Author: Alexander Fawn

They met in town, quite by chance.

They hadn’t seen each other since school. They were now both in their twenties. The older one, although only by a year, lived in the town, while the other lived on her parent’s farm quite a distance away. The older woman remembers two things about her. The first was how her dad would drop her off with his truck at school because the farm wasn’t on any bus route, and the second, was how she was known for telling tall tales. At school she used to tell whoppers! It had always been amazing that although the stories were completely outrageous and totally unbelievable, she would carry on as though she was convinced herself that what she was saying was true. This fact alone resulted in her not having many friends.

Anyway, on the basis that this sort of childish behaviour would have been dropped over the few years since, she was happy to find a café and chat for a while. When they were settled the older one started by talking about where she worked in a local estate agency and the type of work she did. The younger woman seemed reluctant at first, but after some gentle prompting explained that she didn’t have a steady job because of recent illness and she mostly just helped out around the farm. She sipped at her coffee.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know of course. I haven’t seen you for ages. You look OK, though. What happened?”

The other dropped her head. “It was pretty horrible at the time.”

“Go on.”

The other said, “To be honest, I don’t like to talk about it.”

They fell silent for a bit. The older girl began to wonder whether this was going to be like the old school days, with her trotting out all the crazy stuff she was known for back then. On the other hand she may really have been ill. It was only fair to hear her out. Besides, she was curious.

“You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to.”

“No, it’s alright. It just makes me shudder to think about it, that’s all.”

“Like I say, if you…”

“No,” the other interrupted, “no, I should be able to talk about it.” She took out a tissue and blew her nose. “It was a few months back,” she went on, “I only had a bad stomach ache really, but my mum insisted I go to the emergency unit at the hospital here. She was worried that it might be something serious and we shouldn’t ignore it. Anyway, dad’s truck was out of action so we called for an ambulance.”

She blew her nose again. “It was dreadful because half way here into town the ambulance had an accident and ended up on its side. It was chaos, I can tell you, and my stomach pains were getting worse. Anyway, a helicopter was called for and I was air-lifted on a special stretcher and flown the rest of the way.”

The older woman lifted her cup slowly, keeping a straight face, she said, “Wow!”

“Yes,” the other replied, ‘it was pretty awful.”

“And your stomach?”

“Oh! That? Just a bad case of indigestion.”

“Oh! That’s a relief.”

“Anyway,” she went on, “it didn’t turn out too bad really, because after leaving the hospital I decided to get a taxi back. I needed money, so I used the ATM to get out some cash. It was amazing! I accidently put in the wrong pin number and the machine coughed up five hundred dollars of someone else’s money!”

“Amazing, as you say,” said the other with a poker face.

The younger one went on about all the things that had happened to her. The older, just sat there listening to her without saying a word.

She told her listener about the time she had spent the night in a haunted house with friends and by morning she was the only survivor. She told her about how she had been walking home one night and had to fight off a crowd of zombies. She told her about how she had been on top of a hill one day and was struck by a bolt of lightning, and how she was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital, and how she came back to life much to the amazement of all the staff.

She paused to get her breath.

The older woman sat back. “Have you ever been abducted by aliens?” she asked.

The other frowned. “No. Can’t say I have.” After a moment, she said, “Have you?”

“Yes, just once.”

“Wow! How cool!”

“Not really.”

“Why, what happened?”

“It happened last year. They took me to their ship and held me there for weeks.”

The young woman’s eyes went very wide.

“Go on.”

“To be honest, I don’t like to talk about it.”

He was sure he had seen this address before, several times.

To be absolutely sure, he clicked on it. Yes, this was the same page and the same Website. He was sure of it. He was equally sure that he had unsubscribed, several times. Yet, here it was again! He went to unsubscribe. No. He’d leave it there in his in box and think about it.

He’d thought about it. Slowly, slowly, catchy monkey.

He scanned the page carefully and scrolled down. He knew it was there somewhere. He found it; in one of several lines of very small text, an extremely faint, pale grey word, ‘unsubscribe’.

He clicked on it and got the next page.

There were two buttons now, labelled ‘Reason for unsubscribing’ and ‘Unsubscribe’.

He clicked on ‘Reason for unsubscribing’.

Next was the exit survey. He’d seen them before, but he wasn’t going to bypass this one.

He looked down a list of items.

‘Content considered to be irrelevant’; ‘Content is of no interest’; ‘Not tailored to preferences’; ‘Have not subscribed to this’; ‘Address looks suspicious’; ‘Receiving too many emails’; ‘Looks like spam’; ‘Privacy concerns’, and so on. Each one had a check box. He checked all of them.

The next screen gave him two buttons; ‘Unsubscribe’ and ‘Further information’.

This may enable him to get to the bottom of it. He clicked on ‘Further information’.

Up came the question; ‘Are you sure you want to unsubscribe?’

