Barnaby's Shorts (Volume One)

Barnaby's Shorts

  (volume 1)

  A collection of short stories

  By

  Barnaby Wilde

  Copyright 2012 by Barnaby Wilde

  Barnaby Wilde asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Cover picture: Barnaby's Shorts, original self portrait by Barnaby Wilde

  Other published works by the author.

  A Question of Alignment – a Tom Fletcher novel

  I Keep Thinking It's Tuesday – a Tom Fletcher novel

  Animalia – a collection of quirky verse with an animal theme

  Life… -- a collection of verse on a vaguely 'life' related theme

  The Blind Philospher and the God of Small Things -- more verse, with a philosophical theme and bad puns.

  Not at all Rhinocerus – a collection of verse with almost no mention of rhinoceros

  A Little Bit Elephant – a collection of very quirky verse which is only slightly elephant.

  Tunnel Vision – a collection of longer verses featuring flying saucers, dining tables, whales and shoes, with puns and jokes as usual.

  The Well Boiled Icycle -- 35 New 'quirky' poems featuring Clockwork Wellingtons, Goldfish, Jugglers and Gingerbread Men, but not necessarily in that order.

  Barnaby Wilde is the pen name of Tim Fisher.

  Tim was born in 1947 in Hertfordshire, United Kingdom, but grew up and was educated in the West Country. He graduated with a Physics degree in 1969 and worked in manufacturing and quality control for a multinational photographic company for 30 years before taking an early retirement to pursue other interests. He has two grown up children and currently lives happily in Devon.

  Visit www.barnaby-wilde.co.uk for the author's blog and more information about the world of Barnaby Wilde.

  Table of Contents Barnaby's Shorts (Volume One)

  The Monkey Faced Boy

  The Holey Oak

  Tiny Aliens

  Case Closed

  Benny

  The Accidental Bank Job

  Onwards and Upwards

  Sway Crazy

  The Horse That Ran With the Wind

  The Princess and the Frog

  Other works by Barnaby Wilde

  The Monkey Faced Boy

  I never had a problem getting up in the mornings. In fact, I used to think it was the best part of the day. Still do, I reckon Most days I'm still out of bed by four thirty. That's a.m. by the way just in case you're wondering. Yep, I know that's real early for most folks, but then, maybe that's part of the reason I like it so. There's no one else much around at that time of the day. Usually it's just me and a few birds.

  There was always the odd car on the highway, of course. Busy folk's whizzing off to somewhere, or back from someplace else. Tired folks wanting to get home to bed, or else, rested one's off to do a day's work somewhere, but they didn't bother me. Once I'd breakfasted -- that was usually just a strong black coffee -- I'd make my way down to the depot to pick up my wagon. It's just a ten minute walk from where I used to live and I enjoyed that walk in summer, when the pavements were dry and the sun was just thinking about rising, just as much as in the fall, when everywhere was dark, damp and steaming, or the winter, whether it was cold and dry or streaming rain. There's something about walking the streets on your own, when all the other folks are still in bed asleep, or pretending to be asleep so that they can get another five minutes in the warm, that is truly liberating. I didn't care if it was light or dark, wet or dry, I used to love that walk to work.

  I saw things too. Things that reg'lar folk don't get to see. There was often owls about, or foxes that didn't even bother to give me a glance. The birds are waking up too about then too, and in the spring it was almost deafening the sounds they made. One time I even saw a heron. A fat bastard, too, just standing in the middle of the street. I'm talking middle-of-the-town street, here, by the way. We're not talking about some little hick village in the country. I shouldn't think there's been a heron in these parts since they drained the swamp about a century ago to build this town in the first place. But there it was. A big, fat, grey streak, just standing, with it's great pointed beak turned to the side and one big eye watching me, as though it thought it could make itself invisible if it just stood still long enough. And when I got too close, it unfolded two huge wings and flapped off, lazy as you like. You wouldn't think they'd even get off the ground flapping as slow as that. Never seen one since. Not in the town, anyhow.

  Anyway, I didn't tell you who I am. Name's Dixon. Don't know why. It's just what my momma and poppa decided to call me and I've never seen the need to change it. I used to work down at the town depot. Had done for near on twenty five years. Never saw the need to change that either. I guess you might say I didn't have no real ambition. Maybe that's true, but I got by. Never needed much, I guess. What did I do at the depot? Pretty much whatever they asked me to do. Sometimes, in the summer, it was mowing. Sometimes it was cleaning or clearing. In the fall it was leaves and bonfires. Occasionally we got to put out flags for some bigwig, or temp'ry fencing. Whatever was needed, I guess, to keep the town running right.

  I did have one reg'lar duty, though, and it fit right in with my early mornings. In fact I can't remember now if I got the duty 'cos I was always up early, or if I was always up early 'cos I got the duty. No matter. It suited me and I suited it and that's about all that needs to be said.

