Author: Alexander Fawn

Words upon words.

A scribbler at work,

With pencilled words,

And a pressing of keys,

And screen scrolling.

Plots in play.

Tales and verse emerge.

–

A passion for the pen,

Bringing fragmented notions

And a tapestry of thoughts

To form the artistry of words.

Ancient in its beginnings

And diverse in all its meanings.

–

A page fills like a canvas,

While the hourglass is ignored.

Notions come like flowers blooming,

Words are possessed and held.

Allowing the fire to burn within,

With a coaxing out of thoughts,

Or curbing a torrent of images,

Each giving life to lines.

–

Outside of a busy world,

Scribbling dances into the night,

Letting the heart of it dictate,

With phrases sparking into life.

–

A craft that stirs the emotions.

A workpiece in the making.

A gift in the offing,

And the universe smiles back.

–

Look out across the world,

With people everywhere,

Playing out their lives.

Each with their own stories.

With… words upon words upon words…

She was lying on the bed dreaming.

This would have to be one of her favourite pastimes. The bedroom was quiet and this gave her time to think. She knew it was fanciful, but she really wished she could be somebody else! She imagined what it would be like to be an army commando, with a rifle, preparing to go into battle, or a nurse in a uniform, with a stethoscope around her neck. What about being an astronaut that is trained to be launched into space, to land on a planet somewhere and gather samples for scientific analasis when he returns to Earth. It would be really great if she could be some kind of tribal warrior that led others into combat.

Anything but to be her… to have to listen to all the… “isn’t she pretty”, and “can we dress her up?”, and “she looks really gorgeous in that hat!”

She sighed. The fact was, being a Barbie doll really wasn’t that great…

He fantasized about a completely digital life.

Although, like most people, he had no certain idea of how life actually came about, he couldn’t help wondering about how it might change in the future. After all, we are a digital-technology-based society right now! He couldn’t help dreaming about an advanced society where Ctrl + Y would save you the time of having to go back and do something all over again. Ctrl + A would allow you to immediately get a better picture of everything. Ctrl + S could be used to make sure what you have done is captured. Ctrl + N. could be used to start over with a clean canvas and begin something completely new. Ctrl + Z would simply go back and undo something you’ve done… and good old Ctrl + D would instantly get rid of anything you don’t want!

Could we all end up as data bytes just floating around in the ether? Probably not.

Where will it all end?

The writer never responded directly to comments received on his blog.

His priority was to give as much time as was possible to the actual business of writing. Despite this, he always read through these with considerable interest on a regular basis and gave them serious thought. Over a number of years, he saw a common theme to the remarks sent. Overall, it was only a small proportion of the observations about his style of telling short stories, but it was a repeated one. He thought about the nature of these and tried to sum them up as a generic remark. That wasn’t easy. It mainly came down to his style of writing a story. He sat for a while considering how he would respond if a single personification of all such commenters was sitting in front of him. What sort of thing would this imaginary questioner ask? Moreover, what sort of answers would he give?

He allowed the scene to open in his mind…

Commenter: Quite often, you seem to deliberately make your short stories obscure, as a result they can be difficult to understand.

Writer: OK. I think you are accusing me of obfuscation.

Commenter: I suppose I am.

Writer: Yes. Others have said the same thing. Of course, they are quite right.

Commenter: So, you do this knowingly?

Writer: I do.

Commenter: Why?

Writer: Ah! That’s the question, isn’t it? Why do I do it? Well, the short answer is because I can, but I’m sure you’d regard that as an unsatisfactory response.

Commenter: Yes. I would.

Writer: OK. Although some of these stories are simple on the surface, they are actually quite blatantly designed to make the reader think about difficult concepts. I’m sure that some readers don’t want this. They simply want a quick story and nothing else.

Commenter: Yeah.

Writer: Anyway, quite apart from the odd red herring, I occasionally give a hint or a clue for the reader to figure out what happens next. I’ve even written a story within a story, but I think it goes deeper than this.

Commenter: Go on.

Writer: I’m aware of the fact that my story content is sometimes deliberately obscure. I think I do this because I want the reader to stop and think about it. Maybe, I consider it reasonable to expect that only a two- or three-minute read is worth spending another minute or so to look inside the story.

Commenter: I see.

Writer: I’m sure it’s only a case that some readers want to do this and others don’t. I guess, at the end of the day it all comes right down to taste. Of course, I’m aware of this, but it’s not something I think about when writing.

With this final response, the writer walked through to the kitchen and put the kettle on.

They were all gathered there, on Mount Olympus.

A number of gods and goddesses were standing around chatting. It was quite a scene. He stood to one side looking on in amazement. There were so many of them! He figured that Zeus had called them all here for some special meeting or other. He only recognised some of them. He was looking at Hera, Aphrodite, Hermes, Apollo, and of course, Zeus himself sitting on his throne. From all his readings of Greek Mythology as a boy, he remembers stories about Hera, an interesting goddess who was both the wife and sister of Zeus, and queen of the gods. Another of his favourites was Hermes, the messenger of the Olympian gods, particularly Zeus. He was also associated with travellers, trade, luck, and even thieves.

He also spotted Apollo, a patron of the arts, including music and poetry. Then, there was the gorgeous Aphrodite, the goddess of love, beauty, pleasure and desire. Up there, above them all, seated on his magnificent throne, Zeus the god of the sky, lightning and thunder. He was considered to be the ruler, protector, and father of all the gods.

