Author: Alexander Fawn

The IT guy considered that his job was almost perfect.

Almost, because he had to report to a boss that was in all respects a disgusting human being! Although he realised that many members of the general workforce could very well feel the same way, the guy he had to report to was an exception. The man was extremely overweight, was married to a woman who came from a very wealthy family, and it was suspected that she had applied some influence to put him in the position he enjoyed. Beyond this, he knew nothing about the workings of an IT department and was forever sending out the most unintelligible emails. It was generally understood by those in the department that it was best to simply ignore his directives because he would have no idea how to follow up on his instructions.

For some reason, the fact that this incompetent manager bothered him more than most, made him seriously consider moving on from what really was a great job. The nature of the work itself held him, but he felt it couldn’t last.

This was true right up to the day the bus he was on got caught up in a traffic jam, owing to a major accident up ahead. He was on his way home at the time after stopping off to eat near the office, meaning that he didn’t have to cook when he got home. He only did this occasionally. He lived some distance away from his work and was nearly home when he glanced down at the restaurant. It was a pretty swanky place and he’d heard that the prices went through the roof. Being quite dark at the time, people were clearly lit up sitting at tables. That’s when he saw him; the slob! He was sitting opposite a young woman chatting happily. They were half way through an expensive looking meal and sipping wine. He was looking all gooey-eyed and stroking the back of her hand.

The IT man quickly grabbed his upmarket phone. It was one that could take exceptionally good video clips, despite the two intervening windows. When he got home he reviewed the footage. There had been several shots, but he sat looking at the best of them. He was looking at thirty-two seconds of pure dynamite! Of course, he knew exactly how to upload the clip to the internet, while masking his address, along with any other method of being identified. In less than an hour it was done.

As for quitting, he’d give it a couple of weeks.

The old grey eyes look down into an untended garden.

The window, covered with a decade of grime, gives no proper view of what lays beyond. Her memories are coming hard and fast again. Her wizened fingers twitch unnoticed on her pen. She could see his face now, clearly. Ruddy and beaming when they first met. Watery eyes filled with sadness in bad times. His smile, when giving vows in the church. His frown, when told that they could have no children. She focused for a while on the eyebrow that always sat a little higher, and the spot on his chin that looked like a pimple, but wasn’t.

She scribbled away for a minute or two. No marks were made on her fading writing pad. Her ball-point, dried up ages ago. Purblindness had been with her for years now.

She gave a wheezy sigh when remembering the end. It was peaceful. The vicar was very understanding.

More unseen marks were made.

There was so much to record. So many memories. The echoes of all those past times that swam inside her head. They should not be lost. She was determined to capture as much as possible before being moved to a place where her memories were sure to fade.

A final scratching and a slow leaning back in her chair, indicating that she would let it go for now. Her daily ritual completed. Happy with what she had done. The pen dropped. The eyes closed.

More tomorrow.

His best mate was always telling him to go vegetarian.

They were both single, both living in rentals in the city and often met for lunch. Mostly vegetarian places, naturally. Eventually, mainly to shut him up, he said he’d give it a go. Although to some degree he did wonder what it would be like. His mate explained what he could and couldn’t eat. There would be all manner of fruit and vegetables, of course. There was rice, beans, nuts; the list went on. He was delighted with the idea that potatoes were a goer. He was told about all the other things he could eat, but he kept thinking about potatoes. He had always liked chips… really, really liked chips.

Then, as they talked some more he discovered that bread was OK. He was told that bread was a grain-based food and many other ingredients found in bread were also plant-based, this instantly expanded the variety of food he could prepare. Then came the information that most margarines contain absolutely no animal products. As if this wasn’t enough, it dawned on him without his mate telling him, that tomato sauce was all right too. His friend agreed, saying that because regular ketchup is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, it’s hunky dory. He thanked his friend, saying that he was willing to give it a go.

At the end of the working day he called at the shops on his way to his flat and bought several very large bags of potatoes. When he got in, he opened the food cupboard and stood staring at it for several minutes before pulling everything out. It was all spread across the counter top. Anything that was not vegetarian would go. If it had been opened it went straight into the bin. Unopened items would be donated to the local food bank. Among the food stuff remaining, he had vegetarian oil for cooking, tomato sauce and salt.

He made a list.

He could have fried chips, with or without tomato ketchup or salt. He could have bread and margarine as a side dish. He could fold chips into slices of bread to make chip butties, with or without sauce, usually with.

