Author: Alexander Fawn

He looked around; he didn’t want to be here at all.

Scooter had been completely content with his lifestyle, but his Dad saw things differently; he thought it would do him good if he got a job. He knew that if Dad was to get his way everything would change horribly.

Finally, after a lot of bad feelings and countless arguments he had agreed to visit the local job centre. He sat now waiting to be called. If he could get through this… His name was called. “Nigel Brenton to desk number three please. Mr Nigel Brenton.” It took him a moment to realise they meant him. Nobody called him Nigel any more. Of course Scooter was only his surfing nickname, but all the same it made him shudder to think he was a Nigel.

He sauntered through and found desk three. The woman looked up with a broad welcoming smile. “Take a seat.” She tapped a few keys, watching the screen. “OK.” She checked the papers in front of her. “What can we do for you today?”

“Like I told the lady up at the front counter I have to find a job.”

“Ah! Very good, that’s what we’re here for.”

Shooter gazed around the building. “Will this take long?”

The woman looked surprised. “Why, are you in a hurry?”

“Eh. No, I suppose not.”

She looked annoyed now. “I need to ask you a few questions.”

“OK.”

“Currently unemployed?”

“Yep.”

She looked up.

“Yes… I mean yes.”

“And, your last employment.”

“Haven’t had any.”

“You’ve never had a job?”

“No.” He looked around again. “Do you have a coffee machine?”

She started to point across the room, then stopped herself “Mr Brenton…”

“Scooter.”

“Pardon?”

“Scooter. That’s my name. It’s what people call me.”

“Yes, well, that’s as may be, but you are here seeking employment as Mr Nigel Brenton. Is that correct?”

“S’pose so.”

“OK.” She looked at the clock on her screen. “Let’s move on shall we?”

He shrugged. “OK.”

“You say you have never worked. Your records show that you left school four years ago; but you’ve never worked?”

“No. I’ve never felt the need. I mean, it just isn’t me really. I do stuff though. I have a mate who sells surf boards, and he has a board-waxing service. He also mends them. He’s called ‘The Board Guy’. I go out with him sometimes, it’s really cool. He has a Ute and pulls a trailer with all his gear in it. We often get called out…”

She raised a hand to stop him. “Why are you really here Mr Brenton?”

“Well, it’s like I said to the counter lady, I have to find a job.”

“You mean have to, as opposed to want to find a job?”

“Yep. I mean, yes. My old man keeps on about it.” Scooter grinned. “I don’t have to actually find a job, only show up, like I promised.”

The woman sighed and started writing a note in the file.

“Do you have toilets here? I really need to use the toilet.”

The woman stopped writing. She slowly counted up to three in her head. “Well, we do close up at 4:30 and I have two more clients waiting.”

He looked at his watch. It was all about timing he thought. He sat with raised eyebrows, without saying anything.

Finally she said “Yes. If you really need to.” She pointed to a sign in the far corner.

“Thanks.” He got up with a smile and a nod and took off across the room.

Once inside the toilets he found a cubicle and made himself comfortable. Now all he had to do was wait it out. She would get fed up with waiting and he would be put on the back burner. Then, when she was busy dealing with the next in the queue, he could slip away. It was all going to plan nicely.

After a long wait, he stuck his head out and saw that the woman was fully occupied. He walked steadily to the door, then out onto the street.

He was really chuffed with the way it had gone and was still deep in thought congratulating himself as he crossed the main road. Of course he didn’t see ‘The Board Guy’ coming. Hurtling towards him with his Ute and his trailer.

It would remain to be seen which was going to be the more messy… finalising the documentation from his visit to the job centre, or trying to get him up off the road, the Ute and the trailer. There wouldn’t be much in it!

Will you come with me?

To fresh green fields,

Where shafts of golden light

Split clouds of white,

And all the earth is green.

–

Would you come with me?

And sample that which lies beyond

All this we have, our daily throng;

And treat this blessed life’s long song,

And let us all be free.

Will you come with me?

 

My first encounter with Cornelius Blegg was quite as bizarre as my second.

At the time I was employed by a small engineering company in London; this being prior to the great decentralisation push of the late sixties. The city was peppered with such businesses, tucked away in the myriad of jumbled streets and buildings that formed the heart of the metropolis.

