Author: Alexander Fawn

Nobody really knows what became of Medusa.
One version tells of an incident that occurred only a few years back. It is said to have happened one sunny morning in a cave just a short distance from a small village in south-eastern Europe. They say it was there that old blind Boris, from that same village, encountered her. She was squirming around, the way that particular Gorgon was prone to do, when she heard Boris stumble into her hidey-hole. He was drunk again. He was a man of peculiar habits. He always wore dark sun glasses to let the occasional tourist know he was blind. Sometimes this brought about a parting of loose change for drink. One such visitor had recently dropped a pair of mirrored sunglasses that a kind lad had passed on to Boris.

Anyway, becoming aware of his presence, the mythical creature reared up in front of Boris with a loud hiss. This was something he took to be the wind coming down off the mountains. It was when she hissed again, even louder, that the old man realised that the sound was coming from inside the cave. The ugly creature’s eyes were blazing and ready to strike when he turned. The horrifying beam that emitted from beneath the wreath of wriggling snakes struck the mirrored surface of the lenses and bounced back. The cave fell silent. Boris stood listening.
Still wondering where all the noise had come from, he moved forward. By doing so, he bumped into something hard that clattered to the floor and was heard to shatter into tiny pieces before the cave became silent once more.
Anyway, that is only one version.
It seems that Boris found these events strange and disturbing. So, becoming uncomfortable with his present surroundings he concentrated on finding his way out of the cave and into the warmth of the sun.
Besides, he needed a drink.

The woman from number nine could set her clock by the old man across the street.
She saw him come out of his house at seven every morning, almost to the minute. He’d walk slowly down to his front gate and turn out along the street in the same direction, every weekday. It was his daily constitutional. He’d be gone for about fifteen minutes. She couldn’t help admiring his almost religious devotion to keeping himself as fit and healthy as possible. All this was true until that particular Tuesday morning. Being an early riser, she’d been sitting by her front window since soon after six, working on her needlepoint tapestry. At around seven-thirty, having seen nothing of the elderly gentleman from number eight, she began to wonder, and by a quarter to nine, she was definitely concerned.

Although she felt that it was not her place to interfere, there were good grounds for thinking that something was wrong. She considered the embarrassment that could result if she notified someone and it turned out that the old man had simply decided to have a lay in. To avoid this possibility, she thought it best if she made an anonymous call to the local police station to have someone check on him. Surely, this would be the neighbourly thing to do. By nine o’clock she could no longer ignore her anxiety and used her cell phone to look up the relevant number. She dialled and heard a friendly voice ask how he may help.
At this very moment, she saw the front door of number eight open slowly and the elderly woman from up the road at number seventeen come out.
She gently pressed the ‘end call’ button.

Some evenings she just wanted to stretch out on the couch and read a book.
This was one of those nights and she was opening her latest mystery novel at the bookmark when her boyfriend asked her if she wanted a cup of tea. She said she would and soon settled down to reading. As engrossed as she was in the story, she hardly noticed him putting it down, but managed to mumble a belated thanks as he walked away. She fluffed up her cushion and took a sip, quite unaware that he’d returned and sat in the armchair opposite, pretending to read a magazine. He was actually observing her. The book she had was a good read and she found herself getting involved in the plot and the characters without hesitation.
This was certainly one of her favourite things; stretched out, sipping tea, reading a book and getting caught up in a story. She had been reading for half-an-hour, when she looked up from the page with a sudden realisation. One of the main characters in the story had disappeared. He was no longer being mentioned, in fact… he was missing. She kept turning back pages in an attempt to establish when he had dropped out, but he simply wasn’t there. He was no longer in the book!

