Author: Alexander Fawn

It was a recurring malady.

She felt again the great compulsion that had taken her so many times before. Thoughts and words in her head, bursting to get out. She didn’t always hear exactly what they were saying. It was all consuming. It went with her to school, jumping and dangling all through her classes. It accompanied her home and into her room. It whirled around while she changed and spun even faster when she sat down at her little desk.

She started to scribble.

As the words went down on paper, a great relief swept over her.

Finally, she lowered her pen.

Another story was born.

He was never fond of working away from home for any length of time.

He knew it came with the territory and the pay was good. Some distance from the site he was working on he could see several cranes. The place had been humming with activity for several months; ever since the land agreements were signed by the corporation he worked for. His job was pretty straight forward, but he had to live and sleep on site until it was finished. Back in head-office they figured it’d take around two weeks. He thought that was probably about right. Basically, he had to erect twenty nine enormous structures, each one in the form of a shaped panel. They all had to be fixed in a prone position, each at a set distance apart. He had done similar constructs in the past, but nothing anywhere near this big.

He was coming to the end of it with only a couple of days to go. He knew there was going to be a lot of talk about what he was sent here to do. Knowing some of his friends, he was going to get a fair bit of ribbing as well. He didn’t mind any of it, really. His work would certainly be on show.

If he could finish up for a flight back in two days’ time he’d be able to catch the Grand Final. Although he can well imagine that a lot of people will be out with their binoculars reading his sign.

‘LUNA APARTMENTS FOR RELEASE SOON!’

She rented her back room out.

It went well for a couple of days. Then, she began to notice things; small things at first. They seemed to build up. After a couple of weeks all these little annoyances began to escalate. Things like taking really long showers and leaving wet towels on the floor. Like leaving hair in the sink. Like leaving the sink blocked. Like stealing her food and leaving his food rotting in the fridge. Like leaving his dirty dishes for her to clean. Like him not doing any cleaning. Like not putting appliances away. Like leaving his clothes lying about the house. Like leaving lights on in empty rooms. Like his playing loud music late at night. Like not changing the toilet roll, and of course his really annoying habit of continually leaving the toilet seat up!

He did it once too often and she snapped.

She stood in the laundry room looking into the toilet when he came passed.

“Look, you’ve done it again!”

“Done what?”

“Oh! For God’s sake, man. Time and time again, I’ve asked you very politely to put the toilet seat down when you’ve finished in there. I mean, it’s really not a lot to ask, is it?

“Wow! Get a grip, honey. It’s just a toilet seat.”

She glared at him. “OK!” she shouted, “I give up!”

She roughly pushed him out of the way, causing him to step back and trip on a shoe he’d left lying around. As he fell back, his head hit the sharp edge of the metal laundry basin. He lay on the floor, not moving.

She just stared down at him for a few moments. She was still visibly shaken by the whole incident. Bracing herself, she went down on one knee and felt for a pulse. Nothing!

In the kitchen she found a list of essential numbers stuck to the fridge. She found one for an ambulance. Back in the laundry, she checked his pulse again; still nothing. Returning to the kitchen she put the kettle on. She’d make herself a cup of tea first.

Nothing like making sure.

Her friend had told her all about it.

The young woman from 17b was told that the ‘triple shroom’ experience was the best ever. It was definitely the experience of a lifetime, she was told. Her friend told her she’d been to a number of parties where it had been the main event. Her friend knew a lot about this stuff. She said there were lots of different psychedelic mushrooms, too many to count. She explained that the ‘triple shroom’ was a special mix of three of them. Because the taste can be quite bitter, she said the best method, after chopping them up into small pieces, was to boil them up to make a tea that could be drunk. It was easy then to mask the taste with herbal tea bags while it was on the boil. The young woman from 17b was intrigued and was invited round to her friend’s place to have a private ‘triple shroom’ session.

