Author: Alexander Fawn

There was so much talk about the planet dying and how to save it.

The young man, not long out of school and into work, was particularly worried about the newspaper reports and scientific articles on the subject. Then, he came across a piece about the Doomsday Vault. He read that it was a huge depository in Norway, where all of the world’s seeds were kept safe. It was with a great deal of excitement that he began to think a lot about the upcoming doomsday. He realised that this predicted scenario could be used to make otherwise impossible improvements for mankind and the world to come. He formed a plan, and with it, he saw himself as a futurist. He knew you could get just about anything on the black market. So, after a great deal of Internet research he managed to order a visitors pass for the vault. This came in the post a few days later. He booked a flight and took time off from work.

The day he entered the vault, he only carried a bag full of seeds along with a second, empty one. He made his way down into the main storage area and began searching for the thing he had come for. After a long time spent working through the systematically organised sections with their printed labels, he came to the container that held seeds for spinach. After emptying the seeds into his spare bag, he replaced them with similar looking lettuce seeds.

Mission accomplished, he knew he had sown the seeds for a better world!

On the surface he was a decent sort with sober habits.

He had always been kind to children and dumb animals, and had often been actively involved in a variety of volunteering projects for charitable groups. His past would give no guide as to what he had become. He grew up in a happy home and was always treated with kindness. In short, he could only be seen to be a really nice bloke. However, the fact is, he liked to, well… bump people off.

It started when he was a kid. His closest friend had told him he had spooky eyes. It meant very little to him, when a couple of days later, out on a picnic, he sent the boy over a cliff. He watched him tumble over and over before reaching the bottom. The sense of euphoria that swept over him as he watched, delayed his next move for several long moments. Eventually, he began running around shouting the boy’s name and getting the attention of the adults.

These activities carried through to adulthood, where he would regularly give an unseen nudge, push or trip. He always made sure that he was screened by plenty of people; crowds were his favourite. It was most often a fall in front of a car or train. He had never even been suspected. He knew that he had honed his skills to such a high level that he could probably rank himself with the likes of a professional assassin, although he would never do it for money. It would remain a hobby. Falls from high places were his favourite, but more difficult to set up.

On the domestic front, his own personal troubles concerned his current girlfriend. Their relationship had been going down the gurgler for some time. The truth of it being that he had grown really bored with her.

Happily, all this came to a head recently, when she told him that she wanted to go skydiving…

The church was nestled among aging trees at the quiet end of the lane.

Located on the outskirts of the village, it sat unattended and forgotten. He imagined there had been a time when its location, somehow separate from the bustle of comings and goings, would have been a welcome respite and sanctuary for those who had gone there to pray and give thanks. He stood eyeing the scene. There was a comforting beauty in what he was seeing. Then, he realised he’d been looking at the building for a long time, hardly moving. He loved the trees and the gravelly surface of the paths, but there was something… he stood back a little. Yes. He had it! He wasn’t happy about the roof tiles, they needed more moss.

With a smile, he added small blobs of blue and yellow to his palette, and with his brush he began mixing.

The woman entered the psychiatrist’s office and approached the reception desk.

Before she had a chance to arrange an appointment the shouting began. It was coming from behind the door of the consulting room. It fact, it was more than shouting. Someone was screaming, with threats to kill. This was followed by the sounds of a scuffle with furniture being knocked over. Seeing the panic button light up, the receptionist immediately called the police. It was obvious that a violent fight was going on, no doubt between the psychiatrist and a patient. It sounded as though the medical man was pleading with the patient to drop a knife. The woman was feeling nervous and was considering whether or not she should leave. The receptionist saw the look on her face.

In a cool voice, the receptionist said, “It’ll be all right, the police are usually very quick.” Then, with a reassuring smile, she added, “They’re only a couple of buildings away.”

Moments later, two large officers burst through the front door. The receptionist stood and pointed at the relevant door. They stormed through into the room and slammed the door behind them. There was a lot more yelling and commotion. It took the two policemen a while before getting the knife from the patient. Eventually, they appeared looking dishevelled, either side of a deranged looking man in handcuffs, who was still screaming and kicking out wildly. His eyes were ablaze with a frightening degree of evil. She stood well back to let them pass. The ear-splitting shrieking could still be heard as they left the building.

“May I help you?” said the lady behind the desk, still remaining calm.

“Actually, I wanted to make an appointment,” she replied, shakily.

