Author: Alexander Fawn

She entered the eminent psychologist’s room for yet another weekly session.

Her school results were poor. It was considered that the most likely reason for this was her being troubled by the overwhelming nature of her nightly dreams. This in itself was seen to be the most probable cause of such low marks. It was decided that these ongoing events were holding her back from fully concentrating on her school studies during the day. As a result, the school had recommended a course of psychotherapy to get to the bottom of it.

For her, none of this was true. In fact, she actually made up the most scandalous stories in order to embarrass the aging professional. It was merely a fun thing for her. She had never seen the purpose of these visits. She was aware of how expensive these sessions were, but if her parents were willing to pay, who was she to argue? The best thing for her was to create some amusement for herself. So, she concocted dreams of the most scandalous nature, then experienced a great deal of pleasure by watching the old man’s face.

On this occasion, she described at length and in great detail, a series of absolutely shocking immoral activities that had played out in her most recent and greatly disturbing dream. She told the disgraceful story involving a high-borne duchess, a young stable hand and a furious husband.

The psychologist raised a finger and made the comment that it sounded very much like a period piece, and how surprised he was at her detailed knowledge of the life and times of people living in the eighteenth century. She just shrugged, and not being put off, continued recounting her dream.

Since these sessions went for an hour, it was not uncommon to grant the patient a toilet break, if needed. It was on such a break, during the current session, that he spotted a brightly coloured book protruding from her school bag. Part of its title could be seen. The words ‘Amorous Adventures’ caught his eye. He quickly lifted it out and removed the book mark. He smiled before returning it. At the end of the visit he advised the girl that this was her final visit. This took her by surprise. She had to concede to herself that she was leaving with an uncomfortable feeling of disappointment. A disappointment that was to be completely overshadowed by remorse during the following week.

Naturally, the medical report went to the school, along with a copy of it to her parents. Although quite a detailed document, the whole of it was summed up in the final part, being the diagnosis and the conclusion.

The psychologist stated that the reason the girl was not doing particularly well in her studies simply came down to a lack of natural talent, a complete absence of originality with respect to creative thinking, and an obsession with reading cheap pornographic paperbacks.

It was the child’s mother who discovered it.

She had only intended to sit for a while and look at the colourful scribbles in the eighteen-month-old’s book. She would, of course, make all the right congratulatory noises to encourage the child. This was when she found the word. It was a large colouring book, with a few blank pages at the end. On one of these the infant had written in large, black capitals, the word ‘ONE’. She was amazed and excited at the same time, calling out to her husband.

The boy’s father, being something of a cynic, after staring at the page for a while, asked, “One what?”

His mother, on the other hand, was a religious woman, in an angry tone, she said, “Don’t be silly! It’s not ‘one’ anything. It is just the word ‘one’. For goodness sake, don’t you see, for this child to write the word ‘one’ is miracle enough!” She looked up at the ceiling. “This could be a sign, some kind of prophesy.”

They didn’t always see things the same way. Nothing much was said about it for a day or two. He certainly didn’t want to get into any arguments about what was almost certainly a fluke. Nothing happened, until his wife called out, in a hysterical tone, “Come and see. You must come and see this!”

He had to admit a fair degree of surprise when he saw that the child had written the word ‘ZERO’, again in large bold letters.

“I don’t know how,” he said, scratching his head, “but this boy is talking binary.”

“What?”

“Binary, I know you’ve never been interested in that sort of thing, but binary digits are either zero or one; that’s their values.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about, but I feel sure it means something. I mean, it must, mustn’t it?”

He pondered. “Well, I have to admit, with this second word, it is a mystery.”

“Mystery, yes. I think it’s a message of some kind. Should we be telling someone?”

“Maybe, but I suggest we think about it for a while, you know, give ourselves time to let it all sink in.”

She nodded in agreement.

The real shock came on the following day when the child wrote the word ‘TECHNOLOGY’ on another page. Although it was truly amazing their very young child had written it, it did make perfect sense. They had several long discussions about it, with him saying that some kind of communiqué was obviously unfolding and they should remain patient until they had a clear idea of what it was.

The conundrum grew even more interesting when on the following day they found the word ‘MUCH’ had been added. Whereas, they had both felt that it was becoming clearer as to what the statement would say, the word ‘much’ didn’t help at all. They talked about it even more, of course, but there was now a degree of tension growing regarding the whole series of events.

It was on the following day that this strange business was destined to come to a head. The mother was deliberately watching the boy constantly for any signs. He eventually turned to his book and picked up his black crayon. When he had written, his tiny hands proceeded to tear up the book, page by page. After standing frozen for the longest time, she came back to her senses and screamed out for her husband. Seeing what was happening, he rushed forward and rescued the book, just as the last of it was being torn up. He managed to retrieve the last word written.