  Now, we don't have a problem in this town with graffiti like most other towns. Sure, we have plenty of kids with spray cans, but we don't have a problem with it, 'cos a long time ago we figured out how to deal with it. Now I can't say that this was my idea, but who ever had the idea had a good one. They reasoned that the kids sprayed paint over pretty much everything they could reach because they didn't have any proper place to 'express their creativity'. I'm sure that was the phrase they used, 'express their creativity'. So the town built them a place to do it that wouldn't bother no one. They built them a wall that wasn't nothing more than a giant canvas for them to 'express their creativity' on. They did stop short, though, of giving them the spray cans to do it with. Kids round here want to express their creativity, they gotta supply their own paint.

  And it works, pretty much. Of course you get the odd kid who still wants to spray the side of the depot or the town hall, but we jump on them pretty hard. They usually get the message. You wanna spray? Then use the wall provided.

  Where was I? Oh, yeh. Anyway, my job was to renew the wall. Every day, first thing, I picked up the truck from the depot and headed down to the wall to paint over the graffiti from the day before. That's the deal, you see. The kids get a nice fresh wall every day to paint on. It's a good size, too, and you can use both sides. Room for everyone to 'express their creativity'.

  When I got down there each day, around five thirty, I sprayed over everything with white paint. It's quick drying. Within an hour you can paint on it again. I reckon I sprayed that wall so many times the paint must be about an inch thick by now.

  Before I sprayed it, I usually liked to have a walk around the wall and take a look at what'd been put up the day before. Mostly it was just tags. Most of the kids don't have any imagination beyond spraying up their tag over and over. Mind you, some of them can be quite intricate. I'm not trying to knock 'em. If they just wanna spray their tag, well, hell, that's what the wall's there for. Of course you get some obscenities too, but not as much as you might imagine, and it's better here than on somewhere more important. And you get the destructive ones, too. No imagination of their own, so they just wanna spoil something that some other kid has done.

  Every once in a wh
ile we get an actual piece of art A picture, a cartoon, a portrait whatever and sometimes they're pretty good. Some real talent. It was a shame to spray over them sometimes, but that's the deal. You get twenty four hours to use the wall, well twenty three I guess if you take off the drying time for the overspray. For twenty three hours you get a chance to show off your little work of art to the general public. Oh, I didn't tell you, this wall is in quite a public place. It's not hidden away in some little backwater. A lot of folk walk by here every day on their way to work, or going home, or heading for the shops. There's often folk pausing to see what might be new today.

  Sometimes we get folk sticking posters on the wall. That I did not like. There's a sign that says 'bill stickers will be prosecuted', but as far as I know they haven't caught him yet. That's a joke by the way. Bill Stickers? Suit yourself. Anyway, I hated the folk who put up the posters because I had to scrape 'em off before I could spray. Sometimes that took longer than the spraying.

  Anyway, one day I turned up as usual to spray the wall and I'm doing my little walk round first and I see the usual tags but I also see a picture. Some kid had painted a door onto the wall. It's about life size and it's just a picture of a door. I think that first one was blue if I remember right. He must have been there real early in the day, because there was tags and other stuff over spraying it in places. Anyway, I got to work with the spray and it got covered up with all the rest of the stuff as usual.

  The next morning, when I went back, there it was again. Well, not exactly the same door, but a similar one in more or less the same place. I don't remember the colour of that one. And that's how it was for a while. Every day there would be a new door. Different colour. Different style. Different size maybe, but always in more or less the same position on the wall.

  And over the weeks they got better. More realistic I mean. And the other strange thing was that the other kids started to leave the doors alone. They didn't just spray their stuff over the top. Like they were showing it a little respect or something. It got to be that the first thing I looked out for each morning when I arrived with the truck was what kind of door are we going to have today?

  Some days they were very grand, like the entrance to a mansion or something, and some days they were the exact opposite, like a little old weathered door to an abandoned cottage. But they were definitely getting more lifelike. Maybe that should be more doorlike. I'm not sure if a door can be lifelike. Sometimes it seemed like a real shame to be over spraying them, but rules is rules as they say, so I just had to shrug and get on with it.

  They began to get at me, though, and I found myself wondering at odd times of the day what door would be there in the morning, until it nagged at me so bad that I took to walking home that way in the evening to see the door instead of waiting 'til the next morning. I started wondering who was doing the painting, too. To begin with, I just assumed it was a local kid who couldn't do faces, so he did doors instead, but as the paintings got better and more realistic it became ever more puzzling.

  Whoever it was, he obviously got there pretty early in the day because his door never intruded over anyone else's tags and I knew that plenty of the kids stopped at the wall on their way to school to do a bit of spraying, though I had a feeling that they were leaving him a space anyway. Like he owned that bit of wall and this was part of the respect thing.

  The doors got more and more realistic and I took to walking round in my lunchtime, or deliberately making a detour when I was out with the truck to see what door we had today and, I guess, thinking that I might actually see him. The door painter.

  The doors were getting so realistic that I couldn't see how he could do it with a spray can without taking all day and it began to bug me so much that I had to find out who the artist was. This kid, if he was this good, should be going to art college or something.