After a while, he began to wonder how it was that he been extended the privilege of being here, where he stood, in the company of such powerful deities. These Olympians, who were obviously still overseeing mankind and its deliberations.

He was pondering all this when he noticed that some heads were turning to look at him. At the same time, Hermes was climbing up the steps to the throne. Once there, standing beside Zeus, looking directly at, and pointing to, the newcomer, in a loud, booming voice, he said, “Excuse me Zeus; but what’s that mortal doing here?”

Wow! Thought the gate crasher, that must have been the best magic mushroom brew, ever!”

The hobo had noticed that the old vacant property had been empty for several weeks.

It was a two-story house that was well passed its best. Despite the ‘For Sale’ sign, it didn’t look as though it would sell anytime soon. He decided to check it out. Daylight was failing as he wandered around the back, nevertheless he found a window that had not been fully closed. It was easy to climb in. Once inside, he made his way through all the rooms. There wasn’t much in the way of furniture. What there was, had also seen better days. On the top landing, he found a hatch in the ceiling and a pulldown ladder. With some difficulty, he managed to climb up into the loft.

Of course, no lights were working. Only skylights in the roof let in a soft glow from the outside street lamps. It was really quite spacious with very little in it. Despite this, he found enough material in the way of old sheets and blankets to make up a fairly cosey bed for himself. In fact, he had such a good night’s sleep that he slept right through to late morning the next day.

That’s when he found a plate of food scraps near the hatch. He was convinced it was not there when he first climbed in. Did someone know he was there? Was this merely a kindness on somebody’s part?

He was unaware of the pest controller’s visit earlier that morning.

…and he certainly didn’t know about the rat bait!

He took his new girlfriend to see the latest film, followed by meal at a restaurant.

He really enjoyed the date. She, like him, was in her early twenties and was definitely attractive. Previously, they had only known each other by sight. They worked at the same company, but their paths seldom crossed. She worked in Finance as secretary to the manager, while he was part of the team in the IT Department, using algorithms to transform data input, into processed data output, as part of his work. Although he was passionate about this aspect of his job, he tried not to bore her with too much talk of this. He soon saw that she had a very nice and surprisingly relaxed personality. All in all, the evening had gone well.

When he got home, he went straight to his computer. Outside of work, his main interest was the study of how the latest advances being made in statistical analysis, applied to this. He found that he could apply it to anything and everything. These activities were like a private hobby; one that he kept to himself.

This included a program he’d created for assessing members of the opposite sex. Over time, he had come up with fifteen qualities that he regarded as being necessary to measure. He opened his review table with its listed attributes. Each one required him to give a rating from zero to ten.

He had used presentation, punctuality, communication, maturity, humour, fitness, openness, respectfulness, honesty, affection, kindness, loyalty, empathy, values and interests, as critical aspects to measure. Each of these had his own personal ‘pass’ and ‘fail’ ratings already embedded within a complex algorithm. This contained an ordered set of instructions that had been developed to convert and measure all of his descriptive statistic’s values to give a definitive result. He had used this with all previous girlfriends; it served to give him an overall picture of their suitability.

He thought about her again. Despite being quite sure that she would exceed all of his personal criteria, he would see just how well she would rate. He spent several minutes entering his individual evaluations. When he had completed the digital assessment table, he clicked on the button marked ‘Result’.

He was shocked to see the word ‘FAIL’ appear in the centre of his screen.

With a deep sigh, he closed the computer.

Shaking his head, he whispered to himself, “What a shame. Still, you can’t argue with algorithms.”

The day was sunny, ideal for the youngsters to play.

The play area was busy with toddlers clambering, climbing and sliding on the play area’s equipment. The structure was made up of brightly-coloured segments, all cleverly fitted together, making a wonderful set of challenges for the little ones. It sat in one corner of the park with several benches surrounding it. Most of these were occupied by parents; some with even younger children in pushers. A solitary man sat on one of the seats provided. He was an internationally renowned writer of best-selling children’s books; some published in a number of foreign languages. He was watching the children and smiling.

Inside a twenty-minute period, three mothers reported the fact that he was sitting there.

Shortly after, the police arrived and took him in for questioning.

His whole life was about wheels.

When he was 5, he wanted the remote-control monster truck that he’d seen when he’d gone shopping with his mum. When he was 10, he wanted the tricycle he’d seen in a shop when he’d been out for the day with his father. When he was 15, he wanted help from his parents to buy the second-hand motorbike he’d seen advertised in the local paper. When he was 20, he wanted to do enough overtime work at the factory for him to save enough money to buy a second-hand car from the local car yard. When he was 25, he wanted to join the gang that was making money by robbing houses at night, in order to buy a new car. When he was 30, he wanted to be the wheelman for the gang that carried out bank robberies around the country. When he was 35, he wanted to explain that knocking down and killing the panicking woman who ran out of the bank that had been robbed, when he took off in the getaway car with the robbers, was an accident.

When he was 40, he wanted to get out of prison.

… and he was left wanting.

He sat looking out of the window.

He was a writer of short stories, but he couldn’t think of anything to write. Was it going to be a drama or something quite frivolous? So many jumbled ideas were buzzing around in his head; like how the word ‘artery is not the study of paintings, ‘bacteria’ is not the back door of a café, and how a ‘caesarean section’ is not a neighbourhood in Rome. Was this meant to be a humorous piece? On the other hand, there was nothing quite like a nice juicy murder!

He didn’t know.

The garden looked lovely.

Then it came to him.

Surely, he thought, this in itself is a story. A bit too long, he thought. I’d have to shorten it somehow.

I’ll write it…