Author: Alexander Fawn

Through science religion and politics they wade,

These thinkers that have shaped our world.

Causing us to stop and think twice,

Allowing ideas to be seen unfurled.

–

Aristotle, with his peripatetic style of teaching,

More mobile than Descartes, because,

As the father of philosophy,

He just thought, and therefore he was.

–

Plato, with his dialogues,

Founding the Western World’s first university.

Socrates, with his method of asking questions.

Seeking answers that prompted diversity.

–

Machiavelli, thinking that being feared

Was better than being loved,

If you really need to stay in power,

With a fist that is not velvet-gloved.

–

Spinoza, with his intellectual view

That miracles are not supernatural.

Kant, saying that we cannot perceive

What the world is really like.

A view offering no real collateral.

–

Aquinas, combining the principles of faith and reason.

Confucius, shaping thoughts about family and society.

Voltaire, thrusting attention on human suffering.

Buddha, saying that nothing is permanent.

All adding to the overall variety.

–

Asking assumption-challenging questions, about all we know,

Brings the process of thought to the brink,

But despite their firm challenge to conceptual truths,

And their logical analysis of all there is,

When all’s said and done,

Their job was second to none,

When you consider that all they did… was think!

The word is, I have to move on.

More a case of being pushed, really. Nothing I can do; I’ll be leaving soon. Personally, I don’t see that it’s absolutely necessary. Others seem to think it is all in the way of some kind of normal process. They seem to think that it’s part of some greater plan that I leave and not come back here. It is probably the case that if pushed out I will be able to make my own way in the world. I reckon the general consensus must be that I get out and meet people, become an interactive member of society. I guess my main problem is the fact that I like it here. If it was only my personal comfort and happiness that were kept in mind, I’m sure I would be allowed to stay. What I say is, everyone to their own opinion.

Anyway, what’s so great about being born?

It was a warm summer evening.

He didn’t particularly like her, she was weird. He wasn’t sure why he agreed to meet her after work, but there they were, sitting in a swanky restaurant, sipping champagne. She was certainly persuasive. When he took her home she invited him in for a nightcap. He declined at first, then he changed his mind. They were sitting on the bed, he felt very uncomfortable. She had certainly been very good company during the evening, but there was no way anything intimate was going to happen. She told him to relax while she made them both a special cocktail.

Looking around her room he noticed that her antique-looking dresser had a wide drawer with part of a black tassel caught in it, where it hadn’t quite closed. He gave in to curiosity and opened it. The tassel belonged to a black hooded cloak. He lifted it and found several items underneath; a pentacle, a wand, a bell and several black candles. It looked like stuff used in witchcraft. He closed the drawer quietly, returned to the bed and waited.

It was a warm summer evening, and the couple returned from the restaurant. It was their tenth special anniversary. They were celebrating the night he proposed to her. She was a wonderful woman. Such a good mother to their two beautiful children. He was still head-over-heels in love with her. He sat on the edge of the bed taking his shoes off when she asked him to take out her pale blue nightie from the same wide drawer and lay it on the bed for her, while she went to the bathroom.

He took his socks off and padded across to the old dresser. He opened the drawer and looked in. He found the one she wanted and laid it on the bed.

In the bathroom, she smiled.

The situation was grim and she wasn’t holding up very well.

He would arrive soon and hopefully tell her what she needed to hear. Time was passing slowly. She looked at the clock again. It had hardly moved. Its low, monotonous tick didn’t help. It was the sound of slowness, a portent of how unbearable things could get. She was in a state, she knew it, but he would be here soon. He would come back and she would hear the words that would set things right. She was watching the seconds ticking away on the clock when she heard him coming through the front door. Her heart raced.

“Thank goodness!” she cried, as he entered.

He smiled at her concern and shook his head.

“I just need to hear it from you,” she said.

He understood and nodded.

“Tell me,” she pleaded.

“OK! OK! I will…”

She laced her fingers in prayer.

He said, “It’s OK. No need to worry. Everything’s going to be alright.”

