Author: Alexander Fawn

I am everything.

I am the sun that warms the land and the sea. I am the land, the valleys and the rivers. I am the sea, the waves and the tides. I am the wind and the birds, the animals and the forests. I am the flowers and the insects that fly and crawl. I am the moon and the stars. I am all these things. All these things together and more; all things that are. All that there is in the one moment. And I am all that isn’t. All that is and all that isn’t, together in a single moment in time.

I am…

She wanders through the market.

The shops and stalls are all busy. She has what she needs; her shopping is modest. She enters the section where florists put out their floral displays. She strolls slowly passed, admiring each. She sees couples doing the same. Lovers, holding hands and chatting about what they see. Their happiness shows. She sees and buys a lovely bouquet and takes it home. There, she puts water in a vase and arranges the flowers. She places them in the middle of the table in her lounge and settles into an armchair, looking at them admiringly. What a truly lovely thing, she thought, to receive these from my lover.

She sat with very fond thoughts about the lover she never had.

As doctors go, he was unique.

Because of the nature of his work, he found it necessary to maintain a low profile. In fact, the actual number of clients was small. He dealt with those who also preferred to stay below the radar. His rather special abilities as a medical practitioner were that he was able to cure anything; absolutely anything. This included diseases sometimes, but in the main, injuries. On some special occasions this involved bringing back the dead. As far as the crime bosses were concerned, this was his main talent. This was the thing that made him so valuable and kept him protected. His patients came to his carefully concealed rooms at the back of one of the crime syndicate’s restaurants. Without exception they came from the underworld of crime.

Whereas most people within the numbers of those that he dealt with appreciated his special skills, this was not the case everywhere. Down below, a completely different attitude was building momentum. It took a while before it was noticed that the odd soul was going missing from Hades. This was, of course, a different kind of underworld. The man in charge down there was furious when his minions gave him the news. It was evident that nothing like this had ever happened before. It was a given that when a soul was cast down into the fiery depths of Hell, it stayed there… forever!

It was the case that up above no one gave any thought to the problem, while down below the opposite was the case. Down there a great deal of head scratching went on in order to come up with a solution.

In the end, the answer was simple.

It came as a horrible shock to those above when they found their specialist medical practitioner in his rooms, on the floor, as dead as a Dodo.

He was crouching as low as he could behind the waterfall.

He hoped that the curtain of water hid him from view. There was no way the animal would hear his gasping and heavy breathing above the crashing cascade of water. All he had to do was stay perfectly still. He had no idea how much movement could be seen from the other side. Could it smell him? He began to shiver. Moments before he was sweating from the long dash through the trees. It was clear that the animal was after him.

Although he had only got brief glimpses of it as it came crashing through the steamy jungle, he felt sure it was a tiger. Whatever it was, it was huge. Had it gone away or was it just a short distance away? Was it out there, crouching like him, just waiting? He knew that animals were very good at waiting. How long would he have to wait?

The question was answered when a booming voice shouted, “Come on son, out of the shower!”

He sat, watching the bird, almost amused.

Almost, because there was something sad about the crow’s antics. He stopped watching and closed his eyes. He went back to his thoughts; visions of happier times. He had almost finished his psychology degree when things went pear-shaped. He thought about the girl he may well have gone on to marry. His parents, that had always been good to him, had always supported him, until… He couldn’t blame them, couldn’t face them. He could never go back. He couldn’t blame the drugs either. The drugs were just there. He was the one that took them. Then came the shameful end of his part-time job, his only source of money. He was no longer capable of performing simple tasks. He had been high so much of the time.

The rustling caught his attention. The crow was now deep in the bin, rummaging around noisily. Scraps of cellophane and paper littered the path. Memories kicked in. Those tiny plastic bags that contained the precious powder, that were so easy to get, so available. He had the money, back then. Then came the arrest. The charge was burglary. His parents had all but disowned him. He needed the money for drugs; he was honest about that. The streets are his home now. Now, no job, no bed, no drugs, no rent money, no food.

He gave a start as the crow managed to toss a food container out of the bin and onto the ground. He watched as it desperately tried to break it open. He realised, he too was hungry. He remembered back, less than a year ago, regularly taking his girlfriend out for a meal at a local fast food café. With a shudder, he looked on as the bird wrestled desperately with a container that it couldn’t open. He knew that hunger was driving it. With a shake of his head, he stood, knowing that he should find somewhere else. He became aware of the fact that he wasn’t enjoying the bird’s company.

Its desperate predicament was far too close to his own.

His blogsite is certainly not grand,

With most backgrounds the colour of sand,

Like it or not,

That’s what you’ve got,

For that is the way it was planned.

The boy sits alone on the bench.