  I figured he must be getting there pretty early in the day, probably before anyone else did any painting, so I took to hanging around a while to see if he'd show up. Well, I guess he must of not wanted to be seen, 'cos he never showed up while I waited, but by the next morning, sure enough there was a new door. The doors were getting so good now, that you'd swear they were real. There's a name for paintings like that and I went down to the library to find out what it was. It's called trompe l'oeil. According to the encyclopaedia, it's an art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects exist in three dimensions. (I copied that last bit out so as I got it exactly right, by the way). It's French, the words. It means deceiving the eye.

  I began to get obsessed with the doors. I started to take my camera down there and photograph the doors before I covered 'em over and I always left spraying over the door until the absolute last. I put some of the door pictures on the internet and some French woman used a whole bunch of them to make the cover for a book. She emailed and said could she use 'em. Didn't want to infringe my copyright or something, but I said feel free. I didn't tell her where the photos came from. She prob'ly thought they were real doors.

  I took to hanging around for longer and longer each day, until I got a warning about timekeeping from my boss. There wasn't any point in trying to explain it to him. All he knew about art was that it rhymed with fart. Anyway, one day I saw him. The kid I mean. I hid round the corner and just kept a look out and this small kid, with a backpack, appeared from somewhere. Honestly, I didn't see him arrive. One moment there was no one there and the next he was there already spraying in the outline.

  I watched him spray in a base colour and then move in to put in layers of detail. He worked real fast. He never once stepped back to look at what he'd done, or hesitated like he didn't know what to do next. He just worked steadily on until it was finished. I nearly got my cards that day. Got called in to the boss's office and read the riot act about time keeping. Told me he couldn't understand why I'd gotten so unreliable lately. Gave me a written warning. Twenty five years and I got my first disciplinary warning. Gotta pull myself together, he said.

  For the next week I just turned up in the morning, took the truck, did my walk around the wall and sprayed it down. Didn't hang about, just drove straight back to the depot. Didn't see the kid either. The doors just kept appearing, a new one every day. And every day more realistic than the day before.

  I noticed that the other kids were keeping their tags well clear of his paintings. In fact they were pretty much keeping clear of that side of the wall entirely and putting all their own stuff on the back of the wall. No trouble with bill posters either on the clean side. Small groups of people took to coming along in the evening to see today's door and a fair few of them took photos. A local reporter tracked me down at home and asked me what I knew about the artist. I told him nothing. Wasn't difficult. I didn't know nothing to tell him. I'd just seen the kid that once. Didn't even get a real close look at him. He was small and had curly red hair. That's about all I knew. There were some photos and a headline in the evening paper talking about the 'mystery boy painter'. He even got a nickname of sorts. Doorboy. Not much of a nickname, but it was a nickname I guess.

  I couldn't keep it up longer than a week, though. Found myself thinking about him all the time. Kept intruding on my work during the day and keeping me awake at night. What was his obsession with the doors? I knew I was going to have to wait for him again and ask him. Didn't wanna lose my job, though, so I phoned in sick after I'd sprayed the wall down one day. It was a green door that day. Don't know why I remember that, but it was like a Georgian front door, panelled, with stone columns either side and a half round, arched window above. The pillars looked so real you'd have sworn they were stone. I had to touch them to reassure myself that it was just a flat painting and that the kid hadn't sneaked in some real pillars somehow. He'd even painted in a brass letter box and door knob. The gleam on that doorknob, you'd swear it would turn if you got a hold of it.

  Seemed like a real shame to spray it down, but I did anyway and then dr
ove the truck round the corner and waited. He came along about forty five minutes later. It was only just after six a.m.. Still no one else about. Just like before I didn't actually see him arrive. Suddenly he was just there and the basic door shape was already painted. I watched him for about ten minutes. His speed was almost unbelievable. He was pulling cans from his backpack and spraying like someone possessed. I waited until he was almost finished and then walked over as quiet as I could.

  Evidently not quiet enough. He turned towards me and stared for a second or two before discarding his empty spray can and taking off. I ran after him, but he was too quick for me and I lost him before I'd even crossed the square. But I saw his face and it was a face that you'd never forget. Under that red hair he had what I can only describe as the face of a monkey. Now, don't get me wrong here. I'm not just saying he was ugly, or anything like that. And I'm not saying it was a monkey. I'm just saying that there was something about his face and his eyes that was exactly like a monkey's face.

  Did you ever see that film with Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter? Planet of the Apes? The one made sometime in the nineteen sixties, not one of those later remakes. The first one. Well, that's what he reminded me of. Roddy McDowall.

  I won't ever forget that face, or the despair that I saw in those eyes.

  And that was it. I never saw him again.

  I walked back to the door he'd just finished painting. I couldn't help myself but touch it. Damn me if the paint wasn't already dry. It even felt like a door, not like the wall it was painted on. It was minutes before I remembered that I'd left my camera in the truck and I ran back to fetch it.

  It can't have been more than a minute that I was away from the wall, but in that minute everything changed. When I got back to the wall dang me if the door wasn't ajar. Just a fraction. But I could swear he didn't paint it like that. When he painted it, it was just like every other day. It was a closed door. I'd swear to that in a court of law if I had to. On the bible, or on anything you like. That door was closed when I first touched it.

