Author: Alexander Fawn

The girl had always enjoyed feeding the birds.

Today the park was less busy than usual. This made it easy for the woman to keep her eye on her daughter while she walked around with her paper bag. This was despite the fact that she was a fair distance away. The mother was quite content with the wooden bench, catching up with her magazine.

There were a number of birds flitting around and generally following the small child, happily wandering to and fro with the bag full of birdseed. Every now and then she seemed to stop and carry on a conversation with a bird. This had been going on as long as the mother could remember. It had been a concern at first, but both the doctor and her teacher had said it was nothing to worry about. Kids often dream up imaginary friends she was told. It was perfectly natural.

At one point she saw her sitting down in deep conversation with a bird. She could see her chatting away, dropping seed from time to time. This went on for ages. Finally she got up, waved goodbye to her feathered friend and ran back to her mother.

As she approached, her mother said, “You had a nice long time with the birds today, didn’t you dear? Has all your seed gone?”

The girl looked into her bag and said, “No, some left.” She looked back to where she’d been. “I found a chatty one,” she said. “He was lovely. Told me a lot about his friends and his mum and dad and…” She stopped. “You know, some of the birds were very unkind to him.”

“Unkind? What do you mean?”

“Well, his young brother got hit by a car. He died. It was very sad.”

“Oh! Dear!” said the mother.

“Yes,” she went on, “they blamed him, said he should have taken better care of him because he was older.”

The mother looked perplexed.

“I mean,” the girl continued, “what could he have done? They were really rotten to him.”

“Well,” said the mother, remembering the medical advice, “you certainly found out a lot today, didn’t you.” She gave her an understanding smile.

“Yes,” said the girl, scrunching the top of her bag closed, and he said we should move on, because it’s going to rain.”

She looked around. I think we should go and stand in the Pagoda, it seems to be empty.

The mother smiled at her again. “Yes, it would be empty my love. On a nice day like today.”

“But the rain!” the girl insisted.

The mother laughed, and looked at the sky. “I think that’s highly unlikely, besides, we don’t have an umbrella.”

With that, there was a giant clap of thunder and it bucketed down.

After a few minutes he came to.

He didn’t know where he was or what was happening.

Before this, he banged his head and knocked himself out.

Before this, the chair wobbled and he fell onto the kitchen floor.

Before this, he climbed up and reached for the rice.

Before this, he took one of the chairs and placed it in front of the larder.

Before this, he saw the new bag of rice up on the top shelf.

Before this, he opened the larder and found his rice canister was empty.

Before this, he took the chicken out of the fridge.

Before this, he decided on left over chicken and rice.

Before this, he made a cup of tea and sat thinking about what he would get for tea.

Before this, he took his jacket off and laid it over the back of a chair.

Before this, he entered the house and went through to the kitchen and put the kettle on.

Before this, he got home and walked up the front path and put his key in the lock.

Before this, he got off the bus at the end of the street.

He remembered getting off the bus…

She was visiting her friend.

She had known her a long time. At school they had been the best of friends. After a kiss and a hug, her friend said she’d put the kettle on. From the armchair in the lounge the visitor called out, “And little Johnny?”

“With the ex,” she called back from the kitchen.

She came back with two cups, saying, “That’s not exactly true.”

She puts the cups down on the table and flops into the chair opposite. She sits quietly for a moment, then says, “He’s with the man who used to work in his uncle’s hardware store.”

She stared out of the window for a moment.

“The man who smiled at me,” she went on, “the smile that stayed with me through those long days before I met him again.” She smiled softly. “The man who kept inviting me out to the pictures, so many cinemas, so many films. The man who one day admitted he was only doing it so he could spend time with me. The man who said he wanted to be with me, forever. The man who once loved me.”

Her eyes watered. She sipped at her drink and returned her cup with a trembling hand.

“The man I married in the church not far from here,” she continued. “The man that said that giving him a son was the best thing anyone had ever done for him.” Her head shook, and a look of desperate misery came over her. She looked across at her friend, who was still sitting silently.

She wiped tears away and said in a weak voice, “He, who wanted to visit the local pub more often than me. Who took to drinking at home, who lost control of his drinking habit, who lost his job, who would get so angry. The man who broke my tooth. The man who broke my heart.”

She forced a grimace. “That’s who he’s with.”

Her friend lifted her cup slowly and said, “Right.”

People had always regarded him as weird.