This is what he does most days. He watches the other children run around the playground, laughing. They have never wanted to play with him; only poke fun at his funny face; the birthmark on his cheek. He has never been told why it was there. It had been with him from birth. Lots of doctors had looked at it. As far as he could tell, only his parents loved him for what he was. Although they had talked about something called laser treatment. It had always been a challenge, just coming to school. Only he had ever fully understood his own sadness.

That night, he had trouble getting off to sleep. Finally, when sleep came, he had the most amazing dream… he was at his uncle’s farm again, but this time he was on his own. He was stroking Betsy, their pet lamb. Was this the lamb of God that his teacher had talked about? Suddenly, it licked his cheek. It was the warm sensation of this that woke him with a start. Moments later, he closed his eyes and fell back into an even deeper sleep.

In the morning, he woke early. He lay thinking about his dream for a while. Then, he quickly jumped out of bed and ran into the bathroom.

It had gone!

The shock of it kept him frozen for several moments. To be normal. To look normal. How would people take it? His parents, the kids at school, the doctors… anyone who has ever known him.

As he stared into the mirror, despite his young age, he knew that the new challenge ahead of him would be far greater!

He had always regarded that particular uncle as a nasty piece of work.

He had been a man that he simply didn’t like. He had been a crude man with an overpowering presence. He was a brute; a wealthy brute. He obviously didn’t like kids. He had none of his own. He had never married. He owned a great deal of property in the city. All of this had meant that for many he had been regarded as some sort of special relative, but not for the eight-year-old boy who tried to hide whenever he knew the man was about to visit. He would be rough with him and nobody complained. As a boy, he had never liked watching grownups treat him with the respect he didn’t deserve. His riches seemed to make him welcome wherever he went. To a degree, even his own parents had accepted his oafish behaviour.

On one of these unwanted visits the man had pressed a fifty dollar note into his hand with far more force than necessary. Nobody seemed to notice the discomfort he felt, only the impressive value of the gift. This, he had scrunched into a tight little ball and put in an oddments shoebox he kept under his bed. At that young age he had decided that he wouldn’t’ spend it, because it had no value for him. It, like the man, was a burden.

Now, as a teenager a decade later, with the uncle’s passing away and having attended the funeral service that day, he stands at the back of the garden. It is late at night. His family is tucked up in bed. The small oil drum used to burn off garden rubbish sits behind the shed. It only has a thin layer of ash in the bottom. From his pocket he takes out the ball of paper. He opens it up to its original shape. He strikes a match. The corner catches and it burns almost to his fingertips. He lets it fall and watches the final moments of its destruction.

He stands for several long minutes, considering the significance of his private ritual. He would not share it. He thought about the man who had given him the note. He wondered if there were others that would understand. Regardless, he was resolute in his conclusion that whether others shared his view of it or not was entirely irrelevant.

He went to bed that night knowing that a chapter had been closed.

It took several months before the police realised that they were dealing with a serial killer.

All across the country baristas were turning up dead. It appeared that a number of similar cases were being reported where a café worker had finished for the night and at some point had been bludgeoned to death either in the car park when they had gone to their car or at some point on their way home. They had all suffered from the same method of despatch, a single blow to the back of the head. Local police in each district made enquiries at each café, to get a list of customers that had been there on the day. The task force that had been set up to catch the killer received nearly twenty such reports and began searching through them to find a repeat sighting. In the main, they rarely had the customers’ names, but they did have descriptions.

One description stood out as a repeating person. Combining the list of descriptions, they came up with a man in his mid-twenties, short, Caucasian with light brown hair, stubble on his face and wearing wire-framed glasses. From this, a composite was drawn up by a police sketch artist. Copies were posted online and café owners’ were advised to be on the lookout. It was at this point that the detective in charge of the task force had an unmarked envelope left in his mail box at home. Inside, he found a single sheet with a short message. It read: ‘All is well, now. I have found a barista who can make a decent cup of coffee.’ The message was made up with words that had been cut out of magazines and pasted. He immediately put it into a plastic bag and took it in the following day.

The forensic people found nothing to help identify the sender. There were a number of discussions about it within the task force, with some finding it rather funny, and many of them suggesting it was a hoax, perpetrated by somebody that had nothing better to do but cause trouble.

Although officially the case was never closed, no more victims ever came to light.

It was a moving ritual, he had done it before.

It was a quiet place, where no one went. He laboured for a while with his small campers spade, then crossed the field to where he could find broken branches.

Snapping a piece off, he returned. He carefully lifted the shrouded form and lowered it in. More shovelling and a patting down of soft earth was followed by a moment’s silence. This brief pause was respectful and in part satisfying. He was putting to rest a loving pet. A stick in the ground was all that was needed. A simple marker to mark the occasion. There should always be something when this time came.

He had needed to do it before. He looked around at the other markers. Each one commemorating a lost friend. All thirty-five of them.

He hated dogs.