This was followed by two check boxes: ‘Yes’ and ‘No’.

He clicked on ‘Yes’.

Next came the statement: ‘We’ll be really sorry to see you go’.

Followed by: ‘Before removing yourself from our mailing list, please answer the following questions.’

‘Have you been put under any kind of undue pressure to unsubscribe?’

He answered ‘No’.

Are you confident that you know how to resubscribe in the event that you change your mind?

He answered: ‘Yes’.

‘Are you fully aware that bargains and special offers are likely to be advertised on this site in the near future?’

He answered ‘Yes’.

A new page came up with the statement: ‘We thank you for answering these questions and assure you that they will be fully analysed by our scrutineering panel, prior to any future liabilities being considered’.

Underneath, a final button. It was a friendly blue, with uppercase letters.

It said: submit.

He clicked it and the screen went black.

He switched off and made himself a cup of tea.

The following day he received the same email…

Music’s a living, breathing thing,

Sounding with ebbs and flows, with sighing in between,

Allowing strange connections,

To places never seen.

–

Within the passion and the melody,

Its messages relay.

It speaks to each directly,

In an intimate way.

–

It can embrace and comfort,

With its gentle power.

It can sooth the brow and calm the heart,

Before the eleventh hour.

–

It is poetry and art in one,

With stories that abound.

It can be a solemn refuge,

Where solace can be found.

–

To gage the measured flow of it,

By river, by brook or waterfall,

That forms the very pulse of it,

Through rhythms both great and small.

–

With its quivering vibration,

Where instruments blend as one.

It is a wonder born out of silence.

May its notes forever run.

The locals called it ‘voodoo lane’ because of all its hocus-pocus-type shops.

The young man who works behind the counter of the ‘Oracle’s Chamber’, hadn’t been there long. It wasn’t much of a job, but jobs were scarce. He had recently come close to losing it when the strange old biddy that owned the shop had berated him for his lack of knowledge.

“It’s all very well telling customers that this pack is the Chinese Zodiac version or that this one is based on Greek Mythology, when you don’t know what they are,” she had said, “You need to learn the cards, boy. They are one of our most popular lines.”

It was at this point he had agreed to buy a pack and take it home. He would study the cards. It couldn’t be that hard. He had learned about the four suits and was working on the rest.

On the following day he was cycling to the shop, when the broken pack jammed into his trouser pocket lets loose three of the Tarot cards. They fluttered to the ground, unseen. Inside, stowing his helmet and jacket in his locker, he pokes the now incomplete card pack on the top shelf for safekeeping. It is not until he gets home that evening that he discovers that cards are missing.

In the meantime, the owner of the ‘Mystic Goddess’ next door, finds the Tarot card near his shop’s entrance. When he turns it over, he is amazed to find that he is holding the ‘Wheel of Fortune’. This could not have come at a better time. He knew that of late his gambling habit was getting worse, and he was fast running out of any available money to win back his losses. This was a sign.

In a similar fashion, the woman who worked at the ‘Sacred Cauldron’ was arranging things in the window when she noticed the card out on the path. When she brought it in and saw what it was, a great feeling of joy came over her. She knew instantly what this omen meant. The man she had met while taking a short break had promised to email her as soon as he got back to his flat in another town. That had been more than a week ago. She had been checking her account before and after work each day. This was about to change, she was holding ‘The Lovers’ card.

Later that day, the third card was found. The manager of the ‘Cosmic Palace’ was sweeping his front step when he saw it. He picked it up, and seeing what it was, felt a cold shudder go through his whole body. This was the Death card. He had been expecting something like this. In fact, he had been waiting for some portent to guide him, to show him the way, to protect him. It had happened the night before, on his way home. There had been a close call when the bus had swerved violently, narrowly missing a boy stepping off the footpath peering at his mobile phone. Everybody on the bus had been badly shaken. He tucked the card in his pocket. Tonight, the walk, albeit a long one, would do him good.

It will never be known what mystic hand sent these cards sailing to the front of these three shops.

That evening, when he got home, the young man saw the broken pack, and spreading them out found that three cards were missing.

He wasn’t exactly a believer, but he couldn’t help thinking about the cards that were missing; The Wheel of Fortune, The Lovers and the card of Death. He wondered briefly whether it was in some mystic way significant… significant that these three particular cards had so mysteriously disappeared.

Furthermore, it’s difficult to say how he’d feel if he knew that the casino in town now had a greater proportion of the gambler’s savings, that no email was waiting for her at home, and that the number 48 bus had run its regular route to the man’s house, entirely without incident.

It was just an old piece of paper, but it held a message.

She had been on one of her many nature walks when she found it. It was torn and damp when she picked it up. The words were written in a large scrawl with some of the lines not easily legible.

It was a poem. A love poem.

