Author: Alexander Fawn

He was on the club committee.

He was attending one of the football club’s regular meetings when proceedings gave him a hint that something was not quite right. Some of the figures being read out left him wondering. Over the following weeks he delved into the club’s finances. The further he went with it, the more obvious it became that the club’s manager was systematically moving club funds into his own private account. He had never liked the manager, always had a bad feeling about him. These were not large amounts but they were regular. Because it had being going on for more than two years, he realised that the amount being stolen would be building up. He loved his club and knew that he needed to speak up.

It was the first time he had ever considered being a whistle-blower. He gave it a lot of thought. He knew from news reports that people often ended up in strife when they were just trying to do the right thing. As a result of thinking it through, he decided to take a friend into his confidence. He knew that his friend had the skills he needed.

At the end of their meeting, the committee member asked, “You can do this without leaving a trace?”

“Yep. Sure can.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Not a problem. I’ll use a cheap prepaid phone, then throw it away.”

“OK we’ll save it for the big game.”

When the big day came the stadium was filled to capacity. Everything went as usual, with the huge crowd enjoying the game.

It happened at the half-time break. The large screens at either end of the field suddenly blacked out. Moments later the message came up in large letters.

‘Club funds are being syphoned off into the manager’s private account!’

A great murmur went through the crowd.

She felt that things were changing, or maybe about to change.

On the short walk to the café for her morning starter, the sense of something unseeable was gnawing away at her. It was hard to describe the feeling, even to herself. Maybe it was just the way her landlord looked at her… again. Or the girls in the despatch office, with their nasty little minds. Of course, the fact that her boyfriend came home very late again didn’t help. She could have done a lot better for herself in that department. As she rounded the corner, the coffee shop came into sight. There was that feeling again, growing stronger. Would she order the same old latte again? She went in feeling strangely nervous.

It was busy, as always. The three people in front of her gave her a chance to check out the list of drinks on offer. She stood in a daze, reading the board. She thought, it’s all about change, isn’t it? She spent so long thinking about this that the queue had gone and the guy leaning on the counter next to the machine said, “Hello.”

She snapped out of it. “Yes, sorry, can I get a long macchiato please… to go.”

The barista just nodded.

“Eh! I get two shots in that, right?”

He gave a small smile. “Sure do.”

To go, she thought. I just ordered coffee to go. I don’t do that. I sit by the window keeping track of time, looking out at the people gathering at the bus stop, waiting for the same bus I catch. She became aware of the man saying something.

“Sorry?”

He smiled again, bigger this time. He was holding a takeaway cup and felt-tip pen. “I said, name.”

“Oh! Sorry. Ethel.”

The man shook his head, looking over at a distant table. “No, we have one of them; middle name?”

“I… I don’t have one.”

He almost giggled. “Never mind, anything’ll do.”

She thought hard for a moment. “Autumn. Yes, Autumn will do.”

He wrote and she waited.

After standing by the door thinking about her new name for a while, she heard it called out. She left the shop, crossed the road and made straight for the ATM.

It was as though she was running on automatic. She couldn’t remember ever taking out this amount of cash. She only just managed to catch her regular bus. After a few minutes the bus pulled up at her stop. She didn’t move.

Autumn would never look back.

Incantations to order, was her motto.

Her shop was rather old, but she kept it nice and clean. For the best part of a decade the old sorceress had been selling custom-made on-the-spot incantations to her customers. It was a unique service and very popular. When they came, her guests could always rely on being offered a cup of tea or a coffee and given a seat while they explained their situation and told her what they wanted. She had done very well out of it, until recently. Her customers had been dwindling for several weeks. It took a while before she found out that she had competition. The word was that a woman was peddling incantations from her home. From what she could find out, the woman’s spells were nowhere near as good or as powerful as hers, but she was selling them at much cheaper prices.

She decided to fight fire with fire. She went into her back room and opened the cupboard. The shelves were crammed with books. She selected a dozen or so that she felt might contain what she was looking for. She would be breaking new ground. This had never been attempted before. She was a long time going back through all of her many volumes of magic spells. Finally, she found what she was looking for. It was a complex incantation and she would have to spend some time practising it. That evening, after dark, and holding the selected book, she carefully climbed up through the hatch onto the roof.

