Author: Alexander Fawn

 The man was holding the canister with exaggerated reverence.

“You’ll never find another product to equal it!” he was saying. He pointed to the rubber funnel that sat on top. “This goes over the nose and mouth” he continued, holding it near to his face, “and this button releases the gas.”

The lady looked pensive. “How affective is it really? I mean, what you claim is quite amazing.”

“I know, I know, people always say that.”

She waggled her head. “I suppose it works on some sort of autosuggestion, or hypnosis maybe?”

He smiled. “No madam. It’s gas. Whatever the situation, this will put a spin on it.”

“What sort of situations does it cover?”

“Absolutely any.”

“Any?”

“Any.”

“Can you give me a for instance?”

“I’m asked that a lot too. Well, for instance… you were responsible for leaving the hot plate on. You simply say I did not leave it on, and take a puff. Walla! You’ll never believe anything else. If you were in a court of law you would say that with total confidence. You yourself would then be quite convinced that what you are saying is not fabricated, but true.”

She seemed satisfied and nodded. “It is very expensive.”

“Of course. There is only one person in the world who knows its formula.” He patted his chest. “Many have tried to duplicate the chemical composition believe me! Tried and failed.” He tapped the side of his head. “That is why you had to go to such great lengths to arrange this meeting. I travel widely, never staying in one place for very long, or any one country for that matter.”

“How long does it last?” She asked.

“It varies a little, but a year is guaranteed.”

She blew out a breath and squinted. That would be good. She’d be long gone by then. “Yes, OK, I’ll need two. Do you have two?”

He wiggled his satchel and said “I do.”

She slowly peeled off the notes and handed over the money. She took the can and held it in front of her. She said “I did not kill my husband” and took a long, deep draw on the spin gas and handed it back. He placed the spent aerosol back in his bag.

Her fingers curled around the handle of the knife in her pocket as she took the second can.

Although it is generally accepted,

That bad black is simply bad black,

While white gets to be goody two-shoes.

Something seems to be quite out of whack!

–

Black hats and white hats in movies,

Showing who was good and who bad,

Have an awful lot to answer for,

Promoting this two-sided fad.

–

Think of the horse Black Beauty;

What a beautiful creature.

Think of a killer avalanche,

With white as its prominent feature.

–

Although black-hearted people

Are generally up to no good;

Speed and cocaine are the white drugs.

Surely that’s understood.

–

Blackberries are really good in a pie.

Black is useful for conducting heat.

Black orchids are much sort after.

A black suit can look stylish and neat.

–

So what’s going on with this white thing?

Is light always better than dark?

Maybe it is, and it may be the case

That my thinking is wide of the mark!

–

I’ll just put an end to such queries,

Now that I’ve had my say.

Thank goodness I’ve little time for either.

In truth, I really like grey!

They met one sunny morning on the beach, at a holiday resort.

He was there taking a break from an office job in the city. He was single with no plans to settle down. He liked what he did, but tended to run himself into the ground. The holiday was just what he needed.

She had just left a clerical position in order to take on a stint of serious study. The break was for her to rest up and prepare for what lay ahead. She was keen to improve herself and knew there was a lot of work in front of her.

They were both within three days of ending their week’s stay before flying back to the city and the lives they had waiting for them.

They hit it off straight away and spent the last days doing things together. They met each morning for breakfast and dined together each night. They talked about their work and study plans. They agreed that a week after getting back they would catch up and keep their friendship going.

At the last breakfast they discussed things they could do in a week’s time. They agreed to meet in the city’s main square and go on from there. He said he had been looking forward to going to the cinema that was still showing a good movie that he had not yet had a chance to see. It would still be on and wondered whether she would prefer an afternoon matinee performance or an evening show.

“I’m sorry” she said, with a pained expression. “I can’t do that.” She flapped her hands to make light of it. “It probably sounds silly but I can’t go into cinemas. I have phobias about closed spaces and crowds. I just can’t do it.”

“That’s a great pity” he said, looking despondent. “I’m a bit of a movie buff myself. I spend a lot of time in cinemas and movie houses watching the latest films on the big screen.”

“Never mind” she said. “We can spend a more healthy time in the fresh air. I belong to a bushwalkers club and we do some really great walks. I’m not sure what’s on that weekend but it’s bound to be interesting. I’ll find out more and let you know.”

