Author: Alexander Fawn

This budding delinquent went to market. This budding delinquent stayed at home. This budding delinquent had roast beef. This budding delinquent had none. This budding delinquent went… it’s not known where he went at this time.

The one at the market did some shopping and stole nothing on that occasion. The one at home played a video game without smoking pot. The one that ate roast beef was eating what his mother had cooked and not food purloined from a convenience store. The one that had none was content to give shoplifting a rest for a while.

The one that went somewhere, was reading ‘This Little Piggy’ by Mother Goose, while waiting for his case to be called.

The incident occurred on the night the house-breaker gave a hitchhiker a lift.

Looking back, he wondered why he had done it. After all, he’d just robbed a house of all its valuables and was returning home in order to empty his boot and fill the shelves in the back room with even more stolen goods. It must have been bravado. Anyway, he was trying to get to the same town, so he got in. They soon got chatting. The driver asked what had brought the man out, thumbing a lift so late at night. It was at this point that the conversation took on a strangeness. He was told that it was a regular habit of his to visit people that had wandered off the straight and narrow path to salvation.

“A specialist do-gooder, if you like. I try to have such wrong-doers realise that in the end crime just doesn’t pay,” he said, grinning at the man who had just committed burglary. “I suppose you could say that I use unconventional ways of spreading the good word.”

The driver felt his hands begin to tremble on the steering wheel. He said, “I don’t know who you are. What do you want?”

The other waved the idea off. “Want? Nothing special, you don’t have to take me into town, just drop me off at your place and you’ll not see or hear from me again; I promise.”

“OK. I’ll do that, but I don’t see…”

“No, of course not,” the other interrupted, ‘you’re not meant to. By the way, have you lost your phone?

The driver, now very nervous and confused, patted his pocket.

“Don’t bother, I picked your pocket and left it on the floor in the living room back there. Oh! Yes, I also tripped the house alarm soon after you drove off.”

“How…?” the crook began, turning to the other as he swung into the entrance of his road. The seat was empty.

Up ahead, a police car was parked in his driveway with its blue light flashing.

A grinning constable was holding up his phone.

He was on his way to buy her a present when it happened.

The shops were busy, it being only a week before Christmas. The idea of what to get her came to him some time earlier when he called in at her place. He had arranged a time to pick her up for going to the cinema on the following night. As usual, at that time, he’d got chatting with her dad and it came out that she was keen to get the latest music CD by her favourite group. Just between them, it was decided that he would be the one to buy it for her. He got off the bus and made his way to the store in the shopping centre where he usually went.

He had taken the escalator to the upper floor and was walking towards the shop when he saw them. Saw them and heard them. She was with a man that he felt he recognised as one of her work mates from the office. They were holding hands and laughing. As the couple moved through the crowd below he confirmed that it was definitely him. He stood and watched as they navigated their way through the shoppers, with him now with his arm around her waist and her cuddling up close and still laughing.

No longer intending to visit the music shop, he looked around for a café. After settling down with a much needed cup of coffee, he slowly allowed the swell of emotions to ebb away. He sat thinking for a long time. In a way, he wasn’t that surprised. It felt strange that more than anything he felt a sense of loss that he wouldn’t be seeing her dad again! He had really liked him. Anyway, that was the way it was.

On a far more positive note, he realised that he’d made two savings, the cost of a CD and a whole lot of future heartaches…

Do you know what

Really hits the spot,

When in the chair that I’ve got,

When it isn’t too hot,

With no flies to swat,

With the cat on the trot,

And the birds caring not,

On my favourite plot?

–

Traffic out of earshot.

A garden within eyeshot.

In my own Camelot.

It is there that I squat,

Ignoring the rot,

Not caring a dot,

Or even a jot,

In limbo somewhat…

–

I do it a lot!

It was soon after they finished their evening meal that tiredness overcame her.

After a brief discussion about her hectic day and the extra overtime hours she had spent at the factory, he suggested that she turn in early. She’d made her way to bed and he was washing up several minutes later when he remembered his car’s fuel gage. He’d noted how low it was and intended to get the tank topped up on the way home. It had slipped his mind. He didn’t want to stop in the morning and decided to go out when he’d finished drying and putting away. Upstairs, he silently checked on her. She was fast asleep. He would make as little noise as possible getting the car out.

Because it was mid-evening and there was a fair bit of fog around, the station was quiet and he quickly filled up and was on his way back when he remembered his petrol cap. He hadn’t replaced it! He’d done this before. Would it still be under the bar of his roof rack where he usually wedged it? He would have to pull over. The car pulled off onto the edge of a soft verge and he got out. He was feeling for it in the dark when powerful headlights blinded him.

The truck driver saw the car, but not the man.

The impact was quick and fatal.

At that moment, she wakes violently from the deepest of sleeps and sits up in bed. “Are you OK?” she calls.

She was taking articles out of the washing machine.

