Author: Alexander Fawn

Rock a bye currency, up in the charts,

When the wind blows, it will break hearts,

When the bough breaks, values will fall,

And down will come profits, economy and all.

He looked around in disbelief.

How could anybody, he wondered, set about quite deliberately decorating in this ghastly manner? His surroundings where hideous. Somehow there seemed to be a bloody minded belligerence behind the décor.

He couldn’t understand how these people could surround themselves with such a bizarre mixture of mismatched shapes and techno coloured trash.

There was no middle ground with what he saw. These people either had some top interior designer flown in from somewhere in Europe and given him carte blanche, or they had allowed some drugged up, ‘know it all’ art student into their home.

The horror of the setting engendered an atmosphere verging on pure evil and an ambience, the like of which would be more at home in a lunatic asylum.

It was all so vulgar and tasteless.

For him, even the colour of the door brought about a bilious feeling. He couldn’t wait to get out.

But, there again, this wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t asked to use their toilet.

Two grubby children,

Sitting on a fence.

One named Mildred,

One named Spence.

Toppled off Mildred,

Toppled off Spence.

Clambered back Mildred,

Clambered back Spence.

He was loading the printer with paper when he saw it.

It was only seven words, typed out, in English, but the significance of what he read wasn’t lost on him. He stood thinking. How did it get there? He had only just broken open a new ream of white A4 paper. Out of the possible five hundred sheets he had discovered this one! How weird is that? He flipped through the pack. No, it was the only one with anything printed on it. He wasn’t sure who he was really comfortable showing it to. Probably his Grandpa; he had always been able to confide in him. He took it through to the back of the house and tapped on his door. He heard him call out and went in.

“Take a look at this Grandpa,” he said, as he handed him the sheet.

The old man took it. He sat turning it over in his wrinkled fingers a couple of times. He wasn’t wearing glasses when he looked up. “Paper,” he said, pulling a funny face.

“Yes, but read it, please. Put your specs on. I wanted you to see it first. It was buried in a brand new pack of printing paper. I’ve no idea how it could have got there. I’m not sure who I should tell about it. What do you think?”

He put his glasses on and stared at both sides of the paper again. “Sorry, lad, can’t see anything.”

The boy took it back. Maybe Grandpa’s eyes just weren’t good enough. He thanked him anyway.

His mother was standing in the kitchen, reading recipes. He handed her the sheet, but the same thing happened. She said she saw nothing. He took it out to the garage where his father was fitting new spark plugs. “Sorry, son, my hands are grubby, you hold it up so I can read it.” It happened once more. “No, sorry,” he said, after squinting at both sides carefully.

He took the sheet to his room, where he sat on the edge of his bed and read it again. He was shaking.

Suddenly, he knew what to do. He took it into the bathroom, scrunched it up… and flushed it.

Treasures have a widening spectrum,

With forms of these duly noted.

Scaling down from more to less,

The frivolous not to be demoted.

–

There’s the sea, the sky, pink clouds at dusk.

The trees and flowers that skirt a lake.

The wind across a rippling pond,

And every precious breath we take.

–

Wise words, a loving heart,

An open door, arms held wide,

Laughter, joy, music, song,

The bubbles in a foaming tide.

–

A helping hand, an answered prayer,

A sense of hope, a tender look.

A rising sun, a night bird’s call,

A starlit sky, a babbling brook.

–

Treasures have a widening spectrum,

With a scattering duly seen.

A flower’s petal, a needed smile,

Far too many here to glean!

The neighbour from the old shack up the lane came knocking.

The man opened his front door to find his neighbour holding a chain-saw, its teeth shiny and red. He had borrowed it recently and the man had completely forgotten about it. His neighbour had said he needed it before his wife returned from her short stay at her sister’s home. His hands and the front of his trousers were splashed with red too. He was obviously out of breath. He stood for a moment looking lost. Then, he seemed to refocus, saying, “Thanks for the loan,” and held the ghastly-looking thing out.

“Oh! Just put it down there, I’ll see to it later.”

He put it down, then stood staring.

“Did it do the job OK?” the man asked, not at all sure what to say.

The neighbour wiped the sweat from his face with his jacket sleeve, he replied, “Yes. Thanks.”