“Ah!” he said, shaking his head and pouting. “That wouldn’t work I’m afraid. Walking through bushy areas with trees and plants for any extended period would bring on my hay fever. Wooded areas like that tend to have a high pollen count. When I get the fever it always hits me very hard, it just about cripples me for days.”

“OH!” She replied

“Yes, Sorry!” He said.

“Me too.” She said.

When breakfast was finished they went their separate ways, doing nothing together for the rest of the morning. They arrived at the airport for their early afternoon return flight. They saw each other, smiled and nodded, as they collected their tickets. On board they were each ushered to their ticketed seats.

They didn’t sit together.

The Captain looked at the little green planet on the big screen.

He said “Do we look at this one?”

The First Officer said “Can’t.”

“Can’t, why not?”

He looked at his hand-held instrument. “We’re being jammed. Well, not jammed exactly. They have some sort of cabling system that‘s playing havoc with our instruments. Our tech boys say Earthlings have named it the National Broadband Network. It’s some sort of primitive technology they’re rolling out.”

“Can we wait it out?”

“Oh! No sir. They’ve been at it for years.”

The Captain frowned. “We have to come up with something. Some sort of record for Command.”

“What we’re getting is very scrappy.”

“What do you mean scrappy?”

“As far as we can tell, we are getting short wave signals on everything from average teeth cleaning times to the diameter of something called a football.”

“OK. Keep trying. Keep me informed. I’ll be glad when we move on from here. Nasty little system this one. Messy place.”

“Yes sir.”

The First Officer crossed the deck to the consuls, all buzzing away trying hard to gather information on the planet below. After a while he returned to the Captain.

“It’s pretty bad sir. I don’t think it’s going to be enough to make out a report.”

“What have you got?”

The Officer look down at his hand-held device again.

”OK. History seems to be a complete washout, although the planet’s habitation period seems to be quite short.” He shrugged an apology. “There is a very limited capability regarding the study of objects in space, and their units of measurement seem to vary for just about every land mass, no apparent attempt to standardise.”

“They need soft things for sleeping, most of them don’t like walking with bare feet, they use pronged forks for eating, they all have to clip their nails regularly, they grow grass so they can cut it down again, they draw pictures of flowers to put in their houses that have flowers just outside of them, many of them submit themselves to regular intoxication, their shops have tattered and torn clothes that they sell as new, they eat animals and sometimes each other, they seem to be very secretive about how they mate, there seems to be a general sense that most of them are trying really hard to be happy and nearly all of them use body coverings.”

He peered closely at his screen. “We don’t seem to be able to get a precise fix on how many wars are going on down there, but there are a lot of them.”

He looked up. “I’m afraid it just goes on and on like this sir. Completely useless really, I can’t see that we can use any of it. I mean, there’s just nothing substantial enough to provide a proper picture.”

The Captain shook his head and blew out a long breath.

The Officer shrugged and said “Like I said sir… scrappy.”

“Damn! OK. My quarters, now.” The Captain vacated his chair and waved the Second Officer over.

In the Captain’s room they sat looking at the printout.

“Have to do what we did for Rigor 39… fudge it. We have no choice. There’ll be a hell of a stink if we don’t tick all the boxes.” He dropped his head into his hands and said “I’ve got one of my really bad migraines coming on.” He looked up with bloodshot eyes and said “Let’s just give it a B11 rating and move on.”

The First Officer stood up, saluted and said “Yes Captain.”

He left the room, closing the door very gently behind him.

 

Mum and Dad and Auntie Betty all wanted a boy.

Boys were all the thing, the flavour of the month, the best thing since sliced bread, the bee’s knees, the be-all and end-all, the best of the best, etcetera.

So, baby got called Alex, got dressed in blue and grew up playing rugby and hanging out with the boys, which made sense because they were all the thing, the flavour of the month, the best thing since sliced bread, the bee’s knees, the be-all and end-all, the best of the best, etcetera.

Alex came home from school one day scarred and bloody from a playground fight. The family all cheered and gave Alex an extra scoop of ice-cream.

Alex had nothing pink, no bows and no frills.

Alex went on to drag racing in the town’s car park late at night, doing all-night pub crawls and lifting weights.

Inside Alex there lives a girl… and she’s very angry.

Rimember was a strange month.

It was added to the twelve that had been used on planet Earth when it was still inhabited. This was prior to the system becoming defunct on the basis that other planets had very different heavenly motions.