She took another sip of tea. He must have escaped, she thought, but characters don’t just fall out of a book… do they? She fanned the pages, lifted the book up and began shaking it. Her movements became more and more violent and she began bouncing up and down.
Eventually, she fell off the couch onto the floor, muttering, “I meant to do that. Now, let me see… yes there he is, the swine, he’s hiding under here!”
She lay on her side with her arm stretched out under the couch grasping at something. Gradually, the exhaustion of this made her contorted body movements grow slower and slower until eventually she became still. She slept for a few minutes while he sat watching.
When she came to, she was obviously confused about being on the floor. She struggled up saying, “How did that happen?”
“Not sure,” he said, “I think you fell asleep and rolled off. Are you OK?”
“I think so,” she said, as she made herself comfortable back on the couch. She took a small sip of tea.
“This tea tastes funny,” she said, picking up her book.
He suppressed a giggle. He considered the whole thing to be purely recreational.

A place there be,
A league beyond yonder tower,
Where most secretly,
Nestled in a bower,
Amid a patch of ugly weeds,
Where timid creatures hide and cower,
For the intrepid who would seek it out,
There, find a tiny, brightly coloured flower,
Which, being awakened,
With any late day shower,
Takes on some mystic attribute,
While earth’s nutriments it doth devour.
–
Refreshed, it grows ever stronger,
Towards the witching hour,
And at that time,
Takes on a special power.
–
For those who cautions do not heed,
Be warned, its effects are swift and dour.
–
It is best not to wander,
Beyond yonder tower.

She was a quiet girl with red hair, and naturally had the freckles to go with it.

As unremarkable as she was, freckles notwithstanding, in general appearance, she had recently discovered something truly remarkable about herself that would irrevocably change the rest of her life. It had come to her in a vivid dream, after falling asleep still holding the notes for her school essay on reincarnation. It was during this apparent slumber that it was given to her to know that centuries ago, and in a past life, she had been a powerful sorceress. At some length, she found herself engrossed in a discussion about spells and enchantments and how they can be used, with some unseen second party. More surprisingly, she learnt that these awesome powers were still with her!
On waking, she had real doubts about the validity of these revelations, especially the latter one. It was for this reason, and because she had woken extremely early, that she proceeded to test her powers with a number of demonstrations performed in her room, proving conclusively that all that she had been told was undeniably true. Somewhat shaken by the entire affair, she nevertheless realised that her life, going forward, would take on a completely different direction.
Although it was not at all clear how any of this would pan out, the one thing she did know was that the nasty boy that sat behind her at school, who continually called her spotty and poked her in the back with his ruler, will have a hard job explaining why his few facial pimples had so rapidly multiplied in number and had developed into large, yellow pus-filled blisters.

They were in the back garden talking about the tree.
The man from the landscaping company was saying it should be removed as it was too close to the house for comfort and it was almost dead, anyway. The owner was not sure. His late wife had loved the thing. He said he would have to think about it. He was happy with the rest of the expert’s suggestions and it was agreed that his people would be there the following week to improve the look of the place. When the man had gone the owner stood looking at the tree and thinking about what she would have wanted, but maybe the man was right.
That night, he was lying in bed thinking about it. The tree was certainly close to the house because he could hear the thing scraping at the bedroom window, a sound he couldn’t remember hearing before. Maybe he was hearing it now because it was on his mind. He lay there, not being able to get to sleep with the constants scrapes and clicks. He listened for a while and became aware that there seemed to be some sort of repeated pattern to the sounds. The first thing he picked up on was the fact that a definite triple click was each time followed by a scrape. It was certainly repeated quite regularly. His mind went immediately to the letter ‘v’ in Morse code. He knew about the ‘v’, click, click, click, scrape; dot, dot, dot, dash… the notes from Beethoven’s fifth symphony. Surely not, he thought, but as he listened it became obvious that what he was hearing was without doubt a repeated sequence. The ‘v’ came around in the same spot within the cycle of sounds.
He was now sitting up giving the noises more attention. There were ‘e’s in there too. The most common letter in the alphabet. He could hear that being repeated over and over. They were just single clicks. Then he recognised the recurring ‘s’. Three distinct clicks. The ‘s’ from the SOS distress signal for Save Our Souls. That was about the limit of his knowledge regarding the code.