The man looked down from his third-floor window counting the brightly coloured gnomes in his neighbour’s back garden. This, in itself, would be of no consequence, but the fact that this was done at least twice a day, was. He was a man who lived mainly in the past, trapped in his origins, beginnings that, although quite bizarre, brought him to where he was. He slipped into one of his regular yet sudden flashbacks and remembered how as a kid he wanted to wear his cap backwards like all the other kids, but he couldn’t because to do it always gave him nosebleeds. That, and how he was forever getting mysterious rashes.

As he stands staring out, he reflects on his father’s preoccupation with picking hairs off any bars of soap he found in the bathroom. How he liked to do it in private, even when others needed to use the toilet. In his head he could hear the knocking. He didn’t find the sound at all unpleasant.

He reflected on the fact that so many times he would open his school lunch box, only to find it empty, and how his mother found the prank so incredibly funny. He thought about how she took great pleasure in getting brain freeze by swallowing ice cubes, and how she would sort the mail by smelling each letter for several moments before opening them.

Then, there was the time his father tinkered with his equipment and managed to play the National Geographic’s sleep-inducing video titled ‘Rain Forest’ backwards, with sound. He remembers the pungent cloud of opium smoke that often drifted throughout the house, and how fervently his father had worked on his treatise on molecular structures and how he frequently referred to the topic, despite it making no sense, as comparable to the business of stuffing scarecrows.

He ruminated on how his mother, after one of the many blazing rows with his father, would get her revenge by lighting up a cigar, also, her frequent seizures that came on whenever her mood ring turned blue, together with her randomly selecting books, removing them from the study, piling them up on the back lawn and setting them alight.

Of course. There was his father’s obsession with the coming of the new world order, his hatred of queuing like a sheep to book in for a flight, within an airport’s silly bollard and rope chicanes, and his habit of accumulating his toenail clippings in a large jar under his desk.

These parents, now passed away, together with the fact that he had no brothers or sisters, meant that the apparent madness ended there, with him.

He glanced at the clock. He would don his dress suit and call for a taxi. He would arrive at the concert hall in plenty of time. He would sit at the incredibly expensive Steinway piano long before the curtain rose. He would enthral the audience with a rendition of Mozart’s Piano Sonata in D major, before slipping away through the rear exit to walk the six blocks home.

This would be time enough to return to his ruminations about lunch boxes, scarecrows, soap hairs, and the rest.

He focused again on the garden below. He would have just enough time, while there was still sufficient light, to count them again.

Reasonable enough; yet, people had always regarded him as weird.

As he approached the elevator on the ground floor, he couldn’t believe his eyes.

The sign taped to the door said, ‘Closed for maintenance.’ After the day he had already suffered, this really was the last straw. As he trudged up the six flights of stairs, he felt he should be grateful to have someone waiting in the apartment that would be understanding and always happy to listen to him. His flatmate was going to have trouble believing all this, but anyway, it’ll be good to get it off his chest. He thought about his friend. As a companion he does have his drawbacks, but he’s a good listener.

Finally, gasping for breath, he went through the front door, calling out, “Home! Home early!” He heard, “Hi! In here.” He found his buddy sitting in an armchair reading the paper.

He stood for a moment, still catching his breath. Eventually, he said, “Hi! You simply wouldn’t credit the day I’ve had. It has been one disaster after another.”

His friend smiled. “Oooh! Do tell.”

As he sat down opposite, he said, “So much has happened.” He screwed up his eyes to bring it all back. “It all started in the office, just before lunch, when the Internet went down. Of course, that stopped everything and we had to take our break early. The canteen was crowded, so I decided to get some printing done while the queue thinned out a bit.

When I got to the machine there was this sign hanging on it saying ‘Out of Order’. It was really frustrating, so I thought I’d get a cup of coffee to let myself down a bit. It had a sheet of A4 paper with ‘Not Working”, scribbled on it. So I went back to my desk to make a note about doing the printing later. That’s when the air-conditioning cut out. I mean, it just stopped!”

His friend said, “Unbelievable!” and shook his head, obviously taking it all in.

“Anyway,” the other went on, “that’s when the boss turned up and sent everyone home. Well, I knew I needed to get some cash out, so I stopped at the bank on my way to the bus. I was surprised to find quite a crowd in there, then I saw the reason. A sign on the ATM, saying, ‘ATM under repair’. So, I cut across the park to get to the stop and was amazed to find a notice stuck on the door to the public toilets that read ‘Closed for Repairs’, and another sign hanging off the drink fountain saying ‘Do not use’. I couldn’t believe it. What are the chances?”