The receptionist nodded and began checking her book, when the psychiatrist appeared in the doorway. His glasses had a broken lens and his hair was standing up on end in places. Buttons were missing from his shirt and white jacket. One eye was swollen and he had several bruises to his face. He raised a hand to the receptionist.

In a perfectly professional manner, he smiled and said, “Since I won’t be seeing that gentleman again, would around this time on a Wednesday afternoon suit?”

Ever since the night she met her secret boyfriend in the park, she made sure it was kept safe.

Although she wasn’t completely sure why she found it necessary to hold on to it, she knew that it represented something special. Meanwhile, life, for her, went on without boyfriends; she had no need for them. Her initial experience concerning their duplicity was enough. Put simply, she just didn’t trust men. She had a few select friends and that suited her social needs. Besides, her study was far more important, and having completed her course and qualifying with honours, she could only move forward. She very soon landed a well-paid position with a reputable company, enabling her to leave home and move into her own apartment.

Along with her regular belongings, she carefully transferred it from the far corner of her highest robe shelf, still sealed and taped in a plastic bag, then into her main case. It then went into a similar hard-to-reach spot at the top of a cupboard in her new place.

She quickly settled into her new life. However, as strange as it may seem, it took less than a year for her to meet and become fond of, a young up-and-coming professional, who worked in the same building. It came about that within a few months he moved in. All her ideas about how untrustworthy men were, seemed to fade away.

This was the case until the night she came home late from working overtime; something that rarely happened. For some reason her new boyfriend had decided to forage through her belongs. He said he only wanted to know her better, but had stopped looking when he found the heavily taped bag. He had opened it up and examined the contents. He was sitting on their couch holding it when she came in.

Saying that she was happy to explain why she had it, if he was prepared to listen to her, he agreed with growing interest. Sitting beside him, she took it and held it up…

So much happened after this. The police, the trial, the verdict and the cell.

As for it, it resides in an even more secure and tagged bag, in a large cardboard box in a basement evidence room.

Of course, it offered up two different traces of DNA.

It had come on so quickly!

She managed to get him into bed and make him comfortable. Most of the agonising contortions had passed and he was laying still, breathing with increasing difficulty. The bedroom was dimly lit. She sat on the edge of the bed, holding his hand. He was trying to say something.

She leant forward. “What’s that, dear?”

“Ambulance,” he gasped.

“Of course dear.”

He managed to say, “My mouth tastes funny.”

“Really? That’s interesting. That’ll be the syrup, dear.”

“Syrup?” he hissed.

“Don’t you worry about that now, dear. Just lie quietly.”

He groaned with the sudden racking of his body. “I may not get through this…” he croaked.

“I’m sure it’s just an allergy.”

His eyes widened and he made a great effort to speak. “Just in case, I can’t go on without telling you. Our savings, your cruise, the one you always wanted to take. The one we’ve spent a lifetime saving for.” He winced again with the pain.

“Oh!” she said, softly, “You mean Rome, the Colosseum, the Pantheon, Saint Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City, the medieval towns of Tuscany, Athens, Barcelona, Venice, Dubrovnik, the Greek Islands, and of course, the holy city of Jerusalem. Is that what you mean, dear?”

He frowned, looking puzzled.

“All gone,” she whispered, gently stroking his forehead.

“You know?”

“All evaporated away with your secret visits to that silly casino…” Her voice was almost singsong. “Your stupid poker games in the back room.”

“What…”

“Yes,” she went on with a comforting tone, “It’ll show up as an extremely high pollen count. A fatal allergy. You do spend so much time out there in the garden, my love, when you’re not gambling.” She chuckled. “It only took a teaspoonful of that special syrup. Well, I doubled it, to make sure.” She took a deep breath and shook her head slowly. “If you only knew how much trouble I went to. All that cloak and dagger stuff, and it was expensive!”

His throat seemed to be closing, but he managed to gasp, “Ambulance.”

“Of course, dear,” she repeated. “A little later. Not long now.

She bent closer and whispered in his ear, “Rome would have been wonderful!”

With a shrug, she got up and left the room.

He started a new job at the warehouse.

On his first day he was given work clothes. Although his name was Tim, they only had one that fitted him. It had been the one worn by the guy that had just left and had a label sewn to the front that said Mike. The storeman promised him that he would have a name label made with his name and have it sewn onto a shirt of his size. It bothered him at first, but he got used to it and came to realise that he preferred being called Mike, rather than Tim. Everyone was calling him Mike and he was happy with it, when a few days later the guy came in to collect his final pay-packet.

As he was leaving the office the new guy went over to say hello.

