Author: Alexander Fawn

Slippery, pernickety, Jock,

Kept all his loose change in a sock.

When the mugging begun,

The culprit went down,

Slippery, pernickety, Jock.

She really liked him, but her mother wasn’t too sure.

He asked her if she fancied a ride in his car and she’d said yes. It was a nice looking vehicle and his idea of letting her join him when he paid a visit to a friend in a nearby town meant that she’d get to sit back in comfort on a thirty minute drive with his car radio playing music nonstop. He collected her from home, as planned. To her surprise, he pulled over after a few minutes and asked her if she’d like to drive for a while. She was thrilled and couldn’t believe her luck. She had driven her dad’s car a few times, just for fun, but she didn’t have a licence. He was good about it when she told him, saying that he had no problem with trusting that she would drive sensibly.

She soon got the hang of it and with his permission opened it up once or twice to see just how fast it could go. She really enjoyed driving it and when he asked if she wanted to keep going until they got to town, she jumped at the chance.

As they entered the high street, he had her pull over, outside the bank. He checked the time, saying that they were now running late visiting his friend. He did need to pop into the bank quickly, but they should hurry. To save time, he suggested she stayed behind the wheel so they could move on quickly when he came out. He suggested she keep the engine running and be prepared to take off as soon as he came out. With that he got out and went into the bank.

She couldn’t help wondering why it was so important to be at his friend’s house on time; he had always struck her as being very cool and laidback. Anyway, she’d had a great time driving.

She couldn’t wait to tell her mother all about it.

He’d found the ideal place to stash his gear and sleep under a roof.

When he discovered it, the room was empty accept for a few bits of rubbish. It was at the back on the upper floor of an old derelict building; abandoned not condemned. In fact although it was in bad need of repair, it had been built to last. The room was one of many, but it was all he needed. Sure it was messy, but he liked it that way. At least he no longer had to listen to his mother’s constant complaining about his untidiness. He had been squatting there for several months and had kept this fact to himself. When he’d spent a day begging in the town and eating when he could, he would take the long route back to the house, in case he was followed. He would look back from time to time to make sure. This was his place.

Then, quite out of the blue one day, he returned to find that the back door, his entrance, had been opened. The small piece of paper he regularly wedged in the gap at the bottom of the door had been moved. At the top of the stairs he found the door to his room was slightly open. He made a point of always leaving it closed when he left. When he entered, he was pleased to discover that no one was there. However, he found evidence that someone had been. In the relatively clear corner of the room he found a number of items that were not there when he left.

There was a bucket of water, a mop, a broom, a sponge and a cloth. A piece of paper was wrapped around the broom handle, held in place by an elastic band. He took it off. It read:

‘Note from landlord

I own this property.

I’ll let you squat, free of rent, if you clean your room.

Property inspection – one week.’

The added note.

‘To the owner

It’s true that it’s hard for a leopard to change its spots.’

He packed up and moved out the next day.

As a boy he had always managed to shrug off the mundanities of the real world.

All this he could leave behind and transcend from the everyday humdrum to go beyond, into a magical domain. This was achieved by allowing his powerful imagination to enter a world of make-belief. A place where he could create fantasies and allow dreams to come alive. He could fly away to places of his own choosing. He could pilot a space cruiser through a star belt or slay a dragon or discover buried treasure on an unmapped island. He could do all these things, there were no restraints or limits set on what he did. He could fly like a bird or swim like a fish. He could lounge in the Serengeti sun with a pride of lions, he could hunt with a pack of foxes in the Arctic tundra or fly great distances with the wedge-tailed eagles in outback Australia or he could dance with the fairies by moonlight in an English forest. He was able to do all these things.

It was always with a great deal of reluctance that he felt the need to return to the real world, where he was the Chief Executive Officer of the International Global Resources Corporation.

The man in the agency looked across at the candidate with a knowing smile.

He cleared his throat. “Yes, I’ve read your CV. It’s very impressive. I see you have a very thorough knowledge of the myriad of ways possible to communicate with your fellow human beings.”

The young man wriggled. “I suppose so.”

“Yes, you would suppose that.” The account manager looked down at the resume on his screen and started reading.

“Email, Kindle It, Skype, SMS, Viber, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter, Blogger, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Yahoo Mail, Reddit, Tumblr, Evernote, Messenger, WordPress, Outlook, Gmail, WhatsApp, MySpace, Google Bookmarks, AOL Mail, Pinboard, Bitty Browser, Trello, Copy Link, Digg, Pocket, DZone, Pusha, VK, Mix, Flipboard, Slashdot, Box.net, Fark, Buffer, BlogMarks, TypePad Post, Viadieo, Wanelo, LiveJournal, Odnoklassniki, Known, Telegram, WeChat and Diaspora.”