All this was around the time when Earth became the first Holiday Resort of its kind. By its origins, Riminy was the name given to a small hopping creature called a cricket. Riminy Cricket was a character that featured in something that was referred to much later as the Disney Time, but this was all so long ago!

The entity, had spent a lot of time researching the period. It had always found it amazing that beings actually used physical bodies in order to survive. That whole era when the male and female system was in place had always fascinated it. However, so few decent records of the time were accurately converted to thought-banks during the Great Gathering that took place in the thirty-fifth millennia, and as a consequence a great deal of interpolation took place. Because these old cultures go back so far, it was difficult to determine how valid any of the records really are.

During that time the monthly cycles had been either named after Roman rulers, the Gods they worshiped, or the numerical sequence of each month. Tradition was broken quite unexpectedly by naming the thirteenth month after this one specific insect. Ever since the entity had learnt about this, while undergoing its second Schooling Period in the Fifteenth Galactic Era, it had become consumed with a desire to know more. It felt that it was such a pity that there are no pictures left, and would love to know what Riminy Cricket looked like.

Although Riminy was known to be green, wore a blue hat and had large eyes, no images remained. The creature had been famous for a peculiar song about the strange activity of wishing on a star. Records showed that the word wish was a verb in that era’s language that meant request.

However, it was not until more than three millennia later that the planet Urgonis5 was discovered. This was the first of many such planets, sometimes referred to as wish-stars, where the atmosphere allowed entities to both deposit and withdraw thoughts, in what would eventually become a vast network of thought-banks. These events finally culminated in the creation of the Intergalactic Knowledge Fund.

The question raised was could wishing on a star be a direct reference to these planets? If so, was Disney a prophet not recognised at the time? Speculation about this was strife but didn’t help. Sadly, it became apparent to the entity that without sufficiently preserved records of the events that took place during that ancient period… the truth of it would never be known.

 

So many nameless strangers,

Uncounted as they flow.

Filling out the city;

Each knowing where to go.

–

They come by car or bike.

They come by bus or train.

They come as local workers,

Or visitors by plane.

–

Individual workers

Heading for their place.

Weaving through the city streets

At their chosen pace.

–

They flood the streets and alleys,

Like a never ending stream,

Until they enter glass-clad towers.

Roomed; no longer seen.

–

With the flowing human torrent gone,

It’s quieter on the street.

Just a few, with appointments due,

Go out to meet and greet.

–

Others now walk easier paths;

Still strangers on the go.

Not in town to work a day,

But moving to and fro.

–

A hobo and his dog,

With a park bench for their bed.

A giggling couple, arm in arm.

Window cleaners overhead.

–

Bikies in their leathers.

Tourists with cameras and maps.

Police patrolling up and down,

In uniforms and caps.

–

All now in the city

With some purpose they each came.

All part of this living heart,

But strangers all the same.

–

And within this disconnected mass,

On all of which depends.

The saving grace within this place;

That some will make new friends.

The bar was tucked away down a side alley and known to be a haunt for the criminal fraternity.

The man in the suede jacket was what you might call a petty criminal. He was pretty low in the pecking order of things, but knew that some of the top crime bosses used the bar. It could do no harm to mix with them. He was certainly nervous as he entered. He ordered a drink and found a table tucked away in a corner. The place was full of men drinking and smoking. He looked around surreptitiously. Several of them he recognised as being kingpins in the underworld. He saw one man dressed in a particularly expensive looking suit that he recognised as being someone he had met, but only once. He wondered if the man would remember him. He was sitting on his own at a table tapping into a mobile phone. It could be his opportunity to get a foot in the door.

After several minutes of hesitation he plucked up the courage and walked over, smiling and saying “You may not remember me, we met briefly at the racecourse, last year.” The man in the suit looked up with a questioning expression, then seemed to relax. He pointed, saying “I can’t say I do but take a seat. ‘Suede’ pulled out a chair and sat. He felt that this could well be an opening for him. They sat chatting casually for a time, then quite out of the blue, and in a loud voice, the man says “No! There’s no way I’m going to help you rob the jewellery store!”

‘Suede’, being totally shocked by the unprovoked and completely nonsensical outburst, got up and made his way back to his table. He tried not to let the patrons staring at him see how much he was trembling as he sat back down. He just couldn’t believe what the ’suit’ had said. He was thinking about which jewellery shop the other had been referring to when he looked across and found the ‘suit’ was grinning and waving him back. After a few moments of indecision he got up and slowly walked back. The man, still smiling as though nothing had happened, waved him to the chair.

