Author: Alexander Fawn

He sat looking at the paperwork spread over his large desk; it had arrived late.

It had arrived very late. With a sigh, he looked up out of the window. He lifted his reading glasses and peered across at the rocket, sitting on the pad. Some sort of mix-up in Admin, he’d been told. It was so easy to get the calculations wrong. History supported that notion. Nobody likes watching an interplanetary spacecraft blow up before it’s even out of sight. Quite apart from the huge expense involved, nobody really likes it. That’s why it had been decided that when Admin had finished doing what it does to bring it all together, the final check falls to the Senior Launch-Ready Estimates Authenticator. Although he had never understood why they used the word, ‘Senior’, he knew he was getting on a bit, but there was only one authenticator, and that was him!

Glasses back on, he stared down at the paperwork again.

That’s why it was always left to him to do the final check. The weights, volumes, tensile strengths, fuel load, etcetera, etcetera. All of this was now represented by the spreadsheets, graphs, calculations and countless documents scattered across his desk.

He looked at the phone sitting on his distant credenza. No one had called… they wouldn’t dare. These last-minute delays are always avoidable. They should know that. Anyway, they are all well aware of what happened that time when somebody had tried to rush him.

With another sigh, he began to think about biscuits.

There were times when he fancied something with chocolate on it, but not always. In fact, although the vanilla-flavoured wafer things were quite bland, the enjoyment came when you bit into them. That crackling sound you got was something quite special. He closed his eyes and smiled, momentarily. There again, there were always those soft and sugary Anzac biscuits. They were always there!

He bent down, clicked open his briefcase and brought out his thermos. Pushing paperwork out of the way, he set it down. Next came the container with a great variety of biscuits.

She used to give him sandwiches, but these go so much better with coffee…

The girl stood perfectly still before her full-length mirror.

Daylight was gradually sweeping into her bedroom and the bus ride to school was drawing closer by the minute. She had time. Time before she was given a geeing up from her mother. She always made time for the movements. Slowly, her arms were extended to either side. Then, taking only some twenty-odd seconds, a ritual of palms rotating, elbows bending, arms raised above the head, then gradually being lowered in front of her where her fingers were laced for a moment, then pulled apart. All of this, having been repeated so many times, was performed perfectly. She smiled at her reflection, knowing that this short ceremony would ensure her ongoing happiness throughout her day.

There may be those who have grave doubts about the validity of such a thing, but there again… what possible harm could there be in believing that this would bring about the desired effect?

Provided, of course, that the movements were exactly right.

He was an adorable and completely well-behaved dog.

Anyone would have to say that he was absolutely loveable. He didn’t understand what was going on with the cup. After all, he hardly ever barked, and when he did it was only soft and quite easy on the ears. He loves it when people want to pet and stroke him. He was always available if anyone wanted to cuddle him. He was more than willing to curl up and make himself comfortable on any lap that was offered.

It was strange that this woman was offering him pills in a tiny cup. She was being quite insistent.

All he could do was give her a loving lick on her bare arm.

“Enough with the licking, Harry, you’re not a dog. Just take your medication.”

It is fair to say that the boy was mischievous.

He wasn’t much interested in school, but today’s lesson about ambiguity had him paying attention. She gave examples of ambiguous words by writing them up on the blackboard. Then, she gave some examples. She started with the word ‘star’. This could mean a movie star or a star in the sky. Then came the word ‘bulb’. This could mean a light bulb or an onion. There was ‘ruler’, like a king or something to measure things with. ‘Bank’ could mean where money is kept or the side of a river, ‘jam’ could mean jelly or something that gets stuck, ‘ball’ could be where people dance or something you hit with a bat, ‘toast’ could mean someone giving a speech or something you have for breakfast, ‘stories’ could mean something you find in a book or the number of levels in a building, ‘cold’ could mean something you get sick with or the opposite of hot, and a ‘boxer’ could mean a fighter or a breed of dog.

She finished by telling the class that such words can be troublesome. She said that words like these could create problems. She said that they can confuse a person because of them having two or more possible meanings. She explained that their meaning can be vague or unclear, and this can easily lead to misunderstanding, confusion, or sometimes even conflict.

He really liked ambiguous words.

He was going to use them a lot!

Living on her own, the woman was naturally nervous about local news items concerning prowlers.

