Author: Alexander Fawn

The girl was busy in the kitchen of her ground floor apartment, when she heard a commotion from outside.

She went to the front and peered out into the street. Nothing. Only the crusty old woman opposite staring across at her. She felt like poking her tongue out, but she didn’t. Instead, she went back to chopping onions. About half-an-hour had past and she was about to set the oven for baking when her front door bell rang. On opening the door she was surprised to see a police constable.

His greeting was curt. “Good morning, miss.”

He held a tiny creature in gloved hands. She stared at it. Two pathetic looking eyes stared up at her with heartbreaking innocence. It was trembling. It looked positively nervous. She felt a strong wave of emotion run through her. It was probably the intimidating presence of the policeman in his stand-out uniform and his stern features that made her blurt it out. “What is it?”

He frowned. “Well, I’m given to understand that it’s a gerbil.”

“A what?”

“A gerbil, miss.”

She smiled down at it and purred, “How cute.”

The policeman stiffened. “I should inform you that there has been a serious incident.”

Her heart thumped. “Oh?”

“From what we’ve gathered, about an hour ago this animal ran across the street a short distance up from here, causing a young boy riding his bicycle to swerve violently into the path of an oncoming vehicle.”

“Oh! That’s awful!”

“Quite right, miss. As it happens, the boy was not badly hurt. He was taken to hospital, where he is being treated for minor scrapes and bruises.”

“Thank goodness.”

The constable went on. “However, the vehicle, owned by a local building company, careered wildly to the end of the street entering the junction with the main road, where it collided with two vehicles and tipped over, dropping its load of sand.”

Her hand flew to her mouth.

He turned his head. “Although not visible from here, I can assure you that this has created havoc up there at the main road.”

She looked back down at the cute little face with its ginger fluff and quivering whiskers. She said, “And you’re telling me all this, because?”

“Yes, well, we have a witness statement from the woman across the road who says she saw this animal crawl out from under your front gate at around ten o’clock this morning.”

“Oh! Really?”

“Yes miss.”

“I wonder where it came from.”

He gave a long sigh. “I take it then miss; you do not own this animal.”

She looked startled by the question. “Mine? No!”

She looked down once more into those pathetic little eyes. She wiped at the tears forming in her own eyes.

He raised his eyebrows.

“Onions,” she said.

“Onions?”

“Yes, I’ve been chopping onions.”

He gave her a queer look, turned slowly and walked away. She went back to her cooking.

That evening she reflected on the strange events of the day. She decided that she simply needed to move on.

She wrapped the little cage with its defective door latch in newspaper and dropped it into the bin, quietly.

He was going through his father’s belongings when he found it.

He had come back from overseas, where he was now living, to attend the funeral. He was the only child and it fell to him to settle the affairs. His mother was long gone, having had a nasty accident in the garden when she was barely middle-aged. It was just about all over and he was sifting through a few odds and ends when he thought about the old man’s laptop. More out of curiosity than anything, he opened it up to see what was on it. There was nothing special, except for a protected file that was titled ‘Private Journal’. Despite feeling that he was being intrusive, he tried a few passwords that didn’t work. The hint read, ‘a backward animal’. Then, remembering his long-time companion, a bullmastiff named Boxer, he typed in ‘rexob’ and it opened.

That was easy, he thought.

With the opening paragraph in front of him, he started to read. ‘I was just fourteen when I first discovered my true calling. With careful planning, I was able to kill the woman who managed the florist shop. I did it in her back garden, making it look as though she tripped and cracked her skull. It was a full year before I went on to…’

With a sharp intake of breath, he grimaced and squeezed his eyes shut.

His whole body was trembling.

He managed to partly open one eye; just enough for him to hit delete.

The whole thing started the day they discovered that Momo had got out.

Despite it being a much loved pet, the wire mesh door hadn’t been latched properly on the rabbit’s cage and they couldn’t find it anywhere in the garden. The girl had called it Momo because of the dark patches on either side of its nose, looking like a moustache. It was decided that the animal must have got out during the night. Knowing how much the animal meant to his daughter, with the help of others, the father soon had posters going up around the town.