“You have to forgive me.” He said “It’s a bit of a weakness with me. I just can’t resist pulling stunts like that. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid. I’m often told I have a sick sense of humour. No hard feelings I hope? Let me get you a drink. I think you need one.” He chuckled to himself as he made his way to the counter.

He returned, and as before they sat making polite conversation for a while before ‘suede’ suddenly jumped up, knocking over his chair. “You swine!” He shouted. This brought the attention of everyone in the room. “I wasn’t here to offer you a job.” He went on with real fury. “I was sent here to test you and now we know. It was you that tipped the police off about last month’s bank job.” With that, he kicked his fallen chair to one side and stormed out of the bar.

Outside, he started to walk slowly back up the alley smiling to himself.

Just as he reached the street he heard the shot.

The two men were bent over their screens writing blurbs for the advertising agency.

Without warning, a great clap of thunder shook the building and made the office widows rattle as though they might shatter and fall apart. They both got up and went to a window.

“Crikey!” said Brian, the younger man. “There was nothing on the forecast about this was there?”

“Not that I saw,” said Tom, the senior writer for the company. “Look at that front coming in. We are in for some rough weather by the look of it. How strange! I bet nobody in this building brought an umbrella today.” They both smiled at the thought and sat back at their desks as the rain started to pound the building.

“Of course, you weren’t in yesterday,” said Tom, “I bet you can’t guess who turned up here out of the blue.”

“Go on.”

“Archie.”

“Archie?”

“The very man. Came rushing in here, as though he’d been invited! Sat right there and went on about his latest creation.”

“Glad I missed that,” said Brian.

“I know, he was very excited about the preface he had written for the Editing Manual that he’s been working on. You know, the one he’s been putting together for… well, for goodness knows how long! I can only think that the people he’s working for must be extremely patient.”

Brian shook his head. “Did you find out what this masterpiece was?”

“Oh! More than that, he brought a thick folder full of typed A4 pages with him. He sat reading it for a while, then handed me a copy of it; as though I would actually ever want to read it!”

“Really?”

“Really, do you want to hear his preface?”

“Sure.”

Tom opened his desk and drew out the heavy buff folder, packed with sheets of paper. He sorted through then held one up to read.

“This is what he wrote,” said Tom with a condescending grin on his face.

‘Just about any person who finds themselves confronted by the task of editing another person’s written material will undoubtedly have considerations about its quality, and at times, its relevance. However, it stands to reason, albeit a self-serving one, that someone actually wants the work done and is therefore prepared to pay for it. It could be construed as something of a moral dilemma for an editor, when viewing such tendered material, material that may very well leave such an editor with an unwavering sense of professional disdain.’

Brian sat wide-eyed for a while then asked, “Did he really write that?”

The other nodded. “He certainly did.”

Brian gazed out the office window into the darkening sky and pelting rain. “That,” he said “as a preface to a manual, is just about as surprising as this storm. Why would he dwell on anything that negative at the beginning of the manual?”

“Beats me; because I hadn’t seen it coming, I had a job keeping a straight face. He seemed so enthusiastic about the whole thing; so I was being careful not to upset him; but he pushed.”

“Pushed?”

“Yes, you know. What did I think of it? …and how he would appreciate my professional opinion.”

“Oh! No! What did you say?”

“Well, it was all rather awkward, as you may well imagine. I figured that I should be honest in the nicest possible way… not to hurt his feelings, you understand.”

“Sure, what did you say?”

“I said that because I was unprepared for what he had read, I found it to be somewhat unexpected.”

“Right. What did he say?”

“He said he thought that was an unusual word to use. He looked pretty upset, and his face started to go red. But to be honest, I was getting tired of the whole business; you know, his unannounced visit, his weird preface, now him quizzing me because he didn’t like my answer.”

“What happened?”

“Well, he asked me what my understanding of the word unexpected was.” Tom pulled a face. “I probably shouldn’t have…” he paused.

Brian said “Go on.”

“OK. I said that for me the unexpected was getting a puncture, or having a bird swoop past my face, or getting to the end of a puzzle and finding a piece missing, or having an ambulance start up its siren right behind me, or finding money in one of my old trouser pockets. I added that the last one would probably be my favourite. I probably shouldn’t have said that; but hey! I was really fed up with the guy.”

