Author: Alexander Fawn

He had always been interested in fortune-telling.

As a boy he would find books about mediums, clairvoyants, oracles, diviners, palmists and so on. He would find references to the ancient works of olden day soothsayers and seers. No doubt, all this was reinforced by the fact that his auntie was a known tarot reader and his grandmother would amaze people with her tea-leaf readings. In a way, it was strange that he didn’t recognise that he himself had such powers until he was in his mid-twenties. It started with letting people know about things that were about to happen that would involve them directly. These were mainly family and friends. As time went on and word spread, he would be approached by others, often people he didn’t know. That’s when the media caught a whiff of what was going on and in a very short time made him something of a celebrity.

It was during this period of newspaper articles and television interviews that his personal world became even more exciting. At the height of it he was approached. At the time, the contact was deemed to be just another person needing help with some situation or issue that was troubling them. The man that arrived and spoke to him that day was directed there by his department’s superior. Without giving any details about why he was there, it was made clear to him that he could be an enormous help with matters that were of national interest. He explained that the work of homeland security covered many things, such as maritime and border security, the protection of the nation’s leaders, responding to natural disasters and matters concerning counterterrorism.

The prospect of using his abilities to serve such a vital role was more than a little exciting and it was arranged that he would attend an interview in the city on the following day. It was explained that this meeting would be less about asking him questions and more about answering those of his own. It would provide him with enough information for him to make a decision about his personal commitment.

On his arrival things happened quickly. He was met at reception by the same man who had visited. He accompanied him to a small waiting area where they sat together. He explained that his superior’s secretary would be along shortly to collect him, in the meantime they were served drinks and a plate of biscuits. Although he felt sure that this was meant to relax him, he could feel the tension building as he sat chatting and sipping his coffee…

Soon after, now unconscious, he was placed on a gurney. The attendant wheeled him to the elevator and they descended to the basement where he was trundled into the coma room. He was transferred to a bed, alongside many others that contained what could be seen as sleeping patients. He was left after setting up the drip.

Owing to a number of inexplicable administrative errors and a great deal of red tape he was not registered as a missing person for several months.

The university had put up a great deal of money and support for the project.

A building was made available, along with the funds for equipment. It was all provided on the basis that the university would have sole rights to announce the project’s results to the world. Although the research would be ground-breaking, they had every faith in the old professor, that he could deliver the results. Time travel and all of the sciences connected to it as a subject, had been studied by him for many years. So, with the help of several students, a time machine was built over a period of many months. It stood, looking like a large box, in a space dedicated to it. It had a single door. Inside, a great deal of electrical apparatus hung on the walls. A seat was provided for those wishing to use the machine.

It had been agreed from the start of the project that when the time came the chancellor, a proud and somewhat pompous man, being both the chief executive and the ceremonial head of the university, should be the first to use the machine. Therefore, after a series of stringent test routines, a time was set for the inaugural opening. This would be a private affair that would involve the chancellor alone, as agreed.

It was a time of great excitement when, late in the morning on the following day, the university head was shown the finished machine. After a brief discussion about the overall development and progress of the project, they entered the machine. The professor settled him into the chair and showed him which button to press. He came out, closing the door. He waited.

Inside, after several deep breaths, the button was pressed. A crackling began, then he heard a voice. “At the third stroke, it will be eleven forty three and twenty seconds.” Then came a series of three beeps. This was followed by, “At the third stroke, it will be eleven forty three and thirty seconds.” More beeps followed. This went on for some time before the button was pressed again and the box fell silent.

To say that the expression on the chancellor’s face as he emerged from the machine was one of extreme disappointment would be a gross understatement.

The fight hadn’t lasted long, but he was left dazed and out of breath.

He leant against the wall in the corner of the room, exhausted, looking down at the gun in his hand. They had come here in the dead of night, to kill him. He was sure of that. He put the gun down and surveyed the room. There was broken furniture and items toppled from shelves, now scattered across the floor, and of course, the bodies. Two huge men, who despite their failure, had obviously been well trained for the job. The agency would have to be told. No one had foreseen this. He turned a chair upright and sat with his head in his hands. What a mess! The agency would have to send the cleaners in. He knew he shouldn’t touch anything.

He stood up, still feeling groggy, still hearing gunshots ringing in his ears, still smelling the gun smoke that seemed to fill the room. In his head he replayed the scene. Each of them had managed to get shots off before he took them down. Had he not heard them coming up the hall he would be dead. Being forewarned, he had his weapon ready and fired from under the desk. This would all have to be spelled out in precise detail in his report. The agency was always strict about this. He was running all this through his head when he became aware of a distant voice, somehow familiar. It broke his chain of thought.

