Author: Alexander Fawn

Life simply wouldn’t be the same without her.

He couldn’t remember how long he’d had her; ages. She’d always been so reliable, never gave him any trouble. Although she had been appreciated by others, he knew that his would be the greatest loss. He couldn’t believe how suddenly it had ended. One minute she was providing the dependable service that he’d come to expect and appreciate, then, for some reason that he couldn’t fathom, in an instant, she… well, she just went! How was he going to replace her? He was sure that he’d have a hard time trying to find her equal.

He couldn’t remember how she got the nickname of Betsy. Not that it mattered now that she’s dead.

He went online, looking for fridges.

The teenager was on his phone, driving erratically, with a police car behind him.

He was pulled over. The police officer approached, mentally listing all the road rules he had just witnessed being broken. It was his speciality to pull over wrongens. Today was his lucky day. This particular offender first came to his notice when he pulled out from a side street onto the main road without signalling. He drifted around in his lane. He then crossed lanes without signalling causing a vehicle to break heavily to avoid a collision. He failed to slow down through a school zone. He had continued in the same lane for some time driving much too close to the vehicle in front. As he entered the town, he didn’t slow down, ignoring the speed limit. As he drove through the town he failed to stop when people were stepping on to a pedestrian crossing.

Finally, he didn’t yield to an ambulance that was trying to enter the road.

With both vehicles stationary, the officer carried out a registration check on the vehicle, establishing that it was both stolen and unlicensed. He got out of the police car and was feeling pretty chuffed about catching this particular wrongdoer. As he approached the culprit, he was surprised to find him still holding a half full bottle of beer. Burping, he wound down the window. As he did this the policeman noted several track marks on his arm. When questioned about them, the youngster readily admitted that he had recently shot up with heroin. It was quickly established that he was driving without a valid licence, driving while disqualified and knowingly driving a vehicle that was stolen and uninsured.

Much to his private annoyance, he had to admit that in the main, the young lawbreaker had been extremely polite and considerate while the officer had pointed out all of the offences he had committed. However, matters improved for the officer considerably when he looked more closely at the obviously false driver’s licence and saw that the photo showed the boy as being somewhere between sixty and seventy, with the date telling him that it was taken six years ago.

It was fittingly gratifying for the officer that when he was questioned about it, the boy said he’d recently had a face lift!

He stood in front of the mirror admiring his new jacket.

It was a beautiful midnight blue with silver buttons at the front and one on the cuff of each sleeve. He had looked at it in the shop window every time he passed, all the time he was saving up for it. Now, he was ready to go out and catch up with half a dozen of his friends in town. He was sure this would create quite an impression. They met up at the coffee shop, as usual, and in no time at all the conversation focussed on his latest purchase.

“It’s a great jacket,” said one, “I’ll give you that, but I wouldn’t call it blue exactly.”

“You wouldn’t?

“No. Not really. I see a great deal of green in it, myself.”

“Green? Surely not.”

“Green is what I see, sorry.”

He looked around at the others, expectantly.

Another said, “There is a touch of purple in it, but personally I don’t see the green.”

A third person said, “Well, what I see is turquoise. I agree there’s green there, but it’s in equal proportions to the blue.”

“Yes, I agree,” said another. “Although I would describe it as more of a cyan than turquoise.”

Now exasperated, he looked at his friends and asked, “Anyone else think this jacket is anything other than blue?”

“Well, since you ask,” Said another, “I can see that it’s blue…”

“At last!” he said. “Someone can see that it’s blue.”

“No. That’s not what I was going to say.”

The jacket owner frowned.

“What I was going to say was, I can see that it’s blue, but it gives the general appearance of being… well, magenta, I think.”

“Magenta? What’s that?”

“It’s blue, but with a light hint of red.”

“Red! You have to be kidding!”

They all began sniggering.

“Yes, I am, actually. We all are.”

The owner of the new jacket looked perplexed.

They all broke into friendly laughter.

“We knew you were going to get it; knew you were saving for it. We’ve all seen it in the shop window. It’s really great.”

He looked around with raised eyebrows. They were all nodding.

“You’ll be pleased to know that we think it’s a very nice shade of midnight blue!”

He was a remarkable person, when you really thought about it.

