Author: Alexander Fawn

Every weekday morning, the old man would take a slow walk to the corner shop.

It was a regular thing and good for his constitution. Recently, he had found that walking via the main road with its heavy traffic, was not the best. It was just getting noisier by the day. That is why, on this particular Monday morning, he had decided to take the much quieter back street, despite it being a little longer. This wouldn’t be a problem as he enjoyed the walk. It was a quiet street and one he’d never ventured down before. As he made his way, he noticed that the silence was being broken by children shouting. Getting nearer, he realised it was more like chanting than just shouting.

He heard, “Twenty-one, twenty-one, twenty-one,” being called out, over and over again. It sounded like a couple of youngsters playing some sort of game. Ignoring it, he carried on and the peacefulness of the street slowly returned as he went.

On the Tuesday, much to his surprise, he heard the same young voices calling out, “Twenty-one,” repeatedly. This time, he slowed a little to listen. As far as he could tell, it was a boy and girl chanting together. They were probably around the same age. Maybe twenty-one was a lucky number. Leaving curiosity behind, he continued his journey to the shop.

On the Wednesday, he was even more intrigued to find the same thing happening as he approached the house. He paused near where the sound was coming from and peered through a gap in the fence.

It was probably less than a second between seeing the red, plastic nozzle of the water-pistol and receiving an eye full of water! Standing back, dabbing his face with his hanky, he heard the chant change.

It began, “Twenty-two, twenty-two.”

The old man’s face reddened and looking around to make sure nobody had witnessed the incident, he then walked on without a word.

He was smiling.

Some things never seem to change.

Some things are simply ongoing. From the time homo sapiens came on the scene, certain things could be relied on to just keep on happening. There is the movement of the stars, the rotation of the planets, the seasons, years, months, weeks and days. Of course, there is the sun and the moon, the vast oceans, the changing weather and the reshaping clouds. The breezes and the winds, the rain and the building storms. There are the pandemics and the wars. There is hunger and thirst and famine. There are those that are good and those that are bad.

There is crime and there is infidelity…

There is a man and there is a woman…

There is a gun.

She really had no idea whether he knew or not.

Although she had been extremely careful about visiting her neighbour whenever her regular boyfriend was away on one of his frequent business trips, she wasn’t sure. Anyway, their relationship had been rocky for a while. So, it was no surprise to her that he suggested a ‘healing time’ get-away, as he liked to put it, so they could get things back on track. Spending a few days in Mexico might be fun, she thought. She knew he could afford it. He said it was one of the city capitals he visited for business meetings. He explained that he had travelled there that often that he would show her around. He suggested that they stay in the hotel that he knew from previous trips. She agreed and he made the arrangements.

On arrival, she was impressed with what she saw. The hotel was quite luxurious. The building itself was very tall and some of the upper floors had magnificent views across the city. They had just finished unpacking their luggage in their suite, when he suggested they take in the view from the top of the building. He explained that he’d been told how to get to the rooftop on an earlier visit. It was this suggestion that had her wondering again about how much he knew. She was still unsure.

Coming out of the uppermost elevator floor, he led her up a further flight of steps. They immerged onto a large, flat roof. He suggested they cross to the other side, where he would take a picture of her against the best view of the city.

He was lining up the photo, when, out of nowhere, a scorpion appeared near her feet. Posing for the picture, she hadn’t seen it. He lowered the camera and raised his free hand gradually, in a deliberate gesture, palm out.

“Don’t move,” he said, in a whisper. “Step back slowly, but be careful.” He then pulled the gun out from the belt at the back of his trousers. The sight of this was too much for her.

What happened then, occurred in just a few short seconds

The appearance of the revolver made her jump, lose balance, topple back over the edge and disappear from sight.

She sat patiently flipping through her magazine.

There were so many noises. In the relative quiet of the evening, she could hear the ticking of the kitchen clock. She could hear the noisy whine of her old fridge. She heard the rain being driven against her window. She overheard people chatting, as they walk along the hall, beyond her front door. There was the buzz of the elevator in the building. She could hear a toilet flushing somewhere, music coming from below, a TV show playing in the next apartment, a doorbell being rung in the building, doors closing, water moving through pipes, and the occasional tweeting of birds. She heard a dog barking way off in the night and she could make out the faraway drone of traffic.

