Author: Alexander Fawn

The woman stood, looking out into the garden.

She was watching her daughter, who was in a deep and very animated conversation with her invisible friend. It had become quite a habit for the girl of late. She would wander out into the garden looking for her friend. She would sit on the bench and chat, sometimes for the best part of an hour. The whole thing was beginning to worry her, although her husband had insisted that it was just part of growing up. She said that he was usually at work when it happened and didn’t know how far advanced the thing had got. They had actually argued about it. She thought it was high time that she had a chat with her about it.

Her mother approached her when she came in, saying as casually as she could, “Who were you talking to today?”

“That was my friend Dixy,” she replied.

“That’s a nice name, dear. She’s your friend is she?”

“Oh! Yes. She’s really clever and she knows a lot.”

Her mother sighed and got her to sit down with her. “Mummy wants to talk to you about your friend.” Her daughter sat, looking really interested in what her mother was about to say.

“Honey, you know, don’t you, that there really isn’t a friend that you talk to out there, it’s only something you’ve made up.”

Before she could say more, the girl interrupted. “No, mummy, you don’t understand. She is definitely real and I can see her sometimes… when I want to.”

Her mother looked surprised, then shook her head. She went to say more, but was cut off.

“I can prove it to you, if you like. Would you like that?”

Her mother hesitated for a beat, feeling uncomfortable with the way the conversation was going. She took a breath and said, “Yes. Alright, dear.”

The girl jumped up, looking excited. She grabbed her mother’s hand and led her to her room.

Standing in front of the mirror, she said, “Dixy, I’d like you to meet mummy!”

It was mid-afternoon when the couple arrived at the holiday house.

The building had been hard to find, being located so far off the beaten track. This didn’t bother him. The idea was for the two of them to enjoy a well-deserved ‘getaway’ break. It was an old house, two stories and obviously not well looked after. The guy from the office that had offered the rental at a very reasonable rate had almost talked him out of it because of it being virtually empty and in need of repair. He was surprised that he had been so reasonable about it, as they had never really hit it off. However, he couldn’t resist the offer.

When they arrived, they found a screed of papers hanging from the knocker on the front door.

It seemed an odd thing to find way out there in the middle of nowhere. There were a couple of pages, with the front one saying ‘Read before entering’.

“Never really saw him as a joker,” he grumbled, “but we’d better read it, I suppose. There could be a safety issue.”

His wife nodded.

He turned over the first page and began reading the hand-written contents aloud.

‘Take note, there have been issues with the property. Problems with things going missing. At first we thought it was break-ins, but this was soon discounted. It gradually got worse over time and we found that whatever we put in the house would disappear without a trace while we were not in it. The house came to me from a distant relative who had died, leaving it to me. So, I had no one to ask about the nature of it or whether there was any history that would shed light on what was happening.

When the first things went missing we reported it. The local police gave us the impression that they didn’t believe what they were being told. Anyway, it was evident that they simply weren’t interested.

Our losses to date are a camera, a television, two portable radios, a clothes iron, a hairdryer, kettle, four suitcases with contents, toilet kits, books, newspapers, magazines, mobile phones, my son’s pet hamster, a stamp collection, two laptops, a computer game, and several personal medication items.

It’s only conjecture, but we think the house took them.

I can only suggest that you enter at your peril.

PS Please leave this note where you found it.’

He laughed. She wasn’t so sure.

They carried their cases in… and the house took them.

He’d been a garage mechanic in the busy end of town for far too long. It wasn’t the life he wanted. So, when he saw the farm come onto the market, he upped stumps and settled into a completely different lifestyle. It was only a small property in a remote location, but it was perfect. During the first few weeks of getting organised, he spent a lot of quiet moments enjoying the solitude; the peace and quiet of the environment. Little did he know that it wouldn’t last.

