Author: Alexander Fawn

He zoomed off, leaving her alone on the park bench.

She knew this was final. She sat crying for a while. A good cry never did anybody any harm, her mother used to say. They’d been together since their school days, but it had always been the case that they wanted different things from life. In spite of her grief, they both agreed that the breakup was inevitable. She wanted to marry, have children and settle down. All perfectly natural things to crave for, she thought. Her parents had said from the start that they’d help with the money to get them started. She had even talked him into looking at show homes and houses from time to time, but it was obvious that his heart just wasn’t in it.

All he really cared about was his electric scooter.

He switched the TV on and settled into his armchair.

He’d been looking forward to catching up with the show all week. Thumbing through the magazine, he made sure that he had the time and the channel right. He sat back and waited. The minutes ticked away slowly before the programme’s title came up. Not long now, he thought, with a sense of growing anticipation.

Finally, the show started and he began watching the clock. He waited for the ad to come on, the one where his ex-wife smiled into the camera, wearing the latest and greatest eyeshadow. His patience was rewarded when the advertisement started. He stood, picking up the loaded gun. He waited for the final big close up. He took careful aim and shot her between the eyes.

The TV exploded!

Listen to them in the night,

Telling you how you should feel.

A one way heart-to-heart talk,

With nothing really real.

–

An echo from some capriccio,

Playing in your head.

Then, fleeting voices barely heard,

A search for meaning instead.

–

A jumble of notions from the day.

Images and sounds abound.

Some feckless, lacking theme,

Some valid and profound.

Maybe a movie or a parade,

That has these images floating by.

Loved ones appearing, then fading.

Returning by-and-by.

–

Imagining by sound and sight,

Whether causing joy or fright;

A stranger’s frown,

A sorrow to drown,

A ride through town,

A scholar of renown,

A crying clown,

A toppled crown,

A bloodstained gown,

A light pole down…

Just whispers in the night.

The joy of a quiet time.

In a gallery, moving alone,

Staring silently at where shadows fall.

While those around also follow their taste,

Taking in the work of others; choosing where to dwell.

Admiring those with palette and brush;

Those strangers that have mixed beads of oil into colours, light and dark.

These great masters creating beauty and form.

Renaissance art, still aging.

–

This visitor, concentrating on rural scenes, often lacking figures.

Looking beyond, at what nature offers.

A blur of ancient mist, odd patches of half-hidden sky, an unexpected wisp of smoke.

And yet, with the occasional ornateness of a frame catching the eye.

Such distractions being fleeting reminders of times passed,

With this great gathering of revered masterpieces.

–

A merger of the material and the aesthetic.

All somehow verging on the spiritual.

Ah! The pure joy of it.

Staring silently at where shadows fall.

He sat looking at the medical report while the kettle boiled.

He’d been back at the doctor’s that morning to get his test results. It had been a shock. Now, perched at the kitchen table, he went over the information and thought about what he’d been told. He had been given a month, maybe five weeks at the most. Now, he had to think about what he would do with the remaining time that was allotted to him. He thought about the life he’d lived. What had he achieved? He made himself a cup of tea and took it into the lounge. He sat down in his favourite armchair and continued to think about his future. A future that would only span a few weeks.

He thought about his brother and how they had fallen out. They had not spoken for such a long time. He could make amends by getting in touch. He could apologise for his part in the disagreement. Then, there were others. People he had wronged in one way or another. If he were honest, they would be hard to count.

He thought about the life he’d lived. He wondered if he had really achieved anything. Could he have been a better person?

After a while, positive thoughts began to swirl around his head.

His brain began to clear.

Five weeks at the most wasn’t long, but…

If he was careful with his planning, he could rob another bank!

It was late and she’d been walking home when it happened.

She had just finished another overtime shift at the cannery and was feeling really tired. She wondered whether this kind of work was really suitable for a middle-aged woman to be doing. But then, she had often questioned this, and never got an answer. She had just turned into her street when she caught sight of a young woman standing with her back against a hedge, wiping her face with a tissue. She had obviously been sobbing. She didn’t recognise her, but slowed a little to make sure she was all right. The woman came forward a step.