She stood looking out at the town’s lights while she gathered her thoughts. She knew the words, but held the book open at the relevant page, to add power to the spell. It would be a special incantation for a large group. She would need to cast for at least five of the town’s blocks. She felt sure that once this was done, word of mouth would do the rest. She took a deep breath and began…

It took only a couple of days for business to pick up nicely.

The day was bright and sunny, but the couple in the park hardly noticed.

After hearing her news he said, “You know for sure, do you?”

She said, “Of course I do.”

He was surprised by her irritation. “Well, OK then. We’ll have to make, I don’t know… arrangements.”

“I’m not sure,” she said.

“What?”

“I’m not sure that I want to go through with it.”

“Not sure?”

She was more adamant now. “No.”

He moved closer. “You say you’re not sure? Why?”

“My figure.”

“What?”

“My figure. If I let it go full term… you know. I’ll get fat.”

His head began to spin. “What kind of crazy consideration is that?”

She looked into his eyes. “I don’t know. It all feels such a mess at the moment.”

With exasperation in his voice, he said, “Look, I’m having a great deal of trouble understanding any of this. Are you saying you don’t want it?”

“I have a right to decide.”

“A right?”

“Yes. After all it’s my body.”

His head wobbled. “OK. I can’t argue with that.” He looked up into the sky. Before he had a chance to say more, she went on.

“What will others think?

“Others?”

“You know, our friends.”

He shook his head slowly. The wind softly stirred the branch. He raised his voice. “Hey! Wait a minute. What the hell are we talking about here?”

She fell silent.

“None of this makes any sense.”

Her head wagged a little.

After a few moments of silence, suddenly, he said, “Oh! No! I don’t believe it. You’ve been so good for so long. I thought all this was behind us. You’ve been at it again. You have, haven’t you?”

Her head dipped, then nodded.

A stronger gust made the branch bob harder; claws gripped and wings flapped.

“We talked about it didn’t we… and you promised?”

She stayed quiet.

He sighed. “You’ve been sitting on the old woman’s window ledge again? You have, haven’t you?”

She whispered, “Yes.”

He was almost shouting now.

“You’ve been watching soap operas through her window again!”

Looking back, he’d had a really bad time with his first job, after leaving school.

It was all down to the site supervisor. He was a nasty piece of work. None of the workers liked him. He was coarse and rude and never had a good word to say. He never gave credit for any of the work carried out on site. He was generally regarded as evil by those who worked under him. The school leaver hated him with a vengeance! It was because of his black bomber jacket and black beanie, he had been given the most appropriate nickname of Darth. When he strolled onto the company’s latest construction site, he certainly looked like the baddie from the movie. Despite this, the young man liked the job and found he was able to learn a lot from the various tradesmen that he worked under.

All this was at a time when the country was experiencing a prolonged downturn in the economy and the construction industry was hit hard. Job opportunities were becoming scarce. He started out as a site gopher or general dogsbody who was on call nonstop. This was how he became familiar with other trades. The work was hard, but the pay was good.

As a result of this, he was determined to hang on to his job at all costs. This meant dealing with Darth in his own way. In the main this consisted of him having murderous thoughts about the boss on an ongoing basis. In other words, whenever he came on site he would imagine different ways of polishing him off. These were relatively moderate at first, with ideas about opening up his lunchbox and sprinkling rat poison on his sandwiches or pouring poison into his tea flask. As time went on, thoughts of pushing him off one of the upper floors or dropping something extremely heavy on him from a height were his favourites. However, over the years, these powerful fantasies culminated with him being satisfied with regularly imagining beating him to death with a shovel.