The neighbourhood had been prone to this sort of thing for a number of weeks. As a consequence of this, she had locked the house up and gone around checking that all the windows were secured. With the room’s lighting dimmed, through net curtains, she had a clear view of the street from her upper-floor lounge. It was all quiet and she had sat reading a magazine when she heard noises. The clock told her it was only eight-fifteen. Dimming the ceiling light even more, she moved closer to the window. Living in a cul-de-sac, traffic was always minimal and right now the street was empty.

Returning to her reading, she tried to put thoughts of prowlers out of her mind. This didn’t last long. After just a short couple of minutes, she heard it again, this time louder. It was like something being moved or dragged along the ground, at the back of the house. It was at this point, that she took the advice given. Advice that followed each of these news reports. Without hesitation she dialled the publicised emergency number.

She heard a click. “Hallo.”

“Good evening, what service do you require?”

“Hallo. I’m using the number given for Prowler Watch.”

“Thank you. Are you the registered owner of the phone you are using?”

“Yes, but this is…”

“One moment, please.”

Tapping at a keyboard could be heard while she waited.

“I see that you are not fully up-to-date with the latest tariff for this service.”

“I’m not?”

“No. You seem to have missed last month’s fifteen percent tariff increase for this service.”

She jumped at a sudden scraping noise that seemed to be coming from the back window.

She whispered, “I’m sure somebody is trying to get in, through the back window, can you send…”

“Madam, you don’t seem to understand. No action can be taken until the matter of the tariff is settled. Can you arrange payment?”

Then came the definite sound of breaking glass.

“No. It’s you that obviously don’t understand! Can I arrange payment? I’ve just heard glass breaking from my back window. I’m telling you that I have an intruder currently getting into my home. For heaven’s sake, woman, send someone as quickly as you can.”

A short pause. “Hello? Are you still there?”

“My hands are tied.”

“What!”

“My hands are tied. In cases like this, there’s nothing I can do.”

At that moment, a man came through the door, waving a gun.

At the top of her voice, she shouted, “He’s got a gun!” into the phone.

The woman was saying, “It’s all about the tariffs, you see; it’s very frustrating for us… Hang on, he’s got a what?”

There was a loud bang.

The woman asked, “Hallo. What was that? Hallo!”

A long pause.

Click.

It all began when he didn’t show up for work…

This, under any ordinary circumstances, would be of little interest to anyone. However, the fact that he, as a popular actor, playing the role of a specialist profiler in a very popular crime series, would make the whole thing something quite different. His absence on the morning he was due to show up for shooting more scenes for another episode in the show’s following series, had everyone in a complete tizz. The show itself was watched by millions, with the series being aired in many parts of the world. The character he played, as behavioural analyst, crime scene assessor and profiler, had a huge fan club with an enormous following.

Naturally, his disappearance, for that is what it was, caused a great deal of panic and confusion. He was simply no longer around. Police enquiries, private investigators and wide-spread news reports and articles suggesting reasons for his apparent vanishing, were all entirely fruitless.

The truth of the matter, if known, would not be understood or believed by anyone. Despite this, the events that occurred on the morning he didn’t turn up at the studio, involve both an alien abduction and the extra-terrestrials’ failure to make the kidnapping in anyway worthwhile. If nothing else, proving that the actor’s fan club was far greater than anyone could possibly imagine. Believing, as they did, that his extraordinary ability to get to the bottom of completely unsolvable crimes, they decided to take him.

When a five-star commander of one of their space fleets had been found brutally murdered in the toilet of an intergalactic rest stop, with absolutely no suspects, it was decided to call on the profiler to solve the case.

It took a lot of drawn-out and very detailed explanations to convince his captors that the television star was just that, and his portrayal of somebody quite different was only done for entertainment. Finally convinced, they prepared him for his return. It was a relatively small group of aliens that had been responsible for the whole sorry affair and it was them that went about making it all go away. So, with some highly advanced cosmetic surgery, he received an aging face change, a false passport and a complete loss of memory.

It was a complete mystery to the administrators of the Happy Home retirement lodge in Saskatchewan, Canadia, how the elderly gentleman sitting in the corner of the main communal lounge had actually got there!

The two men were sitting together on a park bench.