It was two in the morning when he got up. He used his computer to print off a copy of the Morse code. Now, back in his room, he listened carefully to the clicks and scrapes while he converted them to letters using the print out. He waited for the ‘v’ to come round, then noted down v, e, m, e, s, a, v, e, m, e, s, a, v… Bit by bit, the missive was coming together, and he quickly saw the words ‘save me’. Despite the fact that what he was experiencing couldn’t possibly happen, he actually slept very well that night. In the morning he made a phone call to advise the company of his decision to leave the tree standing when their work on his garden began the following week.
When the remodelling of the back garden was finished and a couple of weeks had passed, he noticed the odd tiny buds appearing here and there on the tips of the tree’s branches. Then, during the months that followed, the tree showed more and more leaves. It became something of a talking point when it became fully green. Several of his visitors would say that it was quite remarkable how it had come back to life. He would just nod proudly.
He never talked about the how of it.

There were so many sightings; so many cases of people going missing, all around the world.
There were believers and there were nonbelievers. He fell into the latter category. He had completed his schooling with good grades and now had a science degree under his belt. This, he was quite sure, meant that he was a perfectly intelligent person, fully aware of what was real and what was not. The fact was, there was so much bunkum being spread around by newspaper articles along with television news reports about supposed events. It was some kind of mass hysteria that was spreading worldwide, he thought. He would relish the thought that he, and he alone, could put an end to all forms of speculation about aliens buzzing the planet and their taking unsuspecting humans on board for whatever nefarious purposes the rumourmongers could dream up. This idea, this desire to be the one to put an end to the nonsense, seemed to grow with the titillating reports. In fact, he felt that the time had come.
He did his research. He found that so many of the most sensational and prolific reports were coming from a particular site in the UK. It was a specific area, close to a military base on the east coast of England. Supposedly, these nightly events were occurring with such amazing regularity, according to most news sources, that it meant that this would be the place that this valiant debunker would head for. He took a flight and made his way to the very spot that he had read so much about. So much so, that once there he felt a strong sense of familiarity with the stretch of open woodlands and even more so with the clearing he was standing in. It was this feeling of being surprisingly comfortable in this hitherto unknown place that had him quietly standing still for over an hour into the late evening.

Although he couldn’t explain it, he was not in any way startled by the sudden appearance of an alien craft hovering silently in the night sky. In fact, it was with a feeling of building euphoria that he watched the craft slide across and take up a position directly over his head. At this point, he was hardly aware of his raising his arms. He watched as a glow began to appear beneath the ship. The beam seemed to descend slowly. It finally lit the ground a short distance away.
He stood, waving his arms.
The spotlight moved towards him.
Then… he was gone!

The defendant was on trial for attempted murder.
There had been a lot of public interest in the case and as a consequence the courtroom was packed. Emotions were running high and the judge had needed to use his gavel several times.
The prosecutor rose. “Members of the jury, I put it to you that what we are dealing with here is a particularly distasteful crime. You have heard the testimony of the witness; that he saw the defendant deliberately cast the poor, helpless animal down the shaft to what may well have been its death.”

He waved his arm across the court. “Had it not been for young…” he glanced down at a paper, “…young Tommy Snout, seeing this atrocity and rushing forward to rescue the animal from the aforementioned well, before any real harm was done, there can be no doubt that the cat would have drowned.”
He picked up and held another document. “You’ve heard the testimony of the farmer, who has indicated the value he placed on the animal; in his opinion, it being an excellent ‘mouser’.”
He turned and glared at the accused in the dock.
Johnny Flynn squirmed.