That night, when the child was fast asleep, they sat talking. Finally, he held up the torn page with the word ‘TOO’ on it. “We’re agreed then?” he said.

“Yes,” she replied.

He finished tearing the page to pieces, then bagged it up with the rest of it, ready for the rubbish bin.

They had taken a mutual vow of silence regarding the entire affair.

He sat pondering over the empty writing pad.

Self-isolation through the pandemic was surely his chance to do something he’d always wanted to have a go at. To write; to write something, anything, really. He knew there were stories rattling around inside his head, there had to be. He would let them come to the surface, then make a work of it. A piece of his own creation!

He sat listening to the silence in his head. A silence that began to stir. A rippling of thoughts began to wash back and forth, like bobbing waves coming in from a great ocean or the tiny ripples on a pond. One by one he felt the notions move; layers of things being revealed. Each being a step towards the telling of a tale. He’d love to write a story about a flight of steps that go nowhere… But, no, that wasn’t real He wanted to write about his memories. He couldn’t help feeling that he’d like to write about some magical person, able to bend light rays or change the colour of leaves back to green from brown or reduce humidity to improve the day or bring on rain or just gave life to dead things…

No. This was more of the same. He needed to let the ripple of memories return. Boyhood memories were best. Some of them were forbidding. Like the scary spare room at the back of his grandma’s cottage, and what it contained. It was kept locked. He never knew why. Then there was the time, lying in bed as a small boy, hearing a loud bloodcurdling scream coming from next door. Another mystery that was never solved. On that night he had considered going down to his parents to learn more, but he had fallen back to sleep.

There was the time when the family had gone to visit friends and found them all out in the surrounding streets, looking for their dog. A dog that they never found. There was the orange monkey, a toy he never liked or the time he dropped one of his mother’s best cups. It had made her cry. Then there was his father’s anger, the time he spilt orange juice on his newspaper. There were happier, spooky times, they’d sit around by candle light when they had power cuts. Lots of things to think about, but was he just treading water?

For a long time he sat remembering smells; the lavender that grew near their back fence; a friend who would visit and smoke cigars, filling the house with the pungent aroma, and how this would upset his mother who said nothing until he had left; the lemony fragrance that hung around one of his mother’s friends. There was always the batty old bird from further up the street who was always going on about aliens, and how they were regularly visiting us, and how people kept avoiding the fact that they existed, and how she would welcome being taken on board one of their saucers, so she could learn more about them. Of course, there was the day their neighbour’s barbeque had got out of hand and thick smoke wafted down the street.

Or he could write about his uncle and the morning he was in the local church repairing a pew when the organ started playing for a few seconds, then stopped abruptly, when he looked up to find that there was no one there. He remembered how one of his best friend’s at school was so proud of how good his pet hamster was at pretending to be dead. Then there was the time he was on the Ferris wheel at the fair when it broke down and he was stuck there for hours looking down at his parents, and how angry everybody was when they eventually got it going again and everyone got off. He could write about some of the things that his auntie was always talking about, mainly how there aren’t enough trees being left to keep the air fresh and how the sea was gradually filling with plastic…

He sighed and dropped his pen.

He could think of nothing.

The friendly old woman in number eleven often found time to stop and chat.

She thought he was a nice lad and often had sweets ready for him on his way home from school. They would talk for a while before he went in for tea. She liked to talk about her daughter, who was a nurse, and she was always willing to hear the latest about his family. Their friendship had grown stronger throughout the year. Then, for several days she wasn’t at her front gate and he wondered if she was all right.

It was a couple of nights later that the drug squad came banging on the door, well after he had gone to bed. There was a hell of a commotion, with squad members going from room to room. The family was herded into the front room after it had been searched, while they carried out their raid through the rest of the house.

After a lot of tramping around and noisy searching, there were shouts from the garage and several men started carrying boxes out from his father’s van. Out in the street, under the light from the lamppost, they were loading them into a truck. His mother was crying, and it got worse when the handcuffs went on his dad. He was led out to a police car.

By this time, most of the people that lived in the street had come out to see what was happening. The big truck took off first, followed by a van with the rest of the police officers, and finally, the car with his dad sitting in the back, staring out at his wife and son.

The spectators began returning to their homes and the street fell quiet again. His mother had run in crying, leaving him to watch the tail lights disappear down the street. Eventually, he turned to go in, seeing the old woman closing her front curtains as he did.

He felt sure he saw her grinning.

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…”