew that the neighbour wrote in a blog and wanted to know more. After a few minutes of chatting, the man explained that his son would no doubt like to find out more about the neighbour’s blog. He suggested that he go off and do his shopping while they talked. This was agreed to and the father left.

At first, the boy looked a bit nervous. Then, driven by curiosity, he said, “I understand you write stuff for your blog”

The neighbour smiled. “That’s right.”

“What sort of stuff?”

“What type of writing, is that what you mean?”

The boy’s head wobbled. “I suppose so.”

“Well, I’d have to say creative. Creative writing draws on the imagination to get across some kind of narrative or story.”

“Are there other types?”

“There are, but I have to tell you there are different opinions about how many types there are, up to a dozen, but there are four broad categories commonly accepted.”

“What are they?”

The man raised his eyebrows. “Do you really want to know?”

“Yes. It’s my favourite subject at school.”

“I see. So, that’s why you’re so interested?”

The reply came as a resounding, “Yes.”

“OK. Types. Well, you could say there are four broad categories; persuasive, expository, descriptive and narrative.”

The boy frowned.

The man went on. “The first two are styles that I don’t use. Persuasive writing attempts to influence the reader. It tries to bring the reader around to the writer’s point of view, such as advertising or job applications, for example.”

The boy brightened. “Yes, I see that.”

“Good. Then there’s expository. This style of writing is aimed at informing or explaining some particular subject. The sort of thing you’d find in text books or instruction manuals; this style attempts to expose or uncover the facts, if you like.”

The other nods. “OK.”

“OK. That leaves descriptive and narrative. I use both of these.”

“Because you write short stories,” the boy said.

“Yes. A descriptive style is easy to understand. With descriptive writing you are painting a picture. The writer makes the reader feel that they are there, that they can actually see the person and where the person is.”

The boy nods slowly, showing that he understands.

“Finally,” the other goes on, “there’s narrative. Narrative is when the writer tells a story. My favourite style, as it happens. It can be fact or fiction. This style is commonly found in novels. Usually, there’s a main character in some particular setting, who experiences something interesting or significant. How this all plays out is called the plot. The writer can make themselves out to be the person they are writing about, and from another point of view, the reader can imagine themselves to be one of the people in the story.”

At this point, in the distance, the boy could see his father returning. “Thank you for explaining all that.” He quickly added, “Can you give me any tips?”

“Any tips?” The other grimaced and said, “Not really. There is so much out there on the internet. Writing is a very personal thing. You’ll have to look for what you think suits you.”

He paused for a moment, looking up and seeing the man drawing closer, he said, “The only tip I can give is that you only ever write what you want to write.”

The boy smiled and nodded.

He made his way across town, back to the café where she was waiting.

He was nervously looking around as he approached. If it weren’t for the money he wouldn’t be doing this. It wasn’t his thing. It had all started with a single phone call to his girlfriend. She was a lot more at ease about the deal than he was. Several people milled around chatting outside. One man seemed to be in two minds about going in. He skirted around him and made his way to the table. She could see he was troubled.

“What’s wrong?” She asked, as he sat down.

“I saw a man.”

“What sort of man?”

“I don’t know, just a man.”

She sighed.

“He was loitering as I came in,” he went on.

She looked over at the entrance. “Well, he’s not there now.”

He turned and looked. “No, but he was!”

Her head shook. “Of course there are people around, this is a café. What would you expect?”

He looked hurt.

Her tone softened. ”OK. Look, I think you’re just getting jumpy. Nobody knows what we’re doing. How could they? We’ve been very careful. You know that, right?”

“Suppose so.”

“Well then, just show me what you got.”

“Oh! Yes, of course.” He dug into his pocket and brought out an envelope, tore it open and took out a key. He laid it on the table, then covered it with a napkin. “I suppose this will open the box.”

She asked, “Did he give it to you personally?”

“No. Paid some random kid he found on the street to meet me and hand it over.”

She frowned, “I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Me neither,” he said, shrugging, “we don’t really know who he is or why he’s prepared to pay us so handsomely, for just collecting something from a Post Office box.”

She said, “OK. I made a note of the phone instructions. Let’s do it.”

They left the café and made their way to the central Post Office. They both felt the excitement building. Whatever it was, they were both moving into unknown territory.

They found the box with the number she had written down, they opened it. Inside, was a large brown envelope with the words ‘Please open’. It was stuffed with banknotes. There was also a typed note, with no signature.

It read: ‘Please find here the recompense you were promised. I am a billionaire who enjoys giving away money, but also, making a game of it. Thank you for your participation.’

They just stood there, looking at each other…