Author: Alexander Fawn

He fumbled with the spanner, trying not to let go of it.

was hard enough holding onto it through the glove, let alone placing it over the nut. Over the last several months he had lost several tools like that. One false move and they just float away into space, lost forever. He hated outside maintenance. He paused, looking at the shiny metal ring spanner thinking about its history. The number of times it had been picked up and used throughout the centuries. Such a basic tool. Such a simple idea. He was snapped out of his musings by a loud crackling in his helmet.

This had been happening for several days now. He was only getting brief snatches of what mission control was trying to tell him. He had lost two-way communication with Earth a few hours back. It was only one way now and continually breaking up. He knew there was some sort of panic going on back there in the control room, he managed to figure out that much, but he didn’t know exactly what it was. He had heard the words ‘third world war’ several times. Could this be the real deal or just another beat up to sell more newspapers? To maintain revenue from advertising.

Advertising had swamped the world back there. This had been one of his main reasons for taking on space work. It was quiet out here. He could play his music and listen to his books. He could eat as many of his favourite pies as he liked with nobody to judge him for it; not up here, anyway. He looked out into the black abyss, in the general direction of where he’d been so often hassled about his eating habits. Only the general direction, of course. All he could see was a scattering of tiny pin points, with his own pin point being somewhere in the centre of it all.

At that moment there was a mighty flash and his earpiece went dead.

In that one dreadful moment he realised what must have happened. He went back to staring at his spanner. What was the point? What was the point of it now? What did any of it matter? He swivelled his helmet back and watched the glow become dimmer by the second, until there was nothing to see but the same blackness with little white dots, presumably with one of them now missing. Looking again at his spanner he thought he might just uncurl his fingers and let it float away. What was the point? Just let it float away into space. What was the point of any of it?

He suddenly got a grip on himself. His full senses came flooding back. With a great blast of awareness, he realised what he was doing. What he was out here doing was turning this nut. He was retightening the main seal on the ship’s refrigeration unit. He was stopping the leak. He was maintaining the reliability of his food supply, not least of which was enough pies to keep him fed for another three months.

He looked back down at the large hexagonal nut with new purpose. He tightened his grip.

It was hard enough holding onto it through the glove, let alone placing it over the nut…

She found it strange; the way tastes can change.

Ever since she was young and her mother made it, she absolutely loved sweet and sour fish. The whole family liked it. That was then, over a decade ago, now some new view of things came into her life. A view that had altered both her attitude and taste regarding the subject of sweet and sour fish. Although this had probably come about as a result of her university studies bringing up the fact that there are two sides to everything and how this in turn can bring about paradoxes, she was not entirely sure if this was the case. Paradoxes in themselves, she was learning, can become powerful game changers. What she did know was that the idea of liking something both sweet and sour at the same time was not at all something she was comfortable with.

After all, there were sweet things and there were sour things. Was she looking at something in between? Surely a person should have a preference for one or the other. Shouldn’t the fish be either sweet or sour? Could you really like both together? Doesn’t this mean that the creature exudes some sense that the fish itself is somewhat undecided about its state? Following this line of thought could well lead to considerations about the creature’s uncertain manner of being, its undefined place in the world, its bipolar existence, and its blatant capriciousness!

Did all this go much deeper? She didn’t want to over psychoanalyse, but she can remember her two goldfish and how upset she was when she found them floating one morning. She refused offers to replace them. She remembers how much more pleasure she got, as a child, feeding the chickens and collecting their eggs.

After considering all this for a while, she realised that she was willing to give sweet and sour chicken a go…

The old lady stood in the checkout queue with her three items.

She took out her purse and began counting the change. Shoppers moved forward and she had room on the conveyor belt for her tin of stew, carton of milk and a tin of cat food. The checkout girl greeted her with a perfunctory smile. She deftly scanned the items and called out the cost. The pensioner frowned. Her bony fingers raked around in her purse.

After a moment, she pushed the stew to one side.

Her old eyes looked into the young face. “I’ll leave that, if you don’t mind, dear.”

The girl felt a swell of emotion, but she understood and only said, “Of course, miss. That’ll be fine.”

With coins and items exchanged, the girl’s smile was now extra warm as she wished her a good day.

As the old woman moved off through the shops, walking slowly with her bag, the girl paused to watch her go.

She’ll be telling her friends about this for weeks.

He sat discussing his hobby with his imaginary visitor.

“How often,” he starts, “does it come about that a person finds themselves in a quiet moment, asking the question, ‘why do I do this?’ A writer can do this. This writer does.”

The imaginary visitor listens in silence.

“I guess it’s all about very short stories… It takes around two minutes to read 300 words. If those words contain an interesting statement or an idea or even just the hint of an idea, then the writing of them is made worthwhile. Not only that, you have engagement.”

The other nods their head.