The gatekeeper was looking through the huge book that lay across his desk, looking for the newcomer’s name. He looked quizzically at the man before him. “Where exactly have you come from?” He asked.

The newcomer waved a hand with a flourish, a gesture that seemed to denote some sort of royalty. “Somewhere, in Egypt… I think. Why? Does it matter?”

The demon, The High Keeper of the Great Book, The Senior Sentinel for the Gates of Hades, who had always seen himself as one of Lucifer’s favourites, looked aghast. “Of course it matters!” He shuffled through more pages, becoming more and more annoyed as he did. “I don’t seem to have a record of…”

He was interrupted by the creak of one of the gigantic gates being pushed open.

The demon stood and bowed as Lucifer approached. He pointed down at the book. “Apologies my Lord, I think we need to pull the miscellaneous file on this one. I… I can’t find him in the book.”

Lucifer looked troubled. “Really?”

The demon bowed again. “Yes, My Greatness.”

Lucifer turned directly to the newcomer. “Where are you from?”

“Egypt, probably.”

Lucifer said, “Probably?”

The man was becoming annoyed. “Look what is all this about? What’s so bloody important about where I came from?”

The demon cowered and Lucifer stiffened, saying “We’ll asked the questions, if you don’t mind. What where you doing in Egypt?”

The man shrugged. “I was on holiday.”

“You were on holiday in Egypt; just a holiday.”

“Probably Egypt, although it may have been Libya.”

Lucifer braced. “Libya?”

“Libya, yes, why not? It’s next door isn’t it? I’m getting just a little bit tired of all this. If you people can’t keep proper records, you’re bound to have this sort of trouble. Just find somewhere cool for me to sit down and I’ll wait for you people to get your act together.”

The demon said, “We don’t have anywhere cool down here,” then bit his lip and sat back down.

Lucifer was enraged by the man’s impudence. He turned to the demon. “Pull the file.”

The demon nodded and summoned a black angel. He gave him his orders. Seeing that the Great Master was present, it flew up and away at great speed, returning quickly with a thick file. He dropped it on the demon’s desk, bowed several times and flew off again.

The demon opened it up and began sifting through paperwork. “Let’s see now. You have to have something… Yes! Here we are. There seems to be an update here that was missed. He’s an undercover government agent, and…”

The newcomer just stood grinning.

Lucifer bristled again. “And?”

“And he’s not one of ours.”

“He’s not?” Lucifer cried.

“No. Your Most Worshipful One. It would appear that Mephistopheles lost this man’s soul recently in a card game to a highly placed American politician.”

Lucifer sighed. “Mephistopheles, gambling again. I might have known.”

The man chuckled.

Lucifer shouted, “OK! OK! Let him go.”

The man smiled, turned, and went back the way he came.

Hunger was always an issue for him and his family.

As mice go, he was pretty smart. However, right now he was trapped. He was stuck, cowering in the corner of the kitchen a long way from his hole. The lady of the house was scowling about something while preparing dinner for her family. He couldn’t move and he just prayed that she didn’t look his way.

Her mobile phone played a tune and she picked up.

“Hi. What’s up?”

Pause.

“Where is he now?”

Pause.

“At school? You were supposed to pick him up.”

Pause.

“What, now? I’m in the middle of getting dinner.”

Long pause.

“OK. OK. I’ll leave now, but don’t you complain to me when your dinner’s late!”

Brief pause.

“OK. Bye.”

“Damn him!” She shouts, and slams down the cheese grater, causing a large knob of cheese to bounce and roll off the end of the table.

His eyes went wide, but he didn’t’ move.

With more grumbling, she took off her apron and stormed out.

He waited until he heard the door go. The house fell silent. He approached the cheese. It was pretty big. He dug his claws in as deep as they would go and began walking backwards, dragging it behind him.

At the hole, he called out. She on the inside pulling and him now on the outside pushing, they just managed to get it through.

He really loved it when humans became bad tempered like that.

They get sloppy.

She had got away.

