Author: Alexander Fawn

She was alone.

It was all behind her now. The freedom she had gained made her heady. She was standing near the edge. The lofty height of the cliffs along this part of the shoreline allowed visitors to look out across the great ocean. In the moonlight it was an enormous expanse of glistening water that went on forever. Gazing out, she became aware of another solitary figure making its way along the track that led to where she stood. She watched as the woman approached, occasionally looking out at the view.

The newcomer eventually stopped a short distance away. She called out, “Ah! A kindred spirit, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Yes,” replied the first, “I suppose we are.”

The other moved closer. “When did you jump?” she asked.

She was working late when her phone went off.

It was a short text message, saying, ‘You are about to die.’ She hated these pranks that the people she worked with seemed to find so amusing. There was definitely a culture in the place that meant that everyone there could spend their time dreaming up practical jokes. She looked around. She appeared to be the only one there. She had to be the last person in the office. As the company occupied the entire fifth floor in the building, she got up and walked around. She soon returned, having discovered that the whole floor was in total darkness. Only her room had a light on.

She wondered whether some silly fool was hiding out of sight, and enjoying the fact that she was being given a fright. It wasn’t very likely, but she called out, anyway. “I want you to know that I don’t find this at all funny!”

Her phone pinged again.

It read, ‘No. You’re quite right, a sudden death is rarely funny.’

The old guy at the saloon was squinting at the small white label on his crisps packet.

The fellow next to him could see the perplexed look on his face. Knowing a great deal about such things, he explained what it was and why it was on the packet. He said that what he was looking at was a UPC number, which stands for Universal Product Code. He told the man that it is referred to as the GTIN, that being the Global Trade Item Number. He said the number is twelve digits long and is assigned to an item, which makes it a completely unique product. He said these markings can be read by an electronic reader. He said this captures and translates the information by using a computer.

His student, although getting more and more drunk, seemed to be taking it all in.

So, he went on to say that these were first created for grocery shops. It made the checkout process a lot faster. Not only that, the system allowed shop keepers to keep track of their inventory.

With a smile, he said, “As you probably know, because this was so successful, it is now used for just about all other retail products.”

The other, blinked a few times.

The man raised his eyebrows. “Do you understand now?

“What?

“Do you get it, what the barcode is?”

“Sure.” He burped. “Last orders are called at 11:30.”

This was one of the writer’s favourite places.

He was sitting in the back corner of the café, watching both the people passing back and forth along the street outside and the customers coming in, sitting, and then leaving. On this particular day he was musing on the human senses when he saw the woman struggling with a pusher, getting it over the step, as she entered. She ordered a coffee. He couldn’t help noticing a quick exchange between the man operating the coffee machine and the woman. It was one of some sort of secret familiarity. It was then that he saw the jagged scar that ran down the side of the man’s neck. She made her way to a table, awkwardly navigating the pusher as she went. Passing his own table, he glimpsed a faint white line across her finger, where a ring had been. He noted that the man making coffees was watching her every move.

He sat listening to the sounds of the barista machine making its hissing and gurgling sounds as more drinks were prepared, together with the intermittent cries of the child in the stroller. Outside, street noises continued in the background. He touched the side of his cup; it was still nice and hot. As he lifted it, he smelt the beautiful aroma of the cappuccino. The taste of it had always been his favourite.

As he drank, his sixth sense told him that today was going to be a productive day at the keyboard.

The man that lived in 17a kept very much to himself.

He only ever nodded to any of the other people who lived in the apartment block. It was rumoured that he could be deaf, or even dumb. Nobody really knew. In the main, he was ignored, and to a degree, avoided. The truth of the matter was that he disliked royal persons, politicians, soldiers, religious callers, religious people, taxi drivers, gamblers, protest marchers, celebrities, people with dogs that barked at night, people with mirrored sunglasses, men with beards, women with large earrings, people with t-shirts that advertised things and people who bought and wore new jeans with holes already in them… just to name some.

In fact, in a moment of unusually clear thinking, with an undertone of self-analysis, he asked himself whether he actually liked anybody?

Nobody came to mind.

He was sitting on a comfortable chair in a small room.

He was holding a ticket. He had no idea how he came by it or what it meant. He wasn’t at all sure where he was. Other people were seated around the room; about a dozen or so. Men and women, all late in life, like him. He looked around, although there was little to see, just bare walls painted in a light grey. Nothing hung on them; no pictures, no certificates, no information boards, no clock. There were strip lights on the ceiling, but no windows. It was like a waiting room, but without it letting you know that’s what it was. In one corner, a door, and in the diagonally opposite corner, quite close to him, what looked like an elderly attendant. He was wearing the sort of uniform you would see in an art gallery, by such people. He was in a dark blue suit with a peaked cap. There was no sign of any insignia.

He was staring at him, when the man with a cap turned his head and smiled.

Getting up, he walked over to him and asked a question.

The attendant beamed up at him. Standing up himself and rolling his shoulders, he took a deep breath and said, “You want to know where you are. I can understand that. I must say, it is always most gratifying to be asked questions. Not many do. Most of them that arrive here are in a daze. I can be on duty here for two or three weeks, day after day, and not get approached by any of our clientele.” He sighed. “I can’t tell you much, I’m afraid. None of us can.”

The newcomer smiled while looking back around. “I just don’t know where I am. Sounds silly doesn’t it?”

“Not at all! A perfectly reasonable question. You’re in a very large, multi-storeyed building, just one of many. On this floor there are dozens of rooms like this. Each dealing with different groups of people. This one is identified by the ticket you’re holding.”

Looking down at the ticket didn’t help, just a string of alphanumeric characters.

“That’ll probably be meaningless to you. When they are ready for you it’ll glow. Don’t worry about it.”