He tapped a couple of keys and went on.

“Amazon Wish List, Line, Mail.Ru, Diigo, Mastodon, Symbaloo Bookmarks, Hacker News, Threema, Mendeley, Meneame, Refind, Mixi, CiteULike, Netvouz, Plurk, Tuenti, Svejo, Twiddla, Wykop, XING, Yummly, Design Float, Kakao, Diary.Ru, Hatena, Douban, Blinklist, Draugiem, Rediff MyPage, Renren, Sina Weibo, StumbleUpon, Yoolink, PrintFriendly, Protopage Bookmarks, StockTwits, Balatarin, BibSonomy, Google Classroom, Kik, Care2 News, Houzz, Instapaper, Folkd, Papaly, SiteJot and Qzone.”

He finally looked up.

“I’m afraid I can’t recommend you to the client.”

The applicant looked shocked. “You can’t?”

“No, I can’t. It’s really quite simple.”

The knowing smile returned.

“The fact is, when you entered the room you didn’t smile and say good morning.”

The room, or a replica of it, was a sad reminder of the brilliant surgeon and scholar.

He had produced some of the finest medical papers in his time. He had made tremendous strides forward in the field of advanced levels of neuro-communication. Now, in the city’s science museum, the room was a testimony to the man and his work. Students from all over the world came here and passed through in small groups to witness in physical terms, the man’s life. On the desk they could see the very pen that he used to write so many of his papers. Beside it, the strap that was used to keep the pen held in place when his grip became too week to hold it in the normal fashion. Next to this, a larger strap with a pad of high friction rubber to enable the hand to press down to steady it while writing. It had been developed at a time when his hands became susceptible to constant shaking.

On a small credenza beside the desk, his keyboard, with the oversized keys to cope with his inability to write using his hands and his failing eyesight. The apparatus next to this, the voice recognition microphone and associated software used when he could no longer write or type. Lastly, when he lost the power of speech, the first ground-breaking version of his head net, designed to emit thoughts that were sent to an electronic receiver screen where they would appear. Here, the students are told of the many stages of advancement during the last few years of the man’s life. The final segment of their time in the room was given over to choosing one of the party to don the head net. This would be a demonstration of how thoughts were sent to the screen fixed to the wall behind the desk.

However, on this occasion, before the selected student could actually place the neuro net on his head, words began to appear on the screen…

She hadn’t seen her best friend since her husband took off.

They went back a long way. It was a sad day for her when her friend and her husband moved out of the area. They kept in touch of course; emails flew back and forth regularly, so her friend knew all about her failing marriage and the constant fighting. Her friend also knew he was out of the picture now, but she didn’t know the details. This visit would be her chance to find out how it happened. Either way, it was a good thing. The marriage had been going downhill for some time and it was becoming physical. Her visit would bring her up to date. When she arrived, they hugged at the front door, but quickly settled down in the lounge.

“What can I get you?” she asked her friend.

“Nothing,” she replied, “I had a drink at the shops. Besides, I want to hear all your latest goss. I mean, it’s wonderful isn’t it, that he is finally out of your life?”

“It is. He didn’t want to be here anymore and I just wanted him gone.”

Her friend nodded. “Your last email didn’t say much, how long’s he been gone?”

“It’s been well over a month now.”

“Did he go quietly?

The woman took on a strange smile. “You could say that.”

“Do tell.”

“If I tell you what happened, you’ll be the only person to know the real truth, other than myself.”

“Hey! You know you can trust me to keep anything you tell me to myself. After all, when you think of all those naughty little secrets that go back to our childhood days.” She giggled.

“I know. I know I can trust you, but if I tell you what happened you may not believe me.” She puffed out a long breath. “Not only that, if you did tell anybody about it you’d probably be labelled a looney!”

“Oh! Come on. Out with it.”

“OK. To start at the beginning… it all happened one evening. He was acting really strange when he came home from the pub. He was drunk. Which wasn’t unusual, and this usually meant he was going to get violent, but that didn’t happen. He was excited about something, but wouldn’t tell me what it was. He rushed off and booted up his laptop. He spent a couple of hours on it.”