This was her life now. This was her new life. Away from him; away from them; away from everybody, all the people she had ever known. She’d been lucky to get work in the old lady’s flower shop. She knows it was a matter of timing. The week before, her predecessor was caught with her hand in the till and got fired. That, and the fact that the old girl took a liking to her. There was no way she’d be anything but grateful. It was her salvation. Getting work so quickly. Being able to pay the rent weekly, eating regularly, and best of all, staying under the radar.

At the end of the day, she walked home from the shop. She’d brought her laptop with her. Internet and games only. No more emails. No more Facebook. They played no part in her new life. When she got in she heated a frozen dinner. She sat to eat it at the small table in the small kitchen. Then she cleared away and boiled a kettle.

It was time to break the rule. Time to allow herself a tiny connection amid all those she had cut. The one link to all that she had left behind. The one and only link to the past. She made herself a cup of coffee.

She sat quietly sipping it from her favourite mug.

The rabbit sat quietly on its favourite tree stump.

This particular spot in the garden was its regular place. From here it could see the birdhouse with its peaked roof fixed on top of a sturdy pole. The rabbit often saw a large, grey cat prowling around the garden, but where it sat, the birdhouse was high enough from the lawn to be a safe place for birds to come and go. These were mostly laughing doves. They would often fly down and pay a visit. They would drink from a small bowl of water. Next to the bowl sat a dish that was topped up with seed from time to time.

It heard a door slide open. Minutes later a man appeared, carrying bird seed in his cupped hand. It watched as the man approached. The rabbit saw it as a ritual. First the dish comes out and is shaken to remove any remaining husks, then the tiny seeds are tipped in and the dished put back in the same place. If the bowl requires topping up the man would bring a small watering can and fill it to the brim. Soon after this the birds would come. They usually came in pairs with one eating and one drinking. Often, they would swap.

The rabbit enjoyed watching all these comings and goings, and this was in spite of the fact that the rabbit was painted green with blue eyes and made of concrete!

She was excited about what she’d been given.

She ran in to tell her mother. “Look mummy! Isn’t it beautiful?”

Her mother, preoccupied with loading the washing machine, said, “Oh! Yes? Where did you get that?”

The girl waved it in the air, saying, “The old man gave it to me, he said…”

Her mother looked up suddenly. “What old man?”

“The old man with the long white beard.”

“Where was this old man?”

“In the street.”

“One of our neighbours, do you mean?”

“No mummy, but he said…”

“I don’t care what he said. You’ve been told over and over not to talk to strangers.”

“But he was nice.”

The mother said, “I don’t care how nice he was,” and put out her hand. She took it and turned it over. It was some kind of amulet. It seemed to be quite ancient, but at the same time in remarkably good condition. Without question, it was a lovely piece, decorated with an intricate pattern that was certainly striking. She said, “It looks quite valuable, why would he give you a thing like that?”

“He said I was special, and it was meant for me. He said if you stroke your finger along this twisty line here, you can enter a magic world.”

Her mother shook her head, not really listening. “I don’t know where it came from, it looks as though it’s worth a bit.” She gave her daughter a grimace as she handed it back, then putting the last of the clothes in, she said, “We’ll have to give it back.”

The girl stamped her foot. “No!” she cried, “It’s mine.”

“Look, you shouldn’t have been out there talking to strangers in the first place. You’ve brought it on yourself.”

“But we can’t give it to anybody else, because it’s mine.”

Her mother straightened and said, “That’s all very well. You’re a silly girl. I’ve told you time and time again not to talk to strangers.”

The girl pouted. She turned away running her finger across the amulet.

Then, she was gone…

I was right there when the murder took place, I saw it all.

Of course, I wasn’t there when he found the reference to the almost undetectable poison on the Internet. Neither was I there when he managed to buy it on the black market. I didn’t attend any of the police interviews where he explained about her two heart attacks. Those were a while back. I wasn’t even here then.

He was clever in the way he had explained about her chest pains and their realising that she could finally go if she had another attack, but I wasn’t there for that either. But I was there when the murder took place.

I was there, sitting in the armchair, when he brought the coffee in.

Naturally, had I been asked, I couldn’t have told them anything, being a cat, but even if I could, I would have said nothing.

I had never liked her.

I had always liked him.