It being my lunch hour, I was taking the air – such that it was – and perusing the large shop windows of Regent Street, when my ears were assailed by a hideous screeching. Up from the direction of our beloved Eros, rode a large man on a bicycle.

It is difficult to describe the emotions that the scene conjured. The rider was enormous. A man of about forty, dressed in a dark suit, with shiny, black shoes. His hair was a thick mass of red beneath an absurd bowler. And, as though this were not enough, he sported a great crimson beard.

The sight was, in fact, sufficiently outlandish to turn the heads of several hardened city-dwellers. And they, as we all know, have seen it all.

The bicycle – four sizes too small – creaked and squealed from somewhere beneath him. The man puffed and panted as he wobbled past me.

I stood for a moment, gazing blankly at a window display and musing on what I had seen, when my reverie was shattered by an ear-splitting crash.

On turning, I saw that the huge fellow had collided with a delivery van that had been reversing from a narrow service lane.

I trotted briskly to the scene, and with no little difficulty pulled him out of the gutter. His bike was ruined. The front wheel was no longer round.

Perspiring and swearing profusely, he brushed himself down.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Aye, that I am, laddie,” he wheezed, and cocking an eye at the astounded van driver, added “no thanks to this miserable creature.”

The driver shrugged his shoulders, climbed back into his seat, and went about his daily business. As the vehicle disappeared amongst the city traffic, I turned and looked again at the dishevelled victim.

“Are you sure you’re not hurt?” I repeated.

The man beamed at me. A red, shaggy beam of a smile.

“Nay” he cooed. “It’d take a great deal more than that to damage Cornelius Blegg.” He extended a large, dusty paw. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, laddie. Now, let me buy you a coffee.”

This is how Cornelius and I met, and talked for an hour, one day in the teeming city.

He worked at that time for a company that made carburettors. His work was that of a draughtsman. The big Scot held the papers of a qualified motor mechanic, but apparently preferred drawing diagrams to wielding wrenches.

On occasion, his work entailed him travelling from one office to another. And it was during one of these expeditions that I had met him.

Through the months that followed we met several times, usually by chance, along the same stretch of thoroughfare. At each meeting we sat and chatted over a hot drink or two.

In due time, my work took me to other parts, and contact was lost. It was not until some five years later, that we sat, sipping coffee again. On the other side of the world.

It was during the summer of sixty nine, in Brisbane, Queensland, that our paths crossed again. Having by this time married an Australian girl, I had returned with her to Melbourne. From there we had set out by car, travelling north, to see the sights of the great east coast.

On one sunny afternoon in Brisbane we pulled into a service station for petrol and refreshments. Having filled the tank I parked the car under a shaded port and went in for cold drinks.

As I stepped from the cool building into the hot air once again, I heard a familiar sound from the past.

A mighty crash, a rending of something metallic, and the boom of a thick Scottish accent filled the surrounding block and a half. I turned the corner to the workshop.

A car, with doors and hood open, stood in the centre of a chaotic scene. Tools of every description lay scattered across the floor, and two great boots waggled at me from under the radiator. It had to be him.

My own lack of real confidence on this point however, prompted me to shuffle my feet a little and remark loudly about the heat of the day. All doubts faded as a great scarlet mop appeared from one side of the car. This was followed by a massive blood-red beard, and a grin that somehow shone through it.

He clambered to his feet like a gigantic, ginger Father Christmas. He had grown! A big, greasy hand thrust out at me, and when I took it, he positively danced me around the workshop, sending spanners and tools scuttling across the concrete.

When we had both simmered down he asked me for my recent history, and I his. By and by we parted on the understanding that my wife and I should join him and his family that evening for dinner.

The meal was truly enjoyable, and the Bleggs themselves a tonic. After their two young sons had been packed off to bed, we sat drinking coffee and prattling at leisure. The ease with which we each relaxed and chatted was quite remarkable.

Eventually the conversation drifted back to the newly adopted country; its politics, economy, and so on.

Cornelius took the opportunity here to repeat an earlier grumble he had made, about being somewhat cornered into his present employment. Although his manner was light-hearted I felt there was genuine dismay in his tone.

“What is so bad about being a mechanic?” I asked. “It’s a skilled trade, and has obviously set you in good stead.”