In a shaky voice, she said, “I’m sorry, I must look pretty silly standing here like this, I’ve just had what was easily the worst day of my life and just needed to… you know, get out and just wander around for a while.” She shook her head with a nervous grin. “It’s OK, I don’t expect you to understand.”

The older woman smiled. “I do understand, dear. Don’t you worry about that. Is there anything I can do for you?”

The woman stepped forward a few paces. With tears still running down her face, she asked, with a sheepish voice, “A hug would be nice.”

So, in a quite unforeseen gesture on both their parts, for a few long moments, the two women stood there in a mutual embrace. For that brief time, neither gave any thought to what brought about what was an obvious cognizance.

The young woman stood back, and with a soft laugh she said, “Thank you.”

She turned and walked slowly back towards the town.

At times life becomes busy,

Requiring a retreat from humanity,

With a need for time out to reset

To an appropriate level of sanity.

–

Chaos is all very well.

It can bring a much needed churning,

And bring into relief,

Albeit quite brief,

A level of shrewd discerning.

–

By freely giving the time,

Gives results that easily exceed.

It’s not about when,

Or the prompts now and then,

But recognising the need.

The woman in the expensive ball gown was found lying at the edge of the field.

She had been dead for several hours, undetected, until a farm worker taking a short-cut to work in the early hours spotted her. Local police attended and made their reports, followed by a call to a detective working in homicide. Although he attended the scene promptly, his investigation had been very slow and drawn out. So much so that the chief constable called him in for a debriefing.

The investigator began. “It’s a complex case sir, not just a simple murder. I’ve been working on it for several weeks now. Anyway, this is what I’ve got so far.”

He opened his notebook.

“It was a local man who found the body. His name’s Jack and being a nimble fellow quickly ran to the farm and called the police. I’ve ruled him out. The farm itself is managed by old MacDonald, but it’s actually owned by the grand old Duke of York.”

Turning pages, he went on.

“Anyway, the day before the crime was committed, up at the farm, Polly, the owner’s daughter, was putting the kettle on when she heard little Boy Blue blowing his horn. When she went to the window and looked out she saw Jack and Jill climbing the hill. When I interviewed these two they said that a rumour was going around that Mr King, a wealthy man who lives just outside the village, who apparently spends most of his time in his counting house counting out his money, had given his son permission to look for the girl he had danced with at a recent ball.”

More page turning.

“Making further enquiries, I found out that the son, nick-named ‘prince’, had a slipper, and using a significant amount of his father’s generous allowance, was going around trying to find a foot that it would fit.” He looked up from his notes and shrugged. “Meanwhile,” he went on, “we had an informer come into the station. His name was Jack Horner, the young apprentice to the village cobbler. It seems he was sitting in the corner unnoticed, when a woman came in and made arrangements for his employer to make a slipper, like the one that the so-called ‘prince’ was taking around, but one that would comfortably fit her own foot.”

At this point he let out a sigh and said, “It just so happens that Jack is good friends with a boy called Peter, often referred to as the pumpkin eater, who is this woman’s younger brother. It followed that the story about the boy’s scheming sister and her apparent attempt to falsely claim the shoe as her own, spread quickly. Well, eventually, word of all this reached the ears of Miss Muffet, the close friend of a scullery maid, named Cinderella, who also worked at the farm. As soon as she finished eating her cereal, she confided in the one person she could trust, Mary, a close school friend that had a pet lamb. As far as we can make out, these two, the Muffet girl and the scullery maid, definitely had a strong motive to stop the pumpkin eater’s older sister, Cruella, from taking the scullery maid’s place. As a result, we do know that Cruella hired the ball gown to strengthen her claim, and that it was, in fact, her body that was found in the field.”

He closed his notebook.

“The problem is that both Cinderella and Miss Muffet have strong alibis for the time of the murder.”

The chief constable asked, “Any other suspects?”

The detective flipped through his notes again.

“There was a little girl…”

“Go on.”

“Well, she had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead. I mean, she was really cute. Anyway, we found out that she’d had a crush on this ‘prince’ lad for some time.”

“So, could there be some jealousy angle here?”

“Maybe. I mean, to look at her you would say she was the picture of innocence, but…”

“But?”

“I know that listening to gossip is not the best way to run an investigation, but a number of people questioned came up with the same comments about her.”

“Which were?”