When the night came, they were sitting in her friend’s kitchen watching the saucepan while it bubbled away. Her friend said that it usually takes a few minutes for it to take effect and it can last up to six hours. When it was ready, two mugs were filled and the woman from 17b was quite excited as they waited for their drinks to cool. Her friend was telling her what she could expect. She said that most people entered a whole new world of unimaginable experiences and self-discovery; a world that enables them to attain a whole range of superior spiritual states, all accompanied by a wonderful sense of euphoria.

Unhappily, this wasn’t the case with the woman from 17b.

She was dead within seconds.

He had never married, and as a result of receiving a very healthy inheritance from a rich uncle when he was a young man, he never felt the need to seek out any form of meaningful employment. Whereas some may have seen him as part of the idle rich, this was in fact not the case. He had, in fact, spent almost thirty years working diligently on his magnum opus. This daunting task was driven by his passion, and based on his lifelong love, of knitting. It was this obsession with the nuances of the craft that drove him to make it the topic of his major work. A large tome entitled ‘The Complete and Ultimate History of Knitting’.

This epic work covered the entire known history of the craft. It comprised of a great rambling description of knitting through the ages from the time of the discovery of knitted items, dating from the period between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, in Egypt. Followed by the spreading of it through Europe and into Britain during the sixteenth century. Then into the Scottish Isles, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, before the huge changes that came about during the Industrial Revolution. This being followed by people knitting clothes for soldiers during the Second World War, then on to the revolution in machine-knitted items during the nineteenth century. All this culminating, when coming into the twentieth century, the ease with which people were now able to gain vast amounts of knowledge on the subject through the internet.

This was a great ambling treatise, presented in the most excruciating detail.

Finally, the day came when the man, now in his early sixties, prepared his five hundred odd page manuscript in a large padded postal package, addressing it to one of the largest and most prestigious publishing houses in the city.

This was followed by a lull of several weeks during which time he was, instead of working on his opus, spending long days in a state of agitated anticipation, waiting for a response from the publishing company.

At last, the day came when his manuscript was returned. It came back in the same large postage bag he had sent it in, with the original address obliterated with a heavy black permanent marker pen.

Inside he found his manuscript… along with a small tin of lighter fluid and a box of matches!

It was only available on the black market.

Nevertheless, it was on sale in just about any city you could think of around the world. Generally speaking, it wasn’t hard to find. The global distribution system was the envy of all the cartels and drug lords. It was so incredibly simple. The elixir had very little taste and was completely free from alcohol and drugs, and was incredibly cheap. There were no side effects, but just one powerful, up front, patent effect. Throughout the centuries love potions had been concocted in secret with formulas undisclosed. The elixir however, was different. Certainly, what was put into the tiny bottles was not talked about, but this was because the effect of just one draft of the liquid was enough, more than enough. Nobody ever needed to go searching for another bottle. Well, almost nobody, that is. There were a small proportion of cases that needed to follow up with something else.

The source of the mixture was in plain sight. It was brewed in a very large warehouse in a major city that was known to all. The staff of this establishment was small, only half a dozen or so at any one time. They worked in shifts with a continual stream of shipping container trucks entering at one end and leaving at the other. Although this rotating group that staffed the place were not very keen about explaining the humdrum business of how the international paperwork was handled administratively, or how records were kept for the export of their product, they were always happy to have a complete and open audit by any authority that chose to carry one out. As for what exactly went into the huge tanks that were constantly filling little bottles was never discussed under threat of stopping production, which every member of staff was willing to do.

The idea that production of the elixir could so easily be terminated as a direct result of any authority asking for the formula would be catastrophic on a truly international basis. No government would want to entertain the sort of rioting and community destruction that would so obviously be a natural consequence of such a scenario. The amazing effectiveness of the potion was the one thing that kept everything in place. However, there was one, almost insignificant number of cases where, for a number of reasons, an antidote was requested. This only accounted for a figure slightly less than one percent globally and was taken care of by a much smaller and trouble-free administration programme. Despite this being an extremely expensive restorative solution it was trouble-free because the contents of the bottles were the same.