Our host seemed suddenly overcome with some deep and racking remorse. His eyes dropped slowly to his feet.

“Nay, laddie,” he replied soulfully, “perhaps I never mentioned it …. I hate cars!”

The slender barrel of the deadly Russian Armalite rifle quivered slightly as the sight came to bear on a moving shape. The man behind the telescope drew in a breath; a moment’s silence; then the weapon spoke. The sharp bark echoed off the rows of dingy houses and lost itself in the rain-sodden night.

To the young British soldier scuttling frantically for cover the sound had scarcely time to register. A giant hand swept his legs from under him as the high velocity bullet shattered bone and cartilage. For a few seconds there was only numbness. Then the first waves of agony engulfed him.

With the sound of the shot the lights illuminating the little cottages were snuffed out one by one, plunging the street into darkness. The street lamps had gone long before, their pillars making steel hurdles across the street to hinder the passage of half-track vehicles and armoured cars. They were just one more hazard for the foot patrols or ‘duck squads’ that laboriously combed the area. That and the white-washed walls which showed up the khaki pigeons to such good effect.

No one ventured into the street. The street, which like so many others, had been often breached by Crown forces, the houses entered and violated. This was an ancient conflict and the members of the patrol hugging the deepest shadows felt the hatred of the Catholic ghetto as an implacable, almost tangible force.

Down the street the sniper’s victim writhed convulsively. The thick black blood pumping steadily from the wound told him that life was ebbing away at an alarming rate. Biting his lip against the pain the soldier removed his belt and fastened a crude tourniquet around this thigh. The effort almost caused him to pass out. He glanced at the closed doors of the nearby houses with their dark, knowing window panes and felt an upsurge of desperation.

Would relief forces never come?

He wondered what had happened to the rest of the platoon. They would surely have called in reinforcements. He thought of his wife and child in England. What was he doing in Ireland anyway, fighting this crazy war? He didn’t know what it was all about. The Irish themselves didn’t seem to know. In the pubs of London, the Irish labourers were a wild and likeable lot, but here the people were different. Here in Belfast, communities were kept apart by high steel barricades dividing narrow streets. Life too, was cheap, with people buried two to a coffin, and often under cover of darkness.

The dying soldier turned as a strange sound broke the stillness.

A young girl came unsuspecting, her heels tap-tapping down the street. Looking up, he glimpsed the soft femininity of her face and the sheen of her hair.

“Are you hit?” the voice had a breathless youth in it.

“Thank God,” he breathed. “Yes, my leg.”

“British bastard! I bet Kerry he’d got you.”

The spittle struck him warmly on the cheek, then she was gone, footsteps tripping hurriedly away. As she opened a door he heard softly, from the interior of the nearby dwelling, a low murmur.

“Thou, O Lord, shall open my lips, and my tongue shall announce Thy praise.”

It was a regular event that they both looked forward to.

Micky and Mandy, the young brother and sister that lived down the road from old Mr Tester, always looked forward to calling in on him. It was a regular thing that they would call in at his house at the end of the school week. He was always giving them riddles. They loved riddles, and on this particular occasion he had something special for them.

They sat in his kitchen while he searched for something on top of the fridge. He found what he was looking for and joined them at the table. He was holding a piece of paper and looking at them over his glasses.

“You are getting something a little extra this week” he said, with a mischievous smile. “This time you get three riddles for the price of one.”

Mandy opened her school notebook and sat with her pen poised.

“When you have solved the first two, you’ll need to put them together to make something” he said.

His visitors looked at each other with raised eyebrows.

“Are you ready?’ he asked.

Mandy gave an excited nod.

“OK. The first one is ‘I am alive without breath, never thirsty, ever drinking, ever travelling, but never walking. What am I?’”

After a moment, Micky looked across at Mandy’s book and said “Got it.”

The old man nodded. “Good. The second riddle is ‘a skin have I, more eyes than one, and very nice when I am done. What am I?’”

Mandy wrote it down.

As they were leaving he said “I’ll give you a clue. Ask yourselves what happens on a Friday?”

They left with puzzled expressions but still gave him a cheery wave at the footpath as they turned to go home.

During the next week they worked out the answer to one of the riddles, and then the other. Eventually they combined the answers. They were thrilled that between them they had found the final answer. The following Friday just couldn’t come soon enough!