The other just sat shaking his head.

He went on again. “When I got to the bus stop, I had to stand and wait, because the seat was broken. Of course, the bus was late, and when I got here, and this will make you wonder whether I’m making all this up, what do you suppose was stuck across the elevator’s door?”

He looked across at his friend.

The hand, that moments before had been massaging the back of his neck, dropped to the side. His eyes went a dull grey and he slid sideways with a limp arm hanging over the side of the chair.

The other got up and went to his flatmate. He stood for a moment shaking his head. He opened the top buttons of his shirt, exposing a small panel in his chest. He flipped open the cover and checked the tiny screen.

Flat battery!

The party was in full swing with several dozen people.

They were all drinking, nibbling finger food, laughing and talking… all at once. It seemed hot in the room. Although nobody else seemed to notice. He wasn’t really much of a party-goer. The guy in despatch at work invited him. He wasn’t sure why. He knew some of them from the work place. Not many. He had spoken to a couple of people in the half hour he’d been there. He looked at the time. He began thinking about slipping away. He could probably do it without anybody noticing.

That’s when the woman rushed over to him extending her hand. “Fancy meeting you here. Are you with the company?”

He went to answer.

“Of course you are. Our host tells me you’re in records. Most of these,” she looks around, “most of these are in the city. I’m not of course, still out there in the country.” She laughed. “Same old, same old. Quite busy though.”

He was beginning to wonder who she was.

“What’s it been, three, four years?”

He went to open is mouth.

She said, “I was just saying to my friends over there, time just slips away doesn’t it? Don’t you find that? Time just slips away. I’m sure you do. We all do.”

She stops to look around again.

“Are you still painting? Wonderful hobby. My ex used to paint. That’s before he had his trouble.”

She flapped her hand.

“Some sort of intestinal obstruction apparently, poor dear. Of course, it went untreated for ages before we figured out what it was. Even then, we had absolutely no idea that it was going to be life-threatening. It turned out that his blood supply was being cut off… somewhere.”

She paused to sip at her wine.

“Anyway, he wasn’t very good. Even he used to say he wasn’t very good.”

He was sure he didn’t know her. He had never even thought of painting.

She started to snivel and took a tissue from her bag.

“You must think me a fool.”

He shook his head.

“He was actually a wonderful man you know. You met him didn’t you, at the gallery that time? Of course you did.”

His eyebrows raised.

“Of course you did,” she repeated, “you were discussing Jan van Eyck’s thing about painting with oils on wood.” She scrunched her face into a smile. “I remember how enthusiastic you both were.” She touched his arm. “Thank you for that. I’m sure that little chat meant a lot to him.”

At this point, he was preparing to say something, when she threw up her arm, almost spilling her drink. “Oh! Look!” she cried. “They made it. I wasn’t sure if they’d be here. I must say a quick hello. I hope you don’t mind. I’ll be right back. Promise!”

She rushed across the room into the crowd.

He slipped away.

It was mid-afternoon when the couple arrived at the holiday house.

The building had been hard to find, being located so far off the beaten track. This didn’t bother him. The idea was for the two of them to enjoy a well-deserved ‘getaway’ break. It was a large house, two stories and obviously not well looked after. The guy from the office that had offered the rental at a very reasonable rate had almost talked him out of it because of it being virtually empty and in need of repair. He was surprised that he had been so reasonable about it, as they had never really hit it off. However, he couldn’t resist the offer.

When they arrived, they found a screed of papers hanging from the front door’s knocker.

It seemed an odd thing to find way out there in the middle of nowhere. There were a couple of pages, with the front one saying ‘Read before entering’.

“Never really saw him as a joker,” he grumbled, “but we’d better read it, I suppose. There could be a safety issue.”

His wife nodded.

He opened the first page and began reading the hand-written contents aloud.

‘Take note, there have been issues with the property. Problems with things going missing. At first we thought it was break-ins, but this was soon discounted. It gradually got worse over time and we found that whatever we put in the house would disappear without a trace while we were not in it. The house came to me from a distant relative who had died, leaving it to me. So, I had no one to ask about the nature of it or whether there was any history that would shed light on what was happening.

‘When the first things went missing we reported it. The local police gave us the impression that they didn’t believe what they were being told. Anyway, it was evident that they simply weren’t interested.

‘Our losses to date are a camera, a television, two portable radios, a clothes iron, a hairdryer, kettle, four suitcases with contents, toilet kits, books, newspapers, magazines, mobile phones, my son’s pet hamster, a stamp collection, two laptops, a computer game, and several personal medication items.

