Author: Alexander Fawn

The old man heard the gentle knock at his door.

He knew what it meant. He had fallen asleep in his chair. He glanced at the clock; nearly two in the morning. He would be happy to receive the reaper into his tiny flat. Happy to shuffle off his mortal coil. His last relapse had been the worst yet, and it told him that his time was short. He would welcome the man with the scythe. No more hospital stays. No more weeping visitors. For him, death would be a blessing.

He struggled up and made his way slowly and painfully to the front door.

Opening it, he found no redeemer, no liberator.

It was the batty woman from number seven, clutching an empty sugar bowl.

The international gathering of scientists were thorough in their deliberations.

The final report on Global Climate Change had been forwarded to the leaders of every nation on Earth. Their findings were, as expected, most worrying. The trapping of the sun’s warmth in the planet’s lower atmosphere, played a major role in what had become known as the Greenhouse Effect. It was shown that the warming of the Earth’s atmosphere, along with the resulting air pollution in the form of greenhouse gases, was responsible for a number of far-ranging and quite catastrophic environmental issues and a frighteningly long list of worsening health effects. The world-wide instance of people suffering from respiratory diseases being the most common.

All in all, the amount of statistical evidence gathered proved conclusively that apart from peoples’ health, the growing occurrences of extreme weather, the world-wide disruptions to the supply of food and the ever-growing number of wildfires were all the result of climate change, caused by greenhouse gases.

Looking back, the immediate response to the report’s release at the time was subdued, particularly in the case of the world’s major powers. The report clearly identified these as being by far the largest polluters. That was a number of years ago now; long before the use of full face respirator masks became mandatory.

It is hard to say why more wasn’t done at the time. Those world leaders were, by default, governments of one kind or another. They each had their individual considerations about what it would mean to their economies. With this in mind, along with the fact that most had considerable control over the media, it is probably not surprising that the crucial nature of the reports and its findings were downplayed.

After all, business is business!

He had always suffered from the same problem.

The thing had got him into trouble a number of times. It was a weakness, he supposed. The bottom line was, he could never tell whether a person was being serious or not. He had shown how easily he could be taken in time after time. On this particular occasion, he was on his break. He went to the nearby shopping centre, where the pretty girl in the kiosk brewed a really good coffee. It was a small kiosk that sat in the middle of the main shopping centre walkway. It sold coffee mainly, with a small selection of takeaway food. The girl inside the circular counter worked alone as barista, pie warmer, snack seller, everything.

She is conscious of the man across the aisle, where he sits reading a newspaper, eyeing her constantly. Just looking at him makes her shudder. She has been there for several weeks. She cheers up when she sees one of her regulars approaching. He is really nice, always polite. She knows his regular order and begins to prepare a cappuccino with two sugars to take away. As she does this, she thinks of something…

With a few friendly words between them, she hands him his coffee. With his change she slips a small note into his hand and winks. She then briefly puts a fingertip to her lips. He nods, realising that she can’t say more. He thanks her and walks away. The man with the newspaper watches him go.

Once outside on the street, he unfolds the piece of paper, it reads, ‘Help! I was abducted from my home. They won’t let me out of here. Call the police.’

The dozen or so soldiers stood and saluted as the commander entered.

The second in command introduced his superior officer as he came in, saying this would be a tactical lesson, being an important part of their military training programme. Then he told them to sit and took his own seat at the front. The senior army officer took up a marker and approached the large whiteboard. He carefully drew a line across the centre of the board halfway down. Above the line he wrote ‘Enemy Territory’, and below, ‘Our Forces’. He then drew a circle in the lower half.

He turned to his audience and said, “This represents higher ground, an obvious advantage point.” He stood looking around the room, as if he was assuring himself that they all understood what he was saying. After a long pause, he returned to his diagram and began with his marker again.

Below the circle he spent several minutes drawing two little stick figures sitting at a table. The men in the room were growing restless. When they caught occasional glimpses of what was being drawn, furtive looks darted around the room.

He turned to the men, pointing at one of the figures. “This chap,” he announced, “is a vegetarian.” More sly looks and one or two muffled sniggers went around.

The second-in-command coughed and the room fell silent.

At this point, the officer drew a large smiley face in the top right hand corner of the board and, staggering slightly, left the room.

As the door closed the red faced second-in-command rose and turned to face the men, he shrugged, saying, “It’s his meds. Dismissed!”

As soon as she came out of the station and turned into the street she saw her.

An old lady, huddled in a blanket, sitting on the pavement with her back against a lamppost. Walking towards her she noticed that pedestrians were giving her a wide birth. The old woman hardly looked up as they passed. She couldn’t see her face and made no attempt to avoid walking close to her. The woman squinted up at her and gave a sad smile. She stopped just long enough to look at the old woman’s wrinkled features and tousled hair. Suddenly, from under the blanket a skinny arm came out holding a piece of paper. She went to see what it was, but it was quickly held to the old woman’s chest. She could see now; it was a photograph.

“My little girl,” she croaked. “Sick, she is. I’m saving, saving up for her operation.”

The woman wondered how true this was, but certainly felt for her. She rolled her head to one side with a smile and went for her purse.

“That’s very kind of you, dear,” she whispered.

She only seemed to have notes in her purse. She decided she’d give her a five. As she passed it down the arm came up so eagerly that the photo fluttered to the ground. She bent to pick it up. As she did, she managed to get a quick look at it before handing it back. Her face remained expressionless while the woman thanked her for her kindness.

As she walked on, she realised that she had been happy to give her something. The old beggar was right, she had done it out of kindness.

