Author: Alexander Fawn

In his bed, he considers the moment.

He ponders the idea that a great deal can be attributed to the moment between life and death. In that very moment, midway between the two, a great deal can happen. It is not only that moment when the likelihood of both life and death can be taken in equal measure, but all else. An athlete holds still while a medal is pinned. A waiter smiles as he uncorks a bottle of champagne. A detective looks down at a body at a crime scene. A child sees an ice-cream being proffered. An innocent man is lead to a place of execution. An artist stands back to view a finished painting. A girl is surprised when the bell sounds that indicates the end of the allotted exam time. A boy watches as the moon appears from behind a cloud. A woman cries with joy as she gives birth. A soldier being trained to kill by his government pauses to question it. A priest sitting back after writing his sermon.

These are all moments.

Such musings, he feels, are only jottings from the myriad forms of human entanglement. The moment itself is shared by both life and death. The moment of it splits the condition of each. It is not merely something that may suggest high stakes, much more than that. A variety of events far greater than involving the value of the moment. It is beyond the space that separates two points. It is beyond that intermediate instant in time.

He feels the moment. His own situation. His own immediate expectations. They preclude any certainties he may think he has regarding his present moment, midway between life and death.

She bought the tickets online, just before they sold out.

The concert would be his final tour. Being one of the top ten pop singers in the world, and him being her pop idol, she had saved like crazy for this coming night. The tickets were pricy, so none of her girlfriends could afford to go. That was OK, she didn’t mind going on her own, not at all. It meant that she could be among strangers, people she didn’t know, and didn’t know her. She could let her hair down. She had only been to a couple of concerts, and one of them was free, but when she did, she really liked to scream herself silly. It was all part of the fun.

That was certainly the case on the night. Her idol was on stage for almost three hours and he had sung his way through the entire evening and she had screamed and shouted along with the huge crowd without a letup. He was wonderful, and by the time the audience began to drift back out into the real world the fans were in a state of euphoria and exhaustion. She was no exception. Nearly half an hour later, on the platform waiting for the train, she was still dizzy with what she had experienced. She had so often fantasised about what it would be like to go out with him, be his girlfriend. Of course she knew there’d be a huge age difference, but that wouldn’t bother her.

On the train, she couldn’t help wondering what he was doing right at that very moment. He would have been exhausted too, but by now, where would he be? He looked so young on stage, he would still be on a high from the show and would be spending time with friends. He must have brought people with him. They were probably at some nightclub right now. He would be dancing with good looking women, and they would all be drinking Champaign. They would ask him to sing for them; yes, how could they resist asking him to get up on stage and give them a song. He would too…. These scenes played out in her mind as the packed train rattled along.

In fact, as soon as the singer got to his hotel, he removed the makeup from his face, removed his hairpiece, had a shower, swilled the prescribed mouthwash for his halitosis, rubbed the anti-toenail fungus cream around his toes, applied the medication to the warts on his leg and elbows, poured a glass of water and, working his way through the small containers on the bedside table, took all his tablets and crawled into bed.

She came out of the shop, disappointed that they didn’t have what she wanted.

That was all she had to do. She could cross to the bus and go home. She’d been a long time; a lot longer than she had planned. He’d be worried. She stepped off the kerb without looking and a car’s horn blasted. The driver shook his head at her. It gave her a jolt. She felt her body trembling. She went into her handbag for a tissue with fingers shaking. Looking around, she saw steps she could sit on; just for a minute.

Wow! She thought. What if I’d been knocked down? I could have been concussed, put out of action. More than that, I could have fallen victim to amnesia. I could have wandered around town not knowing where I was or how to get home. Out of desperation I might have flagged someone down in the hope that they recognised me. I might have simply thumbed a lift and accepted a ride to anywhere in that sort of condition. A truck driver for instance. One of those trucks that go great distances across country. I could have ended up somewhere, a long way for here. A stranger, starting a new life.