Although they had been good friends for many years, their backgrounds, education, occupations and family lives, were all very different. There was no real pattern to the frequency of their catchups. It was usually a random phone call from one to the other that brought meetings about. The park was relatively close to the university, where one of them was a lecturing professor in the Behavioural Sciences faculty. The other laboured on building sites around the city. As said, their diverse backgrounds and lifestyles were so far apart, it is perfectly reasonable to wonder why such a strong and constant friendship could ever come about

One of their cell phones sounded; it’s uncertain which one.

After finishing the call, during which he had said very little, one of them turned to his friend and sighed, saying, “Sorry, I have to go. The camel’s got out again and this time he’s trampled all over my wife’s opium poppy crop!”

Getting up, he said, “Domesticity can be complicated.”

She woke from a sleep full of dreams.

Well, to put it simply, the same one over and over again. It was the face. It was his face that tormented her nights. She never actually knew him. No, that sort of familiarity came later. When it did, it was a photo in the local paper. Sometimes, of late, she would experience sudden flashes that would shake her. Images of it, coming as an unbidden memory, in her waking hours. These troubled her more than her nightmares. She told herself that all this would eventually fade away, despite the fact that a full year had passed since the day it happened. This was the day her life was twisted out of shape.

The day she didn’t slow down as she entered the school zone.

She was never exactly what you’d call sure about him.

You’d have to say he was a nice-looking guy and well mannered, most of the time. He’d been sort of flirting with her for several months, before actually asking her out. He did something in the loading bay at the company. She would sometimes watch him from her window. He had booked a table at a swanky restaurant. He picked her up in his car. The place was really posh and he was really polite pulling out the chair for her. It was as though he was a different person here. They chatted away while they ate. It was so much more than the few words that had ever passed between them.

When they pulled up in front of her apartment building, there seemed to be a tense moment between them. She wasn’t sure what told her to dip into her bag and grip the pepper spray. As he turned the ignition off, his hand suddenly when round the back of her neck and he pulled her violently towards her.

The hiss of the spray was loud, but it didn’t compare with his ensuing screams. He was crying as he finally sat dabbing his eyes with the constant supply of tissues, she was handing him. She felt awful. Had he only been pulling her in for a romantic goodnight kiss?

Up in her apartment, he was scooping up water from the sink with his hand, doing his best to drench his eyes, still whimpering a little. When the stinging had reduced slightly, he was given a fluffy hand towel and ushered through to her lounge area to sit. He nodded and managed to croak out a small murmur of thanks.

She was wiping the sink down, when he came up behind her with a piece of rope. As it tightened, her mind began to race; where had the rope come from, in his pocket? The spray! Where was the spray? As the room grew dark, in the fading mirror, she could see it on a shelf behind her.

The most out of reach thing she would ever know.

The woman never fully got over the unhappy breakup in her teenage years.

It was such a bad ending to what was a special relationship that it seemed to put a pattern in place. The parting laid heavy on her. For her, even casual friendships were hard to hang on to as the years went by. As a result, she had never married; never even come close to finding a partner that compared with the boy that got away. There had been something special between them all through their school years and by the time they were both working in town they were dating. That was the case until the terrible fight one evening as they left the cinema. The memory of the trauma of it had stayed with her, while the actual nature of the argument had been washed away by the decades that followed.

However, on reflection soon after and ever since, she knew that she had been the cause of it. She had been so silly. She had pushed him away, leaving her heartbroken for all the unfulfilled years that had slowly drifted by. Sometime after the incident, she heard that his family had moved away.

Almost six decades had passed, when it happened.

Yet, another jumble sale. It was one of her favourite activities. She had religiously attended every one that had been held in the town hall. It was a ritual that she went along early and set up as a seller, with a card table covered with old unwanted knickknacks, kitchen utensils and whatever oddments came to hand. It never made her enough money to cover the entry fee, but she simply enjoyed being part of the event.

Soon enough she had children looking through all her odds-and-ends. It was then that, with some difficulty, a boy managed to pick up the large, heavy paperweight. He turned it over. Something seemed to be stuck to the bottom. Peeling the piece of paper off, he held it up to her. Confused, she opened the half-folded note and stared at the handwriting. There was something vaguely familiar about it.

It read: I’m really sorry. It was all my fault. Please call if you forgive me!