  I couldn't help myself. It was just too bloody realistic. I reached out again and touched it again. …and the damn thing closed.

  I swear to you. It was ajar, just a crack, and when I pushed it, it closed. And I swear to you, too, that as it closed I got just a glimpse of a meadow through the gap, with a blue sky and …

  … and that was all. It was just a glimpse and then it closed.

  Too late I remembered that I was holding my camera. I photographed the closed door, but that's all it was. Just a fantastically well painted picture of a front door. If you look at the photo, you'd swear it was an actual door. Shadows, reflections, the works. Just a painting of a door. Look, I've got it here, you can see for yourself.

  The next day I was there even earlier. The door was still there, but I saw that the tags had reappeared on the door side of the wall. Worse than that, some joker had put his tag right across the door. I sprayed down the whole wall down and waited, but he never came back.

  I'm still waiting. That's why I quit the job and it's why I stand here every day waiting for the graffiti to be sprayed off the wall and why every day I'm painting my own door. I'm getting better, I think, but the cost of paint is a problem, what with me not having a job no more.

  So if you could see your way to dropping a few coins in the hat, lady, maybe I'll have enough money for paint and a fried breakfast today.

  Thank you, madam. Thank you. That's very generous. I appreciate that. Thank you.

  THE END

  Barnaby Wilde July 2012

  The Holey Oak

  I don't suppose anybody likes to see the death of a fine old tree, and the tree in Davey's field was all three of those things. Fine, old and, now, dead. That oak tree had probably been there for well over three hundred years and generations of folks had walked by it, sheltered under it, climbed up it, or carved their initials on it. More importantly, it had just stood there. A symbol of permanence and reliability. A focal point. A background. A rallying point. A meeting place. Hell, that tree was pretty much the most important spot in the whole village, I even proposed to my wife underneath it, but most days we'd just walk past without hardly noticing it. Until the day it fell over, that is.

  Of course, everyone knew it was rotten, but then pretty much every tree that old is rotten in the middle. That's just the way of trees. But no one expected it to fall down. That old oak tree had stood up to three hundred years of storms, wind, rain, frosts and whatever. It had been snowed on, frozen and baked. It had probably been struck by lightning more time's than most and, to be sure it had a few dead branches and a big scar down one side, but still, we thought it'd be there forever. That's if we ever thought about it at all, of course.

  Still, I guess everything has it's time. Part of the inevitable cycle of life, so they say. The only thing any of us can be sure of is that one day we're gonna die. I guess it was just the oak tree's time.

  It wasn't even an especially big storm. Just one of the sort of gales you get in the fall. Perhaps the ground was bit softer than usual following the wet summer. Maybe the tree was carrying a bit more leaf than usual, or maybe it was just that it's time had come. Anyway, whatever the reason, that was the night Davey's oak died.

  And you might pretty much think that would be about the end of it, a bit of a discussion point for a few days, a bit of clearing up, and a bit of a gap in the landscape 'til we got used to it. But that was the day that Davey's life changed forever. Well, I guess that life changed for all of us a little on that day.

  No one knew where Davey came from. He'd just always been there. A cantankerous old man in an old cottage at the edge of the village with a few ramshackle sheds and a couple of fields. I suppose he must have been young once, but no one could remember when. Some folks said that there was once a mother, but she'd died so long ago no one could remember a great deal about her either. What's more, no one knew how Davey existed. He sometimes had the odd animal on his fields, but they weren't large fields and he was certainly no farmer. The hedges were unkempt, the ditches uncleared and the sheds falling down. He pretty much kept to himself apart from his essential shopping. He left other folks alone and other folks pretty much left him alone. There's probably a thousand like him all over the country. He wasn't that unusual.

  Anyway, the day the old oak tree fell down a few folk paused from going about their business to look at the great trunk lying on the ground with it's broken branches and with it's roots pointing up to the sky. They swapped a few tales about climbing the tree as youngsters, or carving their names in the bark, or meeting their lovers there. Davey came out to inspect the damage, but he didn't waste a whole lot of energy passing the time of day with the dawdlers, just headed back off to one of his sheds for a chainsaw.

  He cut off a few of the biggest branches, just so as he could get better access to the trunk, but then he decided to cut off the root. It took him a while to work round, but the tree being hollow an' all mean's his chainsaw blade was long enough for the job and pretty soon the whole root part fell away.

  Now, I don't know exactly who it was who noticed it first. Betty, from the pub, says it was her, but Jim Bently swears it was him. No matter, pretty soon everyone knew about it and wandered down to see it for themselves. It weren't long afore there was quite a little crowd standing round the cut end of Davey's oak all expressing their own opinions. There was a few folk taking photos, too, mostly using the cameras in their mobile phones. Some of 'em was taking pictures of the tree and some of 'em was taking pictures of each other standing in front of the tree. At the beginning, Davey even stood by the tree hisself and let a couple of folk take pictures of him standing by it, but all the while he was thinking and he carried on thinking long after all the village folk had gone home for the night.

