Author: Alexander Fawn

The youngster was exploring his environment.

Each time he left his mother’s side to go sightseeing he would travel a little further. There was so much to see and he came to realise that his domain, or what he could see of it, was truly vast. When he returned, his mother was waiting. She looked as though she was going to give him the big warning lecture again. The one about the danger signs that a youngster should know about. He was right.

She was saying, “Just beware of the other world, the one up there,” her eyes rolled up as she said it. “Those that inhabit the upper world are wicked. They are evil monsters that will use deception and trickery. They’ll do whatever it takes to find us and kill us. There have been rumours that they actually eat us!”

The youth looked nervous.

“Yes, I know,” she said, “every mother has to explain this to her young.”

He looked away.

“Yes, you can go now. Just remember what I told you.”

Later that day he was weaving his way through the tall greenery of his world when he saw it. He saw the worm. It was wriggling and looked tasty. It was pinned to something metal. He remembered his mother’s warning. He swam closer and looked up, and there it was, the line she had spoken of. It went straight up and out into the other world.

He swam on.

The man on the river bank gripped his rod a little tighter and cursed as he watched the fish swim away.

It was amazing how quickly he was thrown back to an earlier time.

The pop song had been very popular and extremely meaningful to him in his early teens. He remembered her. Her smile and her laughter. That wonderful way she had laughed; it had been contagious. When she laughed, others joined in. Now, in this place, this all but forgotten love song had barely begun to play, when the tears started. He had no idea this old number had been chosen. With eyes squeezed shut, he began to sob. His sobbing grew louder…He felt her hand grip his elbow. Tears ran down his cheeks as he opened his eyes. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his face. He did his best to smile as he looked around at all the wedding guests, then back at his bride. She was frowning. The priest coughed.

“Sorry. Hay fever,” he whispered.

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.

Moments passed. Then, behind him, the elevator squealed and the doors slid open. The gentleman in question emerged. He stood, looking around for a moment.

He said “Paragon 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 returned to cleaning the window.

He was perfectly content with his job, he liked gardening.

He’d been the gardener at a local school for some time. He found the work rewarding and would be paid the occasional compliment about how nicely the grounds were kept. He also liked reading, mainly books about the sciences. He was always searching out television documentaries on the subject. It was on one of these evenings when he went to bed quite late after watching a science show. He woke with a start in the middle of the night. It hadn’t been a nightmare. It had been a dream. He was wide awake with questions running through his head. He got up and sat on the edge of the bed remembering quite clearly the questions from his sleep. He began to recount them.

Do we need to know more than the fact that living things are required to interact in order to maintain life? Do what we call sociology, economics, philosophy and religion promote this? Do we need to look beyond these to understand that life is about chemical reactions? Do biology, geology and astronomy give us a greater understanding of this? Do these subjects further our understanding of why particles form molecules? Are physics and chemistry telling us why particles, forces and fields interact? How heavily are we relying on the fundamental science of physics?

Why should such questions be so important to him? There was obviously some kind of unfulfilled need going on. During the day he gave it a great deal of thought, while making sure he concentrated on his work. However, being a lone worker without any direct supervision certainly gave him both the time and the opportunity to think.

That evening he used his computer to get information about how to study with the Open University. He soon recognised his need. He would study online for a degree in physics!

There was simply no accounting for it.

It all began months ago. The irony of it was that she knew the exact moment it had started. It was in late November, she remembers the incident clearly. It was on one of her Thursday evenings. One of those times she would regularly set aside for what she liked to call her random reading. This being the one activity in her highly ordered life of working in the strict and methodical environment as a means test assessor in the city’s tax office, that wasn’t organised. She privately enjoyed the whimsical nature of it.

On this particular occasion she had approached her multi-shelved bookcase with her eyes closed. She had pulled out a book at random and settled down in her comfy reading chair, as was her custom. She opened the book, it happened to be the King James Bible, giving no thought as to where it would open, and began to read.

At Genesis 19 she read with great interest how two angels had visited Lot in the city of Sodom. How they had told him to take his wife and daughters out of the city before it was destroyed, and how they were told not to look back, and how his wife looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt. Following her reading session she sat down to supper, only to find that her life was about to change radically. She became really sick.

Over the following months she had grown weaker, with her immune system gradually shutting down day by day. During this period she had several doctor’s appointments, a number of expensive visits to Psychiatrists and two CT scans. Despite all this medical analysis, it remained a complete mystery how this collision of synapses within the brain had brought about the life-threatening condition. A strange and unknown malady that was rapidly taking her to an early grave. The entire affair was a complete mystery, both to her and to the dozen or so medical professionals.

How could a simple passage from the Bible bring about such an unexpected and life-threatening allergy to pepper?

Ever since his schooldays he had developed a real passion for précising.

The teacher would come up with a paragraph that contained a hundred words and would ask the class to précis it, using around a third of the words to do it. He probably enjoyed it more than the rest of the class. This interest in finding text and making it shorter and more precise stayed with him into his working life. Despite the fact that his job didn’t lend itself to practicing his favourite pastime, he found plenty of opportunity to put it to work in the world around him. He found examples on notices that were pinned to the information board in the office, public notices on the train, recipe instructions on food packaging, and even the occasional blurb on the back of a paperback.

In fact, he was in a bookshop doing this very thing, when he met her. She was putting new books on shelves when they got chatting, and the next thing you know they were dating. Although at first she was mildly interested in his desire to reduce the number of words used for just about anything, she didn’t share his interest with any fervour. It was a fact that their communications were mainly carried out with text messages. They in themselves being generally short and sweet suited them both fine although not giving him much in the way of a challenge.