The following morning a more urgent incident had been given top priority by the local police. Earlier that day a young boy had gone missing from the main shopping centre in town. His mother had arrived at the shops soon after they opened and was selecting an item from a shelf when she noticed her five-year-old was nowhere to be seen. After searching the store and checking outside and around the carpark, she informed the store manager, who then rang the police.

Later that morning’ some distance away, a pensioner had been taking his usual stroll around a nearby park. He was taking a break by sitting on a low wall, when he saw something quite unusual. It was a child walking towards him, carrying a rabbit! The boy was upset because he was lost. As far as the old man could make out, from what the boy was trying to tell him between sobs, was that he had found the rabbit near the entrance to the shops. Like the boy, the man had seen the posters. The funny markings on its face was confirmation that it was definitely the missing rabbit. He had tried to pick it up, but it had hopped away. He had followed it for some time before he was finally able to catch it. Unhappily, by that time, he was lost.

The old man listened to the boy’s story with great interest and half an hour later, the old man, along with the boy holding the rabbit, walked into the town’s police station.

It has to be said that not every story ends that well.

The craft hovered in the silent blackness of space.

On board, several beings were discussing plans to invade; invade and conquer. Earth was easy pickings. Remove all life forms and plunder the planet’s resources. Sounded good, but not all of them went along with the commander’s idea. He wanted to transmogrify a battalion, around a thousand of his foot soldiers into domestic cats and drop a company of them on each continent. They could come back later when the breeding had tipped the scale in their favour. At that point the soldiers could revert back to their original form and take over. However, the general consensus being that this would be much too slow. Several of the more senior ship’s officers just wanted to get home to their loved ones.

Then came the idea about rabbits; those guys could really breed. They were rodents capable of reproducing at a far greater rate. The females could have more than one litter a year. It was the case that a female could actually have a number of litters, as their gestation period was around just one month. This plan was seen as an improvement; even the commander saw the advantages of just growing and army much quicker. However, despite this new approach having obvious merit, it took only a short spell of research into the planet’s fauna to discover the attributes of the African Driver ant. Here was an insect, whose queen was capable of laying broods with up to a prestigious three to four million eggs every twenty-five days!

 It soon became apparent that by using the ant, a massive army could be generated with enormous speed. It meant that their mission could be accomplished in no time at all and they could all go home early. To this end, a handful of soldiers were transformed into these tiny creatures, with a senior ranking officer being made the queen. These were kept in one of their laboratory’s testing rooms, with a number of technicians seated at a viewing window, observing and recording the rate of expansion. For some strange reason that will probably never be known, the ants began to multiply exponentially, and during one of the mandatory rest periods for the technical staff, the observation room filled to its capacity with test subjects.

When the mass of creatures eventually burst through the room’s viewing window, it went unnoticed on the main deck. For some considerable time, the fact that the security cameras throughout the entire laboratory section were all producing black screens, went unseen. When this eventually came to the attention of the relevant operative it was put down to a power fault, and not that all lenses were smothered by a dense mass of African Driver ants. The main reason for the alien responsible for monitoring all screens not seeing this has to be put down to a distraction on the ship’s deck. A container of crystal styluses were knocked to the floor. These were gathered up quickly on account of their precious nature, being used to mark and direct information screens in a wide range of manner of search and navigational operations.

When it was eventually observed that the entire space craft’s network of cameras were all registering blank screens on deck, it was far too late to do anything about it. The solid mass of ants, with its volume exponentially expanding, was only moments away from breaching the reinforced walls of the most important section of the ship. This, quite naturally, being the main deck. With this final filling of the craft’s interior, the outer structure, including the skin of the entire craft, began to crack. Within moments, it exploded under the immense pressure being exerted by the ever increasing mass of insects that completely filled every tiny cranny of the enormous ship. This created an enormous burst of tiny fragments of the original space craft, along with many dead alien bodies.