  Now, I know I haven't told you yet what it was that Betty and all those other folk saw, but I'm coming to that. What those folk saw, or thought they saw, was that the shape of the dark stained rot on
the cut white end of that tree trunk looked exactly like a portrait of Jesus. And I have to say that I seen it myself and it sure did look a whole lot like the pictures we used to have in Sunday School when I was a kid. In fact it was pretty damned realistic I would say. Almost three dimensional. Almost like the eyes were following you when you moved around.

  And you would think that would be about that. Interesting. Curious to a degree. A talking point for a few days in the pub, but essentially, just a rotten oak tree that had fallen down in a storm with a pattern in the trunk that had a passing resemblance to Jesus. But Davey saw things different. Davey saw potential.

  The following morning, the few folks who'd heard about the face of Jesus, but who hadn't seen if for their selves, wandered down to Davey's field for a look. They was disappointed, though, 'cos Davey had covered up the end of the trunk with an old tarpaulin. He'd also put up a painted sign, which said 'one pound to see the holey jesus'. Well, that provoked more discussion than the face itself had. There was some folk who said as he had no rights to charge for seeing one of nature's wonders and there was others said as it was his tree and his land and he could do pretty much as he wanted. They said it was called 'free enterprise'.

  Anyway, a few of the folks paid up so long as they could take a picture of the tree, though most of 'em refused to pay an extra pound for Davey to be in the picture.

  By the next day, Davey had put up a screen along the road to stop anyone getting a free look. He'd put up a new notice, too, that said 'car park one pound' and pretty soon he had a few cars parking in the field and paying their one pound plus another one pound to see the portrait. Over the next few days the numbers kept increasing. On the first day it was probably only about half a dozen cars, but by the third day the numbers were over twenty.

  Davey noticed that a few of the people were picking up leaves off the tree or even breaking off twigs, so he put up a wire fence to stop 'em getting so close. He also put up another sign offering 'soovenirs from the holey tree' five pounds. He started putting bits of twig and leaves into polythene sandwich bags and signing small labels which said 'authentic soovenir from the holey tree' and to his surprise he sold a few.

  By the end of the first week, the numbers of visitors had shown no sign of declining. In fact there was more of them every day. He'd had to put some markers into the field in order to get the visitors to 'park pretty' as he put it and he'd installed more fencing to direct the visitors to walk one way round the tree. The bags of 'soovenirs' were going well, too, but he noticed that the leaves were already beginning to dry out and drop.

  On the following Monday the first TV crew showed up from the local breakfast programme, but after a long argument they were turned away. They wouldn't pay Davey's demands for an 'exclusive license' but they filmed anyway in the village and did a few interviews with the locals. Betty was happy to pose alongside her photo of the Jesus portrait. They cut in a few stock shots of standing Oak trees and also showed some other examples of 'Jesus images' from around the world. There was one from Mexico that claimed to show Jesus in a slice of toast, a couple of cloud shots vaguely resembling Jesus and even a family claiming to have seen Jesus' image inside the lid of a jar of marmite (that's vegemite to some of you). It seems that images of Jesus have been popping up all over the place. As though Jesus has nothing better to do than leave his tag everywhere like some kind of religious teenager with a can of spray paint.

  But it had to be admitted, even though the film crew didn't get that close, that Davey's image of Jesus was more convincing than most of the others.

  Well, the following day there was cars queuing down the lane to see Davey's Holey tree. The pub stayed open all day with the extra business and Davey had to offer to pay a couple of local kids to manage the car park and take the money at the entrance.

  Over the next few weeks he improved the fencing and even put up some crude stands with scaffolding to give folks a better view.

  The leaves had pretty much all gone, though, and he was running short of small twigs, so he brought in the chainsaw and began cutting up a couple of the larger branches. Sales of 'woodchips from the Holey Tree' went well, even though the price had gone up to eight pounds a bag. He was even selling small bags of sawdust as 'Holey Tree animal bedding' for two pounds a bag.

  Davey had the idea to make small crucifixes out of some of the wood chips. These proved to be very popular at fifteen pounds a go and sales of souvenir postcards were going well, too. He rigged up another tarpaulin and got a couple of local women in to do teas and coffees and was quick to catch on to requests for water and started to sell bottles of 'water from the Holey Tree source', which almost got him into trouble with the local Trading Standards, who insisted that only the Pope could designate the tree as Holy, until Davey pointed out that his was a tree with a hole, a holey tree, and that he wasn't making any other claims. He wasn't so lucky with the water supply company who said that he no license to extract and sell water. He argued that the source was only his kitchen tap, but they wouldn't listen.

  Still the numbers of visitors continued to grow. The car park field was getting pretty churned up, as was the path the pilgrims, (he was starting to think of them as such), were taking around the tree. He had to lay cinder roads and paths, which roused some interest from the Planning Agencies, who insisted he needed to apply for a change of use for the land, which was zoned as 'agricultural'. When Davey showed the pale faced young man from Planning and Building Control his shotgun, though, he quickly withdrew. Davey later insisted that the gun was never loaded and, anyway, he was only showing him the gun as an 'interesting antique'. Fortunately no one enquired whether he had a license for said 'antique'.