He was known for coming up with all kinds of conspiracy theories.
So, it wasn’t unusual for his friend to get a phone call one evening telling him how he had unearthed yet another plot. They had known each other since school and the conspiracy theorist had been full of ideas about what was really going on in the world even back then. The only difference between this call and all the other claims was that he said he had proof, actual, real, hard physical evidence that something really dodgy was going on. He was extremely excited and wanted to come round straight away with the evidence. Although he didn’t always agree with his friends ideas, he was always happy to listen to them. Although this particular request to visit out of the blue was unexpected, he agreed.
His eyes were blazing with excitement when he arrived. Without wasting time, he held up a small thumb drive and asked, “Can I use the computer?”
The other said, “Sure, go ahead.”

He plugged it in, saying, “A friend of mine took this a couple of weeks ago.”
“What is it?”
“You’ll see.”
A video started to play. Staring at the screen, he asked, “What am I looking at here?”
“In short, Landfill Pit 9B.”
“I don’t see…”
“Just watch,” the theorist interrupted, “it only goes for a couple of minutes. Watch it first.” When it ended, he turned to his friend. “Did you see that? Did you see what was being tipped into the pit?”
The other just shrugged. “Well, rubbish, I suppose. That’s what rubbish tips are for, right?”
“Yes, but that’s not rubbish!”
“It isn’t?”
“No, my friend. That’s recycling material. You know, the stuff that’s put into special bins. It’s meant to be kept separate, of course. Let me show you.”
He ran it again, but stopped it at the point where it was cascading out of the back of the truck. “There!” he cried, pointing to the screen. See that? That’s not rubbish. These are items that have been saved for recycling. Look, paper, cardboard, newspapers, magazines, bottles, jars, milk cartons, aluminium cans, aerosol cans and other stuff. All items that people have gone to the trouble of separating!”
His friend was impressed with what he saw. With a questioning look, he said, “And your friend, what does he have to say about all this?”
‘Nothing, I’m afraid.”
“He must be a fellow conspiracy theorist like yourself.”
“He was.”
“What do you mean, he was?”
“Ah! He hasn’t been heard of for a while.”
“What do you mean? Where is he?”
“Officially, he’s listed as a missing person.”
“And unofficially?”
“Unofficially, Pit 9B.”

He was about to open the door when he saw it.
He had worked late in the office. It was dark in the open air carpark behind the building. It had been the briefest of moments, but he had registered the transaction in the few seconds that he stood watching. He recognise one of the men, a well-known politician. He was on the TV news regularly. He didn’t know the other, the man handing over a fat envelope. He shouldn’t have unlocked the car. He should have stayed silent, ducked down even; but he didn’t. The ‘blip’ of his car when he pressed the button on the remote made the men swing around. He had been seen. Acting as casually as possible, he climbed in, started the engine and drove out of the carpark.
That was yesterday.
He knows he had witnessed something he really shouldn’t have. There was nothing he could do about that. This night he had stayed even later. He looked down at the carpark from time to time, watching it empty. He was prepared to be the last to leave; to satisfy himself that he wouldn’t be followed. It was all he could do. It was very late when he went up to the third floor window to check. There were only two cars left; his and one other. A large, black, shiny saloon with tinted windows. He recognised it. It was the car the men had stood by the night before. As he watched, a door flew open and a man dressed in dark clothing jumped out. He stood looking up for a moment, then marched quickly towards the building.

The witness realised that he’d been seen. He raced out to the lifts. He was already on the top floor. He opened the door to the roof and ran up the stairs. He came out onto a vast, flat roof that covered the building. There was nowhere to hide! As he stood there in the quiet of the night, he heard the whine of the lift coming up. He had nowhere to run. He walked to the far edge and looked down. He heard the sound of the lift stop. He stood frozen until the man appeared. He had a gun; it was pointed at him. He looked back down again. He would never survive the fall. The man was moving closer, walking slowly, arm straight out, holding the gun. He knew that either the fall or a bullet would kill him.
The man was now in front of him, with the barrel pressed against his chest. He looked apologetic when he said, “I’m sorry about this. I’m sure you realise, I have no choice.” He thrust the gun forward and the other toppled backwards over the edge.
As he bounced in the safety net, the director shouts “Cut!”