In an absolutely remarkable coincidence, this amazing catastrophe, this potential demise of all human life on the planet, was only seen as a miniscule blip on the screen at the SETI Institute. Remarkably enough, this went unseen when a researcher knocked over a container of pencils that clattered to the floor, causing the monitoring technician to jump and look away from the screen at that very moment.

Even if the existence of these two distracting events, both on Earth and in space, were known, it’s doubtful, despite the apparent overload of significance at play, whether any real sense could be made of it…

She sat, crouched over the screen of her laptop; she had been there for hours.

She had no idea how many… It started when she’d logged on just after tea to do a quick search on an old friend. That afternoon, right out of the blue, she’d received a call from her. She’d been getting on the bus after work in the city when her mobile sounded. It was from her best girlfriend from her school days. A decade ago they were the best of buddies, but they had both moved on. Since her caller had moved away from her home town, she must have looked her up on the internet to find her number. It was such a lovely call, and she had been so pleased to think that she’d gone to the trouble of tracking her down. So, it was for this reason that at about six in the evening she had hopped on her machine to do the same.

As it turned out, she never found her.

The reason for this being the common dallying that occurs when on the net, it had been a case of getting side tracked. She had started by going to the website of her old school. In doing so, she found an unusual message coming up in a tiny text box. It seemed to be telling her how much more information she would receive if she followed the link it contained. She hadn’t seen anything like it before and wondered if it had been something her brother had done. He had used her laptop on his last visit. He’d probably downloaded stuff that gave him access to it. Out of curiosity, she clicked on it.

It was quite fascinating, really. She was looking at a number of strange-looking websites, with even stranger messages. It was like nothing she’d seen before. It wasn’t until she noticed that so many of them were accompanied by warnings, about anonymity and security, and regular links asking whether she wanted to proceed, that she realised she was actually on the Dark Web. She found it exciting. She became engrossed. For the first several hours she trawled the content, seeing what had been hidden from the common user. Then, around midnight she had found herself in the Deep Web. She was barely aware that the deeper she went, the more she was losing herself, being pulled under.

So intrigued with it all, she ignored the warning signs and continued to delve down. She seemed to sink with it until, in the early hours of the morning she entered the lowest of the low; the Shadow Web. She was falling through the layers. This was something usually talked about with a deal of scepticism. People only surmised that such a thing might exist. But she was now drowning in the unseen sub-layer of the net and gasping for air without realising what was happening to her. The world of digital shadows was slowly taking her. She was becoming a shadow, she was being surrounded by the darkest of them and dragged down to the lowest depths of the web. She was becoming a digital ghost.

At a little after three in the morning, she was completely wrapped up in the web and swallowed!

Meanwhile, in another town, her old school friend was using what she had been given over the phone to find out what her old friend had been doing since their schooldays. She started by googling her, but came up empty. She tried more searches, again and again. Nothing. As far as the internet was concerned she didn’t exist!

Naturally, they never did catch up.

You would think that being polite to a policeman was a basic survival instinct.

Regardless of the fact that in the normal progression of a person’s development, no actual programme has ever been put in place to explain this in any great detail. However, you would think it was painfully obvious. To understand that when driving a motor vehicle, you suddenly hear a siren blaring behind you, accompanied by blue flashing lights and a headlight coming on, indicating a request for you to pull over, it is best to do precisely that. Further, that this should be done in a manner that is both careful and safe, showing a conscious level of respect for other road users. It has to be said that the guy with the red sports car from number ten seemed completely oblivious to all this.

To see the benefit of being polite to an officer when he approaches your vehicle should be apparent. To produce any papers that are requested in a courteous and timely manner would have to be the best way to respond. Being aware that answering any questions put by the officer in a polite and civil manner, along with respectfully following any instructions given by the officer, should come naturally. However, none of these self-evident pointers to a peaceful and happy life came in the slightest bit naturally to the guy with the red sports car.