She paused and sat thinking for a bit, while her friend waited patiently. She took a deep breath and went on. “When he’d finished messing about with the computer, he told me about the crystal. He showed it to me. It was only a small thing, yellow, about the size of a sugar cube. He said he’d bought it from a guy in the pub. Told me it had magical powers. He was raving about it. Said it could take you to wherever you wanted to be. Well, I just figured he’d finally snapped. He said he was going to use it to get away. Of course, I thought the whole thing was ridiculous, but I went along with it anyway. I mean, if it works, good riddance, right?”

“Absolutely!”

“Anyway, he had the thing in his hand, clutched to his chest. He walked down the hall and opened the door to the linen cupboard. I just stood there. I watched him walk into it and close the door behind him. After a few seconds I heard him call out goodbye, and that was it. When I opened the cupboard he was gone!” She let out a long breath. “Of course, I never told the police any of that, only reported him as missing.”

“Wow!”

“I mean, people just disappear sometimes, don’t they? I guess a lot of the time it’s a case of them simply not wanting to be found. They want to take off and start afresh somewhere. But this was different. This was instant!”

Her friend raised her eyebrows and said, “Right!”

“Naturally, once I’d got over the shock of it, and at the same time come to terms with what a blessing the whole thing was, I jumped on his laptop to find out more about what had happened. He only said that he needed to hold the crystal, enter a dark place, close his eyes, and think of where he would rather be.”

“And?”

Her face fell. “You can imagine, I couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Plus, a lot of it was password protected. It’s left me feeling so curious, you know?”

“I bet it has. Couldn’t you get some computer person to have a look at it? They can get stuff back somehow, I’m pretty sure they can.”

“Not really”. She looked across at the table where the laptop had been.

“The next day, while I was at work, the cheeky sod came back for it!”

She was watching the gentle flow of the stream as it occasionally stirred dead leaves from the embankment.

It was a place that they had always come to, just to chill out. To catch up with each other, as they were doing now. To share secrets. She seemed to have so many to tell this time around and nothing was going to stop her talking. She confided that she had reported the creepy guy from dispatch to her boss for his making lewd remarks. Nothing more was said, but she noticed that he has stopped doing it. She’d read in the paper that the CEO of one of her charities, the one for the homeless, had been charged with embezzlement. She crossed that charity off her list and would give more to the cat haven. As for the neighbour’s dog that keeps fouling her front lawn, she hit him full blast with the hose the other day and he’s not been back since.

She stood on the bank in silence for a while.

She thanked her friend for listening and whispered her goodbye as she slowly tilted the urn above the running waters.

It was not unusual for him to wake up momentarily during the night.

On this occasion he saw movement across the room. It wasn’t much more than a shadow. He could only just make her out. He felt or his glasses and put them on. She was just standing there looking out. She was obviously having trouble getting off to sleep. This wasn’t uncommon, but it rarely ended up with her actually getting out of bed. She was probably worrying about something, he thought. He knew that she could be a terrible worrier at times. He wondered what she was concerned about this time. He couldn’t think of anything that could be troubling her, but that didn’t mean anything. He knew she could get worked up about the most trivial things. He was tempted to ask, but this could lead to them both being awake for ages.

He sat up quietly, not wishing to disturb her. He watched her for a while. In the darkened room it was hard to see, but he got an occasional glimpse of some slight movement. After several minutes of doing this he felt sleep creeping up on him. Eventually, he realised that he’d have to whisper something that would not make her jump, but at the same time would stir her enough to get her to climb back into bed.

He took a sip of water from the side table and softly cleared his throat. In his quietest voice, he asked, “Are you OK, Pet?”

The bedding behind him moved. Slightly annoyed, his wife replied, “Yes, of course. Do try to get off, dear.”

He knew every road and lane in the city.

He had to, he was a bike messenger. He worked for a courier company, carrying and delivering items around the city, and as such he’d received a few scrapes, cuts and bruises over the three years, mainly from getting bumped by the occasional car. Coming off his bike was like getting brownie points with the girls. They always liked to hear the details of any collisions, and if he had scars they were always keen to see them. He was always more than happy to oblige; he certainly had a lot of them. It transpired that this aspect of his job had, over the years, resulted in him accumulating more steady girlfriends than he knew what to do with.

Unhappily, this particular lifestyle came to a very abrupt end the day that the slightly haughty girl from behind the counter in the jewellry store, being somewhat foolishly convinced that she was the only one, found out that she wasn’t.

He was on one of his regular runs, heading down the main street when he saw the car cross into his lane, and coming straight towards him. It seemed to be picking up speed. He may have had the presence of mind to make a sudden, last minute manoeuvre, had he not taken those last precious seconds to recognise and fully comprehend why he was looking at the face of the of slightly haughty girl from behind the counter in the jewellry store…