When it did, they made their way to his house, both very happy with themselves. Not only had they solved the riddles but when they left Mr Tester’s house that afternoon, they knew exactly what they were going to have for tea!

There was once a being from another world; another world, time and altogether another condition of circumstance.

This being worshiped light. It saw only goodness in light, and wanted to stay forever bathed in it.

It revelled in sunshine; would glide happily through moon beams, immerse itself in twinkling starlight, and would often be found hovering excitedly around the dimness of the smallest candle’s flame. In fact, wherever there was any light to be found, it would be there also. This being never tired of searching out and chasing light, in all of its many forms.

In this being’s world, for it was a world of sorts, there ruled a great king. A king, or a God, or a great source of light; for this was the state of things in this other condition of circumstance.

Because of its unending love of light, this being made a great journey across vast tracks of time to visit this king. It had a wish that it carried; a wish to remain forever in the light.

The king, being made up of the brightest and most beautiful light the being had ever seen received the being with abundant grace. It wanted to know why this being had travelled so far over such a span of eons to seek an audience.

The beings request was put. It wanted to abide with light for eternity.

The king saw how earnest this request was and decided instantly to grant the being’s wish.

It was decreed that the being would take the name of shadow. The king declared that shadow would always exist where there was light.

And so it came to pass that wherever there was light, there also would be shadow. And for all of eternity it would be that light and shadow were always found together.

Sometimes she murmurs softly,

While from ideas I’m trying to choose.

It’s so subtle, how she buoys my pen.

I’m truly in love with my muse.

–

I can’t remember the first time

She whispered in my ear,

Or the first time she stroked my cheek;

The memory isn’t clear.

–

Her name may be Erato,

Just one among her peers.

No names are required to interact,

She’s been there for thousands of years.

–

It’s an affair like any human kind,

With a premise based on love.

An elevation of two-way faith,

That nothing can rise above.

–

My muse comes by to drink my thoughts,

Maybe drop an idea or two.

The pieces get swirled around,

Then scribbled down anew.

–

Her presence alone provides support,

With no coaxing her to inspire.

She allows me to play my part,

While fanning my inner fire.

–

I asked if I could write simple lines,

She said that was quite alright.

We just sat their holding hands,

Way into the night.

–

Sighing gently in my heart,

She sees a dream begin.

I listen, as part of our sacred pact,

But drawing always from within.

–

There is a tenuous nexus between

My life and her ancient existence.

She listens to me writing from the heart,

Promoting ongoing persistence.

–

She is an ethereal goddess,

With far more patience than I.

There’s a balance between her measured support,

And my degree of willingness to try.

–

She helps me colour the world with my pen,

As I sit at the end of the day.

We quietly unite, to bring to light,

What this poet has to say.

–

She has been around since ancient times,

I will always honour her dues.

She easily quickens the beat of my heart,

I’m truly in love with my muse.

Johnny pulled up at the kerb and waved at Tom. A grateful Tom jumped in. “Thanks” he murmured and shut the door. Tom asked if he could get a lift home and the car pulled out onto the main road through town. There was certainly a lot of traffic this weekend and Johnny knew he should take extra care.

Johnny seemed to be driving a little fast on this trip, and when they cleared the main street he really put his foot down.

“You’re not going too fast are you?” asked Tom.

“Nah!” Johnny replied. “D’you want to see just how fast this baby will go?”

“OK” said Tom, shrinking down lower into his seat.

The car accelerated with a roar, soon reaching top speed. Within minutes they were tearing along the country road between the two towns.

Johnny’s knuckles were stretched white on the steering wheel, when the dog ran out onto the road and stopped, staring at the approaching car.

Tom screamed “Look out Johnny!”

The car swerved violently and skidded across the road. The car mounted a high verge, tipping onto its side. Then it slid down a steep embankment on the other side, tumbling over a couple of times until it righted itself back onto its wheels. But now it picked up even more speed. Johnny was out of the driver’s seat, desperately trying to reach the brake pedal. He could see the wooded area looming at the bottom, where the slope levelled out.

“Look out! Hold on!” Johnny screamed, as the car ploughed into the trunk of the tree. The sounds of metal crumpling, a tyre exploding and glass tinkling all combined to make a defining roar on impact.