It was a cold night and he was tucked up in his warm bed. He’d been asleep for a couple of hours when a disturbance woke him. It started with a horrible droning sound. Soft at first, then growing louder. Then the lights, great brilliant flashes every two or three seconds. He got up and looked out of the window. He couldn’t see anything in the front yard, except for the intermittent flashing lighting everything up. Whatever it was, it was coming from the back. Shivering with the night air, he got dressed quickly and went to the back door. The droning had changed pitch and was now a dull humming noise. He opened the door and walked out. He was looking at a giant saucer. It was a huge metallic craft giving off bursts of blazing light. He could just make out several figures emerging from some unseen part of it. These extremely ugly alien creatures seemed to be beckoning to him.

He closed his eyes tight, turned and went back in. Slamming the door hard, he stood leaning with his back to it for several minutes. When he opened them, he saw that the flashing had stopped and the thing was making different noises. Suddenly, there was a great whooshing sound, followed by utter silence. He stepped outside and looked up into the night sky. There was nothing.

The next day was a busy one. He arranged to have the farm put up for sale, sold his truck, packed his bags and caught a flight back to the city. To hell with aliens! he thought. If the offer was still there, he’d fix tractors for his uncle.

There once was a writer named Kyle,

Who tried hard to vary his style.

He knew he aught

To fully assort.

But lacking topics to exhort,

He turned to sport,

But he had to abort,

For a different sort.

As a last resort,

He tried to import,

The thrills of transport,

But with scant retort.

It gave no support.

His stories were fraught,

And his poems were short.

It’s sad to report,

It all came to naught,

With none of it really worthwhile.

They did a lot of online correspondence; they were good at it.

Naturally, having dated for more than a year, they spent time together, in person, whenever they could. Their jobs however, had him… him being hugo.22Z@gmail.com …working some distance from the town, and this meant that he saw her… her being h.c.posy17@yahoo.com …working as a hotel receptionist on night duty, only when he was back in town. Generally speaking, their one-on-one personal time didn’t happen as often as they would have liked. This also meant that the internet was used extensively, but it was not without risk. This became apparent when the troublemaking hacker, a nasty piece of work, who went by p.l.98.2.thisguy@supamail.com, decided to cause problems for the pair. He knew them well enough that he could enter their space, using an assumed name, and stir things up a little.

At first, pretending to be someone who worked alongside of ‘Hugo’, he messaged ‘Posy’ to say that he wasn’t getting productivity bonuses for doing extra work, but suggested that he was drug dealing instead. Then, he intimated to ‘Hugo’ that ‘Posy’ was being less than faithful and was spending time with somebody else while he was away.

What ‘thisguy’ didn’t know was, not only did they use internet regularly to stay in touch, but both had always been pretty savvy on the subject of how the whole thing worked. Figuring out what was going on, they hacked into his system and found enough illegal material on his hard drive to fix the problem.

When members of the police cybercrime unit came knocking on his door with a warrant to take his computer away for analysis, the problem went away.

The two men sat drinking at the bar.

One was saying that within the trades you often come across anomalies. He gave the example of Tilers that have leaky rooves or Plumbers that have a pipe under the sink that constantly drips. There were Florists that don’t grow flowers in their gardens and Launderers with closets full of dirty clothes. There were Bakers who never bake at home, Landscapers that had messy gardens and Veterinarians that don’t keep pets. Panel-beaters with dents in their car doors and Glaziers with broken windows. Again, you had carpenters with doors that stick. Barbers with messy hair. House painters with peeling paint. Locksmiths with locks that jam. Bricklayers with garden walls cracking and Electricians with frayed wiring.

Slurring slightly, the other said, “So, as a coffin maker, should I be worried?”

He was just taking a turn around the garden.

There was always so much to do, he reflected. As he moved around he didn’t notice his recently potted Angelonia was beginning to wilt through lack of water. He stood admiring a Bougainvillea blossom when a giant thorn pierced his arm. He walked off rubbing it. Next, he was just passing when a spindly branch from a Hydrangea bush whipped him round the side of the neck. He was getting annoyed. Then, just moments later, a branch with a great cluster of gumnuts came down, hitting him on the head. The shock of it caused him to stumble and fall. He lay there for a moment while a flash of his wilting Angelonia came to him. He sat up slowly.

“OK!” he said, loudly. “I’ll water the Angelonia, OK? I will.”