“OK. You’re welcome,” said the other and went to close the door.

“I hope you don’t mind,” said the neighbour, holding up his hand.

“Yes?” said the man.

“I was wondering if you had a shovel…”

She wrote the letter and he replied to it by letter, knowing that the guard who looked after the mail room was a nasty piece of work. By that, I don’t mean a piece of work of some sort that was carried out by someone lacking the skills to do the job properly, thereby producing something horrible. This is notwithstanding the distinct possibility that he would be most likely to bring such a thing about. Still, knowing that he read all the mail, both coming and going, fully served the prisoner’s purpose. The warder would certainly read it. The prisoner had seen him at his desk, pouring over the letters and stroking his ugly little goatee beard. Well, not quite a goatee; it was more of a cross between a Norse Skipper and a Chin Puff. Whatever it was, he didn’t like it.

When it came right down to it, he didn’t like the rest of his face either. It had splotches, revolting puce coloured patches. Not a bright and cheerful puce, like the dress his mother altered for a neighbour who was pregnant and wanted to wear it to a do being put on by the local Rugby Club. The do she never actually went to on account of her fiancé’s younger brother, who she was really fond of, came off his motorbike that afternoon and was in an intensive care unit in the local hospital. The prognosis was touch and go and they both spent that particular evening at his bedside. Whereas he recovered shortly after, the prisoner’s mother had a great falling out with the woman who refused to pay for the work she’d done, on the basis that she hadn’t worn the dress, and wasn’t likely to in the near future.

Be all that as it may, the man’s facial markings were no way near that attractive. They were not that kind of puce at all, more of a foreboding greyish red-violet, mixed with brownish-purple. Despite this, he must have read it because the police became involved and the prisoner received another letter from his wife. This one saying that a group of police officers had been there with shovels and had dug up the entire back garden. Of course, when she said they had completely dug up the whole of the back garden, this had to be a gross exaggeration, obviously. They wouldn’t have lifted all the paths or dug under the shed. On the other hand, all of the soil in the garden had been dug over very thoroughly.

The upshot of all this was that his reply to her request to plant vegetables, read, ‘Please don’t do any digging in the back garden’.

While the letter he was writing now, reads, ‘Now, would be a good time to plant vegetables.’

The calendar crawlers go about their insidious business.

Back and forth they go between the blocks of numbers. The matrix of a month, a year, a day; laid bare. All that is done and said viewed without shyness. Lives lit by spotlight. Thoughts and ideas that were once owned, now shared. They know what he did on Friday afternoon, and them on Sunday, and her on Wednesday night. Days made open, comments and activities seen. For these, their own lives not enough. Their activities, once bringing disgrace and social spurn, now regarded as acceptable.

From pigeon and parchment to paper and glass. The praises and clamour for the digital made loud enough to subdue any dissenting voice, telling of what new shape society is taking. The mirror of it now fuzzy, the ugliness made common. No more stealing across borders; passports not required. Going so easily from time’s numbers on the open grid. All this availability, riding helter-skelter on expanding technology.

To those not riding on the wave, choose your passcodes wisely!

Mum was forever doing really stupid stuff.

I mean, we kids used to love a lot of it. The funny stuff, that is. Dad just couldn’t take it, so he took off. We didn’t really miss him. He had no sense of humour. Mum would suddenly come up with one of her hair-brain ideas, right out of the blue, and off we’d go again. Some of it was deliberate, some of it not.

There was the time we were all; me being the only girl, and my two younger brothers, anyway, there was this time we all went to the shopping centre to get a few things. Mum made us all where balaclavas, her too. All the time people were staring at us, but all we could do was giggle. Mum really enjoyed that.

Some people said she was just plum crazy, certifiable, others said she had a death wish. We kids took no notice of any of this, after all, she was our mum. We were not at all popular with the neighbours. One time, the guy next door complained about mum’s laughing. He said it was maniacal and up set his wife.

Mum got angry. She got her own back by taking the jug of chilled water we kept in the fridge, called to him over the side fence, when he approached she tipped it all over him and yelled at him to chill out. Then she laughed, maniacally.