He would so often say “did you know?” right out of the blue. He was full of amazing information. At the drop of a hat he could tell you that the height of nelson’s column was 52 metres, or that a kolinsky is a type of weasel, or that there are thirty letters in the German alphabet, that Hg is the chemical symbol for mercury, that the twin Petronas Towers in Malaysia are 451.9 metres tall, that Whoopi Goldberg’s real name is Caryn Johnson, that the world’s biggest jam doughnut was made in January 1998, at Utica, New York, that Nicaragua was the first nation to ratify the United Nations charter, that the first magazine to run an advertisement for condoms was ‘Sport’ in 1969, that it was Montgomery Ward who invented Rudolf the red nosed reindeer in a comic, that political parties are banned in Bulgaria, that Mariner 9 was the first space probe to orbit another planet, or that Barbie’s first horse was named ‘Dancer’.

It just went on and on.

It was such an irony that he was never invited anywhere!

Everybody has fantasies about it at one time or another.

Not many would like to admit it, but there would be very few people that could honestly say they had never wished someone dead. Despite the fact that in most cases this comes about in a moment of anger that fades away soon after. It could be brought on by an annoying spouse, a critical boss, a rude neighbour or a dangerous motorist. Should these feelings of retribution hang around a little longer, the imagination may well turn to considering the method of dispatch. These ‘get even’ scenarios can vary in intensity from a quick tap on the back of a head, all the way through to being dropped from a helicopter directly into the mouth of a live volcano!

It is a matter of serious debate as to whether imagining such evil acts of revenge is actually a whole lot better for a person, psychologically, than denying that they ever have them.

Just saying…

For the writer, there were far too many words.

He was miserably considering the unalterable fact that there were times when reducing something down to the smallest possible amount, by means of minimization, just doesn’t work. There had been other occasions when this had been a problem. He would have the story in his mind, but as it was being captured on the screen of his computer he would soon realise that it was going to need a lot of words for the telling of it. It was at times like these, the writer knew that he was in for a long slog. He could see that he wasn’t going to get the usual enjoyment and satisfaction from writing it. Right now, he was confronted with the worst of these situations. It was for this reason that he had called his friend.

They were both in armchairs, in the living room for comfort, when his friend said, “On the phone, you said you had a problem.”

The writer said, “I do.”

“The old imagination drying up is it?”

“No, the opposite.”

“Go on.”

“Thanks, you always were a good sounding board.”

His friend smiled and nodded for him to go on.

The writer relaxed a little. “I thought I had a great idea for a story, but it’s just too big! I’ve tried drafting it out, but its running into thousands of words already and I haven’t told the half of it yet!”

“Really… thousands?”

“Yes, really. You know I don’t do thousands, I do hundreds. Preferably around three hundred or so.”

His friend folded his arms and settled back in the chair. “Better tell me,” he said.

The writer sighed. “OK. The story goes like this… this exploration company is trialling a ground-breaking method of taking core samples. These are far deeper than anything the industry had done before. Then, when this one time the hollow drill is brought back up they find that the end of it is gold plated! You can imagine, the excitement this discovery generates. Because of the vastly increased depth, and the greater temperature, they have hit, not a seam of gold, but a liquid pool of the stuff. Well, the company sets to and builds a plant at the site and starts pumping the precious metal up. You realise of course that this is radically new technology being developed here. When the molten metal reaches the surface, inside the plant that is, it’s poured directly into moulds and left to cool as gold ingots.”

“You see, instead of all that other messing about?”

His friend sat thinking for a while. “Wow! Interesting idea.”

“That’s as maybe, but it’s taken several thousand words to describe that much properly. As for the baddies…”

“Ah! Of course, you haven’t come to them yet.”

“No. You can see how much of a threat this whole thing is. I mean, apart from how it impacts on the gold standard, there are some many other factions that want to get in on the action, both legally and illegally. The mind boggles. Well, no, my mind boggles. Just consider, the repercussions of using this new method of producing gold is going to have such a huge impact on the bullion market. Even the legal ramifications could impinge dramatically on world order, as we know it!”

The writer suddenly stopped speaking. “Do you realise that if I were to write down an account of this conversation, I mean… just me sitting here telling you about it, I would have to write at least six-hundred words to describe it?”

His friend grinned. “No doubt.”

The writer pointed his thumb at the ceiling. “Well then, thanks, I’ll do that…”

He had been sitting in the waiting area for a long time.

His doctor was usually pretty punctual. Although he could remember an occasion a couple of years back when he’d had to wait for more than half an hour. The reasons for the delay were described at the time and it was obvious that his GP had little control over the situation. After all, it was all in the nature of what a medical professional had to contend with. Today was not the same thing. Today he had been squirming on his chair for nearly two hours! He had considered concocting a story about having another appointment to go to and making a new appointment date at the front counter. On second thoughts, that might not go down really well.