  A museum offered to buy the tree trunk, or at least a slice showing the portrait, and Davey negotiated a good price. He spent a whole evening slicing a segment off the end of the tree and was relieved to see that the image persisted through to the remaining trunk, like lettering through a stick of rock, though maybe not quite so perfectly detailed.

  Clearly news of the sale of the slice to the museum spread through whatever network it is that museums have for spreading that kind of news and Davey was able to slice off and sell four more pieces. By the time the fourth slice had been cut off, though, even Davey had to admit that it was starting to look a little less like Jesus than it had in the beginning. In fact it was starting to resemble John Lennon more than a little. At least he'd have a fall back business, he thought, if the Jesus thing started to decline. He decided not to sell any further slices though.

  The tree was now considerably smaller than it had been when he started. Several of the big branches had gone entirely in the manufacture of the crucifixes, though demand was higher than ever. Davey could see, though, that at this rate there'd be nothing left by Xmas.

  The prices for admission and parking went up, as well as a ban on photography in the hope of boosting postcard sales. The café had expanded to include 'a Holey Tree breakfast' and 'a Holey Tree cream tea'. Although he had little knowledge of what exactly it was, Davey was persuaded to pay for the setting up of a website on the internet and demands for the 'Holey Tree Crucifix' went through the roof. Davey now had two local carpenters making them as fast as they could. Despite his exhortations to use less wood in each cross, there was no doubt that the wood supply was rapidly diminishing.

  Davey was a transformed man. No longer unshaven and unkempt, he was now every inch the businessman. The hedges and ditches were trimmed and tidied and flower borders dug round the edges of the car park. The fences and stands round the 'Holey Tree' were smart and sturdy and the café had been upgraded to a semi permanent building. A picnic area and small play area for the children was added, as well as a petting area (one pound per child) with one sheep and one goat.

  Still the numbers of visitors continued to increase, though the tree trunk was starting to crack as the wood dried out. There was now a shelter over what remained of the main trunk to keep the public dry during their visit. Th
e portrait looked more than ever like John Lennon as the timber aged and the stain began to fade in places.

  Davey began to worry that his cash cow had a limited life. In particular the supply of wood for the crucifixes was now getting critical. If he cut any more of the large branches off the tree he would have to start advertising it as the 'Holey Log' instead of the 'Holey Tree'.

  The whole enterprise very nearly went pear shaped when Davey was accused of repainting the portrait with creosote to restore the 'Jesus' factor, but he was able, just, to talk his way out of it by saying that he was merely applying colourless preservative to maintain the wood and prevent any further deterioration. He knew he'd have to be more careful, though, in future.

  And that's about the end of the story, really. What's that? Oh, yes, he's still in business. It's true that the number of visitors has dropped off a bit recently, but the sales of the crucifixes are still going strong, especially the internet sales.

  The wood supply? Well, that's the truly amazing thing. It never did run out. Perhaps that was the true miracle of the 'Holey Tree', though some do say that sometimes, at the dead of night, they hear the sounds of a truck delivering something at Davey's yard. Davey say's nothing, of course. He's as cantankerous as ever, but no one in the village would want to shut down a business that's brought so many extra visitors.

  We planted twenty more oaks this year around the village green. Don't suppose any of them will turn out to be miracle trees, but I guess it'll be another three hundred years before anyone knows.

  THE END

  Barnaby Wilde July 2012

  Tiny Aliens

  I don't remember the year exactly, but I guess it must have been sometime around 1949 or 50. I would have been about thirteen or fourteen years old. Or maybe I was only twelve. I don't remember that clearly now. Anyway, I do remember that it was very hot that summer, but then every summer seemed to be hot when we were kids. Don't know what's gone wrong with the weather these days. Used to be a time when winter was winter and summer was summer. Seems to me that there's hardly a difference now.

  Anyhow, the whole world was different in those days. Kids were allowed to be kids and in the summer we just used to go out and roam about all day, doing the kind of things that kids were supposed to do, which, essentially, consisted of doing the things we'd been told not to do and hoping that we didn't get caught doing it. Or, maybe it was the other way round. Maybe it was not doing the things that we'd been told to do. I forget now. Anyhow, as long as we didn't make too much mess, too much noise, or too much nuisance of ourselves, we were pretty much free to roam provided that we came home occasionally to eat and sleep.

  There were more places to roam, too. Not so many cars. Not so many houses. Not so many people, I guess. Also we didn't have any of those computers or game things to keep us indoors. Hell, we didn't even have Gramophones, most of us. What? Gramophones? For playing records on. Yeh. Record players if you wish.

  Some of us had bikes. Nothing fancy. Usually just frames and wheels that we'd put together ourselves, or maybe with our Dads if we had that sort of Dad. Anyway, we'd get to any place we could get to by bike and if we couldn't get there by bike then we'd get there on foot. We knew pretty much every corner, every stream, every tree, every unlocked shed and every field big enough to play football in the area. Most days that we weren't in school were just spent roaming.

  There were about six of us altogether that went in a group. Sometimes more or sometimes fewer. It just depended who was about. The youngest was about ten and the oldest was about fifteen or sixteen. Ages didn't seem to matter so much then as they do now. I guess that there weren't that many kids about in the village then. That was before they built the new estate, of course.