“No doubt about these buggers,” he grumbled under his breath, as he went for the watering can. “Word soon gets around in Mother Nature!”

He paused momentarily at the window, watching the man across the street.

The man, who was dressed in an expensive suit, was obviously agitated. He had rushed to come to the address and was now standing with his back against a shop window, catching his breath. He was checking the time and looking up at the detective agency. It was evident that he considered it important to arrive at the office on time. The man seemed to be twitching, continually looking around nervously from time to time. Together, all of these things pointed to a person who was in serious trouble. He was living on his nerves. Beneath this there was a reluctance to turn to a stranger. The observer noticed these things in his line of work.

After a couple more minutes and checking the time again, the man carefully crossed the street, straitening his tie as he came forward to the entrance. The man at the window nodded with satisfaction seeing that the visitor was intent on giving a good impression. He could tell. He could also determine that it was a very personal and possibly embarrassing mission that had brought him here.

Minutes passed, before the elevator squealed behind him. The doors slid open and the gentleman in question emerged at the end of the long hall, looking around.

He said, “The Investigations Agency?”

The man at the window said, “Along the hall, second door on the left.”

As he watched him go he smiled knowingly.

He dropped his chamois leather into the bucket, squeezed it out and went back to cleaning the window.

When he left work he made a bee line for the clothes shop before catching the train.

On the train home, sitting with his new jumper in a bag on his lap, he thought about his mother. He was really pleased with it. It was just what he wanted. She knew he was going to buy one and he’d show it to her as soon as he got home. Staring out of the window, his mind meandered back in time, to another jumper. It was one that he had really hated. He remembered how coarse the wool was and how it scratched him whenever he wore it, and how it made him itch. He remembered how it became so bad that he complained about it. He said that he didn’t want to wear it any more. She had got really annoyed. Told him how much it had cost. He was sent to his room early that night.

That night… how he had laid in bed feeling so angry. How he had waited until it was well past midnight, before climbing out of his window, making his way across to the nearby woods, building a small fire and dropping his jumper into the flames. That night, he had seen it as such an adventure! He can remember getting back into bed, laying there, wondering how long it would take before she missed it? He remembered… it didn’t take long.

He thought about it now. It was so wrong and wilful. He wasn’t proud of it. Would she remember? Of course she would! She’s his mother. Thank goodness for a mother’s love.

The poet and the scientist sat together, one reading, one writing.

The elderly men, now retired, had been meeting up in the least busy end of the club room weekly for more years that either of them would have been able to easily remember. The scientist smiled as he watched his old friend scribbling away with passion.

He lowered his paper and said, “You can’t just fix a thing up by writing a poem about it.”

“Yes you can.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Yes, I do; although it depends very much on what the ‘it’ is.”

The other grunted.

The poet continued. “After all there are so many its to contend with. This world of ours is full of them. Surely, you know that?”

“Example?”

“Ehm, I suppose one that stands out would be the verses written to woo some young girl that had rejected the attentions of the said writer.”

The man of science said, “I don’t suppose there would be any chance of anything being fixed there, since the girl had obviously made up her mind. When a girl makes up her mind…”

“No you’re right of course… bad example.” Without any prompting, his eyes glazed over and he went on. “You know, talking of girls, whenever I find kitty sitting on my favourite chair and I give her a gentle nudge for her to jump off, I get this strange little squeak. I like to think she is saying “Yes, of course, there you are, I’ve warmed it up for you.” He shook his head. “However, it may well be that what she’s really saying is, “Oh! No! I was so comfortable.”

His companion sat nodding slowly. He was used to his friend drifting off into his harmless dream world from time to time.

After this, they sat for some time discussing various examples of things that needed to be put right, both with and without the use of poetry.

Finally, the man of science, albeit a long time since this had been his work, leant over and tapped the pad with his friend’s verses. “May I see what you’ve come up with?”

“Of course, not finished yet, but I’m making progress.”

The other read.

“To be honest, I can’t see this fixing the well-publicised issue of the lack of veracity applied to the running of the 2016 presidential election campaign.”