How long could it last? He didn’t know but he’d give it a damn good try!

Beauty waiting to be found,

While sound and fragrance play their part.

Jagged mountains and rolling hills,

Merely looking stirs the heart.

–

A morning sky, a flight of geese,

A wooden lattice dressed with flowers,

The purest white of downy clouds,

Shadows creeping through the hours.

–

The frozen surface of a lake,

Shadows floating in a fog,

Branches waving in a breeze,

A crop of moss upon a log.

–

The bands of colour in a rock,

Melting snowflakes, a setting sun,

A spread of countless sparkling stars,

A dancing flame sure plays its part.

Ivy climbing up a wall,

Water dripping, one by one,

A dark horizon’s silhouettes,

Web beads glistening in the sun.

–

Sands patterned by relentless wind,

Leaves slowly flutter with a breeze,

Berries hiding in a bush,

Leafless branches on winter trees.

–

Seashells washed up on a beach,

Lightening racing straight to ground.

Albeit of a visual kind,

It’s beauty, just waiting to be found.

It has no name, no real name,

Only an assigned designation.

It is a virus that causes respiratory infections,

And it spreads from nation to nation.

–

It is known as an infective agent,

A nucleic acid molecule,

Wrapped in a protein coat.

It brings a great litany of symptoms,

That go far beyond a sore throat.

–

There is fever, a cough and tiredness,

A loss of taste or smell,

A discolouration of fingers or toes,

With diarrhoea and skin rash as well.

–

There are aches and pains and headaches,

Chest pains and difficulty breathing,

And an irritation of the eyes.

Then there’s a loss of speech or mobility,

Confusion, being no surprise.

–

It multiplies when invading a cell.

Known only as some bug by most.

But it manages to copy itself,

In the living cells of a host.

–

This writer prefers it remain nameless,

As too often our species must hear,

That which has brought such suffering,

Year after terrible year.

–

In this nineteenth year of the century,

We know only too well the evil it brings.

Is it too easy to say, that this too shall pass?

As it will…with all other things.

As a kid, he just hated fairies.

This may not readily explain why inquisitive neighbours may have heard violent noises coming from the old man’s shed in the early hours, but for him, this activity needed little in the way of explanation. As for the fairies, well, he was fully aware of the fact that most people regard them as quaint little supernatural creatures that possess magical powers and flit around doing all sorts of really nice things. It was as a result of this fact that he made it a lifelong pledge to never reveal his nightmares. In these nightly episodes he would see them crawling out from under the bed as soon as he fell asleep. Scary little buggers with their wands, smug expressions and their creepy hairdos! They would sneak up under the sheets, no matter how much he tried to tuck them in all round, and poke at him savagely with their magic sticks until he woke shaking and sobbing.

These terrifying dreams were visited upon him regularly throughout his childhood years and although this was several decades ago now, he often had the uncomfortable thought that they could one day return. It was the recent significant incident that served as a reminder of this horrifying possibility.

Now, with his wife’s passing, and living alone in a much smaller and more manageable house, his ongoing preoccupation had been to carry out his plan to create a small flower garden in the limited area between the back door and the back fence. When it was finished, several members at the local pensioner’s club, who had shown an interest in his project, had called in to see what he had done. It was both unexpected and disturbing when, a no doubt well-meaning lady visited, bringing with her a gift for his garden. When unwrapped, it was a rather large garden fairy!

Over several hours he allowed himself a self-congratulatory pat on the back for holding his emotions in check. This admirable restraint was let go in the early hours that followed the woman’s visit. In the shed, with the door closed, it all went away the moment the mallet came down on the figurine, and even further away with each subsequent blow.

He still hated fairies.

It can safely be said that he was widely regarded as a nobody.

This was true for just about all aspects of his life, but nowhere more so than in the office where he worked. As a general rule he was simply ignored. If he ever tried holding a conversation with any one of the thirty odd staff members, he was met with complete disinterest. He would sometimes try different topics based on current affairs, or a movie he’d watched, or some interesting thing he had seen coming to work. None of this made any difference. It came down to the fact that no one was at all interested in him. Over time, he had learned to live with it.

However, this all changed on the night that the evening news on TV reported that he had gone missing. The police were involved. It was reported that shots were heard coming from his flat and when police arrived on the scene, they found the place had been thoroughly trashed and the owner was missing. His car, empty and gutted by fire, had been discovered still smouldering shortly after. As a result, the police put out a statement saying that he was ‘a person of interest’ in their ongoing enquiries.