“If in those words they give a view into the relationship between two or more people or the thoughts of somebody sitting alone or a challenging situation that requires some sort of resolution, they may leave the reader with something to think about…”

The other is listening.

“I guess, below the surface there may be other less acknowledged aspects, such as the fact that the supply of stories is everywhere and can’t be avoided. They shout at you!”

The writer pauses.

“I guess you’d have to say that my stories fall somewhere between a cursory glimpse into a brief incident and a broader delving into the mysteries of the human soul.”

The writer smiles.

“Then there is the more technical stuff, like having so few words to play with promotes the obvious preference to take a linear or straight line approach in a story’s structure. Keep it simple; start, middle and end. One is trying to create people and situations that the reader can briefly become involved with. Of course, there is always that enigmatic approach in the writing that entices the reader to look beneath, to see what is simple and mentally expand this to the complex.”

The writer glares at his visitor.

“For instance, is the imaginary visitor male or female? Did they come of their own volition or were they invited? Are they older or younger than the writer? Is describing their time together entirely reasonable?”

This, by default, is engagement…

He wasn’t sure where to start.

He had so many ideas. He looked at his drafts. Each one being the basis for a story. Some of them only consisted of a sentence, others were stories that were almost finished. He looked down a list of some of his favourites. There was one about a young man who shoots what he thought was a burglar that was actually his uncle coming for a visit, or the one about all the pretty scenery outside the coach, but the ride makes the person feel sick, or a tourist car automatically going round and round a circuit on an uninhabited planet, or digging up a corpse to steal an expensive necklace, or boys hearing a strange growling coming from a cave.

Then there’s the one about a much-loved tree, scheduled to be removed, or a nursery rhyme character being a murder suspect, or trying to find the right computer chip for an early model android, the thoughts going through the head of an old woman in an ambulance, filming things in a studio pretending they happened on another planet, Satan tempting someone to do bad things, a man selling magical things from his spare room to make room for a lodger, choosing a coffin for the mother-in-law who’s about to move in with the family, a tradesmen who doesn’t fix things at home, but fixes things for other people, or the wrong person showing up at the pearly gates.

It was all quite overwhelming.

He liked the one about the unknown creature in the cave.

He had to start somewhere, if he was going to get anything done. He opened a new page on his laptop. He decided to call it ‘Cave’.

He began to type…

‘None of the boys knew what it was that lived in the cave.

It was quite common to hear deep growling sounds coming from deep within it. It was probably some wild animal that had made it its home. Nobody knew for sure. All three of them stood at the entrance. They peered into the dark tunnel as far as they could see, which wasn’t very far. They were debating who should go in first, just to check it out. As none of them was actually volunteering, they decided that the oldest of them should do it. After some hesitation, the boy made his way in slowly while the others looked on. Gradually, he disappeared into the blackness with only his footsteps being heard. A minute or so passed before they…’

Looking through the mail, he was intrigued by the golden envelope.

It had been addressed by hand. He opened it and found an elegant invitation card, printed in a beautiful script. It was for an Old Boys’ School Reunion being hosted by a boy from his old year, who’d obviously done well for himself. It was to be held at his country house with supper and entertainment provided. He saw the name; Caruthers. He remembered him. He was Bugsy Caruthers to them all. Holding the invitation card, he stood thinking about the old days. He let the card flutter to the floor.

He stamped on it. He continued to bring his foot down on it violently, over and over, until he became short of breath. He picked it up and crushed it into a ball. He went into the kitchen and found a china dish. He dropped the crumpled card in it. He struck a match and set light to it. He watched it slowly burn. When it was just a few wispy flakes of carbon he took it through to the bathroom, where he emptied the dish into the toilet bowl. He flushed the toilet. After taking the dish back to the kitchen he returned to the bathroom and peered into the bowl. It was empty. He flushed it again, just to make sure.

He had always really hated Bugsy!

The law was perfectly clear regarding the building of these devices.

In short, under federal explosives law it is illegal to engage in the business of manufacturing explosives without a license. The government’s explosives bill, targeted those who were involved in the manufacture, supply and use of improvised explosive devices states clearly that anyone found guilty of detonating a homemade explosive, such as this, without a lawful excuse, faces up to twenty years imprisonment.

It was for this reason that his work takes place in the shadows of the spacious and almost empty cellar beneath his grandfather’s old fashioned yet popular pie shop. The old man rarely went down there, and was happy for him to tinker with his laptop and play video games to his heart’s content. The only thing of value down there was the shop owner’s Blue Willow china collection, gathered over many years. These had been carefully wrapped and were kept in a locked cupboard for safekeeping. They were far too precious to have on display, and it had been emphasised that the cupboard was not to be disturbed in any way.

On this particular day, his grandparents were out for the afternoon. They were visiting a touring exhibition of precious porcelain, showing at a library in a nearby town. The bomb-maker saw this as his chance to settle down and finish his work. He regarded this particular construction to be his masterpiece. It needed to be built to strict specifications. It had to be powerful enough to completely destroy the upper floor of a government building.

