Author: Alexander Fawn

He was preparing the ground before planting a row of radishes.

During this particular autumn he decided to till a section of his garden that had never been used to grow vegetables. This made it a special project to begin with. However, it was this decision that led him to a mystery that he would never be able to solve. He was turning the earth over with his spade when he struck something metal. After carefully clearing the ground around it, he was able to bring it up. It was a small, rusting, metal box. It didn’t have a lock. He pulled the lid open with difficulty and peered inside. At first, he thought it might be a time capsule, but this wasn’t the case. It was a piece of heavy paper, folded to a quarter, that had greyed and become mostly unreadable over time. Most of the writing was completely lost through mould, and in places, the paper had completely disintegrated.

Leaning on his spade, he began to read what he could of it. At the top, he could just make out the words, ‘The True Identity of …’. Whatever came next was illegible. Although, what had been an A4 page, almost full of writing, there was not much left that was discernible. Scanning through it, he was able to read fragments of it. The longest sentence in tact was, ‘born in 1947 to Scottish parents, being the oldest son, he married the daughter of the…’ It ended there. Other lines, like ‘further police investigations’ and ‘international crime syndicate’ and ‘in hiding from’, were legible, but little else.

He thought about it. Whoever buried it had obviously wanted to conceal the identity of someone at that time, but for their own reasons was happy for the truth to be unearthed at some distant, later date. Should he pass all this on to the police? What could they do with it? How involved would he have to be in any new investigation that was started? He thought very carefully about all of this, before making his way back down the side of the house and dropping what he had found into the rubbish bin.

Being something of a pragmatist, he decided he would rather spend his immediate future watching his radishes grow.

It must have been an overnight delivery.

It was just sitting there by his mailbox, when he went out to pick up his daily paper. It was a fairly large wooden crate with a single address label. There was no sign of any courier company’s logo. It was quite heavy, but he managed to carry it in and put it on the dining table. The sticker certainly had his address on it, but the name was hard to read. With building curiosity, he went out to the shed and returned with a heavy-duty screwdriver. He managed to lever the lid off. Inside, something was wrapped in bubble wrap. He lifted the thing out, and placing it down next to the crate, unwrapped it. It looked like some piece of electrical equipment, twice the size of a regular video player. It seemed to have a lid, much like a laptop computer.

He stood looking at it for a while before lifting the lid. It was obvious that it was a mis-delivery. He hadn’t ordered anything for ages, besides, nothing like this! Opening it, he found a complex array of electronic controls, some sort of dashboard.

Still curious, he spent time on the internet, describing the apparatus in as much detail as possible. Alarmingly, his research had repeatedly come up with the fact that he was in possession of a nuclear trigger device!

He went into the kitchen and put the kettle on.

After giving the thing serious thought, and on the basis that he would prefer to keep his involvement minimal, he returned to the dining room. There, he closed the lid, wrapped it back up, placed it in the crate and secured the wooden lid. He smudged out the address to make it unreadable, then made up a second label, saying, ‘Not known at this address. Return to sender’. This he taped next to the original sticker and put the thing in the boot of his car. Later, when the post office was closed, he’d drop it off at the side, where the vans usually parked

Then, he’d keep his fingers crossed…

The young boys simply loved climbing the fence and exploring the rubbish tip.

They were brothers, with only a year between them. They shared a passion for rummaging around in the town’s rubbish dump. They would enter the tip on the far side where they could not be seen. There was always a fascinating variety of stuff people had thrown out. They never seemed bothered by the terrible smell or the chance of catching some horrible disease. In fact, they would spend as much time as they could picking over the items, some of which were partly buried. Because it was some distance from the manor house where they lived, they assumed that the stink on their clothes would be gone by the time they got home. Their mother, who suffered from having only a partial sense of smell, never seemed to notice.

Their father, however, being the mayor and rather stuck up, if he knew… there would be a completely different kind of stink!

If there was ever one thing that he really hated… it was hornets!

Since he was a youngster, he’d been warned about them, especially the Asian Giant Hornet. He’d had nightmares about those. These guys were big, really big! He’d been told that these fearsome looking insects could grow to a couple of inches in length. As for their stinger, this weapon was around a quarter of an inch long… it gave him goose bumps, just thinking about it. What they could do to an Asian Honey Bee wasn’t something you’d like to dwell on. Apparently, their hard outer shell is impenetrable to bee-stings. He’d heard stories. He’d been told that these monstrous creatures steal the young larvae of honeybees, then they feed them to their own offspring. Yuk!

If that wasn’t bad enough, if these murderous things ever manage to get into a hive, well, it’s carnage!

One may wonder why all this is going through his head, right now.

It’s because he was looking directly at one, right now.

He needed to slip away without being noticed.

The fact that he was an Asian Honey Bee, didn’t help…

He was something really big in the city.

He most certainly lived a short but charmed life. His mother had always said that he would really make something of himself. She wasn’t wrong. Financially he went from strength to strength. His stocks and shares were all going gangbusters. His holdings in real-estate in many countries around the world were mindbogglingly substantial. As for his cryptocurrency wallet, this was growing exponentially day after day. Good fortune had followed him throughout his lifetime. He became a multibillionaire at the age of thirty-two. He was thrilled to little pieces; the day he received confirmation that he had made it to the Forbes Richest People in the World list.