Feeling a lot better, she returned to the kerb.

She was looking for a truck driver.

It has come about.

Quite suddenly and with no self-evident purpose. It strives to understand its own being, using the faintest degree of awareness thus far granted to it. Sounds and images emerge slowly, discomfort and distress surely not far away. A sensation of wanting to probe dawns, as does the veiled concept of having no indulgent understanding. It is alone and remains in this limbo until the universe decides it should know; to know of itself. Isolated with no gathered memories. Suspended knowledge becoming harder to ignore. Then, images form from shadows. Forms become shapes. The designs of surroundings become clear. The universal intent unfolds and life itself becomes apparent and self-knowing.

Who is to say that it will become animal, vegetable or mineral?

A square, a square of tulips.

Barrow loads of soil.

We hiccup, we hiccup,

Let not the flowerbed spoil.

He sat looking at the page on the screen, two thirds of it was covered with type.

He was shaking his head and sighing. He had his doubts about it. For some time he’d been picking it to bits. He had gone back over all three hundred and fifty odd words several times. So many edits! Should he read through his short story once more? He felt he had just about edited the thing to death.

Was the opening paragraph too long?

Should he have said more about the main character?

Could it have done with more dialogue?

Did the title give a strong enough hint?

Was the way he described it too obscure? He knew he tended to do that.

Should he have said more about the relationship between the characters before the main event occurred?

Did he expect too much from the reader when it came to reading between the lines?

Did the ending sum it all up properly?

Finally, he had to ask himself the question, what does any of it mean? What was he trying to say?

Ah! Well, he thought, another one bites the dust.

He hit ‘Save’.

Put simply, he never liked to lie about anything.

It was probably down to his upbringing. Loving as they were, both of his parents were fairly strict about many things; telling lies was one of them. However, what happened to him recently, in fact, only a couple of evenings ago, was going to change all that. Had he not gone looking around out there in the poor light, it would never have happened. Had he checked to see whether he had the right colour during the day, when looking along the back of the shelf would have been easy, it would never have happened. Did he have regrets? How could he? All he had been quite certain about, over the last day or so, was the inevitable conversation about it. The chat with his wife. He was not looking forward to it.

He chose his time carefully. It was shortly after teatime, with everything cleared away, when they would normally relax, maybe they’d be looking forward to a show or a film on the television. That’s when he said he needed to tell her something. They were sitting down when he started.

He wiggled his head. “I don’t know how to tell you this,” he said.

She smiled. “Try me.”

He took a deep breath. “OK. I’ve won seven million on the lottery!” he blurted. Then, with a quick shake of the head, he said, “No. We’ve won seven million on the lottery.”

She frowned, she could see he was serious. “You really think you’ve won that, do you?”

“Yes. I do.” He took the ticket out of his wallet. “I’ve spent time on the internet. The numbers all check out. I’ve gone over them several times.”

She stared at it for some time before looking up. “But you don’t do the lottery. Heck, you don’t even gamble.”

He squirmed in his seat a little before saying, “I know, I was just passing the newsagency when this notice caught my eye.” That was a fib.

“When was this?”

“A couple of weeks ago.” Another fib.

“And you just walked in and bought a ticket?”

“Yep.” Also a fib.

“What newsagents are we talking about?”

He scratched his head. “I forget where I was now; it might have been our local, but it could have been another shopping centre. Sorry.” Yet another fib. They were building up, he thought.

She went wide-eyed. “I can’t believe it. What are the odds?”

“I looked that up too. One site said the odds were eight million, one hundred and forty five thousand and sixty, to one.”

She stood and threw her arms up. “Wow! If this is right and we really have won, what are we going to do with the money?’

He shrugged with a big smile. “Whatever we want,” he said, managing to sound casual.

She took a few paces and threw her arms around him.

The following day, he thought long and hard about their conversation. He was still feeling uneasy about it, but on the other hand he’d always been the sort of person that preferred the quiet life.

