Author: Alexander Fawn

As offsprings go, he was pretty damn weird.
He never wanted to go out, even when it was sunny. He didn’t like ice cream or chocolate. He liked dressing up, mostly as a zombie with lipstick. He told the kids at school the church had ghosts. He said he was going to be a superstar. He hid under the bed a lot. His father got angry when he took bank notes from his wallet and flushed them down the toilet. His mother got angry when he poked his underwear down storm drains. He got into big trouble when he bit and kicked his teachers.

The camp fire he built in his bedroom set the house on fire.
Everyone got out, but nobody sees him anymore now.

She was sitting on one of the padded benches, taking the weight off her feet.
The shopping centre was chaotic, she had never seen it so busy. She’d spent most of her lunchbreak looking for a pair of shoes. Her feet were killing her. She was happy to sit for a while, watching shoppers milling back and forth. After a while, she noticed the man in a suit. He was just standing still, looking lost. His clothes looked expensive. He was tall and quite good-looking. She supposed he was some kind of professional. She’d been doing all this summing up in her head when she realised that in all that time, he’d been looking straight at her. Suddenly, feeling both foolish and embarrassed, she quickly looked away. This solution didn’t last long, because moments later she became aware of the man struggling through the moving stream of shoppers, heading her way.
He approached with a pleasant smile and sat down next to her. He was even better-looking close up, she thought. She watched, as he nervously tried to make himself comfortable. He’d not been there long before he began to mumble. Under his breath, he said, “I shouldn’t be here. I should have returned to 2254.”
“Pardon?”
“You know, 2254. The future.”
Always good for a laugh, she said, “Oh! Really?”
He looked around. “Yes, I think it’s a mistake.” He paused. “Well, no, not really… I know it’s a mistake!” He rubbed his forehead. “I shouldn’t be here.”
She giggled. “Come on. Why d’you pick me?”
He looked straight at her. “I thought you looked ordinary.”
A little hurt, she frowned and said, “What do you mean?”
“Well, maybe not ordinary, but approachable. You know, someone to talk to.”
Still enjoying the banter, she said, “OK. Future man, talk.”
“Aren’t you hot in here?” He took out a hankie and dabbed at his neck.
“Not really. Feels pretty normal to me.”
He frowned. “No matter. I saw you take your shoes off and rub your feet.”
She thought for a moment, then said, “If you must know, they hurt. These shoes are not comfortable. I’m shopping for new ones.”
A broad, charming smile spread across his face. He said, “Wouldn’t be a problem where I come from.”
“Where’s that?”
He shrugged. “Like I said, 2254.”
She smiled back. “So, you say.”
He sat with his head nodding for a few seconds. “That’s OK. I can’t blame you for your scepticism.”
Her eyebrows went up in mock gratitude. “That’s all right then.” She pouted and said. “So, tell me why my sore feet wouldn’t be a problem where you come from?”
He looked around, then fell silent for a moment. He said, “Well, you wouldn’t be wearing shoes, for a start.”
“I wouldn’t?”
“No. Not in 2254, you wouldn’t.”
“How’s that?”
“I know you can’t imagine it, but we don’t wear clothes.”
She giggled again, louder this time. She said, “Oh! I get it, you all go around naked, do you?”
“Basically, yes, once the scientists figured out how to regulate the weather, the world’s climate became, well, very comfortable I suppose.”
Her face coloured slightly. She said, “So, no clothes; not even a bikini or a loincloth or something?”
He chuckled softly and said, “Loincloth… no, no loincloth. There was a time, apparently, when some people couldn’t adjust to the new norm and used pieces of adhesive material, but all that soon petered out.”
She couldn’t help staring at him for several beats. She was trying to think of something to say, when some sort of chime sounded from one of his pockets.
Suddenly, looking over her shoulder, he said, “On the subject of time, I think there’s something wrong with that clock.”
She turned in the same direction, but couldn’t see any clock. When she looked back, he was gone.
If it wasn’t for the crumpled hankie…