He was most definitely charmed, when you considered the fact that it was only two days after this well-earned and exciting news that a meteor, just a little bit larger than the planet, struck with unbelievable force, the impact of it wiping out all life forms.

His wife was suffering from a viral infection, probably laryngitis.

She woke up with a throat that was very sore. It was so bad that she was unable to speak. Her husband, obviously the inventive kind of chap, devised a comprehensive system of communication they could use. It boiled down to her being able to tell him things by the number of blinks she made. It started simply enough. For example, if he asked her if she would like a cuddle, she would blink once for ‘no’ and twice for ‘yes’. The number of blinks that should be used continued in this fashion, to cover most everyday things that they would normally talk about. It was a most elaborate system and she was required to spend over an hour becoming familiar with it.

Soon after they’d had breakfast, she had a question for him. It required twenty-seven blinks…

She had to go through it twice, with him counting and at the same time asking himself whether the whole business was far too elaborate!

Finally, he said. “Twenty-seven, is that right?”

With a sour face, she nodded.

“Have I fed the cat, yes?”

With a sigh, she nodded.

“No,” he said, with a sigh of his own, “I’ll do it now.”

He sat, looking around the room, imagining.

How long had it been? He’d lost count. She was gone; he knew that. He stared at their picture, where it always sat, on the small table near the window. The window they’d had double-glazed because she had always felt the cold so badly. The picture; their wedding day, in front of the church. The day that they both felt that they would be together, forever. His attention turned to the magazines on the coffee table, some left open to keep her place. The book with a bookmark, sitting next to the part-used box of tissues. He couldn’t help wondering if she missed him. He reached for a tissue and blew his nose.

He heard something at the front.

Then came a voice, calling out. “Sorry love, traffic was murder!”

He relaxed.

Roused from their sleep, the couple stand looking out of their bedroom window.

Hastily dressed in their dressing gowns, they look down. It was gone two in the morning. Distance sirens approaching had been the first disturbance. Within minutes, the ruckus of the police car and the ambulance sirens pulling up opposite shattered the night’s silence. This, together with every dog within several blocks around were noisily doing their own thing. All this had brought several, warmly-wrapped neighbours out into the street to find out why their slumber had been so alarmingly interrupted. They watched as police tape was strung around the building, while people in hi vis jackets stood around conferring. Although the street lights had gone out earlier, the scene was lit by a number of blue, red and orange lights, all blazing brightly.

Then, just when you’d think nothing could possibly add to the growing chaos, a fire engine arrived, with its wailing sound and bringing even more flashing lights. It parked in the middle of the street.

The couple at the window had no intention of going out into the cold night air when they had a perfectly good bird’s- eye view from where they stood.

It was a mystery to them.

As far as they knew, number eighteen across the street had been unoccupied for several years…

He had been there three months when he made the request.

Just about everybody had a name tag that gave their title and the role they played within the company. He had never been offered one. After a week or two, he dropped the occasional hint, but this hadn’t done any good. As a result of him not having one, he had been showing a special interest in those worn by others around the place. He was beginning to learn people’s names and see what role they played. Doing this for several weeks made it even more crucial that he wore one himself. When his manager came into sight, he approached him.

However, before he had a chance to speak, his boss said, “I understand you’ve requested some sort of name tag, is that right?”

“Yes, I think it would be nice if people knew who I was and what my job is.”

“Nice?” He paused. “Why not, I’ll see what I can rustle up. We should have a few spares somewhere.”

On the following day, he was handed a small plastic tag.

Frowning, he said, “This only says ‘Spare’!”

“Yes. Well, we didn’t have any more badges in the cupboard, so I had that one printed.”

He looked back down at it. “What about my name?”

“I didn’t think your name was really necessary, considering.”

There’s my role… what about what I do.

Becoming agitated, his boss said, “Look, you just keep doing what you do now. You know, keep sweeping areas when you are asked to, help out with loading the trucks and help the ladies in despatch when they need a hand shifting boxes and packages, the way you do now.”

Thanking his manager, he went back to mopping the floor. He thought about his place in the world. He’d had a similar experience in his last job, when his main battery had run low. They hadn’t had any spares there, either. He’d been switched off for three days while they recharged his original battery.

Squeezing the mop out in his bucket, he sighed. He really had to accept his place in the world.

The fact that everybody else was doing it, didn’t help.

He could remember, even as a kid, he just didn’t like wearing a mask. Other kids didn’t mind. In fact, most of them thought it was great fun. Now, in these troubled times, most people around him were wearing them. At least he had often heard how those wearing them had tried a number of types to lessen the discomfort. People had tried a number of different styles and brands, but their complaints continued. They were either too hard and felt tight on the face or they were too soft and kept slipping down. People said the things made them sweat or itch. Some couldn’t stand the elastic around their ears, while others simply struggled to breathe properly.

None of this actually made him feel any better. He could only tell himself that his need was far greater than most. The one he had made for himself was as good as it got, even if it did receive a lot of looks from other customers as he entered the bank.

The masked teller’s eyes widened as he slid the canvas bag and the note across.