Finally, he was called.

Sitting down in the practitioner’s room, he could see that the man looked quite harried. After a polite cough, the doctor said, “Sorry to have kept you waiting…”

He looked conflicted for a few long moments, then went on, “There are two versions for that. Either the one that says that I ate a large curry last night and have been suffering from diarrhea all day or there’s the one that says that I’ve had a couple of emergencies to deal with. Which one would you like?”

The patient, clearly shocked at the statement, thought for a moment, then said, “If it’s OK with you, I’d like to think about it…”

He had always been blessed with the personal attribute of looking on the bright side.

Regardless of this, his life was pretty dull. His work was boring, he lived alone, his apartment was uncomfortably small, the owners never did any kind of repairs, the wallpaper was peeling and the toilet never did flush properly. He had no partner and very few friends to speak of, it had been raining a lot recently and he really hated the rain, and on top of it all the neighbours that lived on either side of him were extremely noisy. On this occasion their din was worse than usual; there was a lot of shouting and a banging of doors. He had figured that it was a case of both sides holding rowdy parties at the same time.

He was sitting in his lumpy armchair, looking through to the kitchen at the huge pile of dirty dishes, when he first heard it. It sounded like some kind of police siren. He got up and opened the curtains. Looking down from his twenty-second floor, he saw a dozen vehicles and lots of flashing lights. A stream of people where running out of the building, directed by the police. They were being herded away. He could make out a huge crowd gathering in the park across the road.

One officer was holding a megaphone and making some kind of announcement. He could barely make out what he was saying, but it sounded like a warning to anyone left in the building. He definitely heard the word ‘bomb’!

He opened the window to hear what was being said. Over the loudspeaker the man was saying that the bomb squad were unable to defuse the device in the basement and were convinced that it would bring the whole building down. He was saying that the lifts were not working and residents should use the stairwell.

After a short spell of silence, the voice said that the bomb squad estimated that detonation would take place in less than a minute.

He walked back into the kitchen. He stood for a moment pondering. No matter how hard he ran, he’d only make three or four floors in less than a minute.

There was always a bright side to these things, he thought.

He wouldn’t have to do the dishes!

He noticed that his daughter had been sitting on the lounge room floor for some time, drawing.

She was using a set of coloured crayons to cover the page of a large colouring book. He took a quick peek every time he went passed. She seemed to be completely engrossed in what she was doing. As far as he could tell, it was a complicated drawing with what might be stick figures and lots of different coloured shapes. When his curiosity had finally got the better of him he went to have a closer look.

Crouching down next to her, he stared at a mass of coloured marks. He said, “So, what have we got here, sweetheart?”

She stopped scribbling and looked up. She giggled and pointed at the picture. “Can you see you?”

He squinted at it. “No,” he said, as though he was really trying.

“That’s you and that’s mummy and that’s me.”

“And the dots?”

“They’re flowers down by the lake. You know, the one near the shops. Mummy lets me play on the swings, sometimes.”

“Oh! I see them now. I don’t know what those are,” he said pointing to a cluster of tiny shapes.

“Ducks, and some other birds that I don’t know about.”

“And these?” He pointed at several brown boxes.

“They are the seats for people to sit on.” She poked at the paper. “See that there? That’s Tiddles, the cat from a cross the road.”

Pulling a funny face, he said, “Wow! How did it get there?”

She giggled again. “She walked, silly.”

As he stood up, he nodded sagely and said, “I think that’s a wonderful picture, honey.”

“Thanks,” she said, and picked up a crayon.

Minutes later, in the kitchen, he was telling his wife about the conversation.

“I know,” she said, “I could hear you.”

He looked really impressed. “I can tell you one thing, the kid’s got vision…”

The man in the bed at the end of the ward pressed the call button again.

The ward was full and the nurses were all busy. The long-term patient in room 17B waited for a response to his call. He didn’t expect to receive any special treatment, but that was the fourth time he had called, all with no response. It had been going on for days. He didn’t know who was in charge out there, but he had his suspicions. Meanwhile, one of the young nurses decided to have a word with the charge nurse about him at the first opportunity.

“He hasn’t had any visitors for weeks,” she began. “He seems to be perfectly articulate. I’m sure he feels isolated and alone in there.”

The charge nurse nodded.

“He certainly rings the call bell a lot,” the nurse added.

The charge nurse, knowing what a demanding and spiteful old misery the man actually was, shook her head. “You’re right; he’s not a happy case, I’m afraid.”

She didn’t care to explain that it would be best for everybody if her husband was best left with his own miserable company…