After spending the first half a dozen years of his working life with the construction company, he moved on to join a small firm in the housing sector. By that time he’d had enough experience as a brick layer to take up the trade. He had been working for the firm for around a year when it happened. He’d been out visiting friends and was returning home late in the evening. Coming back into town he saw a man stagger out of the pub. He strolled out into the middle of the street and stopped to take his phone out of his pocket. He recognised him straight away. The man just stood there looking at his phone. It was Darth! The man himself. The evil swine who had caused so much hatred and with it the burning desire for revenge.

As his car drew closer, the man didn’t even look up. He just stood there, head down.

At the last moment he yanked on the steering wheel and swerved around him.

For some, with the years comes wisdom.

The young man from menswear wasn’t happy about the transfer.

He knew it was only temporary, while the two ladies that usually worked in that department were off sick. Management had said that it couldn’t be helped. They had hinted that this would look good on his record, if he wanted to get on in the company. He had resigned himself to it. He stood looking at the racks of women’s clothes, hoping the department head was right when he said that Tuesdays were always quiet. That was true for the first hour or so, that’s when the woman appeared. She was tall and slim and reasonably well dressed, but he felt there was something odd about her from the beginning. She spent a long time looking at the blouses, occasionally eyeing him and giving him a quick smile. Eventually, she chose one.

“I’ll try this one,” she said, opening the door to the changing cubicle and going in.

After a couple of minutes she came out wearing it. “What do you think of the colour?”

“The colour, I don’t know, purple I’d say.”

“No, I mean, does this colour suit me? What do you think?” She span around.

“Oh! Erm, yes, yes I think it does.”

“Right, that’s good,” she said, as she took several more from the rack. She gives him a wink as she goes back in.

With each blouse, she came out asking his opinion, and he was getting fed up with it. He thought, why did she keep coming out and asking me? Didn’t she have a husband or a boyfriend or something; that does that sort of thing?

Once more she came out. She gave him a big grin and he couldn’t help noticing up close that she had strangely pointed teeth and dark bags under her eyes. She is definitely a strange one, he thought.

She stood in front of him again. “What do you think, is it a bit short?”

“Eh! No, I wouldn’t say so, madam. I think it suits you.”

She surprised him by blowing him a small kiss, before returning to the cubicle and gently closing the door.

When she emerged wearing yet another blouse, he couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “Sorry madam,” he said, apologetically, “but don’t you have a mirror in there?”

“Oh! That! Come, let me show you.”

She held the door open for him and he reluctantly went in. She followed him in, pointing at the mirror. He was trying to make sense of the fact that she wasn’t reflected in it, when he heard the soft click of the lock. He turned to see her smiling at him.

With those teeth again…

She was in two minds about showing up.

She wasn’t at all sure about her date. She’d been told that he was nice, but a bit odd. Anyway, he was right on time when they met. He was very polite. The restaurant he chose was quite classy and the food was great.

They were finishing with coffees when he unexpectedly blurted it out. “What do you know about what happened in Istanbul last night.”

She was intrigued. She said, “Nothing! Why? What happened?”

“I have absolutely no idea,” he said, taking another sip of his coffee.

“You don’t?”

He shrugged. “No. That’s why I asked. You might have known something.”

She finished her coffee and looked forward to leaving. It seemed an age before she was waving goodbye getting on the bus.

She can’t say she wasn’t warned.

He sat looking at his glass.

With a trembling hand, he managed to drain the remains of the second bottle of twelve-year-old scotch whiskey into it. With difficulty, he brought the tumbler to his lips. He sipped shakily as he pushed through his inebriated state to reflect upon the incident that brought him to his present malaise.

He considered that it would take a defrocked Jesuit priest with a predilection for sky-diving, who was an avid fan of reality tv, hated Mexican food, had a sister that he never talked to, had ongoing issues with a fungal infection of his toenails, who was born by Caesarean section under the sign of Capricorn, on a Wednesday morning during a violent storm, and whose dog got run over outside a pawnbrokers shop, that later closed down on account of the owner being arrested and jailed for a series of local burglaries…

…only someone like that could even come close to properly understanding the way he felt when the girl in the laundromat told him to get lost.

The old man in his rocker reached for the bottle.