Anyway, the day came when we all came in a bit late, it was almost dark and we were expecting to get told off.

When we got in we found that the house was stinking with this really weird smell. It was all through the place, in every room. At first we couldn’t find mum, but she was upstairs closing windows. She came down explaining that we could smell propane. She told us how much she loved the smell of it. We just figured she was doing one of her peculiar things again.

Next thing, she went to the fuse box and cut the lights. We got a torch each and had fun wandering from room to room looking around and seeing how different things looked. Then she went to the cupboard and brought down the box of candles.

It was at that point that I realised… there was simply no hope for any of us…

He had gathered a really big crowd and was finishing his act with his longest sword, a sword that some members of the audience had confirmed was, in fact, extremely sharp! Just as he brought the hilt down to his lips a nasty little kid ran out of the crowd and threw pepper in his face! Well, you can imagine the crowd stood there boggle-eyed as the poor fellow finished his act with a performance none of them were expecting, and started to go berserk when some of the people at the front were spattered with blood! In the pandemonium the kid took off and it was some minutes before a policeman was on the scene.

Being told what had happened, he tried to settle the crowd down, while using his walkie-talky to call for an ambulance. Not that there was any hurry for that, and more importantly, he put out a call for any police car in the vicinity to chase the boy, who had taken off down the main highway. He told the crowd that they would soon run him down… By run him down, he didn’t mean actually run him down, of course. Unlike what had happened to the police officer’s brother the year before. That was a terrible case.

His brother had been orange picking in Greece; a sort of a pay-as-you-go type holiday. He was in this orange field. They call them fields over there, not orchards. Anyway, this field was on a hill and they were collecting the fruit in plastic crates and loading a trailer that was hooked to the back of a tractor. The brother had just got down from a tree when the trailer came unhooked and started to roll down the track between the rows of trees. He was pretty unlucky not to have heard it coming, as he stood looking out over the attractive view and the quaint little town below. Everybody was pretty upset and they didn’t pick any more oranges that day.

Anyhow, I digress. Pulling her jacket sleeve down, she managed to hide the tear in her blouse. Once inside, she was ushered through to what they called the blue visitors room. She had been there a couple of times before, or maybe three or even four, to be more accurate, but regardless of how many times it was, she’d wondered about the name it had been given. From the first time she’d entered it, she had the feeling that the room wasn’t exactly blue. In fact she thought it was more of a turquoise. Not only that, it was a turquoise that had less blue in it than green. This aside, she sat and waited a couple of minutes; more like five or six, in fact. 46!

She had never found the canvas backed chairs at all comfortable, she felt the material was rather coarse on her back. Canvas, was often made from cotton and linen, but sometimes either hemp or jute are used. She surmised that when these backs were made, the rough surface came about with the use of jute. Even so, she waited patiently, as she had a particular request to make. She was keen to do a bit of gardening while he was inside. She thought she’d plant a few lettuces to start with. She wasn’t sure what type of lettuce she wanted to plant, it would probably have been either Goldrush or Buttercrunch. She thought it would most likely be ‘Buttercrunch’. She was sure he wouldn’t mind, but she should ask because normally he spent more time out there than her.

He came through and sat. They chatted happily for around their usual thirty minute visit. It was around thirty minutes… then, before she left she asked the question that had been pressing on her mind since she’d arrived. When I say pressing, I don’t mean… no matter. His response took her by surprise. He said she should put the idea off for a week. At first she was disappointed, but when she questioned his decision he became very angry. This in itself may have contributed to his being sent to jail in the first place, although that would be pure speculation. Having learnt that it was best not to argue with him, she agreed to wait. She could see that he was earnest.

Now, it goes without saying that his name wasn’t necessarily Ernest, as this was never disclosed as part of the joke. Yet, being strictly logical about it, from all of the many hundreds of given names that he could have, there has to be the possibility, no matter how slight, that this was indeed his name. To move on, whatever his name was, he calmed down and explained what he had in mind. When she got home, she was to write a letter with the request in it and send it as soon as she could. He promised to reply with a positive response within the next few days. She was very happy with this and probably began discussing the merits of Goldrush and Buttercrunch, when the bell sounded for visitors to leave.