He stepped over the bodies and moved towards the door. It was partly open and a different aroma came up through the hallway.

The call came again. “Ready!”

He left the room.

The short story writer just loved the way she did chicken cacciatore.

It took every hour and every minute of seven days for him to fully adjust.

It hadn’t been a soft landing. He was confused and quite naturally upset. The punishment had certainly not fitted the crime. You couldn’t even call it a crime, just a touch of rudeness. Although it had been aimed at the boss. Never a good idea. What was done was done. He would go about making the best of it. As soon as the perplexity of the event had given way to a clear understanding of what needed to be done, he began to plan. It didn’t take long for him to use his Godlike powers to see his way ahead.

First, he walked through four walls and took a modicum amount of cash to get him started; just a few thick bundles, the big money would come later. He was in his luxury apartment in no time. Having the suits and casual wear made to measure would take a few days, but that couldn’t be helped. He was dead lucky with the car. They had just one Ferrari LaFerrari in stock, and it was red. Once he had put most of life’s basic necessities in place he settled down to a study of the stock market. With only a tiny amount of cheating, he held a sufficiently robust basket of stocks and shares that he would not have to think about any of it again. In no time at all he had apartments and houses in several cities around the world.

Unaccustomed as he was to the idea that a being could be lonely, he began an extensive search. A great deal of time was spent looking for a companion. He looked in restaurants, shops, supermarkets, bars, offices; all around the city. She had to be single, fairly attractive, reasonably healthy, in the right age bracket, and so on. He actually found her in a studio, where they were shooting a commercial video advertising toothpaste. After a short period of watching her movements, they met. They hit it off. She just loved his car. The marriage was simple, the ring with a cluster of diamonds wasn’t.

They would honeymoon somewhere nice. It wouldn’t take long to get away. His mansion in Italy, overlooking the ancient village of Vernazza, had a helipad.

This wasn’t Heaven, but he was sure as Hell going to make the most of it…

From an early age, although not knowing it, she was destined to be put down by nasty people.

It started in the school playground when the class bully roughly wrestled her to the ground and she had yelled “Stop!” at the top of her voice. It seemed to do the trick because he rolled off her and lay panting before the teacher helped him up. The fact that the boy had a sudden cardiac death a few days later, was greeted with the understandable grief. The connection between the two events went unnoticed. Later, as a teenager, she had been visiting an auntie that she felt no fondness for, with her parents. When the woman, who didn’t like the youngster being in her bedroom uninvited, even though she was only taking in the view from the window, took her by her upper arm and marched her out. The angry grip was far too tight and the girl shouted for her to stop.

Once again, this unpleasant yet relatively minor event was overshadowed when the woman had a dizzy spell and tumbled down the full length of her stairs later that week. She died in the ambulance.

These two events in her life came together as having some significance, but her interpretation of their meaning could not be construed as anything more than fanciful. However, an incident that occurred several years later forced her hand.

One of the men in her office, an obnoxious chauvinist, had, for no apparent reason that she could detect, been particularly nasty towards her from the day she arrived in the department. It had been going on for several months and she was sick of it.

She knew he lived close to the office and travelled in and out by bus. One evening, after work, she left sharp and was parked a short distance from the bus stop. She saw him get on and followed. When he got off she parked nearby and watched him go in. She waited for a couple of minutes before ringing his door bell. When the door opened, he raised disdainful eyebrows, but stood speechless. “I only have one thing to say to you,” she said. She drew in a great breath and shouted at the top of her voice, “Stop!” He just stood wide-eyed looking at her, thoroughly amazed. She just turned and walked away.

On the following week she went in each morning, sat and waited… Sure enough, on the third day he phoned in sick. Then, the next day all staff in her section were told that he was in hospital. It wasn’t looking good. Apparently, it was a case of ischemic heart disease. Following this, at the end of the week, the manager called them all together and gave them the very sad news.

When she got home that night a great jumble of thoughts was racing through her head.

She put the kettle on, sat down quietly in her kitchen with a piece of paper and a pen, and with a trembling hand she started to make a list.

He was telling the customer, who was not mobile phone savvy, about the amazing app, now available.

He was saying that he could sell him a phone, but he highly recommended the latest app, explaining that it was free and had a marvellous array of settings. It had a split screen facility for multi-tasking. It had a laser reading facility that could measure distances. It could instantly recover any accidentally cleared notifications. In addition, it had a bonus section that washes dishes, unloads the dishwasher, does the laundry, irons clothes, folds clothes, cooks dinner, sets the table, cleans the bathrooms, hangs clothes up, dusts ornaments, vacuums the house, cleans the windows, feeds the pets, makes coffee, mows the lawns, sweeps the front drive, walks the dog, washes the car and takes the rubbish bin out.

