Author: Alexander Fawn

P is for Preference, in the way of a fruit,

O is for Ongoing, with a story to suit,

E is for Everything that needs to be told,

M is for Making a story unfold.

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P, O, E and M do a poem make,

Let it continue, for the alphabet’s sake.

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A is for Apple, that falls from a tree.

B is for Boy, who sees that it’s free.

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C is for Cap that sits on his head.

D is for Dog, that hasn’t been fed.

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E is for Envy, as the dog gives chase.

F is for Fear, as they pick up the pace.

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G is for Growl, which comes from behind.

H is for Halt, as he changes his mind.

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I is for Initiative, as he throws it back.

J is for Joy, as the dog eats his snack.

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K is for Kindness, shown by the lad.

L is for Laugh, what a fright he had had.

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M is for Mother, who hears his tale.

N is for Nectarine, she bought at the sale.

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O is for Offer, she makes of the gift.

P is for Plea, as he asks for a lift.

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Q is for Quick, as he dresses to go.

R is for Rush, to make the next show.

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S is for Seals, in the circus ring.

T is for Tension, when trapeze artists swing.

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U is for Unhurried, as he strolls to the bus.

V is for Virtue, lets others on first without fuss.

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W is for Window, with its tinted glass.

X is for X-Men, at the cinema they pass.

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Y is for Yak, newly on show.

Z is for Zoo, where he would later go.

–

A is for At, at the moment, after such an adventurous day, all he could think about, despite his mother’s kindness, was whether there would be enough daylight left for him to go back to the tree, and if the orchard owner’s dog was not around, he could look for windfalls, as he really preferred apples to nectarines.

He is there, drinking bad coffee, every weekday at the same time.

He sometimes has the opportunity to see her arrive in the mornings, but that is very much hit and miss. There are occasions when she walks from the station, on others she is dropped off by him. He sees her kissed goodbye, by her husband. He has seen him from time to time, and he looks to be a good sort. He hopes so. It is mostly the late afternoons that he can rely on. He watches, as the building’s office workers stream out onto the street. Some cross to the café where he sits, some turn left along the pavement, some turn right. She turns right. She always looks beautiful; no different from the woman he knew a decade ago. Of course, he still loves her.

As he sits by the window in the gloomy coffee shop, sipping on the worst kind of coffee, waiting for her to appear, he often reflects on the fact that she would no longer recognise him. His time overseas, the Taliban insurgency and the dreadful explosion that brought him home early, have all put paid to that possibility. His face received the worst of it. The heavy beard and tinted glasses help him get out in public with minimum discomfort.

She no doubt thinks he is dead. They had been courting for two years when he was called up. Of course, the letters he sent during the first few weeks were the last contact. Nothing since then. He feels sure she would have waited for a while, but life moves on.

Now, he comes here and sits, and waits.

He considers himself to be a stalker of the most decent kind.

It was a quiet night in the village pub when the man fell in through the door.

Several patrons helped him to his feet and got him to a chair. He was in a bad way. He had blood on his hands, his face and his clothes. These were torn and he’d lost a sleeve from his jacket. It looked as though it had been ripped off. His eyes were bloodshot and he had bruises to his neck and face. He was given a stiff drink by the landlord, which he sipped with a shaky hand while the dozen or so drinkers gathered around. The man could hardly speak at first, but finally gained enough breath to explain that he’d come from the next village, where there had been a calamitous situation. It had unfolded over just a few hours. He described how all of the villagers were dead and told them that he was the sole survivor. They brought him another shot and asked him to explain what had happened.

After squeezing his eyes closed for several seconds, he said, “It started with the cane toads. I don’t have to tell you that they come through in swarms from time to time. I’m sure you’ve all seen that?”

There was a general nodding of heads.

“This was different. They can spit, you know that too. Within the first hour there was a plague of them. They got everywhere! Then the spitting began. No ordinary spit, mind you. Green it was, and stung when it hit your skin. So I was told. I don’t know why, but I never had to experience it myself. I was in a pretty good hiding place right up to the end. Anyway, then people started fighting; fighting one another for no good reason. Only another hour when by before they became so wild that they were killing each other! It was unbelievable! Some folks just suicided right there on the street.” He wiped tears away. “There were only a few blokes left fighting and slugging it out in the street. They had knifes, guns, axes, machetes, anything they could get their hands on. That’s when I made a break for it.”

He stopped to drain his glass.

“Unfortunately, they saw me. About three or four of them all jumped on me. It was horrible. A couple of them I recognised; known them all my life. I fought back. The poison, or whatever it was, had also weakened them and I managed to fight them off. I started running as fast as I could. It was then that I realised that there didn’t seem to be any toads around. They must have all moved on. I’m just so lucky to be alive!”