  We'd invent wide ranging games that always seemed to involve building camps, damming streams, lighting fires or climbing trees, or even all of those things at the same time. A couple of the older kids had air guns, so sometimes they'd shoot cans off a wall, or scare cats, or try to catch rabbits. The rest of us had to be content with catapults or bows and arrows. But that was the fun, don't you see. Making do. Inventing stuff. Sharing stuff around or just doing without. Not that we thought we were doing without. That's just how it was. We didn't have bedrooms full of televisions and computers and game players. Hell, most of us didn't even have our own bedrooms.

  Anyway, that summer was a hot one. Prob'ly one of the hottest I can remember. It was so hot you couldn't sleep at night and pretty much everyone was reduced to keeping their windows open all night and sleeping on top of their beds. Quite a few sleeping in just their skins, too, I wouldn't be surprised. A regular peeping Tom's charter if you'd been that way minded.

  Well, I was lying on my bed that night tossing and turning 'cos it was just too danged hot but, eventually, I just had to get some air, so I got out of bed and climbed out onto the windowsill to look at the moon and the stars. You could see the stars in those days. Used to be you could look out on a clear night and see a million stars. Probably more that a million I shouldn't be surprised. I never actually tried to count 'em. Now, you're lucky to see half a dozen. Light pollution, that's what it's called.

  Where was I? Oh, yeh. I was sitting on the windowsill looking at all the stars and trying to make out the constellations like Orion and The Plough. Do you know what they call The Plough in America? They call it The Big Dipper. They think it looks more like a ladle than a plough. Reckon they may be right there, too. Anyway, I found a couple of the main constellations and I was looking at the Milky Way, too. You could see it quite clearly then. Today you have to go Africa to see it properly. Anyway, while I was looking, there were a couple of shooting stars.

  You should go out and look for them, you know. Early August is one of the best times. Sometimes there's hundreds. I remember lying on my back in the grass at the back of the cottage one summer night and seeing one about every second or two. Might even have been that same summer. I don't remember precisely.

  Anyway, that night there were just a few shooting stars. They're just dust, you know, falling into the earth's atmosphere and burning up. It's earth's gravity that pulls them in. Well, after a few minutes I was going to go back to bed, but then there was this big, bright shooting star and it didn't burn up in a couple of seconds like most of 'em, it just kept coming and coming and getting brighter. I thought it was coming straight for me at first, but then it sort of veered off and disappeared . I thought it had crashed down somewhere over the back of the village. Sometimes they do that, you know. If they're big enough, the meteorite doesn't burn up completely and some bits come right down to earth. I saw one in a museum, once. Didn't look much. Just like a piece of rock, but the label said it had come from beyond the moon. Don't know how they knew that, but I s'pose they've got their ways.

  I kept watching for a bit longer, but there weren't any more of the big ones. There were a few of the tiny ones, just little streaks amongst the stars, really, but it wasn't like that other night I was telling you about when there were hundreds. No, on this night there was just the one bright one and a few little ones. I don't actually remember going back to sleep, but I guess I must have done at some point. Anyway, the next day was hot and sunny, just like every other one that summer and I couldn't wait to get outside after I'd had my breakfast.

  I met up with Joe Green and Tom Edgecombe at the end of the lane. Yeh, that's right. He ended up running the garage down by the green. Anyway, Tom Edgecombe was a couple of years older than me and about half a head taller. That made him our leader, I guess. In as much as we had any kind of leader at all. I told 'em both about the shooting star and we decided to go looking for it, to see if there was any bit of it that had come down to earth. We thought maybe it would have diamonds in it, or gold, or something interesting anyway. Billy Hopkins and Bob Williams were down by the stream and they decided to come with us to search.

  Well, the five of us didn't have much of a clue where to look or what to look for. I thought the thing had come dow
n somewhere behind the village, so that's where we started looking. We found a few rocks, but we had no way of telling if they were meteorites or not. There weren't any diamonds or gold in 'em for sure, but some of the rocks could have come from space I suppose. To begin with, we started to collect some of the likely ones, but we had to stop that when it all got a bit heavy, so we dumped all the ones we'd picked up by the bridge, so that we could find 'em again later.

  I guess we prob'ly searched for about an hour, until it got a bit boring, and then we pretty much went back to the usual roaming about and tree climbing. Tom Edgecombe had got his air rifle with him, but he wouldn't let any of the rest of us have a go. He tried to get us to set some targets up for him, but we soon got bored with that, too, and then he got bored with us and he went off to look for some rabbits to annoy.

  Joe, Billy and me, and Bob Williams decided to make a camp up the big oak tree in Tom Davey's field and we dragged a couple of old scaffold planks across to give us a platform.

  We'd pretty much forgotten about the meteorite until one of us noticed a burnt patch in the next field. Joe Green said as it was him who saw it first, but I reckon maybe we all saw it about the same time. Anyway, we thought someone had had a fire there at first, but then I took to wondering if it could be the meteorite. We couldn't get down the tree quick enough once I'd suggested that. Each one of us wanting to be the first one there to claim the moon rock, if that's what it turned out to be.

