Author: Alexander Fawn

His ten-year-old son had been missing for almost a year.

He was a widower and the boy obviously meant a lot to him. The youngster had been playing in the front garden on the day. Only one witness, a woman who lived on the same street, saw him wandering off towards the end of the road. The father could have no complaints about the massive effort put in by the police. Now, registered officially as a missing person and all activity on the case faded away, he turned to the internet for some sort of agency that dealt with this kind of thing. Some company that took on the job of searching beyond where the police had left off.

He had never been good at searching on the computer and had inadvertently ended up with a site that looked positively gothic. Even to his untrained eye, the area of the internet he was looking at seemed somewhat irregular. It claimed that it had a track record second to none for finding lost children. It wasn’t cheap, but the testimonials were impressive. Reading through the introduction he learnt that it guaranteed to locate and return the missing child within twenty-four hours from the time payment was received. With little hesitation, he sat down that evening and began the registration process. It involved filling out an extremely detailed application form that went on for several pages. At the end of a gruelling hour and a half, he paid the fee using the account details provided.

It was early evening on the following day that he was startled by a knock at the front door. Opening it, he found he was looking at a young girl.

She said, “My name is Rosy, I have been returned to you. Where’s my mummy?”

He had also never been good at filling out forms.

The neighbour had just popped in to visit his friend.

He had only just sat down when a bell sounded somewhere and he was left sipping his coffee while the man went to answer the phone. A minute or two later his friend’s daughter wandered into the room clutching a soft toy.

She seemed to be rather precocious as she came up to him holding it out to show him what it was.

“It’s a penguin,” he blurted.

She hugged it, saying, “Yes, he’s only a baby.”

He was feeling awkward. Now that his wife was gone and his children were living overseas, he had lost touch with the earlier generation. Nevertheless, he took a leap of faith.

“There’s a funny thing,” he began, “you’ll never guess what happened to me the other day when I was driving home.”

She cuddled her toy, saying, “What happened?

“Well now, just standing there in the middle of the road was a baby penguin!”

The girl’s eyes widened. “A real one?”

“Yes, a real one?”

“What did you do?”

“Ah! That’s the interesting thing, you see. The next day I took him to the zoo.”

The girl sat enthralled. He sat waiting for her to break the silence. She did. “What happened then, was everything alright?”

“Oh yes,” he replied, “it certainly was. He enjoyed it so much I’m taking him to the cinema next week!” He chuckled. She wasn’t laughing. “What do you think of that, eh?”

The girl looked perplexed. She said, “What about its mummy and daddy?”

He frowned, “What do you mean?”

“Where’s its mummy and daddy?” Her eyes began to water. “If it was only a baby and all alone, someone has to find its mummy and daddy.”

Just then he heard his friend hanging up.

“Yes, OK,” said the story-teller quickly. “I’ll do my best to find them.”

“That would be nice,” she said, wiping her eyes. “It must have its mummy and daddy,” she repeated softly as she wandered off.

The father came back, shaking his head. “Sorry about that. It’s supposed to be my day off! Trouble in the office; turns out it was only a misunderstanding. They can creep up on you, can’t they?”

The neighbour said under his breath, “They certainly can.”

She had settled down nicely in the new town, albeit in a foreign country.

She soon picked the language up and had made several new friends. The house she had rented was adequate for her immediate purposes and the town had all of the services and shops that you would expect. It was while on one of these regular shopping trips that the incident occurred… yet again. She’d been through the checkout and was loaded up with two full bags. As she came out of the shop, she heard somebody call out.

It was a tourist. He came rushing up to her with a broad smile.

“Well! Look at you,” he said, “it must be fifteen years, at least! Our mystery, disappearing neighbour.”

She frowned heavily. “I have no idea who you are,” she said, in a foreign tongue.

He stood gaping.

She shrugged and hurried off with her shopping. No bus today, two blocks away she hailed a taxi. She got dropped off several streets before her destination. Walking the rest of the way she removed the card from her phone and dropped it down a roadside drain. A short distance further on she found a bin and tossed the phone in. Once she was in the house, she knew the routine. She dumped the shopping bags on the kitchen table, packed a suitcase, opened the metal combination case, removed the leather pouch, selected a passport along with matching currency, used the backup prepaid phone to book a flight and called a taxi.

She would have to vanish again…

Stand in awe, staring into a thousand trunks.

A clamour of magnificent pillars, riotous in their cavalcade.

Each one different to the very last;

By their girth, their height, their colour, their texture.

All with branches disappearing into the upper green of the forest.

On these pillars, a disorder is found through a myriad of patterns.

And through this medley of shapes, this disorder, comes a variety;

Seemingly unplanned within its diversity.

A wooded scene that combines how nature expresses its propensity for individuality

And its innate ability to show what beauty can be found in such a random scene.

Pillars; magnificent pillars!

He came to, slumped in a chair.