He buried his head in his hands.

The landlord, apparently quite sober, and more than a little aware of the fact that he’d been giving the man free drinks, spoke up. “I’ve got to say that was just about the silliest thing I’ve ever heard! If they ever make a B grade horror movie of it and I was offered a free ticket, I wouldn’t bother to go and see it.”

As he said that, the door creaked open and a particularly large and very ugly cane toad hopped in.

She sat near the front window looking out, missing him.

He was a great guy really. He had his faults, of course, but he was kind and caring, and… and she had blown it. It had all fallen in a heap because she was… what? She was careful about things. No, more than that, she was a stickler for the rules. She was pedantic about doing the right things, the right way, the responsible way. It was this that had come between them. She saw it now. The reason he had stormed out a week ago, probably never to come back. She just hadn’t seen it coming. It was such a shock! But, she could hear him now. “Everything has to be perfect with you, doesn’t it?” He was right of course. That was a fair summing up.

She went through to the kitchen and switched the kettle on. She brooded while it boiled. She sat wondering. Maybe he was right. If I made the effort, maybe I could let down my hair a little. Why not? If I could change. She sat stirring her tea, deep in thought. Maybe I could win him back. Show him that I really have listened. But how would you start to do that? How do you go about breaking the habits of a lifetime? Where would you begin? She looked around her neatly ordered kitchen. Her eyes came to rest on the empty milk bottle. She closed her eyes and shuddered. She slowly got up, pulse racing as she whispered, “To hell with it.” She looked at the bottle. She could do this!

She could feel a fire burning through her whole body as she went to the recycling bin and dropped it in.

Without rinsing it!

She was on the bus thinking of him.

They’d been going out together for several months. He worked the other side of town and she was on her way to meet him at the café across the street from where he worked. They caught up regularly on a Tuesday and had lunch together. He always insisted that they ‘go Dutch’ to keep things even. She was thinking about the recent evening when he had forgotten his wallet and she had to buy the cinema tickets. He never seemed to have any money, although she knew that he earned more than her. He hadn’t paid her back, or even offered to, but it was a small amount. However, this brought to mind the much larger sum she had come up with when he needed to get his car fixed.

She sighed and took out her mobile. In her calendar she found the date.

She returned to her thoughts. That was several weeks ago. She remembered that he was short at the time and they needed it to go away for the weekend, staying in a motel near the coast. They had each paid their own way for that, as well. Her musings seemed to be acting as a wakeup call. She went on the recall the number of times that this sort of thing had happened. There were a lot of similar instances coming to mind, going back over the months. She hadn’t really noticed them slip by. She was only a couple of minutes from her stop when a feeling of foolishness swept over her in an ugly wave. In that moment she realised that she would have to do something about it. As far as she could see there were only two ways to go about it. She would either confront him about it or…

The bus pulled up at the stop.

She didn’t get off.

As a youngster he was considered to be exceptionally bright.

His level of plain curiosity seemed to know no bounds. In his early days of schooling he developed the habit of making a note of anything he didn’t like. Although it’s not so uncommon for bright kids to start writing at around the age of five, not many of them would start a diary; he did. Maybe less of a diary and more of a ledger. A place where those things that he had issues with could be recorded. It was actually an old out-of-date diary that he used. He painstakingly went through it, scribbling over the unwanted entries. He ignored all the dates and used the lines for daily entries to write on. It was kept in his bedroom and mostly only brought out and used around his bed time.

It all started with the names of kids at school that he didn’t like, which included the girl next door. As time went on, this became his ideas about his school subjects and what was wrong with them. Then came community issues, mostly heard on the television. He would scribble them down as best he could when he got the chance. Such entries went on to include world affairs and morality concerns. As he entered his teen years his notations became far more comprehensive and delved more deeply into all facets of human behaviour that he considered wrong.

In fact, it was during this period that he began to realise that there was a lot going on in the world that he wasn’t at all happy with. This worsening of his view of things grew ever more worrying. He became more and more convinced that there was a great deal of madness in the world and that it was all going to hell in a handcart. This eventually lead to the irrepressible fear the he could easily go mad with it!

Then something happened. At the age of eighteen he reached ‘the age of reason’. He read that this was something that was generally accepted as being the age at which a person is considered to be capable of distinguishing between right and wrong. After studying both the legal and moral aspects of this he made a decision.

He went out and bought a new diary. His spirits were lifted markedly as he opened it in his room for the first time and began to write.

From this point on he would only make entries about the things he liked.

Before she took on a celebrity status she was regarded as obnoxious; afterwards, more so.