The tree they had hit was just visible through the shattered windscreen. The driver and passenger sat half comatose in the car, with a strong smell of petrol seeping into the cab.

All of a sudden, there was a loud wrapping on the side window. They both turned their heads to see Johnny’s mother, looking angry. Johnny reluctantly wound down the window.

“How many times do I have to tell you kids? No playing in the car!”

 He was just an ordinary kid… originally that is.

It all started the night he watched a TV program on telekinesis. He was fascinated by the idea. That night, as he lay in bed, he really wished his alarm clock would rise up, circle the room and set itself back down again… and it did!

The following day in class he demonstrated his new-found powers, much to both the delight and horror of classmates and teachers alike. Not all onlookers liked the idea of a school desk floating out into the playground and back again through a different window.

Within days his story was being told in the national press, and after a couple of weeks he was getting international attention. With his parents’ full support, for there was an awful lot of money to be made, he quit school almost immediately, flying out to a Vegas casino, where he was due to strut his stuff for a crowd of high-flyers happy to pay astronomical sums for tickets.

In fact, it was the night before his big debut that he found out that it wasn’t him doing any of this clever stuff at all. He was being assisted. Nobody knows quite what happened in the luxury suite of the hotel that night, but sometime later, a friend and fellow illusionist recounted a late night conversation they’d had in a bar.

He maintained that after a night of heavy drinking it had come out that a poltergeist was responsible for these miraculous happenings. This supernatural being had found that the mischief it got up to was great fun at first, but it was now getting bored with it and wanted it to stop. His friend had then resorted to blackmail, saying that if it didn’t continue to perform he would expose it. This had done the trick for the time being, because poltergeists really don’t like being exposed.

It was on that fateful night after his last big show that the mischievous spirit decided that enough was enough and opted out of their partnership. Of course, nobody knows how it happened or what motivated his unseen host to end it the way it did… but it was sensational.

After repeated banging on the door to the showman’s room, the hotel manager unlocked the suite using a master key. He was found dead, lying flat on the floor, arms at his sides as though he were standing to attention, with no signs of being attacked or harmed in any way.

The means of his demise would have been a puzzlement in itself, but when he was examined more closely it was discovered that he was hovering just above the carpet!

The people in the quaint little hamlet of Richford had a secret.

The folly, for that’s what the locals called it, sat sheltered within a copse of oaks. It had been there for over five hundred years and cherished by the inhabitants. The barn or stone shed, for that’s what it was, would be made available through a narrow gate. Visitors could walk around it at set times during the day for a small entrance fee, but were not able to enter it. It was deemed to be too dangerous. The gate was part of the high wooden fence that surrounded the entire stand of trees. This being all part of keeping the customers safe.

The story that they would put about was that it was put there by a powerful sorcerer during the Dark Ages. He had the barn built from stone quarried nearby and when it was finished he had cast a spell that would enable his followers to settle there, living in comfort for their remaining years. That was the full extent of the legend that any would offer to the tourists that went out of their way to visit it, and spend a little money in the few shops that lined the narrow road. That was all rather vague, but it didn’t deter people visiting, just for the novelty.

Little did any outsider know that this old building had a sentinel. He was from a line that went back through countless generations with the honourable duty of guarding it. He, and he alone held the key, and only he would allow those living there to enter through the ancient wooden door, to pass in and out again.

No one ever really challenged the notion that he original inexhaustible supply of gold coins that the chest first held had somehow changed again and again through the ages; but the fact that it now produced an ongoing bounty of used bank notes was all they needed to know.

There were very strict rules of course, how often, how much, and so on, strict quotas that had been passed on down through the centuries, but the ancient rite had always been held sacrosanct. All that was true, until the incident. Nobody saw it coming…

The writer stopped writing.

He leaned back and stared out of his window. “Where to from here?” he mumbled. He considered; several options came to him straight away. He sat, deep in thought. A boy; yes some malevolent child could slip a note into his pocket bringing the spell undone, or a bird could fly in and make off with a note for nest-building, or some freak gust of wind… No. He would have to give it some thought.

He looked again at the garden bathed in sun. “I’ll have to come back to it” he whispered. He got up, stretched, and left the room…