The chair was bolted to the concrete floor and his ankles were chained to the legs. He was in a dimly lit room that he didn’t recognise. A vague memory came back of being snatched from the street and bundled into a van. Then, the recollection of being questioned by the two unsavoury ruffians for hours on end. He was exhausted. He had no idea what they wanted. Over and over, he had tried to explain that they obviously had the wrong person. This had no effect; they were convinced that he was holding back. When they left for a break, they assured him that there would be no more gentle questioning when they return.

He heard voices and a metallic rattling from somewhere beyond the door. Moments later they came in, pushing a metal trolley covered with what looked like medical instruments. They parked it beside him and stood grinning at him.

He fingered the remote control in his pocket and found the button.

Just before pressing it, he reflected on the true value of time travel…

He was now counting the days.

They’d been a long two years, but his sentence was about to end. Just a couple of days to go. Seven years of house burglaries had brought him to this. He sat in his cell reflecting on the hardships of prison life, the things he missed, his wife’s affection and being able to play with the kids. He missed his privacy, his loss of freedom, the company of friends, going out drinking with his mates, attending football matches at his local club and the occasional fishing trips. He missed his favourite meals, his magazine collection, being able to go to the movies or visiting his favourite café, but at the end of the day, it was all about priorities.

Then, he thought about the stolen items that had been recovered before they were sold for cash. He thought about all that cash; about how none of it from all those robberies was ever recovered.

He grinned, as he thought about the fact that only he knew exactly where he had buried it.

It came to her when she was a young girl who liked the fairy tales her mother read.

When she explained the visage to her book reader, it was met with the sort of kind rebuttal that any parent would be expected to show under the circumstances. Nevertheless, it was real, and it was the very beginning of a quest that would consume her every waking hour from that time on. It had happened one night, just as she was going off to sleep, that the visage appeared. She was a truly beautiful thing with long, golden hair and silver wings. She told her about the eternal charm that would bestow great happiness and untold wealth on her if she found it. The message she received had been given extra force and significance by virtue of the fact that she who gave it made it quite clear that she, the young girl, was most deserving of it.

Although she was not told what form the charm would take, whether it was a stone, a crystal, a ring, an amulet or a pendent, she had always been convinced that she would know it when the time came. Simply knowing that it was meant for her, knowing that it was always there to find, had made her life-long quest worthwhile.

Now, at the age of ninety-two, having never found it, and knowing that only hours remained, she reflected on the joyful search that had seen her through her time.

There were so many, far less fortunate.

The deity had no idea how the whole thing had gone so horribly wrong.

It knew that the situation had to be revised. There were clues, of course. The idea was sound, but it had been something in the implementation of the grand plan that had turned it all pear-shaped. It considered the turn of events. Perhaps the idea of a garden wasn’t what was needed to kick the whole thing off. After all it was there that it all came apart. It had created other worlds that had run smoothly. In all of these, it had brought about a growing populace without the need for gender. These had proved to be peaceful worlds that could be viewed and contemplated with both satisfaction and enjoyment. The planet it had created this time was one of the most beautiful it had brought into existence. This could be left alone; reused. It considered that the starting point would need to be the eradication of life.

Although many of the lesser life forms had developed admirably, only a clean sweep would be a practical approach. Therefore, it would be a complete obliteration of all life. On this basis, it had considered allowing the inevitable self-destruction brought about by the more advanced life forms to take place. This would entail a great deal of suffering for so many among them who were not responsible for the actions of the few. If it carried out this cleansing, it could be made to happen in an instant. This would result in no suffering; none at all.

It would dwell on the idea, meanwhile…

His problem was identified.

People would say, “He drinks too much.”

Typically, he staggers home in the early hours.

He falls onto his bed and passes out.

He has nightmares throughout the night.

He sleeps through his alarm.

He misses his bus.

He arrives at work late, again.

The boss fires him.

He goes to the pub.

He drinks all day.

He is told he has had too much to drink.

He is rude to the landlord’s wife.

He is thrown out.

He is mugged on his way home.

He is easy prey.

He puts up a fight.

He is stabbed.

He lays bleeding for a while.

He draws his final breath.

He lays unnoticed for a while.

A man walking his dog finds him.

The man calls the police.

Two detectives arrive.

They confirm that he is dead.

They find his wallet with ID.

One of them says, “I know him; he drinks too much!”

He reflected on the notion that his life had become some sort of void.

He felt that he knew all there was to know about emptiness. Empty of social contacts. No work prospects in sight. No money in the bank. Empty pockets, empty heart… empty everything.

He suddenly thought about something. He’d recently come across an article that speculated about the beginnings of, well, everything, he supposed. It had postulated that the entire universe as we know it came about from nothing. In other words it materialized out of nothingness. It was originally a great empty space. Yes, he could relate to that. In fact, he rather liked the idea. He felt very much at one with it. He felt that he knew all there was to know about emptiness. He would have to think about it.

Looking on the bright side, spending time dwelling on this would help fill the void. He may even come up with ways to fill it!

After all, if the universe could do it…