Author: Alexander Fawn

His book was about to be published and it was time for him to take a well-earned break.

It was a novel. It had taken him several years to write. It was a large work, dealing with the family history of the lords of the Celtic regions, covering six generations. It was full of detail, cram-packed with the nuances concerning the daily lives of the inhabitants of the isles. The painstaking research had taken up almost all of the long hours it took to write. It dealt with how the lords of the isles clung to the hope that despite all odds, they would endure as a Celtic nation.

Although he had not shared his research notes with anyone, some of his friends had showed interest. With some of them, despite their not having read any of it, even dropping hints about him being something of a genius!

His flight was booked and paid for. Within a couple of days he would be on a warm beach, having drinks brought to him.

He was putting the phone down, having just arranged an appointment for the next day with the nice lady at the publishers, when the room went dark. At first, he thought it was a power cut, but it was the middle of the afternoon. He was sitting in total blackness in the middle of the afternoon!

As he came to, still feeling rather woozy, he found himself standing in what looked like a cage. It was dimly lit, and as his eyes adjusted, he could make out metal bars, a small, high window, and a sparsely furnished room that seemed to be a cell. He also became aware of somebody approaching from a dark corner.

“I suppose I should say ‘welcome,’” he began. He looked around. “Doesn’t seem appropriate though, does it?”

“Where are we? What are we doing here?” the other managed to blurt out, with more than a small tremor of fear in his voice.

“You’re a newbie.”

“A newbie? What kind of newbie?”

“Slow down. All in good time. I’ve been here for almost six months,” he then added with a thin smile, “with just three weeks to go.”

“And me?”

“Dunno. You’ll be told later. You’ll find that on the slip of paper you get with your first meal. If you can call it a meal.”

“Who’s doing this? Who put us here?”

The other dropped his voice to a whisper. “I don’t think they want us to know who they are.” He put his finger to his lips. “You might find out more later, if there’s ‘talking time.’”

“What do you mean?”

“There are lots of cells here. Sometimes at night we get to talk to each other. Sometimes a loud siren goes off and we all keep quiet. As far as any of us can piece it together, it’s all about people that have transgressed against the English language. Some say it’s all down to aliens, but I don’t know. My book, ‘The History of Macramé’ was about to be published when everything went black and I ended up here. You’ve replaced my cell-mate. He’s just been released. He was a speech writer for some president or other. They came down on him hard. He got three years! Poor bugger!”

He scratched his head. “To be really frank about it, he wasn’t very bright. He didn’t seemed to know very much about politics either, which was surprising, considering how he made his living.” He threw up his hands. “Anyway, what about you? How were you taken?”

“I was putting the phone down. I had been talking to the publishing house; making arrangements to go in and sign the papers. The room went black. That’s all I can remember.”

The other sighed and said, “I know. The thing that bothers me is I don’t know what I’m going back to, where I’m sent. I was in a taxi coming back from the publisher’s when they took me. There’s one cabbie that didn’t get his fare. I don’t know how it works, you see? That’s what bothers me most. Did anyone feed my cat?”

He moved to the bars and peered out. “There’s no one to ask, you see. I wish I knew who they were.”

He turned back and went on.

“They play this bloody recording at lights out; must go for about five minutes. It goes ‘A book badly written about a boring subject should never go to print.’ It’s probably meant to send you off to sleep. It doesn’t, I can tell you that. I mean, what a hackneyed statement is that? Do they think that’s going to help? After all, taste is taste right? We all know there’s no accounting for it. Right?”

“Right.”

“Sorry, I’m probably going on a bit. The last guy, the script writer, well, I could never hold much of a conversation with him.”

He looked around and pointed. “Anyway, that’s your bed over there.”

Seize the day, forget tomorrow.

Know it when you see it, take the leap.

Make the present moment felt.

Stand firm within it, it’s yours to keep.

–

Precious moments may not return,

Don’t be blinded by routine.

Validate being in the moment.

Reach out for it, when it’s seen.

–

A moment can be lost forever,

Leave all else in the past.

Give the present its wings.


Seize the now, it may not last.

–

Know the time to make it yours.

Be prepared to take and hold.

Do not take the moment for granted,

Recognise the chance, be bold.

–

There are no snares or labyrinths,

But break the shackles, if it’s needed.

Make the moment all your own,

Don’t let it pass unheeded.

–

It’s all in the beauty of the moment.

Find your voice strong and true.

There is no time like the present,

Don’t wait for it to call on you.

–

These moments are not stopped but missed,

For all of nature’s bounty is truly now.

Knowing tomorrow is never promised,

No preparation’s needed, just know the how.

–

Do not squander what it is.

Grasp it with a fervent will.

Lay claim to what is there.

It’s carpe carpe diem still!

She had always been an imaginative child.

Nobody would have suspected that the large cardboard box that sat snugly in the far corner of her bedroom, the one that the new refrigerator had come in last year, was in fact a time machine. Well, not exactly a time machine, yet. It was a work in progress. It was being built. When she had asked her parents if she could have the box in her room, they had been surprisingly tolerant about it. Carrying it up to her room had been a difficult thing and quite a drama. Her parents had found a fair measure of humour in the thing.