Her car was sitting in the filter lane, about to turn right, empty…
The day she went missing caused a great deal of endless speculation. In the lane next to her car, the driver was staring at some sort of obstacle sitting in the road. He got out of his vehicle to remove it. It looked like a large bag of rubbish. He picked it up and was taking it to the nearest footpath, when he saw the that the car at the front of the filter lane had no driver! Of course, It didn’t take long before motorists began sounding their horns. The manageress in the ladies dress shop on the corner, hearing all the honking, went to the front window to look out. When she saw the man dumping a bag of rubbish in front of her window, she came out and asked him what he thought he was doing.
With all of the hullabaloo going on, the man ignored her, returned to his car, got in and drove off. Pretty soon the lane cleared and the flow of traffic returned to normal. This left only the filter lane jammed up with cars.
The events that followed were pretty chaotic. The police were soon on the scene, managing to get the traffic moving again, while at the same time doing their best to get statements from drivers, passengers and bystanders. To make their job even more difficult was the fact that the CCTV had gone on the blink earlier that morning.
A tow truck was called and the empty vehicle was towed away.
Witness statements varied quite a bit.
The obstacle in question turned out to be a large bag of old clothes. The sort of discarded items that can be found in any of a number of charity bins around the town.
It has to be said, that as young adults in their early twenties, she and her boyfriend both had issues at home. Her parents had separated and she was living with her mother. It wasn’t good and she couldn’t wait to move out. As for him, for some reason, his parents weren’t at all happy with her as his current girlfriend. He had never got on with his father. He too was looking for a way to escape.
He, with his annual time off from work, was about to fly out to stay in a holiday resort in Cyprus. She would fly out later the same day, to the same destination.
He had devised the plan. At the very least, you would have to say that the plan was elaborate. With her quickly putting on a false beard and a beanie, then slipping out of the passenger side, keeping the bag low and out of sight. Her tossing it in front of the car next to hers, crossing to the opposite side of the street and walking down a laneway, never to be seen again.
Once meeting up at the resort, using fake passports with different names, care of the dark web, they would fly together to an unknown destination.

Now, sitting together on the plane, they really did have to ask themselves whether they would actually get away with it?

The old pensioner had a passion for jumble sales.
He had seen the poster for it. It was only a ten-minute walk to the community hall. He decided to get there early, before it became crowded. He liked to take his time perusing the great variety of items that were always on show. He hadn’t been there long when he saw it. His heart missed a beat when he spotted the tiny plaque. His hand trembled as he picked it up. In that moment, he was instantly thrown back several decades to a time when he and his late wife had holidayed in Ibiza. It was an exact copy of a small, round wall plaque that had immediately caught her eye that day, when they had entered the souvenir shop.
He remembered how much she was taken with its colourful painting of a Mediterranean beach scene. It was obviously made to hang on a wall. Then he remembered, back in the hotel, opening the bag and discovering that the securing ring at the back of it had come off.
Still standing there, gazing down at it, he became far more emotional when he remembered how upset she was when they finally got home, only to find that the plaque was not in their luggage. It had obviously been left behind, probably in their hotel room.

The hanging ring that had come off, was all she had. As she put it in her oddments box, he remembered her saying that it was all she had of the souvenir, but it would have to do. That in itself, was so typical of her.
His fingers shook even more, as he turned it over. Only a small rough patch on the back surface showed evidence that something had broken off, but… the ring was missing!
Despite the fact that he had barely been in the building for five minutes, he left immediately. On his way home, apart from occasionally dabbing his eyes with his handkerchief, he knew exactly where to find her odds and bods box and how he was going to glue it.
Better still, he knew the very spot where she would have hung it!

The nice old man from across the road was telling people about his request.
He was dead serious about it! He explained that sometime in late December last year he’d put in an application for a radical upgrade for this, the new year. He had made his appeal directly to the big enchilada, as he called him, the guy he said that runs everything. Apparently, he has been in touch with him for quite some time, but only back then did he feel compelled to forward his one-and-only personal petition. He kept it simple by asking only that all wars that were currently occurring in countries around the world no longer exist in the following year. He made it clear that people could carry on being really nasty to one another and that personal fights between individuals could continue, if people thought that it was really necessary; even murder would be accepted… but not wars.

Those who listened to his brief description of how he had entreated the big honcho with regards his proposal had, in the main, regarded the idea as perfectly reasonable, despite them considering its success to be unlikely.
This new year has proved them right.