One or two of them were his. She inspected them carefully. He’d always had some funny ways. Some of them had bothered her at first. There had always seemed to be a forceful yearning inside of him that he was unable to control. She thought about how the late night wanderings had tapered off over the years. He still did it from time to time. He’d be in bed, next to her, waiting for her deep breathing or possibly snoring to indicate that she’d gone to sleep. Not that she ever was. She found the snoring quite difficult to fake, so she kept those times to a minimum. Then he’d slide out of bed silently and disappear from the room.

It was strange how they never talked about it. Never brought up the subject of his going out into the dead of night. Never a word about his climbing back into bed during the early hours. As a wife, and as someone who loved him dearly, regardless, she felt she had managed to do rather well. If nothing else she was loyal.

She held things up to the light again, smiling.

Bloodstains all gone.

She glanced out of the window.

Good day for drying, she thought.

He had carefully made the arrangements for a quiet wedding.

He wasn’t at all sure how their families would take it. For that reason, he didn’t invite them. None of their friends had received invitations either. It would be a private affair. It would be just the two of them at the registry office, way out in the countryside. Just them, their very own special day. He was finding it more and more difficult to suppress his building excitement. Despite the modest environment where the marriage ceremony was due to take place, he would be wearing an expensive suit along with top quality shoes. She would be wearing her new wedding dress. The occasion’s pomp would be brought to it by their splendid appearance. No expense was spared. She simply deserved the best.

The day came and they approached the celebrant in all their finery. He presented himself like a high-flying celebrity, while she looked absolutely gorgeous. Despite her pale complexion and sunken eyes, she was still beautiful.

Bringing her back from the dead was definitely the right thing.

More than fifty years had passed since the great tragedy.

Now, in a large room, in a secured wing of the most prestigious metropolitan hospital, a patient’s signs were looking positive. The bed was surrounded by dozens of doctors, surgeons, scientists and neurological specialists, all excitedly muttering to each other. They had been brought here from all corners of the planet to witness the event. The elderly patient was none other than the revered descendant of one of the several men, each one regarded as ‘the father of the internet’, at the time of the global tragedy. At the time when digital technology, as it was known back then, had suddenly stopped!

Nobody understood what had happened or indeed why it had happened. It started with networks simply dropping out, one by one, world-wide. The all-consuming dependency on what had been taken so much for granted, became apparent as more and more services and systems became non-operational. The planet as a whole was fast reverting to a condition where things mechanical and analog in nature took over. Rich countries got poor, poor countries got poorer and the mortality rates skyrocketed across the planet. There was still electricity, but nobody knew how to control it, and when anything went wrong with it, nobody knew how to fix it.

It was in the year 2025 when this young genius, the man in the bed, had been in his early twenties. Apparently, this super guru was tinkering in his government-sponsored laboratory when it happened. He’d been working on a project designed to improve the overall capability of the World Wide Web. Although it was never properly established what did happen that day, a number of cynical pundits at that time said that he had simply pressed the wrong button. However, notwithstanding any such popular rumours circulating at the time, it was generally accepted that, looking back, if anybody could fix it, he could.

At the time, it was considered that the young man had suffered a heart attack and had fallen into a coma soon after. Throughout the medical world there were many alternate theories about this, up to a point when it was generally agreed that arguing about it was simply a waste of time. The event, although nobody understood why, through the auspices of the world press, became known as the ‘Great Cessation’.

The frail figure in the bed stirred.

Despite clear instructions that had been given to the contrary, en mass, all those assembled moved forward slightly.

At last, with his old, faded, tear-filled eyes, and despite the dribbling, he was heard to murmur, “I want my mummy.”

He’d been homeless for years.

In the main, he stuck to the streets around town where there were places, shops and pubs, where he often got something for his trouble. Just hanging around looking down and out usually did the trick. In most cases, any of the passers-by seeing his situation, crouched in a shop doorway, would instantly see that, for whatever reason, he was destitute. Occasionally, he received derision and dismissive comments about his appearance, but not often. Of course, people didn’t know his story. Couldn’t possibly know how he’d lost his mother. How being left to defend for himself in the world had toughened him up, had forced him to take on a new life and a new sense of independence.

Whenever he got really desperate, there were places he could go, knowing that the people there were good for a handout. The bits of food he was given were often those items that would otherwise be destined for the bin. This, of course, made no difference. The truth of it was that he often felt that he’d like to show his appreciation more.

However, a simple meow always seemed to be sufficient.

The late afternoon light showed up the leg scars.

Fresh out of the shower now, standing in front of the full-length mirror in the bedroom. Body dried, but clothes scattered. Peering at the stomach bruises, received only last night. Holding back tears, stepping forward to take an inventory of face damage. One puffy eye, split lip healing nicely. Thumb prints from the choke-hold taking a long time to fade. Most things cunningly hidden by the discreet use of clothing. A scarf, long sleeves, gloves, sunglasses… sometimes makeup. Sporadic discussions about separation never seem to come to anything. What is it all about, love or weakness?

The front door was opening.

“God!” he thought, “Here we go again…”