‘It’s only conjecture, but we think the house took them.

‘I can only suggest that you enter at your peril.

‘PS Please leave this note where you found it.’

He laughed. She wasn’t so sure.

They carried their cases in and the house took them.

He had only recently moved into the property.

His family, his wife and two children would follow. They would move from the rented house in a couple of weeks, partly to allow the already paid up rental to run out, and partly to allow him to do a bit of fixing up. There was a fair bit to do and thankfully his boss was accommodating about shifting his holiday period. They had seen the house listed and knowing what a bargain it was they moved quickly to snap it up. The agency said that the previous owner had to go abroad in a hurry and he wanted a quick sale.

He set to with a number of noted tasks, some of which could be carried out during the evening. He very soon realised that this period of being completely alone was not to his liking, he enjoyed company. He made up for this by watching the television he’d had the presence of mind to bring. At the old place he’d become reliant on the playing back recordings made of his favourite shows. Here, it was live TV or nothing. He was following the major news story of the politician who had been gunned down as he got out of his car to attend a charity event. The papers and media channels were full of it. It was a very brazen attack. The story had gone ballistic, mainly driven by the shock factor.

At the end of the first week, he had made good progress. He had a list of things they had agreed that he should do, in order to make the place more habitable. His biggest job was in the kitchen. After ripping out the cupboards he had purchased new ones and was in the process of fitting them. However, his headway was being slowed by the doors refusing to align the way the manufacturers of the DIY flat packs said they would. The diagrams were of little help. After struggling with the problem for an hour or two, he decided to stop for a cuppa and check the mail.

That’s when he found it, in the mail box. No stamp, obviously hand-delivered, and definitely overnight. Whatever it was, it was wrapped in heavy brown paper and bound very thoroughly with clear sticky taped. Beneath the tape in one corner there was a small white slip of paper with the words ‘Make it disappear’. The thing was the size of a small loaf and very heavy.

Back in the kitchen he squeezed the package all over, trying to determine what it held. It didn’t take him very long to come to the conclusion, especially after staring again at the little label, that it contained a gun. Suddenly, he was aware that he was putting his fingerprints all over it. He sat with it for a long time.

He thought about the inevitable involvement; the police interview, the notoriety, all those things that would unavoidably disrupt his otherwise comfortable life. A life that currently was rather demanding. Whoever had posted the package, along with the person who had made a hurried exit from the country, along with others no doubt, would at this time all be striving for anonymity. Therefore, further to the scrutiny of the police, there may well be a criminal element now taking an interest in him and what he was doing. Sooner or later, this latter group of undesirables would be watching and waiting… waiting for nothing to happen. Knowing what these people are, they would not show themselves unless they had to.

At around two in the morning he drove into town and parked in the empty carpark behind the butcher’s shop. He took the short walk to the middle of the bridge and paused. Gazing down as if he were admiring the sheer breadth and depth of the glistening river, made barely visible by the few street lamps still glowing. The small parcel came out from beneath his jacket and leaning forward, he let it go. Hearing the finality of the distant splash, he relaxed and strolled back to his car.

On the way home he considered the fact that he would have to come to terms with notion that he was most probably complicit in a news-breaking crime that currently featured in every newspaper around the country.

He was doing the very thing that that the criminals were doing; going for anonymity. At least, in his case, and unlike the villains, he had a clear way forward.

He would go home and make those final, important adjustments to the hinges on his cupboard doors.

It was a hot day and the teenager had to drive around for several minutes before finding a parking spot.

Entering the building she pulled off a ticket. It read 163. She wasn’t sure whether this was a good sign or not. The place seemed crowded with every counter occupied. She found a seat. The large digital number, suspended from the ceiling, read 137. With only four counters being manned, she could be in for a long wait. That being the case, it wasn’t a good sign. She picked up a magazine and started flipping through, looking for a crossword. She could always pass the time with a crossword.

She was busy counting the number of letters in the word ‘Morpheus’ on her fingers for seven down, when somebody shouted, “Is number 163 still here?”

She raised her arm and stood up so quickly that she almost fell over. At the counter she apologised.

The middle-aged woman behind the counter smiled sweetly and said, “That’s perfectly alright madam. It is a hot day. We’ve had several customers doze off in here today. Think nothing of it.” At this point she chuckled to herself and said, “Can I trouble you for your ticket?”

“Ticket?”

“The ticket with your number, if you’d be so kind.”