“Hi Mike,” he said, as he approached.

The guy looked annoyed. “No. I’m Brad, actually,” he said.

“Oh! I thought this was your shirt,” said the other.

“It was. They never got around to changing the name. I got fed up with complaining and being told that it would be fixed. I guess I just ran out of patience. It’s why I left.”

In that moment Tim didn’t think he would be there very long either. He no longer wanted to be called Mike. He wanted to be called Tim. After all, that was his name!

It was the sound of a car skidding and then accelerating hard that brought them out.

The man and the woman came out of nearby buildings to find the victim of a hit and run accident. The victim was laying in the otherwise quiet street. The man quickly took out his mobile and rang for an ambulance, giving the address and details, while the woman took her woolly cardigan off and folded it to make a pillow. She couldn’t help noticing the absence of blood as she tucked it under the man’s head. She noticed that the flap of broken skin on his temple had dropped, revealing a metal plate. She moved the gash on his elbow around a little until it gaped open, she saw metal. She then looked closely at the damage to the man’s leg, and saw metal rods!

The man’s head turned and his eyes opened a crack.

“Sorry,” she said, “don’t try to move. I’m just doing what I can to make you more comfortable.”

The victim said, “There are, of course, degrees of comfort, but for some, there are also levels of comfort below these, and beyond that there are many conjoining aspects that relate to each of these levels of comfort…” With that, his eyes closed and he lay still.

The man walked over. “How’s he doing?”

The shaken woman hesitated, then said, “Not sure; delirious I think.”

Wagging his head, he said “Not surprising, eh? The ambulance should be here soon.”

Minutes later the ambulance pulled into the street, followed immediately by a large black van. Two men from the van jumped out and talked to the medics, showing them paperwork. After a short discussion the ambulance left.

The two bystanders watched as the two men loaded the body onto a stretcher, loaded it into the back of the van and left; without anyone saying a word. The whole thing seemed to be over in just a couple of minutes.

The man turned to the woman with hands flapping. “What just happened here?”

The woman shrugged, and with fear in her eyes, said, “I really do think it’s best if we don’t ask.” Without saying more she turned and went back into the building.

The troubled man, reluctantly did the same.

The Himalayan field rat looked up into the professor’s eyes.

It looked tired. It was. Its sleepy eyes and sagging head gave testimony to yet another full day of an extensive and gruelling series of tests. These had been going on all day. Today had been like so many other days before, when it had been subjected to multiple investigations and assessments. A full month had now passed since the operation. The six-hour procedure of genetic merging he had performed had gone better than he could have hoped. The complex testing regime that he’d been carrying out on the rodent had shown very positive results. All indications were that the overall aim of the experiment would prove successful and ground-breaking.

The research scientist carefully jotted down a few final notes. He too was tired. Straightening his back and removing his surgical mask, he said, “That will do for today, we’ll run the stage seven tests tomorrow”.

He smiled down at the animal. “We are making wonderful progress,” he whispered.

He closed the cage and moved to the door. As he switched the light off, he called out “Good night.”

“Good night,” replied Rodney.

They sat around the table, holding hands, with their eyes closed.

The old lady at number fifty eight held séances regularly on the second Friday of every month. The small group of attendees didn’t vary much. Occasionally, a new comer would join them, but in the main everybody knew everybody. It was generally considered that these evenings provided entertainment of a sort. Most evenings saw enough messages come through from the spirit world to keep them all happy. Anyway, happy enough to leave a donation in the jar by the front door on their way out. It turned out quite differently on the night in question. The lighting was subdued as normal, and the old clairvoyant had been sitting in silence longer than usual, before she made the call.

The old medium cleared her throat, and speaking softly she entreated a visitor from the spirit world with the words, “Is there a spirit out there who would like to join us this evening? If so, make yourself known to us.”

Almost instantly, in the corner of the room a misty form slowly took shape. Unseen by those sitting around the table with their eyes shut tight, the figure is plainly a young woman. She is wearing a white crinoline dress and a small bonnet. She said, “Yes! Yes! Who is it that calls me forth?”

The medium repeated, “If you are there, would you like to join us?”

The figure said, “Why do you call me here?”

The medium said, “If you are there, please join our circle this evening.”

The figure drifted closer to the medium. “But, I am here!”

The medium said, “We would like to make contact. If anybody’s there please make yourself known.”

At this point the figure came to the mediums side, saying, “I’m here,” and laying her hand on the medium’s arm.

The old woman screamed and they all jumped!