Her transformation started when the tips of her toes turned bright orange. At first, a skin disease was suspected, but this was discounted. This strange discolouration soon progressed to a point where both feet were affected. Whereas most young girls would be mortified by the situation, she revelled in the attention it brought. In fact, when her legs were likewise mysteriously recoloured, she made a point of only wearing skimpy shorts. Being short, skinny and not particularly attractive, this turn of events had fired up an interest in her looks that she would otherwise never have experienced. When the national press finally caught on that something strange and indeed newsworthy was going on, a reporter and a camera crew were dispatched. Much to her delight, she was becoming more and more a person of interest.

As time went on the pigmentation continued to spread slowly up her body, culminating with her head. It was when her face had turned completely orange that more reporters and camera crews were sent. The fact that she had escalated to a point where she was a celebrity, with a fan base that covered all continents, seemed to also go to her head. This newly acquired stardom had the effect of driving her original obnoxious behaviour to the more intense level of insufferable and when her hair turned green overnight this pushed her beyond this, to the point of being positively loathsome…

It was probably as a result of this that nobody was particularly surprised, or concerned, when she ended up being eaten by a very large rabbit.

The surgeon had a fairly meagre practice in the city.

He was a heart specialist. He held consultations in his rooms, then performed heart surgery at the local hospital. He had never attracted many clients, and his reputation as a practitioner was not the best. He just managed to scrape by. However, none of this could explain the fact that he was able to maintain such a lavish lifestyle. His mansion, set on a large property and his expensive cars seemed disproportionate to the income derived from his paltry medical practice. This had been the case for several years, but had changed radically when he decided to take a short break of a day or two. So, instead of flying into Saint Moritz, the luxury alpine resort town in Switzerland where he would cross-country ski for a week or two, he booked into a five-star hotel in a coastal holiday town.

It was there, on the second night, that he had taken a stroll along the promenade after his meal and found himself at the entrance of the pier. He hadn’t visited such a place since childhood and with a degree of excitement he went in. He spent time looking at the various forms of entertainment, including a penny arcade. He was thrown back to a time when, as a boy, he would go into such venues with a handful of coins. Strolling past the brightly lit, noisy machines, his attention was caught by on old wizard in a glass case beckoning customers to have their fortunes told. Dipping his hand into his pocket, he approached. The slot took his coin and he stepped back to watch the mystical fortune teller bob around before a click told him that a card had slid out onto the tray.

He picked it up. It read, ‘Your future does not look bright. You have systematically swindled more than fifteen million dollars from the Sandler, Bingly and Mortimer Corporation over the past twelve years. The authorities have been advised.’

His heart stopped.

She had mixed feelings about being there for him.

She had been through hell and back with the whole thing. Three years for a crime brought on by alcohol. The police, the courts, the neighbours, all of it! But she said she would wait. She would give him another chance. There had been other incidents where he would get drunk and end up in a brawl. The drink had been his downfall. He was certainly known to the police. It had been just petty crimes until this. It had hit the local newspapers big time. It seemed to her that his criminal activities were all brought about by drink. But this could all change now, with his promise to change his ways. He would reform. It was this promise, repeated during several prison visits, that had kept her there.

The day before his release she had given the flat a thorough cleaning, making it nice for him to come home to. She also had her hair done at the expensive saloon in town. She wanted to look her best for him. She really did love him when he wasn’t drinking.

The next day, release day, she drove out to the prison and brought him home. It was wonderful. They were both so happy. He went off for a shower. He was gone so long she went looking for him.

She found him sitting on the bed, bottle in hand.

“Where the hell did you get that?”

He grinned. “Shoebox in the wardrobe, where I left it.”

It was the most memorable stage performance in the magician’s career.

His finale was always the woman in the cabinet trick, and that night was no different. Having performed a number of clever illusions to warm the audience up, he called for his assistant. A spot light followed her onto the stage. The music swelled as she took a low bow. He caught her hand and led her to the cabinet. With a drum roll, she entered the cabinet and he closed the door. He then began a series of mystical hand movements and mutterings while walking around the apparatus.

Meanwhile, inside, she was kneeling down and tugging at the lever that opened the trap door. Nothing happened. She tried several times to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. It was at this point, crouching and panting from the effort, that she heard it. It was a soft whooshing sound followed by a pop.

On stage, the magician finally opened the cabinet. Of course, it was empty and the audience broke into enthusiastic applause. That wasn’t what made it memorable. Closing the door, he started up his magical incantations again, swirled around the cabinet several times accompanied by the haunting music before ripping the door open with a flourish and a bow. It was the audience’s reaction, or lack of it, that made him turn around to find the cabinet empty.

Her not reappearing wasn’t what made it memorable. The trick going wrong wasn’t what made it memorable. It was the fact that after a great number of investigations and a great deal of press reports, the woman was never seen again!

That’s what made it memorable.