After all, the photo… it was a picture of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz.

For him, it was a constant struggle to make things shorter.

His stories rarely filled more than a page of type. He would count the number of words, then start culling again. Removing a word here, or one there. Maybe using just one word to replace two or three. It was a continual battle. His favourite stories were those with only fifty words, or less. Sometimes he managed to tell a tale in only forty, or even thirty. Rarely was he able to manage it with twenty, and rarer still, ten.

His latest triumph was his story that contained only five words! It was, he felt, almost a masterpiece. It was the pinnacle of his writing career, and yet, he wanted improve on it. He spent many hours on it, snipping it here, reducing it there. Finally, he sat looking at a single word. A word that he eventually decided was completely superfluous. Once gone, he sat staring at the page. It was just a white rectangle sitting in the middle of his computer screen, but… he printed it anyway.

When his five-year-old daughter came in from play, He handed her the sheet.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It’s my latest story. What do you think?”

She stared at the page for several minutes without saying anything. He could see she was concentrating and was perfectly happy to remain quiet.

“Lots of elephants,” she began, “they are all walking slowly in a long line, holding each other’s tails. It is a very sunny day. There aren’t many trees. But it’s very nice.”

He nearly spoke before she looked up, saying, “They are really happy.”

The writer clapped.

He had annual leave coming up, but had no idea where he wanted to go.

As a young guy in his twenties, he felt that the world was his oyster. He knew he could go just about anywhere in the world for a couple of weeks. The problem was, each year he’d done a bit of travelling, seeing new places, but this time around he had no idea where he should go. That evening, although he got home rather late, he decided to have a quick look back at past occasions. He sat looking through his photo album, looking at previous holidays, hoping to get some idea of what he wanted to do. As he turned the last page it was obvious that this hadn’t helped.

Then he saw it. On the right. On the page that should have been empty, a single photograph. It was bang in the centre of the page. The position of it looked odd. Why had he stuck it right in the middle like that? When he looked closely at it, he could see that it was a picture of himself in the foreground, smiling at the camera. He studied the scenery. He didn’t recognise it. It was some sort of open space with people walking about in it. It had a somewhat European look to it; Italy maybe? That couldn’t be right because he’d never visited the country. The more he looked at it, the more perplexed he became. It was definitely him, but he had no memory of it. Also, who was taking the picture? That wasn’t something he normally did. Surely, he would have some memory of that!

He carefully lifted it out from the self-adhesive photo corners and turned it over. Nothing! No date or any brief note about its location. He always wrote something on the back, always!

He fitted the picture back into place while considering what he should do about resolving the mystery. He felt sure that no one had put it there as some sort of practical joke. He was also convinced that the image placed him somewhere that he had never been. He needed to find out where that was. The internet would be the place to go for this, although there was nothing much to go on. On the right of the picture was a long building with lots of columns. It was two stories high and looked very grand. There was an old-fashioned looking lamppost, and way back in the distance, a single column with a strangely flared top section.

He rubbed his eyes, there may be something on top, but it was too hard to make out. He was getting tired and eventually he decided to sleep on it. Before going to bed, he used his phone’s camera to take a picture of it. Tomorrow, in the office, if the opportunity arose, he could do a little research.

This he did, and coming home on the following day, he went straight to the album. He was pretty sure he’d worked out where the picture was taken. In the office he had finally ended up with several pictures that were taken around the Piazza San Marco. His photograph was of Saint Mark’s Square, in Venice.

Opening the album, he went to the page. He was no longer in the photograph! He was no longer there…. He stared at the picture for several beats before blinking a few times. At this point, although this was something that he was never able to fully understand, he simply closed the book and switched on his computer. Within minutes he was looking at more pictures of the popular tourist destination and soon after that, he was checking out the website of his travel agency.

A little later, thinking he should at least write something on the back of the mysterious photograph, if only the date that it was found. This time, when he opened the album at the page, the photo was gone, leaving only the four corner pieces. Again, the lack of surprise at discovering this seemed to be perfectly natural.

In fact, before he turned in that night, he went to the album once more and found what he seemed to expect. The corners had gone! He ran his fingertips over the surface where they had been and felt no trace of stickiness. Again, he regarded this as normal.

Despite the fact that the whole thing had been very strange, sitting in the travel agency on the following day, he knew exactly where he was going.

Leaving the shop, he found himself thinking about the album and couldn’t help wondering where he’d be going next year!

You would have to say that there are better ways of making decisions.

For him, it was always on the toss of a coin. As a young man he was always doing this to make up his mind. So far he’d done rather well. He’d beaten the odds most times. Would he buy the regular box of cereal or the moneysaving super-size? Was he interested in going to his old school friend’s birthday party? Should he call in and get petrol now or later? Did the lawns need a mow? Brown or black socks? Tea or coffee? Heads for yes, tails for no.

He was coming out of a shop when it happened. He felt he’d had enough of it. Would he get these last couple of items on his list today or would he call it quits and go home? Out came the coin. He flipped but missed it as it came down. It hit the pavement and rolled off the edge and over the drain. He bent over and saw it had come to rest on a bar of the grill. That was lucky, he thought, as he stepped out and crouched to retrieve it. He didn’t notice that the car was travelling much too close to the kerb.

Lying unconscious in a hospital bed, the doctors weren’t sure whether or not he would recover. The coma he was in was very deep. It could go either way. The doctor made a brief note on his chart.

His colleague said, “If you had to make a judgement about his chances of recovery, what would you say?”

After rummaging through his trouser pockets, the doctor turned to the other and asked, “Do you have a coin?”

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.