Reading through as best she could, it seemed to be unfinished. The words went to the other side of the paper, with its ending showing that there was more to come.

The first lines read,

‘If I had known him forever

That would not be enough time

Such a beautiful fella

And a good friend of mine.’

Was this from a woman to a man or a man to a man, a man to a woman or a woman to a woman? In truth, it doesn’t matter, love is where you find it, and this person had obviously found it.

The finder only knew she was holding something precious.

Was it written here or somewhere else? Was it brought here one day and lost or discarded. Will it be missed? Will the writer manage to claw back the words already written? Was it given a new birth somewhere else and finished? Was it ever passed on to the one it was intended for?

There was an element of mystery to the thing, but it was clear that somewhere, at some time, someone, had found love.

It was just an old piece of paper, but it held a message.

Inside the message something more was found… for love is where you find it.

She liked her office job, most of the people were really nice.

It was only a junior position in the company, a grade two. A lot of what she did was pretty menial, mainly data input with occasional printing, copying and stapling. She wasn’t too keen about using the printer in the small alcove down the corridor. She never knew when the General Manager would be in there. She found him to be rather creepy. She had been running copies off in there recently when he came in. She didn’t feel comfortable about him standing so close. She was as polite as she could be, after all, he was the most senior in the department, a grade eight. She got out as soon as she could.

It had played on her mind a little and she made a point of finding out what she could about him from the other girls. She found that she wasn’t alone in the way she felt about it, but didn’t find out very much about him. Apparently, he was in his fifties, divorced, and played golf most weekends. It seemed that not much was known about him outside of the office.

She had all but forgotten about it, until once again, she needed to use the printer. She was turning to leave when he came in. They almost collided. He seemed to brush against her. Maybe it was accidental, but she didn’t think so. The incident upset her, and once more she found it an uncomfortable experience that she found hard to shake off.

The next time it happened, it was blatant. Again, at the printer. He was deliberately reaching across in front of her and pressing against her. She left her copies behind and returned to her desk. It bothered her so much that she got up again and headed for the ladies’ toilet. She sat in a cubicle and cried for a while. Moments went by and discomfort turned to anger. She needed to do something about it. She needed to report it. Grade eight or not.

After thinking it over, she called Human Resources the next day. She made an appointment. She had only met the HR lady a couple of times. She seemed rather prim, but listened politely before handing her a complaints form to fill in. It was suggested that she take it home and fill it in, then return it when she was ready. She was told that sometimes these incidents took on more significance than they deserved at the time, and that reviewing it a day or two later the whole thing can be seen in a different light.

On that advice, she took the form home, filled it in and returned it the next day. Despite appearing to be surprised at how quickly the form had been returned, the woman read through the complaint carefully. It was obvious that she took her responsibilities seriously. She was a grade four, after all. She said she felt that the incidents were in themselves not enough to go ahead with, and cause bad feelings among the staff. She stated that one of her aims was to have a happy office. But she said she had done the right thing by making a report. She said it would be kept on record with full confidentiality confirmed. She said that no action would be taken at this point.

She came away from the meeting with mixed views about the whole thing. She had already made up her mind that if the situation got worse, she would simply leave. She’d have no hesitation about that. She would move on and find work elsewhere. It was as easy as that. In fact, she may just start looking around anyway.

However, she stayed on, and just a few weeks later had the opportunity to apply for a promotion. The role had more responsibility attached to it, but it was nothing that she couldn’t handle. She applied for it and was successful. It was an upgrade to level three and the increase in money that went with it was really good. She took on the new role and felt really comfortable in it. She reflected on the fact that not long ago she had considered moving on.

It was almost three months later that the next potential change in her work status presented itself. One of the middle managers retired, and it was decided to advertise the role internally. Although it was a grade five position, it was part of what she had been doing and it dealt with the same type of work, but from above. What did she have to lose? She applied, along with applicants from other departments. There were seven in all and they were listed for initial interviews. These took place over a week and a half; each being told that they would be informed of the outcome during the following week.

Although she had gone into it with a fairly cavalier attitude of ‘give it a go’, she had actually found the whole process quite exhausting and more than a little nerve-racking. The General Manager and the Human Resources Manager were two of those who made up the four-member interviewing panel. She would just have to wait it out now.

A couple of days later she was packing up to go home when her phone rang. It was the General Manager asking her to come to his office. Of course, her nerves were jangling as she made her way through to the large office in the corner of the building. She knocked and he beckoned her in and returned to his writing.

She stood nervously for a moment.

He looked up. “Congratulations on being short-listed,” he said with a smile.

She was speechless.

“I have a bottle of champagne in the fridge at home, I wondered whether you’d care to celebrate?”

The schoolgirl ran her finger across the book spines on the shelf.

She had been asked to write an essay on storms, how they are formed and the damage they can cause. She settled on a large volume that dealt with the world’s worst disasters. She felt sure she’d find something she could use. She was carrying it to a desk when the lady with a trolley of returns rounded the end of the nearby isle. She paused and looked across at the girl.