The following morning, in the office, everybody was interested.

In London, it was the man’s lunch hour when he left the office.

He liked to walk a few blocks, then wander in and out of antique shops. He was always looking out for a bargain, and it was amazing what can be found in such places. You could say he had a passion for old things; small objects that looked as though they had history.

Leaving his building sharp had allowed him to walk farther than usual and he came across a shop he hadn’t visited before. Pushing open the door set off a loud clang above his head. It was an old-fashioned type of bell that bounced on a spring. The man at the counter was busy with a customer, which allowed him to stand quietly thinking about another time and another bell. It was on the handlebar of his son’s first three-wheeler bike. The bell, still sounding above his head, was much louder than the one he thought of now, but the note… the note that it sounded was the same. He and his wife were often reminded of how much he loved that bike. He told the shopkeeper that he was just browsing so that he could just stand there and remain in the moment a little longer.

He thought about the recent email he’d received, giving him his son’s hotel number for the next couple of days. He’d ring him tonight.

At that exact moment, that afternoon in New York, at an unattended hotel reception desk, the man who had stood waiting for a while hit the bell for service. He was intrigued to find that the bell’s tone was exactly that of the bell on the handlebar of his first three-wheeler bike. Nobody came, and this enabled him to stand with his vivid memories flooding back without external interruption. He was put in mind of just how much he loved the bike. He remembered the thrill of first sitting astride it, of finding how good it was to feel the pedals beneath his feet, of hearing the bell sound when his father flicked the lever. He could see the patient smile on his father’s face as he flicked it into sound over and over.

He was spending a couple of days here. He’d ring him tonight.

The voice was wonderful, it told her everything she needed to know.

When her mother needed help in the kitchen, despite her being only eleven, she would very quickly slice the carrots to just the right thickness. This sort of thing had always impressed her mother. The voice told her how to do it. At school, her teacher was amazed at her ability to solve maths problems almost instantly. The voice, of course. Then there was the time her father was working under the bonnet of the car trying to figure out what was wrong with the fan heater’s wiring. She hopped in and rerouted several wires and got it going. He said she was a natural. The voice, again.

Although she was probably far too young to understand the full potential of what was happening to her, or what this incredible gift was enabling her to do so perfectly, she only knew that it was extremely useful.

After all, that’s how she made the annoying boy across the road disappear… forever!

She knew she had a shapeshifter in the house.

She first came across it when she found an ornately framed oil painting of Renoir’s ‘Roses in a Vase’ hanging in her living room. When she approached it to take a closer look, the painting instantly shapeshifted to become a fly and took off. However, it became apparent to her over the following days that not all shapeshifters are particularly good at what they do. The following day she found a vacuum cleaner lying on the sun lounge, beside the pool in the back garden. On drawing closer, it became a dead leaf, which was instantly whipped up by a breeze and blown into the flower bed somewhere, among a great many other such leaves.

Before these events, she had only the vaguest notion regarding the phenomenon of shapeshifting. She was to learn more and more as time went on. One website said that you could trap them, but you had to be quick. Then there were the events, the more practical experiences, like the day she found an egg whisk in the bath tub, which turned to water and drained away as she peered in at it. Then there was the elaborate Queen Anne chair in the corner of the laundry, a full-size casino roulette wheel sitting precariously on top of the microwave oven in the kitchen, a leaf rake propped up behind the television, a pair of binoculars hanging in the closet, the hedge clippers she found lying on the settee, not to mention the roller skates sitting in the kitchen sink.

Most of these unexpected items changed by morphing into flies; this being the creature’s favourite mode of transformation. It was this fact that gave her the idea of having a can of fly spray handy at all times. In doing this, and giving the matter some serious thought, the horrible woman across the road that had once made a derogatory comment about the condition of her front fence, had become her primary focus.

Her lucky break came late one evening.

She was watching television when she noticed that a pencil sharpener had suddenly appeared on the coffee table in front of her. She carefully picked up the can from beside her chair and zapped it. The thing had barely gone through the process of changing when it received a direct hit.

It was not dead, but stunned.

She slipped the fly, little legs still twitching, into a prepared envelope that was addressed to ‘The House Owner’.

Quietly, with the envelope held to her ear, listening with satisfaction to the buzzing, she crept across the road in the dark.

She pushed the envelope silently through the woman’s letter box.