The customer was impressed and asked if it had a clock. His shop owner said, no, but that was being worked on.

The storm that raged that night didn’t help his state of mind.

He had felt the feeling that something wasn’t right for several days. It had been building in intensity. Now, soaking wet, with an umbrella that had been ripped apart by the howling wind, and chilled to the bone, it was an unbearable feeling of foreboding that he couldn’t shake off. As he left the bus and began walking the two blocks to the house his awareness of an evil presence grew even stronger. Although yearning for the safety and comfort of his home, he found himself wishing for the first time that he didn’t live alone. Turning into his street he saw that the street lights were out. At his front door he fumbled with his keys in the dark.

Finally inside, he fell back against the door. He flipped the light switch, but no light came on. The storm must have taken that out too, he thought. He knew where the torch and candles were kept in a cupboard in the back room. He made his way through the house in almost total darkness. He finally located the door by feel. With his hand on the doorknob he hesitated, overcome by the same feeling of malevolence. He entered the room slowly and made his way in the direction of the cupboard.

In the shadows, something was silently crouching.

It was grinning.

She was going through her family history when she discovered it.

She had been building her online family tree for several months. She had interviewed her parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, cousins, as many as possible. Then she went through every scrapbook she could find, she spent hours gathering as much relevant information as possible, including names, dates, and places. This included going through old letters, certificates and any informative documents she could find.

Then, out of the blue, she found it!

Her great-grandmother was exactly twenty one when she gave birth to her grandmother. Her grandmother was exactly twenty one when she gave birth to her mother, and her mother was exactly twenty one when she gave birth to her. What a coincidence!

Amazingly, despite all the hours of research she had put in, these astounding facts did not come to light until late that very evening.

She was now twenty one, almost twenty two.

She was lying in bed and thinking about this, feeling absolutely exhausted… but she wasn’t pregnant!

The story goes that they had known one another since kindergarten.

Not that they had played together. She was too noisy, he thought. He was no fun, she thought. They were similarly uninterested as they moved on through the following school years. Most of the time they were unaware of the other’s existence. It was only towards the end of their school days that they came into contact more often. It was during this period that their relationship had strengthened to a point where it was obvious that they felt a mutual loathing. In fact, despite their never actually wondering what it was that brought this level of hatred about, it remained in place through those years that saw them entering into their working lives.

It was his first job that found him working on the eleventh floor of a large financial company in the city. Here he found himself enjoying the administrative duties that his role required. He had always had a knack for organizing things.

It was her second term of employment. After spending a few months in her cousin’s florist shop, she took up the position, in what might be called the typing pool of the invoicing department. She had always been a natural on the keyboard. This just happened to be in the same company, situated on the twelfth floor.

One may well wonder how this tale will end. It would be a sting in the tale if they finally get married. It would be far more realistic and in keeping with everyday life if they went on with their lives in their own separate ways. It’s anyone’s guess, really.

As stated previously, this is only a story…

They were both very young when it happened.

The only reason they played with each other was because she lived next door. The boy, a fairly serious-minded child, was actually quite bright for his age. She, on the other hand, was not. There always seemed to be an unnecessary silliness about her. It was a regular trait of hers to mock him about some of his ideas. When he discovered the stone, he had no intention of telling her about it, nor anyone else for that matter. But, as time went on, the temptation to share his knowledge regarding the magical properties of it, got the better of him. He felt sure that she would scoff at the idea that it could actually do what he said it could; that couldn’t be helped. It wouldn’t matter, anyway. He would swear her to secrecy.

So, the day came when he told her in strict confidence that he possessed a magic stone that enabled him to disappear. Of course, she didn’t believe a word of it. After a lot of wrangling about how stupid she thought it was and how truly amazing he thought it was, he showed it to her, but he wouldn’t let her touch it. As far as she could see there was nothing at all remarkable about it, it was just a stone. When he insisted that it had magic powers that would amaze her, she demanded a demonstration. At first he was reluctant to let her see what it could do, but finally, after reminding her that she was still under oath, he agreed.

For the sake of secrecy, she agreed to meet him in the park across the road; not a thing that either of them would normally be allowed to do. There was a small wooded area where they could go, allowing him to show her how it worked, away from prying eyes. When he was happy that they could not be seen, he took the stone out of his pocket. He placed it in the middle of his palm and closed his fingers over it. He clenched his fist tight and brought it up to his chest. With eyes closed, he began to murmur the incantation.

She smiled at his performance.

When the last few syllables had been spoken, he opened his eyes.

She was gone.