The rudeness exhibited from the young man, along with the filthy language and repeated references to the officer’s parentage was bad enough, but the fact that almost every member of the local constabulary had suffered in the same way indicated that the matter would most likely move to a whole new level. The officer from the patrol car felt it appropriate to mention that there had been yet another incident to one of the detectives. Think about it… if anyone knows how to make a body disappear a detective does. The arm of the law is long.

When the morning came, they found the shiny, red car abandoned on the side of the road.

Words, taking on so many colours.

With scenarios flitting back and forth.

With some lines unwritten; others die at birth,

Stillborn and not brought back.

Some notions yet dangle out of reach.

–

Heady words are washed into patterns.

Visions are observed and given life.

Minding over these from line to line,

And purging to completeness.

–

Faint revisions made to frozen thoughts.

Being they plain or elegant,

All emptied onto paper.

Simple verse to rival scripture and scroll,

Made by thought and a common hand.

Held in place, for either long or short.

Even when unread, singing silently to itself.

Making music in the dark.

Emanating hues unseen.

–

Maybe just rumpled paper,

Holding rainbow-coloured thoughts,

Speaking softly without sound,

With something precious in every word.

Laying fallow, yet possessing its message.

A missive dancing unseen in shadow.

–

These, the writer’s dreams, begging for freedom,

Through style and rhyme, imagery and theme,

And all coming down to words,

They… that take on so many colours.

As far as anyone knew, he was a travelling salesman, selling kitchen utensils.

The agency provided his cover. Although he was equipped with a suitcase full of brushes, potato peelers, dish cloths, etcetera, he never actually sold anything. He spent most days driving around in the car they provided, doing very little. His undercover work took him around the country, sometimes abroad. That was the case when he wasn’t actually carrying out a hit for the agency. Quite naturally, his work for the government meant that his activities were such that he would always be totally immune from prosecution. On this occasion he had received a termination order and was looking it over on the evening before. It was a brief document that contained only a photograph, name and address. That was all he ever needed to carry out the work. He could see that the photo was very grainy and the text was more grey than black.

This particular job would entail a car journey of several hours. He would carry out the hit on the following day. He couldn’t help thinking that there was something about the address that rang a bell. He went to his old school file and pulled out an invitation he’d received. It was for a recent event that he’d not attended. It was in order to celebrate the retirement of his old headmaster, a person that he had nothing but trouble with when he was a student. He was forever receiving low marks for his work and asking for them to be reviewed. The truth was, he had not liked the school, any of the teachers and certainly not the pompous headmaster. It had resulted in his name being wrongfully smeared.

Anyway, it just so happened that the penny dropped when he noted the man’s address. He was amazed to find the current target’s address indicated that he not only resided in the same street as the old retiree, but he lived next door. His next victim lived at number fifty-five, the other at fifty-three. Considering the poor resolution of the photograph, together with the almost illegible text, he figured it was his turn to smear. The number fifty-five could so easily be smudged.

At the end of the following day he returned, having sent one more soul to meet its maker. When sending in his confirmation report he added a postscript. This was done to make sure the agency saw it as a mistake of their own.

It read: PS I think the printer is running low of ink.

They were not just soldiers, they all had families.

They all had loved ones waiting at home. Waiting for their return. In this case it was one particular ant that was asking some of his fellow ants why his son was so late. None of them seemed to know and this prompted him to make his way through to another part of the nest to make enquiries. When he arrived he was greeted by the ant that was not only in charge of recording deaths, but was always the one, whose sad duty it was, to give any such bad news to a fellow ant. For some reason that he couldn’t fathom at the time, despite having to tell an ant that their loved-one was dead so many times in the past, he found it extremely difficult on this occasion.

When the father heard the terrible news, for some reason that he couldn’t fathom at the time, despite knowing how often these losses were brought about by being crushed underfoot by humans, on this occasion he was unable to accept the inevitability of it.

It was as a result of this commonly shared feeling regarding the unnecessary loss of life, together with their most uncommon refusal to accept these ongoing fatalities, that after a brief discussion they each resolved to meet later at an agreed time. Their meeting place was a cavern at the end of a dead-end tunnel on the outskirts of the colony. It was a place set aside for private discussions like the one that was about to take place. On their meeting up together in this way, they immediately went back over what had been talked about and began forming a plan to combat what they both regarded as a huge, but not unsurmountable problem. They could see that it not only affected their own colony, but it equally affected the operating efficiency of so many others.