It had a small opening on the side, much like a dog-flap. Inside, was a small podium, on top of which was mounted the main control unit. It had taken several months to accrue all the materials necessary. These had been mainly easy to acquire things, such as empty tissue boxes, kitchen foil, rubber bands, empty cans, sticky tape, contact adhesive, lengths of wire, in fact, a great deal of wire. When she first began building it she had hoped it would be like the Tardis, very much bigger on the inside than on the outside, but it wasn’t. However, it was truly remarkable that the whole thing ran on just two ‘triple a’ batteries.

As the time drew closer and closer to the evening when it was planned to activate it, she found it extremely hard suppressing her excitement. This, together with the idea of surprising and impressing her parents. She thought this outcome would be an added bonus. Unfortunately, she hadn’t fully thought the whole thing through properly.

On the morning she went missing, all the usual reports and enquiries started up.

It was several days before anybody noted the absence of the box.

The detective entered the interview room and dropped the file down on the table.

“Good morning,” he said with a grin. “I just thought I’d pop in for a chat.” He looked down at the file, then up at the suspect. “I’m sure you’re just dying to tell me what you’ve been up to; helping yourself to things that simply do not belong to you.”

The suspect dragged his thumbnail across his lips, indicating that he wasn’t going to say anything.

The detective’s eyes glazed over slightly, then he laughed and said, “Ah! That’s good, very good, your mouth has been zipped.”

The suspect slowly nodded.

The detective grinned again and mumbled, “Marvellous invention zips.”

The interview room fell silent. The suspect frowned, and let out an involuntary, “What?”

The policeman was obviously enjoying himself. “Zips,” he repeated.

The other sat glaring.

“Yes,” he went on, “invented by a chap in the late eighteen-nineties. Then, the modern version, the one you and I know today. Yes, it was improved on and really took off a couple of decades later.”

The suspect stared in disbelief.

The detective sat nodding, he seemed to be deep in thought. “My word. Awfully clever things; based on the wedge and hook principal.” He leant forward and tapped on the folder. “It’s all about making things come together, you see. Coming together and staying together.”

The suspect was becoming visibly agitated.

The detective went on. “He was a travelling sales man, the guy who first came up with the idea; name of Whitcomb. What kind of name is that, eh? First name Whitcomb.” He held up his hand, “No. Don’t answer that.”

“You know, these things have dozens of tiny teeth with weeny hooks and hollows. I mean, what an invention! It’s hard enough to invent the idea that these miniscule, odd shaped components should all lock together like that, but to figure out how to actually make it! Think of it, a thing like that; to manufacture all those separate bits so perfectly that they mesh; they just come together!”

He made a slow hand movement.

“And you slide this thing, I forget what it’s called, backwards and forwards to open and close the whole thing. The simplicity of it. The cleverness of it.”

He snorted. “Just think about how long it takes to button things up. You know, a shirt, a jacket.”

His eyebrows raised. “Did you know they have to manufacture a special tape, just for zips?”

He clasped his hands behind his head and gave out a long sigh. “I mean, people like us, the good and the bad of us, we just pale into insignificance.”

The suspect said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Of course, you don’t,” replied the other and opened the file. He read for a moment. “Would you like to know?”

The other just shrugged.

“What we have here, received from forensics earlier this morning, is a thumb print.”

The suspect stiffened.

“One beautiful thumb print. I must say you did a pretty good job of wiping the jewellry shop clean before you left, what a tidy fellow you are, but… you missed just one nice, big, clear thumb print.” He held up the evidence sheets and jiggled them.

“I’m not saying anything.” The suspect growled.

“No. I wouldn’t expect you to. We have you cold on this one and you’ll be spending time for it.” He sat back in his chair. “I’d like you to be truly amazed when I tell you that your place has been turned over and we’ve found the loot.”

The other’s head dropped.

“Do you see what I mean, now? About things coming together, I mean. I do like it when things come together.”

The suspect was still staring at the copies, now laying on the table. He sighed and said, “OK. OK. No point now in… well, denying or anything. Just tell me what all that zip stuff was about.”

The detective put his head back and closed his eyes for a minute.

“Oh! I don’t know. This can be a pretty boring job, really. You have no idea how mundane it gets sometimes. It’s always me that ends up doing the interviewing, and to be honest, I just get sick of it!” He closed his eyes while he massaged his face.

“Can you imagine,” he went on, “how many suspects I’ve had to interview in this room over the years?” He put his hand up. “No. Don’t bother. Not even I know the answer to that. Just about all of them had to be worked on for hours, and in most cases with no result. Just think about how mind-numbingly boring that is. But you…” he looked at the robber and wagged his head, “…you, my friend, are a piece of cake.”

He picked up the papers and slid them into the file. “How easy was it, eh? You leave a nice piece of evidence that you were in the jewellery store on the night of the robbery. They wipe all the glass cases ready for the next day, you see. So finding the print you missed wasn’t that hard.”

The robber said, “What was all that stuff about zippers? Did you just make all that up?”

“No. Watched this interesting documentary about it a couple of nights ago.” He chuckled softly to himself. “I mean, with the evidence we had on you, I could have jumped straight in with it. I could have been out of here in less than a minute, but there’d be no fun in that, right?”

The robber went to speak.

Before he could say anything the detective said, ‘that would have been so boring!”

He stood up. “You have no idea how satisfying it’s been, teasing and annoying you in here today. There should be more of it. Honestly… taking things that don’t belong to you, it’s very naughty.”

He chuckled again as he left the room.

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?”