All of which gives light to the fact that the gullibility of people is truly awesome!

She had been unhappy with her life for some time.

She had been homeless for as long as she could remember. The only thing she had to look forward to was when she visited her friend. She was very fond of him. Whenever she went to see him he would see that she had something to eat. His place was comfortable and he was well off. The only problem he had was that some of his neighbours weren’t so nice.

This particular morning they were sitting in his back garden, watching the birds pecking at seed.

She said, “You’re having issues with some of your neighbours, right?”

“Well, yes,” he admitted.

“Well then, why don’t we just take off? You know, run away together!”

He was silent for a while. “No. I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not?”

He looked back at the house. “It’s the humans you see, I couldn’t leave them.” His whiskers twitched. “They need me.”

He’d always been nervous about doing live podcasts.

The doctor was reciting a piece that he’d written on the subject of cancer. It was a ten minute talk where he described the various kinds of cancer that the human body could be subject to. His talk included studies that had been carried out in countries around the world, and statistics related to the various types of cancer prevalent in numerous types of communities. Throughout the broadcast he continually made reference to the fact that smoking was a heavy contributor to the condition, with cautions about the use of tobacco. He was listing the percentages of recovery rates in patients, when listeners heard him cough and swear under his breath. This was followed by a loud clattering noise. There was a muffled silence before he resumed by apologising, with the explanation that his neighbour was having some heavy construction work carried out on his house. The remainder of his talk went without a hitch.

The fact that his cat had jumped up on his desk knocking his ashtray to the floor causing him to drop his cigarette only to see it burning a hole in his wife’s favourite rug, never came to light.

He was forgetting things far more than she was.

She said it would do no harm to at least discuss it with the doctor. Between them they had looked up the early signs of dementia. There were so many of them, but they worked their way through the list. After discounting a number of symptoms they made a note of what applied to him. Of course, there was the memory loss. This was the obvious one, along with occasionally not being able to come up with simple words, sometimes finding it hard to concentrate, now and again having difficulty simply doing everyday tasks, and at times just losing track of time and place. These were only vague signs, but they were still worrying. Having done this, he reluctantly agreed to make an appointment.

He chats with the doctor who suggests he gives him an assessment. He tells the doctor what date it is, recalls a couple recent news items, does some simple mathematics, names several objects, draws a clock showing a specified time, identifies a giraffe, remembers a set of words, and recites a group of numbers backwards.

His doctor is happy with his responses. He feels pretty pleased with himself as he leaves the surgery.

On the way home he pulls over, takes out the old map book and opens it. He shuts it again. That won’t help…

He can’t remember his address!

He left the office, aware that he was running late.

The young stock broker checked the time as he pulled his Porch 911 out of the underground carpark. He had arranged to meet his good friend at his local country club. His friend, a financial consultant, had flown in from New York during the day. Not being a member, the broker would have to sign him in. It was a cold night and he didn’t want his friend having to wait around for him. When he arrived the carpark was full and he had to park on a patch of spare ground beside the car park. He was running late. He didn’t lock it.

As it turned out, he was on time with seconds to spare. They went in and spent the evening catching up. When he returned to his car later that night, he discovered the fact that he’d left it unlocked for several hours… but it was still there! Shaking his head, he climbed in. He was about to start the car, when he saw the figure sitting in the back seat. He was fast asleep, slumped, with his head against the window. He sat thinking for a couple of minutes. He started the car and pulled onto the road very carefully. He spent the whole journey home driving with the utmost care and attention so that the stranger was not disturbed. When he got home, instead of parking the car in the garage he left it on the front drive, unlocked.

In the morning he went out to the car. It was empty. He smiled as he opened all the windows to give it an airing.

Privately, he had always envied hobos.