Pushing her trolley closer, she said, “Just be careful with that one, young lady.”

The girl looked up. “Careful?”

“Yes. It can be problematic?”

“Problematic?”

“It has been known to cause trouble.”

“Trouble?”

“Yes. We’ve had accidents.”

“Accidents?”

“Yes, just be sure you don’t leave the book open at one spot for long.”

“Spot?”

“Yes. Page. Don’t leave it open at any given page for too long.”

“Page?”

“Look! You seem to be repeating everything I say.”

The girl shrugged. “I just don’t understand what you’re telling me, that’s all.”

A glimmer of a smile. “Yes. Well, OK. It is difficult I suppose. Anyway, just be careful.” She smiled awkwardly and moved on, pushing her trolley down another isle.

The girl checked the index for storms and turned to the page. It was very detailed with photographs of the devastation caused, coloured charts giving meteorological data, and descriptions of the events. It described how large regions had been ravaged, reaping massive destruction and creating unbelievably high death toll figures.

After several minutes of note-taking, she went looking for a toilet. After several more minutes, she returned.

As she approached the desk, a great booming roll of thunder seemed to swirl around the outside of the library and a tremor started to vibrate up through the floor. This was followed by an almighty crack of lightning that seemed to be directly over the building. The lights flickered and books began dropping from shelves.

She ran forward and closed the book.

You feel the ebbing in your skin,

Your teeth, hands, eyes and walking.

But age is becoming in a ‘child of life’,

As long as you’re still talking.

–

Maintain all moments of belonging.

Let intimacy remain a treasure.

Trade loneliness as closeness grows,

Don’t hide the grace that age bestows.

–

While struggling with tiny print,

While needing brighter lights,

Age softly with a mortal calm,

Let contentment reach its heights.

–

Do not let your retorts flag,

Every story has an ending.

Beauty is replaced by wisdom,

Hold fast to comprehending.

–

Leave good stories as you go.

Make sure the passion stays.

Observe life’s changing patterns,

Towards the end of days.

Leave monuments, not ruins,

As you travel down the track.

For this time round, at least,

There is no going back!

His mind was made up, this would be the best that money can buy.

Cash had been stashed away for almost a year. This will be the crème de la crème. He knows exactly what he wants. He will travel to the city for it. He knows there are places there that are equal to the best in the world. Money will be no object. He will approach the makeover with the knowledge that his requirements have accumulated in detail over a long period. He knows exactly what he wants.

He wants something that radiates his personal, effortless, sense of power.

He wants something that inspires confidence in others when they come near him.

He knows exactly what he wants.

He wants something that allows people to judge him with kindness.

He wants something that has the girl from the pie shop on the corner looking at him twice.

He wants something that exudes political correctness.

He knows exactly what he wants.

He wants something that has ordinary people feeling special when they talk to him.

He wants something that gives people a reason to live.

He knows exactly what he wants.

He wants something that encourages sick people to get better.

He wants something that brings about peace on Earth.

Wow! Now that he really comes to think about it all… that business about the girl from the pie shop on the corner looking at him twice… is actually all he wants!

After so many months of careful planning, this would see it all come to fruition.

The man driving had been behind the wheel for several hours, while the woman next to him could hardly contain her excitement. She had been talking non-stop about what a relief it would be to finally rid herself of the other man in her life, all the time waving the precious airline tickets, their passports to freedom. Occasionally, she would stop and hug them to her chest.

Eventually, they pulled off the track at a secluded spot. The location they had both agreed would be ideal. She stared out at the wooded area.

“I really couldn’t have done any of this without you,” she said, cuddling up next to him. “I knew this would be the perfect place. There’s no chance of any busybody walking a dog, way out here, making a discovery.” She kissed him on the cheek, then took the gun from the glovebox.

He hugged her tighter. “Are you sure you want to do this? I can take care of it, if you want,” he offered.”

She shook her head, smiling. “No, my love; this part I’m going to enjoy, believe me.” With that she gets out of the car and goes to the boot.

The man in the boot, both gagged and handcuffed, squirms around grunting with the sudden light almost blinding him.

“Out!” she shouts, and pulls at him as he struggles to get out. He falls to the ground and slowly makes it to his feet.

She takes out the shovel and begins pushing him towards the trees, with the gun held to the back of his head. When they reach the place selected for it, the digging begins.

The man in the car, waits.

After a lengthy period a gunshot rings out through the woods, sending birds fluttering.

The man in the car hears the gunshot and smiles.

Then the silence returns for a while before he sees her returning, with the shovel over her shoulder, wearing a broad grin.

Nearly at the car, she points back, smiling, saying something. He winds his window down.

The man standing by the open grave hears the gunshot and smiles.