For once in his life he saw his fibbing to be a much better option than telling the truth.

How could he ever tell her?

…in the shed looking for a tin of paint, finding the dirty oil lamp, wiping it with a rag to see what it was made of, the genie popping out, the granting of a wish…

Nah!

He was back home and glad to be there.

He had spent yet another stint in hospital. His daughter would come by soon to see how he was doing. He looked around his tiny living room, thinking about how much nicer it was than the clinical environment of the ward he’d been in. Here he had all his personal things, pictures, photos, bits and pieces. So many of them held bad memories. All in all, he’d lived a sad life. The old man thought about all of the things that had gone wrong in his life. Looking back, he had been the one that had done what he did, but in truth, he’d had a lot of bad breaks. The bad marriage and the workplace accident were prominent among them, but there seemed to be so many!

He was shaken out of these thoughts by the sound of the front door opening. She came in, and after a brief kiss on his head she sat across from him. She asked if he had all of the medications he’d been sent home with. He pointed to the sideboard. She got up and went over to the cluster of containers. She stood reading the labels. She shook a large bottle, noting that it was nearly empty.

She sat back down with it, saying, “These are analgesics, they are painkillers.” She looked at him questioningly and said, “I thought you said that the pains you had were all gone now.” She rattled the bottle again.

“Yes. I know,” he said. “I’m taking them for my memories.”

They were staring into one another’s eyes.

He took her hand, producing a nervous smile and said, “I like you in your coat with the fur collar.”

She replied, “You do?”

He said, “Yes.”

She said, “That’s nice, dear.”

He said, “It brings out the colour of your eyes.”

She said, “Really?”

He said, “Yes, definitely.”

She said, “But, my eyes are blue.”

He said, “I know.”

She said, “My coat is brown.”

He said, “I know.”

She said, “Well, I can’t see how my brown coat can bring out the colour of my eyes.”

He said, “Why aren’t you wearing it?”

She said, “What, here, do you mean?”

He said, “Yes. You should have it on… for the eyes.”

She said, “But, we’re inside. Why would I have it on in here?”

He said, “For the eyes. Are we having pasta?”

She said, “What?”

He said, “Pasta. Are we having pasta?”

She said, “Sweetheart, you’re not making much sense.”

The doctor comes to the bed. “No. He won’t for a while. Not until the effects of the anaesthesia have worn off.”

The three men who lived and worked in the city were all writers, of one sort or another.

The first had a prestigious occupation working for a law firm where he prepared legal documents. The second held an important position as a copy editor for the city’s newspaper. The third had an enjoyable career as a freelance writer who wrote children’s stories for a publishing house. They were all friends and single. They had known each other since their school days. They would regularly catch up at their favourite café during the day. Although they lived in city apartments, they all shared a common desire to live in a house by the sea. Over time they each made plans to build their dream home at a chosen location along the nearby coast.

The first man thought he would be innovative and decided to have a straw-bale construction used. This was a building method that uses bales of straw as structural elements, as well as providing natural insulation. The second man decided that the popular timber frame construction would be best. It was basically a large carpentry job with a relatively short construction time and needing little in the way of heavy tools or equipment. The third man went for the common brick and tile house. This would be a conventional brick veneer construction with brickwork on the outside of the building, with the roof covered with overlapping clay tiles. Eventually, all three homes were built and the owners took possession.

However, not long after this, a storm came in from the ocean with gale force winds causing damage to properties along the coast. The first man had his house literally blown down. This was followed a few days later by a much greater storm with even more powerful and destructive winds, bringing even worse devastation in the form of damage to coastal properties. The second man had his house flattened.

When the third man, who lived in the brick and tile house heard what had happened he arranged for all three to catch up for a coffee. They met at the Wolf and Pig Coffee House, as was their practice. It was there that the third man’s proposal was discussed and accepted.

The others would move in with him, pay a reasonable rent, and live happily ever after!