Between them, they found it quite remarkable how they so quickly came up with ideas of how they could correct the situation. Some time was spent considering how it was possible, with their vast numbers, how they could so easily devise strategies to reduce the number of humans. By the end of their sharing of ideas they agreed that they had come up with a foolproof plan that would enable them to carry out a successful revolt. They had so many ideas that could be used over the upcoming times of weeks, months and years, to throw humankind into a state of utter chaos, thereby reducing their numbers.

The first stage involved contacting those of other colonies in the immediate region of their own, and advising them of the way forward to improve their existence. It was considered that these numbers would be enough to get things going. Greater numbers could become part of it later, as the movement progressed. This could be done easily by sending out messengers.

The second stage was basically one of surprise. This would be particularly easy because humans had never had any inkling of just how extremely intelligent ants actually were. This ignorance would work in their favour. In practical terms, their objective was the main power station, located on the outskirts of the city. It was there that by virtue of their vast numbers they would create temporary havoc by taking the plant offline.

It followed, that the word went out and countless millions of ants were assembled above ground near the two organisers’ nesting ground. They all agreed that such numbers had never been gathered in one place before and the element of surprise would throw the humans into a state of panic. As previously envisaged, this would herald the beginning.

The direct route from the vast seething muster point to the isolated location of the plant was only a short distance. In proper soldierlike order they all began to move as one. It was not without some hesitation that they soon came across the freeway, but in true form the soldiers marched on, as they ever did. Indeed as they ever would. Barely a quarter of the mass had crossed the six lanes of busy traffic before vehicles began to skid and collide on the quickly changing surface. This went on as the march continued until all traffic came to a halt and the scene became a complete disaster area.

As night fell and the portable flood lights were set up, the emergency response teams, ambulances and the police had their hands full with the carnage. Throughout the night various authorities were struggling with how to report the incident, with the root cause and the never before seen nature of such an inexplicable event remaining a complete mystery.

When the last of the vehicles had been towed away it was left for the appropriate section from the roads authority to come out and clean the lanes to make them safe and serviceable before the police could reopen the affected stretch of freeway.

Meanwhile, the deep, glistening layer of brown slime that covers the entire area of this section of the freeway is testament to the fact that the immutable order and status of all living creatures simply can’t be messed with!

He was jogging along the footpath, later than usual.

It was an early evening jog that he went for a couple of times a week. He had started late this time and it was growing dark. He reached the tiny lookout with its view of the ocean. His last rest spot, only two minutes from the carpark. He was catching his breath when he heard it. Barely audible over the sound of the waves crashing below. It was an alarm of some sought. Maybe a mobile phone. He looked around; nobody! He retraced his steps and it grew louder. It was coming from the cliff’s edge. He left the path and made his way carefully. It was definitely there. He laid down flat on his stomach and worked his way to the edge. It was louder now. He looked over and down at the huge drop. There it was, glowing in the semi-darkness, a mobile phone. It was on a jutting rock, not quite within his reach, not safely, anyway. He was considering this when the alarm stopped and the screen went black. He scrambled back away from the edge and sat wondering about it. He decided to take another run tomorrow, but much earlier.

The following day he came to the same spot in full daylight. There was no one else around, so he made his way to the edge. It was still there. This time, he could see clearly how to get hold of it without any possibility of falling. He retrieved it and sliding back from the edge, he sat looking at it. The home button brought up the details of the recent alarm. He read the single word, ‘Bin’. Presumably a reminder about rubbish collection. It seemed that he didn’t need a password to open it up. It may identify the owner. He was jiggling with the unfamiliar buttons when ‘messages’ opened. The last was from several nights before. He felt a growing discomfort as he took the words in.

It read: ‘We can work it out, sweetheart. Meet me at the lookout at 1:00am and we can talk about it privately’.