Brian raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “Wow! I bet he was mad.”

“That’s the funny thing. He wasn’t! He just sat staring at his folder. He finally looked up at me. Ï started to apologise, or at least I think that’s what I was doing, when he suddenly got all excited and started to rabbit on about how important a glossary was and that he was sure he had got that one covered. I asked him what he meant, but he just kept telling me to hang on while he sorted through his paperwork.”

Tom went back to the folder now lying on his desk.

“Do you want to know what he read out to me?”

“Of course,” replied Brian, leaning forward with obvious interest.

Tom lifted out a page. “Here it is; part of the glossary for Archie’s manual. I quote.”

‘The Unexpected – The unexpected, albeit a common enough occurrence in the life of an Editor, is not generally predicted because if it was it wouldn’t be unexpected. This goes a long way to explaining why people don’t usually look out for or anticipate the unexpected. The unscheduled nature of the unexpected may well result in either a pleasant or an unpleasant surprise. Since the prospect of an unexpected event is most unlikely, this author is of the opinion that this sort of thing should remain the subject of random chance.’

Brian sat with his mouth open, coming to terms with what he had heard, but for the moment quite unable to comment.

Tom said, “Well? What do you think?”

The other wiggled his shoulders and rolled his head, as if trying to wake up. He said “Crikey, I don’t know what to think! Tell me; what did you say?”

Tom smiled and said, “I just told him it was unexpected!”

Alice climbed out of bed and made ready for her morning run.

This was her weekday ritual. Before catching her bus to work she would get into her running gear, do a little warm up to the end of the street, cross over the main road, run through the park and out onto the sealed path that ran parallel to the coast. She would do five kilometres, ending at the Surf Club, take a short break, and then make her way back. She loved these runs and the weather today was just perfect. Once she was on the coastal track she would use earplugs to listen to music.

As she felt around in her small back-pack she had strapped behind her, she found her music player but was annoyed to find she had forgotten her mobile phone! She could see it now on the dresser; how dumb was that? Things went from bad to worse when she found the player’s batteries were flat. No music, no phone, she was tempted to go back but that didn’t make sense, and it would certainly make her late for work. So, she decided to carry on with her run. After all, that was the main point of it, wasn’t it? Wasn’t this the whole reason for getting up that little bit earlier in the mornings? Yes; the run was the main thing; the thing she really enjoyed doing.

As Alice ran along beside the sea, she could hear the rhythm of the waves washing in below. It was a soothing sound and she felt tempted to run down to the beach. She made her turn around point and rested a while to catch her breath. As she started back she found the desire to spend just a minute or two, watching and listening to the waves that she could only hear from the path. She finally relented, stopped and rested for a moment before climbing down through sand and rocks to get a view of the coast. She settled down just short of the beach in a cranny of rocks. She was virtually unseen here and it was shady, out of the wind and giving her a perfect view.

Alice sat very still, taking in the beauty of the scene spread out before her; she listened to the soothing sounds of the waves breaking on the beach and breathed in the smell of the salty sea air. She closed her eyes. This was heaven! It was peace. It was… a kind of tranquillity that swept over her with nothing else happening or pushing its way into her life. She felt a sense of freedom. No phone, no music… but right now, no clocks, no TV, no home computer, no intrusions, no people. She was disconnected. It was a wonderful feeling and it brought about a sense that her life should be looked at, analysed even. Had she the time? Of course she had the time. She would phone in sick when she got back. She liked her work at the office and had always done well in her job; there would be no problem taking a day off.

Bit by bit she looked at her current life. She had been feeling a kind of information overload for several months now without stopping to think about it. In her private life she was finding it more and more difficult to make decisions while being bombarded with too much information. Her phone was a classic example. It was loaded with so many apps, and she no longer looked at most of them. She would definitely thin that right down… or better still, strip the apps out and take it right back to simply being a phone again! Wow! She could do that. At the same time go through her enormous list of contacts and reduce it to those few people important in her life.

She thought about Colin. They had been dating for months but it wasn’t going anywhere and she knew it. They were supposed to go to a nightclub in the city tomorrow night; she would cancel. It would be a start. Let him down gently. The more she thought about it all, the more things she thought of that she needed to change.

After a couple more hours of soul-searching her head was full of stuff. She climbed back up, ran home, phoned in sick, got hold of a common or garden pencil and a piece of paper and started a to-do list.