He poured a measure of single malt whisky into his glass. He thought about the one that had passed away. God rest his soul, he thought, as he put the glass to his lips. Naturally, there were other passings. Yes, and him, he thought, may he also rest in peace. He poured another to commemorate the sad event. There were so many of them. Ah! Yes, he’s another, God bless. He poured again.

This went on for a further half-hour. So many gone, he thought. So many sombre moments. I wonder why I talk about all of them as hims, he mused, I’m sure there must have been a few ladies among them. He looked at the half empty bottle. The porch was getting chilly. I’m going in now, he decided, and there’s no point in wasting electricity.

Before going in, he got up and switched off the electric mosquito zapper.

It really couldn’t get any worse.

It was a case of one damned thing after another. He sat on the floor of the cave, watching his torch grow dimmer by the minute. He’d been fossicking around in the cave for less than an hour when the cave-in happened. The sound of the rocks crashing down at the entrance and the resulting thunder that roared back through the tunnel had left his ears ringing. He knew that the fading torch meant that his only source of light would soon be gone. Before any of this, the handle came off his little trowel and the strap on his multi-pocketed sample bag had snapped.

He wistfully thought about what might have been. What, he now felt, should have been. He’d been offered a job in his uncle’s company. Nothing more than dull paperwork, nine to five, but steady work. Then, he’d seen the poster, pasted up outside the local Space Research recruitment centre. ‘Work among the stars’ it said. The money was pretty good and the work was in no way arduous. He’d get to fly his own spaceship and take exciting trips in his personal shuttle craft. He’d be happily gathering soil samples from some of the less-visited planets around the outer edge of the galaxy. That wasn’t too bad, was it? At least he was very much his own boss most of the time.

But now, here he was, on this Godforsaken planet, trapped in a cave, in a stuffy space suit, watching his torch flicker. It finally went out!

He sat for a long time, reflecting miserably on his misfortune. As these minutes passed, he became aware of the fact that it wasn’t really dark at all, well, not completely. A faint glimmer was coming from back at the entrance. He carefully crept through the tunnel and discovered a wall of shattered rocks with a fist-sized hole, deep within the pile. It let enough light through for him to survey the area. There was only one option. He needed to start pulling it all apart.

It was obvious that to safely remove sufficient debris to allow him to crawl through was going to take a long time. But, he had heaps of that, he thought. So, he set to, carefully taking out one piece at a time and stacking them back along the wall of the passageway. Hours later, and he had no idea how many, the light failed. It was obviously night outside. Now it really was pitch black. He searched around for a piece of ground that felt as though it was fairly flat, put his head down, and went to sleep.

Naturally, the light woke him. He began the gruelling task again, although he was feeling tired and hungry. This fact seemed to slow him down a lot throughout the second day. But he had no choice about what he was doing, and when the light coming through began to diminish he could see that there was a good chance that one more daytime of work was all that was needed to give him freedom. He worked on until he could no longer see. He settled down to sleep again. He lay thinking about removing the last of the boulders and crawling outside. As he drifted off to sleep, he began to dream about climbing into his comfy chair in the shuttle and setting the controls on the console, with its tiny red light, using the navigation screen to take him back up to a ship that had food, and all the usual creature comforts.

Again, he woke to see the amount of work to be done and began with renewed enthusiasm. He’d only been shifting material for a short time when his dream came back to him. Walking back and forth with his loads he remembered it in more detail; sitting back into the soft, ergonomic seat with the red light showing… wait… showing?

He gently put down the rock he was carrying and stood thinking for a while. Why would he dream about the glowing indicator? After a few minutes he realised that it was because it was real. The light was on! At least, it had been. It was coming back to him now. As he left his seat in front of the console he had seen it. Yes, there was no doubt about it. He had seen the main power indicator glowing with a little red dot, telling him that he hadn’t powered the shuttle down when he left, and that was… he counted… three days ago! His head started to spin. He was giggling to himself when he found his sleeping area. There was no need to rush anymore. He would have a nice lay down.

After all, the only thing waiting for him outside was a one-man scout craft with a flat battery…