Author: Alexander Fawn

In the operating theatre a young girl is fighting for her life.

Those in there with her are doing the same. Outside, further along the corridor and in the waiting room, a mother sits and waits. She sits in a far corner with a handkerchief pressed to her face. Music seeps into the room through a tiny speaker. It is just audible. It is classical. Wind instruments sounding against each other in a duet. A flute and a bassoon. They are competing. The flute, with its high, merrily tripping notes. The bassoon, with a deeper, more foreboding register. There is antagonism in the piece. These two instruments are at odds. The flute, ascending and offering hope. The bassoon, gravely warning of dire consequences. The battle rages as the mother sits.

On the table, a girl. An innocent victim of a careless driver. Nobody meant it to happen. In the theatre, all there are hoping to save a life. It is what they do. There is no music playing in there. Any struggle between life and death stays in the heads of those present. They do not need music to prompt the saving of a life. A machine gives a slow steady thump to beat time, giving no more melody than a metronome. In their heads they are all marking time.

The music plays on for the mother. The bassoon, ominous. The flute, striving for better things.

Hours pass before the swish of the doors are heard from the end of the hall.

The soft harmony of the flute prevails, as the surgeon comes forward with a smile.

 

She was waiting for him to text her.

The night before, they’d had a terrible row, and it was made worse by the fact that it had all been about nothing. It was probably all her fault, when she came to think about it. From the moment she got up the next morning she was listening out for the message tone she had on her phone. It was a single high pitched bell. It was amazing how many things sounded just like it. In her kitchen that morning, as she was preparing her cereal, she kept hearing sounds that could be it, and had kept checking to see whether anything had been sent. Her anxiety was growing. On the bus, going in to work she was surrounded by other people’s phones making sounds that had her frantically checking for a message. In the office, it was more of the same. All through the day she was responding to false alarms. More and more she was experiencing feelings of despair and guilt. She was frantic, waiting for something… anything!

Finally, in the evening he called her. He apologised sincerely for not getting back to her sooner. His day had been really hectic and he had to work overtime. He had lost his phone on the way in to work that day, probably on the bus. He had just got in and was calling from his parents’ home phone. He asked her if she’d been worried about not hearing from him.

“Not at all,” she said.

He watched the receding spire of the house of God through the back window of the taxi.

In some strange way, the young man was convinced that he would not be returning. All this was happening within a few short weeks of receiving Holy Orders. Even to himself, he couldn’t explain how he’d become overwhelmed by his devotion; how he had come to the realisation that this was not his calling. For him the sole searching was over. The struggle between the customs, rituals and liturgy of the church and his desire to go out into the world, was over. He knew he needed time to reflect; to find somewhere quiet to analyse the past and to plan the future. He would give himself time. In his heart, he felt sure that the Almighty would understand.

Now, some distance from his place of birth, he managed to find temporary accommodation above a seedy wine bar in a small village. After a meagre meal, he went up to his room and climbed into bed. He made himself comfortable and spent a long time considering his situation before finally falling asleep.

It had been around two in the morning when he was brought out of his sleep by a commotion out in the hallway. There was a great deal of noise, with several voices and a woman wailing. He laid there listening to the drama unfold.

He had no way of knowing that within the hour, the young girl in the next room would give birth to the antichrist…

He was out in the garden again, collecting leaves.

Well, not exactly collecting, but measuring. There again, measuring isn’t the right word either, grading is more like it. Grading the various green colours of leaves. He was certainly spoiled for choice, there were so many of them. They varied from the very pale green through to the very dark. He had gathered his latest pile and was sitting cross-legged with them in front of him. He studied the collection with interest before sorting the dozen or so samples into a row in front of him. He looked at each leaf very carefully before placing it down in its proper place. He then took the sticky tape out of his pocket and, pulling out a long length of it, placed it carefully over the row of samples. Holding one end, he stood up. With his latest leaves dangling beside him, he went back into the house.

In his room, on the largest bare wall, he added the strip. Although confused about what he was actually doing, his parents had given permission for this. The wall was almost entirely covered with these strips.

Although pleased to see that there son had been able to occupy himself, while at the same time apparently gaining a great deal of enjoyment from doing it, they had doubts about how normal this behaviour was for a three-year-old.

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!