The girl was truly amazed at how polite and understanding this person was. She put it down to some new job centre policy. She was all for it. As for the ticket… she searched her pockets and finally came up with it. She handed it over and watched as the woman tore it into very small pieces, then throw them into a litter bin hidden somewhere under the counter, out of sight.

“And the form we sent you? I presume you brought that with you?”

“Yes.” She handed it over.

The woman leant across to a small shredding machine and fed the form in.

The girl said, “Wow! Why would you shred that, isn’t it a record or something?”

“Security,” came the reply.

“Security?”

“Yes, we are allowed to tear up a client’s number ticket, but for anything official, we have to use the shredder.”

The girl frowned. “You know, I really don’t understand that.”

The woman’s face became hard. She sniffed and said, “Well, you don’t have to, do you? I mean, why should you?”

The girl felt awkward, she said, “I suppose not, but I was just saying…”

“Yes, you were, weren’t you? That’s the problem I think. Too much conjecture about things you don’t understand.” She sniffed again and said, “That’s typical of your sort.”

The girl went red and raising her voice said, “My sort?”

She was about to go on when a man in a suit and tie approached, saying, “OK. We’ll stop it there, I think.”

The woman behind the counter giggled and said, “How’d I do? This one’s very good.” She smiled warmly at the girl. “Very convincing, I must say.”

The man was looking over his notes. He shook his head and said to the woman, “That didn’t go the way I had hoped.”

The woman said, “Oh! Really?”

“Yes, really. The object here is to have the customer be rude and demanding, so that we can train you, as the service provider, up to a point where you know how to respond to you, the role-playing customer, in an appropriate manner.”

The girl looked perplexed. “But I’m not role-playing!”

“No, that’s the problem, you’re not, and you should be. You are being far too polite. The whole intention of setting up this staff training program is to…”

“Wait!” said the girl, “did you just say training program?”

The man’s face began to move out of focus and she became aware of an irritating nudging at her arm. She turned to see the man next to her was pointing at her lap. “That’s you.” He nodded at the ticket held limply in her hand.

She blinked a few times. “Pardon?”

“Your number. I think you ought to go, they’ve called you twice. Your number up there has turned red… and it’s flashing!”

She thanked him and made her way to the counter.

The woman smiled and said, “Do you have the form?”

The girl said, “Yes, of course,” and handed it over.

The woman behind the counter didn’t shred it.

It took a while for him to come to terms with what he saw.

He was amazed to find that with just a little research, he had discovered that the definition in the dictionary was wrong! He supposed it could be partly explained by the fact that it dates back to the early seventeen hundreds, and a hell of a lot can happen over a few centuries, what with the ever-present existence of typos. The confusion had no doubt been quite understandably brought about by dint of the additional fact that it was derived from four separate Latin roots, and obscure ones at that!

It played on his mind.

The thing that bothered him most was not knowing who he should tell. Despite this, he began digging deeper, spending more time in the evenings after his daytime job sorting returned books in the local library. In a way, it was this daytime activity that first got him started. He would often see a book title that appealed, and of course he would end up reading it. For almost a decade he had been there, sorting, returning, finding, borrowing, reading, sorting, returning, and so on. It was all about words really. Millions of them. However, finding one that had been defined incorrectly was a real worry.

That’s when he started looking for more.

Over a period of several weeks, he discovered four more. A total of five words, all being attributed with erroneous meanings.

It was at this point his thoughts returned to the vexed question of who he should approach with what he had discovered. If he managed to find some high authority that oversees such things, would they just fob him off with the notion that the definition was written by an editor, and not a specialist in the discipline of whatever the word was trying to deal with? Moreover, could he find himself getting into a lot more trouble than he wanted?

He considered going back to basics. He could start by going to the Chief Librarian. A pompous man, who had never really liked the way he had borrowed more books from the library that any of the other members in the library’s database. What would the man say, being confronted with something that had such extensive ramifications?

He began to think about how truly extensive all this really was.

When he considered how English speaking, writing and using people, had managed quite well with what was, after all, one of the most difficult and complex languages in the world, he had to ask himself, if these minor issues he had uncovered had not caused even a ripple over the centuries, was it worth risking his present situation? Did he want to risk his heart’s contentment, and place his nice little niche in jeopardy?

At the end of the day, he had to ask himself, was it better for him to maintain his regular, paid employment of sorting returns and reading as many books as he liked?

After careful thought, he was pleased when he answered with a resounding ‘yes’.

He put himself at peace with the concept that the world would never know.