As the days went on they regularly caught up, each time arranged by text. They hadn’t been going out for very long when it happened, but long enough for him to know that she was, surely, the girl of his dreams. It was on their third evening out together. They had been to the cinema and watched a movie they both really enjoyed, then followed up with a meal at a restaurant, where they spent the whole time talking about it.

Finally, he was driving her home when he realised he hadn’t asked her how her day at work had been. On the ten minute drive she told him all about it.

It was when he pointed out that she had used one thousand and twenty three words and he felt sure that he could have done it with less than two hundred, that she went quiet.

When they pulled up at her place he didn’t get a goodnight kiss. Instead, she simply got out and went in. The following day he sent her a text asking if she’d like to catch up for a midday coffee.

The single word, ‘no’, was the last text she ever sent.

They had enjoyed a wonderful evening out together.

It started with a show that they both enjoyed and spent time discussing it as they walked the few blocks across town. At one point, they had stopped to kiss briefly, before crossing the road. At the restaurant, after the meal and the wine, they had talked for such a long time, sharing their feelings and hopes for the future. They had laughed a lot and she didn’t want it to end, he knew it had to. It was very late when the taxi dropped them both at the end of her street. They deliberately walked slowly to make the most of the evening. They were both so happy.

He had planned it that way. He had brought things to the perfect moment for him to tell her that he was married.

It is a remote Macedonian village, nestled on the slopes of Mount Olympus.

The buildings are old and of simple construction. Yet, set as they are, amid the sweeping hills of green fir trees, it has its own beauty. It is very hot in Greece this time of year. It is a small community. Even the locals take the shade where they can.

In the little square, there is a young woman. She sits on an old wooden bench over cobble stones. She is lonely. She sobs quietly to herself. She knows in her heart that there is someone out there. A kindred spirit. A man that would fulfil all her dreams. She knows beyond any doubt that there is a soul-mate out there, somewhere, like her, waiting.

Her tears hiss gently as they land on the heated stones, and evaporate almost immediately. Although not readily noticed by the casual observer, tiny puffs of vapour float up from where the tears strike. They float steadily skyward.

Meanwhile, across an expanse of sea, in a small town on the Turkish coast, a young man sits on the back steps of his home, reading. He too feels some strange longing for a companionship not yet discovered. There are many houses in his town, between where he sits and the Aegean Sea, but he stares in that direction anyway. He so often gazes that way without knowing why.

Above, the grey clouds that have threatened, finally send down the light beginnings of what will be rain. He gathers up his books and stands. He lifts his face to the sky for the briefest of moments. He feels the cold spots that dapple his cheeks.

He was glad when his neighbour called in; he needed someone to talk to.

He was still shaken when they sat down.

“Are you OK? You don’t look too good,” asked the friend from across the street.

The man shook his head. “No, still getting over it, I suppose.”

The neighbour looked around, and said, “What’s happened?”

The other took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It happened last night,” he began, “I’d just settled down to watch the final part of a forty-episode series I’ve been watching, when I heard this peculiar humming noise coming from the back. Naturally, I got up and put the back light on. There was this saucer, smack in the middle of the back lawn.”

“Wow!”

“I know, it was quite a shock I can tell you. It wasn’t very big, but it filled the lawn. Anyway, after just standing, gawping at it for a couple of minutes, there was a hissing sound and a side panel that seemed to be hinged at the bottom, flapped open and dropped, forming a ramp. Moments later, this blue thing appeared.” He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. “It came down the ramp and stood looking at me.” He massaged his face for a moment and went on. “It was pretty ugly, I suppose. It was half the size of a human, with extremely thin arms and legs. Its head and backside were huge compared with the rest of it. It was blue, like I said, from head to toe, and naked, except for a skimpy, blue loincloth.”

“Hell! What did it do?”

“It began flapping its arms around and pointing at the saucer, I could see it was in trouble. It pointed to the tool shed and we went in. It stood there making a sawing motion with its skinny arm. I opened the cupboard and took out a hacksaw. Its head nodded immediately. It took it with spindly fingers and went forward peering into the cupboard. Well, after a couple of minutes it had selected half a dozen tools it seemed to need. It had dropped them on the floor, so I grabbed the empty toolbox I use for taking stuff out on jobs, put the tools in and held it out. I was really surprised when it took it without any problem and promptly marched back to the ship with it. It was obviously a lot stronger than it looked. Anyway, it went up the ramp and disappeared inside.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing really, I just stood waiting for a few minutes.”

“Wow! You were probably in shock.”

“I suppose I was, but I had a bigger shock coming.”

“Go on.”

“After a bit, it came back out and began waving its little arms about, as though it was doing some sort of semaphore. I didn’t know what to do so I just gave it the thumbs up. Its head just went to one side, so I waved.”

The neighbour nodded. “Best thing, I suppose. What happened then?”

“Well, as it turned to leave, I suddenly remembered and called out, ‘What about my toolbox?’ At that point it stopped, leant forward with its hands on its knees, wobbled its huge rear end and passed wind! I was shocked, I can tell you. With that, it ran up the ramp, giggling. I think it was giggling…”

“And?”

“And? Nothing. The door slammed and the ship shot straight up at enormous speed, like a rat up a drainpipe!”

Within a tiny clearing,

Albeit quite unseen.

Surrounding trees wave their leaves,

Where a gentle breeze has been.

–

An untouched patch of swaying grass,

Dotted with rocks and stones.

Broken twigs and branches lay,

Amid the tiny bones.

A lone butterfly enters there,

With beating wings not heard.

It dances low above the ground,

Slow fluttering preferred.

–

In this moment it owns it all,

No threat or challenge to face.

It is master of this little world,

It surveys the spot with grace.

–

It moves on, not looking back

At the treasure left behind.

No lessons here are heeded,

Though they are sorely needed,

About the grasping of humankind.