Then, she heard the happy jingle of her mobile phone.

Picking it up, she saw his name, and heard the pounding of her elevated pulse…

The hilly terrain made driving tricky.

In truth, he got a kick out of pushing the car to its limit, taking bends faster than he should and almost becoming airborne as he crested the hills. He was comfortable enough doing this as this was a part of the countryside that was rarely used with hardly any traffic. Besides, it was a clear, dry day with good visibility, unlike the recent bad weather. He was making the most of it. Ideal conditions for letting his hair down. In front of him was a long stretch of practically flat road, well before the next hill, ideal for really opening it up. He was watching the speed dial rise when he became aware of the figure on the side of the road. It was some distance away and waving something.

He began to slow, wondering if they needed help, although there was no car, just him and what appeared to be a flag. It was red and he seemed to be waving it. It could be a trick. Someone trying to get him to stop for some reason. He wouldn’t need a flag for that, he thought, he would just need to stick his thumb out. He was obviously some kind of crazy character, out here in the middle of nowhere. He kept slowing and cautiously approached. He had a bad feeling about it. He wasn’t going to stop.

As he crept past, he tried to get a good look at him. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing! He was looking at himself. It was some kind of doppelganger. No, this couldn’t be. He had to be mistaken. Perhaps he hadn’t really got a good look at him. Moving on past the figure, he then wondered whether what he was looking at was actually real. Was he imagining it? None of it made sense.

Climbing the next hill, he kept watching what had to be an idiot, still standing there, still waving the flag. He was still checking the nutter in his rear vision mirror, when he came to the top of the hill, only to slam on the brakes! Just a short distance down the slope a huge tree lay across the road. It must have been brought down in the recent storm. He would have to report it. He got out of the car to use his mobile.

Of course, when he looked back, all he saw was a long, empty stretch of road…

It all started when he met this man in a pub.

This man was telling him about a special service that was being provided locally. It was all very hush-hush, and he would have to promise not to tell anybody about it. He told him that people could only visit the place by personal invitation. He said the people who ran the business could not afford to have the nature of it become public knowledge. Of course, running it as a business was all highly illegal. Those that knew about the service had all sorts of reasons for using it, some good, some bad. It was known that criminals used it for nefarious reasons, while others simply wanted to experience otherwise out of reach destinations.

He had gone on to explain how it was a method of having customers visit a selected destination, anywhere in the world. He said that for five hundred dollars, provided you had the precise coordinates, you could be relocated to anywhere on the face of the planet for thirty minutes. He told him that it was also important that you were aware of the actual time it would be when you got there. He explained that it was not time travel, but teleportation!

Well, he was certainly interested. He’d always wanted to revisit the small village where he grew up, even if it was for just a few minutes, but had never been able to afford the air fares. So, it was agreed that if they met up again on the following evening, for five-hundred cash he would receive the address. Again, it was stressed that the matter had to remain strictly confidential. He agreed with the terms.

It was the next day, after having done some careful research on the internet about coordinates, time zones and weather forecasts, so that he knew what time he wanted to arrive and how he should be dressed, that he arrived at the address he’d been given. When he got there, he discovered a large ‘For Sale’ sign at the front of the property. The house looked empty, with a lot of weeds growing all around it.

He was both confused and disappointed at the same time.

It just so happened that he met the man again, although it was in an entirely different pub. It was only by sheer dumb luck that, because he just happened to be in the neighbourhood, on the following evening he went for a drink in a different pub, way over on the other end of town. Although somewhat surprised to see him, the man who had sold him the address was very sorry to hear that the providers had gone out of business. He said he had heard rumours during the day that they had to move on, leaving the empty house that had served as a perfect cover for their unique enterprise.