Looking around again, the other grimaced and said, “Something tells me I should be worried about something, but I don’t know what!” He sniffed. “I mean, why are all these people being scrutinised? Have they done something wrong?”

“Look. You obviously want to know what’s going on. You could call it examination, analysis, and certainly judgment, if you like, but it’s definitely scrutiny. It’s very thorough, I can tell you that. Anyway, only those through the door over there, know what’s going on.” The attendant grinned. “The simple answer to your question is yes. They all…I should say, you all have something to hide. Things done in the past. Bad things, that is. Really bad things, mostly. As I… we, understand it, these wrongdoings have remained hidden.”

“Such as?”

“You know, money laundering, drug dealing, murder, genocide, but mostly murder, I think.”

“Really?”

“Oh. Yes. They are things that never get found out about by other people, but the scrutineers get to the bottom of it…”

Suddenly he sits up in bed, pauses momentarily with his eyelids flickering, then slumps back onto the pillow, releasing his last breath. The machine starts to give out a continual buzz.

“No ID on this one,” says the nurse. “Have to book him as a John Doe.”

Back in the room, his ticket glowed.

It was a small group that started the private club.

They were seven likeminded people, five men and three women. They all agreed with the idea that they would create a regular time and place to gather. Their sole purpose was to ignore the usual restrictions people place on themselves in everyday society and enjoy conversations based on complete openness. Their goal was to cut through the tethers that others place on themselves and speak freely about anything they wanted to. They were creating for themselves a unique environment, where anything and everything could be discussed between them. On their initial get together, their mutually agreed upon complete openness of it was heart-lifting and positively therapeutic.

During the two hours that had been set aside for their weekly discussions, what was dealt with went way beyond the topics of politics, religion and personal finances. In fact, during that first meeting the use of social media, race, ethnicity, gender, medical problems, intimate relationships, family issues, therapy sessions, past crimes, and private fantasies were all covered.

By the end of the evening, after all members had spoken openly with no topics avoided and no holds barred, they all agreed on how much they looked forward to their next scheduled meeting.

What actually transpired over the following weeks couldn’t have been predicted by any of them.

Their first two meetings went really well.

It was at the third meeting tensions began to build, with bad feelings creeping in.

During the fourth time they came together, things became a great deal worse, with two threats of legal action being made.

It was at the fifth gathering that it was mutually agreed that all future gatherings be terminated!

The disgruntled man through the newspaper down with disgust.

He sat thinking about how much trouble there was in the world. He thought about how people are going hungry, about the endless wars that were going on, and the spread of corruption, the polar ice rapidly melting, more and more fires to put out, poverty, and a failing economy, and of course, there’s that dog next door that barks at night. There’s climate change and crime statistics climbing, soaring temperatures, people still dying of Covid19, exploitation, floods, lying politicians. I did ask the woman if she could keep her dog quiet. There are school shootings, widespread pollution, torture, child abuse, greed, officials on the take.

I bet that retched animal barks again tonight…

The man who lived in the last building of the dead-end street was extremely quiet. Nothing was known about him. As far as anyone knew, he never spoke to anyone. People in the street never heard anything coming from the house; no sound of a television or music. So much so, that his surrounding neighbours were fond of trying to guess what he did for a living. Gossip about him was rife. He would be seen loading his suitcase into the boot of his car and going away for several days at a time. Most thought he might be some sort of travelling salesman. Although not seen so much anymore, there were still those who worked for brush and mop companies that travelled around, going door-to-door, selling their products.

As it happens, in the quietness of his room, stripping down and cleaning a Remington M2010 Enhanced Sniper Rifle made hardly any noise at all.

It had started with him finding the suitcase.

Now, sitting on a small settee, with the case next to him, he looked around the unfamiliar room trying hard to clear his head. He needed to think. He’d travelled through the night to get there, many hours and a great distance from his home. Far away from where it had all begun. He’d not stopped shaking all the time he was driving. It was all he could do to go the distance without crashing the car. He thought back to how he had seen the large, black suitcase tucked between two bushes the previous evening, while on his regular walk home from the bus stop to his flat. It was a very odd place to leave such a thing and he figured it had been dumped there because somebody just couldn’t be bothered to dispose of it properly.

He was going to ignore it at first, but on second thoughts he’d decided to take it to the rubbish skip behind his block of flats. He could be a good citizen. He wouldn’t be going out of his way by doing it, would he? However, everything changed when he tried to pick it up! It was incredibly heavy. Out of a growing curiosity more than anything, he managed to drag it out and tip it onto its side. Surprisingly, when he tried the catches they both popped open. When he lifted the lid there was just enough light from the street lamps to enable him to get a brief glimpse at a layer of banknotes.

He had surprised himself at how quickly he came to the decision to fall onto the wrong side of the law by taking the case home… as quickly as possible. Although it had only been a two-minute walk, it was the hardest thing he’d ever done. Fortunately, only one car had passed by when he was struggling with the weight of it. He must have looked a bit odd, but the vehicle had just carried on without slowing at all.

The thing had obviously not been simply dumped. It was placed there for a later pick up. There must have been a very short time frame between it being put there and the time it was due to be collected by someone else. It had to be a major robbery that had gone wrong and the money had needed to be stashed briefly while other arrangements were made.

Now, in this strange motel room, he sat for a while. Despite missing out on a night’s sleep, he could think. He could think fairly clearly. He had to, because he needed to plan ahead. He could relax. Nobody knew he was there. He felt safe for the first time since finding it. He needed to disappear. He had to start a new life elsewhere.

He looked back at the case. He had just finished counting it all… for the fourth time. The case held exactly two million, all in used notes, each bundle held with elastic bands, layer after layer.

He was sitting there with his eyes closed, considering his next move, when there was a loud knock on the door…