The new man in the Advertising Agency was being shown the ropes.
After running through the basic ‘settling in’ information at his work station, the IT guy tells the new employee that he needs to know about the codes they use throughout the office. He explains that a small coloured dot can appear in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. He said that it was a simple system, based on primary and secondary colours. He proudly announced the he, and a couple of others in the IT section, had developed it. He pointed to the corner of the screen.
He sat back. “When a yellow dot appears there, it means it’s five minutes to morning and afternoon tea breaks. Blue means it’s five minutes before lunch. Violet warns staff that the Supervisor is on the warpath. Green warns staff that the Department Head is on the warpath, and Red warns staff that the General Manager is on the warpath.”
With a shrug, he adds, “You really need to learn all of them.”
The latest employee asks, “Is that why colour blindness was on the medical checklist at the beginning of the interview? I wondered about that.”
“Certainly not!” said the other, with a grin, “it’s because of the careful choice of colours we use in our advertising campaigns. Anyway, to continue, the last colour to look out for is Brown.”
“Brown? but, that’s not even a secondary colour!”
“Of course, it isn’t, but Red and Green make Brown, and that means that the Department Head and the General Manager are both on the warpath. Get it? Pretty clever, hey? Stinky came up with that.”
“Stinky?”
“Oh! Just one of the guys in IT.”
“What if they should see that colour?”
“They won’t, they’re not on the system.”

They all knew what had happened.
The women that sat around the table in the golf club’s bar area all knew what had happened. They were all there, less than an hour ago, looking on. Just knowing that it had happened made each one of them part of it somehow. Nobody wanted to talk about it; that was obvious. Things brightened up a bit when one of them brought another round to the table, but they couldn’t help noticing how much her arms were shaking when she put the tray down. It had happened on the fourth green. They all saw it. Being members of the same club meant they had an unspoken bond. In this case it also served to make them complicit in some way. As far as they knew it was never reported.
The tension between them was becoming obvious.
The oldest member suddenly blurted out, “Look, I know what you’re all thinking!”
Shrugs and nods all round.
She stroked the back of her neck and frowned. She said, “I really don’t want to talk about it, if that’s all right?”
One of them said, “Sure.”

He hadn’t been a registered private detective for long.
The case he was on could well be the one that made his name; could get him noticed. The mother of one of the ladies had called at his office and asked if he could investigate and find out who killed her daughter. He had agreed to take the case on and she had agreed to his hourly rate. There had been a number of deaths and the papers were full of it. The police didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. Six local hookers murdered and found dumped in skips all around town.
He was parked in a side street, in the middle of town. He was maintaining surveillance. He had spent a lot of time at night doing this. He opened his vacuum flask and poured himself a coffee. He checked the time. It was well into the morning.
All was quiet. Time to pack up he thought. There’d be nothing more for tonight.
He finished his coffee and sat thinking. Wouldn’t it surprise every one, if he cracked this case?
He giggled softly to himself. No, he couldn’t do that. How could he? He looked around at the bundle on the back seat.
Another one for the skip on the way home, he thought.

Something strange was going on with the elderly gentleman living at number thirteen.
Inside the house, he gathered up all of the various medications he’d been taking. He then flushed them all down the toilet. Next, he went looking for all the old photo albums, personal diaries and even his love letters. These he loaded into the metal bin in the back garden and put a match to it. Back inside, he contacted his bank and arranged to have all of his accounts emptied, and to have the cash ready for him to collect when he called in during the morning. Leaving the bank, he drove to a local car sales yard, parked it in a visitors bay, then walked home. On the way back, he dropped his wedding ring down the grating at the side of the road, walked on by way of the local park, where he tossed his mobile phone into the middle of the pond.
Once back home, the cash went into the bin that was still smouldering, where it began to burn quickly.

This done, he returned to the house, where he made himself a nice cup of tea.
It was all very mysterious, but the bigger mystery was that nobody knew why he did it!

The tiny man in a green suit sat under the shade of a tree, thinking.
It had been a busy week in the city. He had granted wishes to several lucky people. It was a noisy place, with very little greenery and so far from home. He didn’t like it much. He was sitting in one of the few places that had a small group of trees. He was thinking about all this when, to his amazement, he saw a fellow leprechaun coming his way. This was indeed odd, because it was very rare that anyone ever saw two of them together! Anyway, this got him working on an idea that would have him return home in the quickest of fashions. He would have his newfound friend grant him a wish, and he would wish to go home, and return to the emerald isle.
He jumped up and waved him over.
After putting the idea to him, the other agreed. Without hesitation, he granted him a wish.
The homesick leprechaun stood perfectly still for a few seconds, preparing himself, before saying that he wished to go home…
Nothing happened.