Asking for why they had to go elsewhere, he was told that the machine they used had developed some sort of glitch. Looking around the pub, he dropped his voice. He went on to say that apparently, and he made it very clear that this should not be passed on, the word on the grapevine was that those that had been teleported had stopped coming back!

On the subject of a refund, it was pointed out that the man he gave the money to was gone, along with the machine. He said, if you think about it, he was extremely lucky that it had happened that way.

On reflection, yes, he had to agree.

The whole family was going through a really bad time.

He’d been missing for quite awhile now. In the sitting room a detective was discussing his disappearance with her parents. She the fourteen-year-old daughter, just one year younger than her missing brother, sat across the hall in the kitchen. She could hear a lot of what was being said. Although quite mature for her age, she found the whole thing both creepy and frightening. Upstairs, she could hear other officers searching her brother’s room; maybe for clues. She wanted it all to stop. She wished they would all go away. It was hours before they finally left. A long time had been spent questioning her mum and dad, even longer, working their way through just about every room in the house. They even went around the garden with this fancy piece of electronic equipment. It was supposed to detect areas where the ground had been disturbed.

The police were obviously taking her brother’s disappearance seriously. With all these officers assigned to the case, she thought, and carrying out such a thorough search of their house and property, what did they hope to find?

Was it the tablets she had saved up and used to drug him first, the bottle now well and truly gone to landfill? Was it his mobile phone, pieces of which have since gone down the drain two blocks away? Was it the knife bought at a jumble sale, now thoroughly cleaned, taped to a large piece of rock and dropped from a bridge over a river, in a distant town?

Could it be that they are actually hoping to find her brother?

Good luck with that, she thought.

Centuries ago, a most learned scholar was appointed to be the Keeper of the Book.

This duty would be passed down through the generations until it was required. It contained a great deal of knowledge regarding the future of mankind. The information contained in its pages would remain securely hidden, its location only ever known by one living soul at any one time: the keeper. It would remain this way, until such time when the world’s population became threatened by complete annihilation, and only then. Over recent generations, the need to reveal its existence to the world became more and more imperative. Thus, it came to pass that the growing likelihood of mankind destroying its own planet was deemed by the Keeper of the Book to be the criteria originally needed, to necessitate its unveiling.

Before announcing anything regarding the purpose, or even the existence of the book, the keeper went alone to the place of concealment and as foretold, proceeded to remove masonry. Here, he found a wooden casket. Opening this, he discovered that over time the contents had disintegrated. All that remained was dust.

Needless to say, the keeper was really glad that he hadn’t mentioned it to anybody!

When one thinks of an explosion, it is usually a very loud noise that hurts the eardrums.

Despite this, a massive, violent expansion of matter was not what happened the day the habitat disappeared. Although not known to the creatures that lived there, unseen powers, let’s call them aliens, had the place marked for removal for some time. As projects went, this had been an utter failure; a complete cock-up. There had been dictators and wars, followed by dictators and wars, over and over again. These silly goings on, acted out by inhabitants that never seemed to learn by their own mistakes, had created an ongoing situation that had become irretrievable. As already stated, the powers previously mentioned saw it as a complete mess, and were absolutely sick of it!

In the best tried and tested tradition, mistakes are made to disappear. One moment it was there, the next, not. The faint click that accompanied the going of it was barely audible.

As far as most onlookers were concerned, and there were onlookers, the solar system’s third planet from the sun had never actually existed…

Imagination, tripping the light fantastic,

Dwelling on this, dwelling on that.

Any writer entering the beckoning unknown,

Losing track of where they’re at.

–

Lost in the flourish of imaginary caprice,

With a clouding of shadows, bringing the dark.

Crafting words around random dreamings,

A glimpse of infinity, so wide of the mark.

–

Reality stretched thin like a rubber band.

While burning up the precious hours.

A sentence formed from strange designs.

Literary restrictions, theirs, not ours.

Like stars that dance in their own strange patterns,

Blinded by the unreachable, a poet’s strain.

Innocent decisions are laid to rest,

From here to eternity and back again.

–

Words building like mountains.

Moments of clarity, heaven sent.

Ideas tumbling through happenstance,

Golden moments well spent!