“Well, the general consensus was that when she was good, she was very, very good, but when she was bad she was horrid.”

The senior policeman slapped his knee and said, “Bring her in!”

The boy had not been sleeping well.

He’d outgrown his soft toys, and was well into attending preschool, but regardless of this, his parents decided to get him something that would be of comfort to him at night. It was a large, softly stuffed chimpanzee. He was pleased enough when they gave it to him. There suggestion that he could cuddle up with it at night was appealing. However this only lasted for a couple of nights before his mother noticed bags under his eyes the next morning. It was her view that he was looking even more tired than before. Anyway, he seemed to go off to school without any real drama. It was later that morning that she found the monkey under his bed with sticky tape across its mouth.

When they were all back home together his parents questioned him about it. He explained that he wasn’t able to get off to sleep because from the very start the monkey had done nothing but go on about Darwin’s theory of evolution. He told them that it said it has issues with it. He said that it kept going on about how natural selection is grossly overrated as a means of survival. He thought it was quite interesting at first, but after half an hour he just couldn’t shut him up!

Some issues just never seem to go away…

At five minutes past ten on that Wednesday morning five things occurred, all at the same time.

The woman from Ambrose Street picked up the dog lead that she needed to take her Yorkshire terrier for a walk, while the boy with the bad tooth got out of the chair at the Best Smile dental surgery. Not far away, and at that very same moment, the van driver from Westlake Delivery Services climbed back into his cab; while quite unseen, the flea hopped from the carpet onto the dog’s back, and at the same time as all this, the girl left the school yard to post a letter.

The woman made her way to the top of the street, crossed the road and entered the park, while back in the car, the boy’s mother gave him a couple of painkillers before returning him to school. The van driver always suffered from hay fever around this time of year. Meanwhile, the flea made its way to the underbelly of the dog, while the girl was playing hooky for a few minutes because her busy mother needed the letter to be posted without delay.

In the park, the woman took the lead off her dog to let it run free. Arriving at the school, the mother dropped her son off at the front gate. As soon as the van driver got settled he felt an enormous sneeze coming on. The flea huddled deeper into the warm hair of the dog. At the post-box, after posting the letter, the girl stopped to check the collection times posted below the slot.

The dog chased around while the woman walked to the far side of the park. Before entering the school, the boy stood and watched as his mother’s car disappeared up the street. The man in the van sneezed, and the flea hung on tight while the dog bounded around in circles. The girl made her way back to school.

At the main road, the woman put the lead back on. Nearby, the boy saw the girl walking back from the post-box and the man in the van went to move off, then remembered how his mother had always told him to blow his nose after a sneeze. The flea made itself comfortable again when the dog stopped moving, and the girl spotted the boy and waved.

The woman waited for a break in the traffic before crossing to the shops, while the boy wondered where the girl had been, and although the driver was never really sure whether this was good advice or not, he stopped to blow his nose. At the same time, the flea settled down in the warmth of the dog’s hair, while the girl wondered why the schoolboy was standing there.

At a gap in the passing vehicles the woman started to cross with her dog, while the boy decided to wait to find out where the girl had been, and the van driver took off. The flea came very close to the dog’s flesh, while the girl walked faster, as she was curious about why the boy was standing there.

The woman felt the dog tugging at the lead, the boy watched the dog, trying to remember its breed, the man in the van stepped on the accelerator, the flea bit the dog’s belly, while the girl glanced over at the woman crossing the road.

The woman shortened the lead and held the dog tighter, while the boy, who had always wanted a dog, was admiring its colours. Meanwhile, the van turned onto the main road, the dog dropped to the ground and rolled around, and the girl stopped when she heard the dog yelp.

The woman looked around frantically to see if any traffic was coming, while the boy gasped, and the van driver, thinking that he might be getting behind with the morning’s deliveries, sped up. The flea was swallowed by the dog while the girl held her breath.

The woman made it safely to the shop, the boy was pleased that the dog was OK, in the distance, the van-driver approached the spot, seeing nothing, the flea was being digested, and the girl looked relieved as she and the boy returned to school chatting about what they each had been doing.

A couple of minutes later, the delivery van passed safely down the street because the driver did what his mother had always told him what to do. The day was saved, and all because he took his mother’s advice and stopped to blow his nose.