He unlocked the large suitcase and perused his stock. It was packed with dozens of blocks of C-4. He considered carefully before removing five of them. These were placed and secured in a smaller case that would be used to transport the device. Once the detonators had been prepared, he set the timer to allow for a one hour delay.

At the very moment that the last two wires were connected, the glass display cabinets in the library rattled. His grandparents looked on with horror, as one or two precious items toppled off their plinths. When the room stopped shaking they peered at the delicate pieces, hoping that no damage had been done.

Meantime, back home, the quaint little shop dropped suddenly into the smouldering pit that had once housed the family’s prized porcelain collection.

His late grandson knew a lot about bomb making, but was obviously behind the times when it came to daylight saving.

The old lady looked forward to Sunday Mass.

She could no longer make it to the church. She was too frail for that. Her son used to take her, but it was too much of an imposition for her liking, so she stayed at home and watched it on the TV. It was a ritual she enjoyed. She would first take the bottle of wine from the box in the cupboard and place it on the low table that sat between her armchair and the television. This was followed by a packet of plain crackers from the larder. Then she would take down the lovely pewter chalice her dearly beloved and much missed husband had bought for her, just because she liked it so much. She would give it a wipe and place it next to the wine. At this point she would open the bottle to let the wine breathe for a while. The man from the farm told her that. Finally, she would switch the TV on and go to the channel that aired religious programmes and select the service. She did this a few minutes before it was due to start, giving herself time to make herself comfortable.

When the service began she sat devoutly, listening and watching the programme in silence. At the appropriate time, she climbed out of her chair and knelt beside the table. With the priest on the screen extending his arms and reciting, she took a single cracker and placed it on her tongue. She then took the bottle and tipped in a small quantity of wine. This she sipped. After a few long moments with her head bowed, she returned to her chair to watch the remainder of the service. As she did, she would take an occasional sip of the wine. It was truly delicious. She always found that the taste and the aroma of it became stronger with every sip. So much so that as the evening went on these grew larger and larger.

The wine was homemade. Her neighbouring farmer used peaches from his orchard. He was a nice man. All those years ago they had gone to the same local school together. He was proud of the quality of the wine he made, often telling her how you should use the yeast starter two days before starting the wine, together with getting the temperature spot on was the trick to getting a good fermentation. She never really understood any of this, but was happy to listen to how much pleasure he got out of it. For the price of a cup of tea and a brief chat he would hand deliver a box regularly. It was their little secret.

She never went to bed on those nights. The armchair was comfortable enough.

Yes, she really looked forward to Sunday Mass.

A flat glass panel with a coating behind,

Some with a scratch or a crack.

Only an image of what is there,

Silently looking back.

–

Reality is its only stock.

No metaphors are there at play.

Nothing is ever exorcised.

False distractions just fall away.

–

There is no enchantment to be found,

In the nature of its return.

Reflections exist for themselves alone.

No candles of prayer to burn.

–

There never is a portrait,

Visible in the glass.

No chaos lurks within it,

Just snatches of memories that pass.

–

It is never a captive picture.

Never a materialised gaze.

That which looms into view,

Never really stays.

–

It will not mock adornments,

Nor will it give back praise.

A reflection is all it ever depicts,

And broken at the end of its days.

The man sat in front of a large monitor, occasionally making notes on what he saw.

He was looking at the Luna surface. This was something he was expected to do for several hours every week. In truth, he was just plain bored. He didn’t share his feelings about how he felt with his colleagues. In this place, everybody around him was convinced that working in the NASA facility was the best thing since sliced bread! For him, he couldn’t understand how, after all that study and attaining degrees in three different areas of astronomical and scientific research, it had come down to this. His father had tried to talk him into taking on a partnership in his fruit packing business when he left school. But no, he wanted something more exciting. He wanted to be part of something that was ground-breaking. Packing fruit had never appealed more.

He had to admit that what he was seeing now was better than before. Then, he’d been looking at pictures that were taken during a moon landing. The last mission, apart from taking many samples, had set up a permanent camera on a high lamppost-like structure that gave a live feed of several square metres of surface where samples had been taken. The fact that he was looking at a small area of the moon in real-time was better than still photographs, but not a lot.

The image he was looking at was quite sharp and he could move the camera around on a universal joint, along with the ability to zoom in and out. He was in the process of measuring the dimensions of a range of small rocks when he came across a strange shape. Two things struck him about the thing. The first being that its shape, unlike the rocks, seemed to have some regularity about it and the second was the idea that it hadn’t been there a few moments ago.

Adjusting the image with the controls he had, he magnified the dark shape and brought it into focus. It looked to be round, with a faint pattern on it. He began to reason that it could be man-made and had been left behind by one of those that had gathered soil samples.

He was considering the possibility that it was a lid from a container or some sort of badge that had been dropped… when it moved!