  I guess we all arrived at the burnt spot at about the same time. The field was just stubble 'cos it had already been cropped. I suppose if it hadn't been we might not have noticed the burnt patch at all. It was just a small circle of blackened ground, not much more than a couple of feet across, and in the middle of it was what looked a bit like a big metal frisbee or a car hub cap.

  It looked like it was made of some sort of metal with a very smooth surface. It was shiny like metal, but it had black streaks on it, like it had burnt up a bit. Like it had once been very hot. It was about fifteen or sixteen inches in diameter I would guess and circular as near as you could tell. Thicker in the middle than the edges, but pretty much featureless apart from that. All around it was blackened earth where the stubble had burnt off.

  Joe was going to pick it up, but I told him it could still be hot if it was the meteorite, so he prodded it with his foot instead. It must have been very heavy, 'cos it didn't move at all when he poked it. That seemed pretty odd and we all took turns to push it with out feet, but it didn't budge at all. No one was brave enough to test it with their hands in case it was still hot. Joe suggested pissing on it to see if it would steam and he was about to do just that when we saw the insects.

  There were about a dozen of them as far as I can remember. They were about the size of a large beetle and sort of an iridescent blue green colour, though I swear that they also had some red on them somewhere. They had six legs and four arms and a joint somewhere between the two. Yeh, I know that doesn't sound right, but they definitely had some limbs that were legs and some that were arms. They were carrying stuff in their arms. Some of it looked like bits of dirt from the field and seeds that they'd picked up, but some of it looked like little machines. And they were looking up at us while we were looking down at them. They weren't like any insects I'd ever seen before.

  Before anyone could stop him, Bob Williams stamped on one of them, flattening it completely. The rest of them just scattered after that and ran into the stubble. A couple of them ran under the frisbee thing. They all moved pretty quick, but I guess you would, too, if you were about to be stamped on by a giant foot. I don't know why he wanted to kill them. Some folk just react that way I s'pose. Like some folk are scared of spiders. Maybe Bob Williams was one of those.

  The one he squashed was one of the ones carrying a little machine. It was just a little cube of something, only about a few millimetres across. It looked complicated, though, with lots of little marks and protrusions. I went to pick it up, but Joe grabbed my arm and stopped me. What if it's radioactive, he said. Not that any of us had much idea what radioactive was.

  Well, the next thing we knew was little stings on our bare legs. Like bee stings, and we thought that those beetle things must be stinging ones, but we couldn't see what was doing the stinging. Then I saw that it was coming from the frisbee thing. It was shooting something at us. Little stinging darts or something. We began slapping our legs and hopping about a bit and Bob started crying. I remember that. He was the only one that started crying, but then he was the only one that stamped on a beetle thing. We moved back a bit and the shooting stopped. The beetle things started to creep back out of the stubble and some of 'em went over to the squashed one and picked it up, but I could tell that it was dead. They all started to head back to the frisbee, but some of them seemed to be pointing their little machines at us, as though they were protecting the others. They didn't have to worry. We didn't go closer 'cos we didn't want to get stung again.

  The beetle things all ran back under the frisbee and for a few minutes that's all that happened. We were just daring each other to prod it again, but no one felt brave enough. Bob suggested that Joe piss on it, since it had been his idea, but he wasn't keen on getting that close again.

  That was about when we heard the humming begin. It was very faint to start with and quite deep but it gradually got louder and higher pitched. Like something was spinning faster and faster. And then we saw that the frisbee was starting to move. All on it's own. There weren't any jets of anything gushing out, or blades whizzing round or anything like that, it just sort of floated up off the ground. Quite slowly at first and then it sort of hovered, like they were watching us or something. I guess we'd have run off if we'd had any sense, but we just stood there watching it watching us.

  After about a minute it started to move off across the field at about head height. It hadn't got more than about fifty feet, I reckon, when it suddenly exploded. Now, I don't mean it exploded like a bomb. It didn't make a big noise. There was a sort of a ping and it just disintegrated. One moment it was there, all sort of solid and metallic and then, next, there was just a cloud of dust.

  Before we even had a chance to say anything, there was a loud cheer from behind us.

  "Got it!" shouted Tom Edgecombe. "What a fantastic shot. Pow!" He was brandishing his air rifle as he clattered up towards us. "Bloody fantastic, eh?" he added. "What was it anyway?"

  Well, we just stood there and looked at each other, Bob and Billy and Joe and me. Nobody wanted to say what he was thinking.

  "What was it?" Tom asked again as he got up to us. "Bloody brilliant the way it just sort of exploded, eh?"

  "You murdered them," I said. The others just nodded, but Tom had no idea what we were talking about.

  "Who?" was all he could say.

  "The aliens," said Joe. "That's what they were, isn' it?" He looked at me for confirmation, but he'd said exactly what I'd been thinking. That wasn't a meteorite I'd seen last night, it was their tiny spaceship landing and Tom Edgecombe had shot it.

  We searched about a bit in the corn stubble for any bits of wreckage, or to see if we could find any more of the insect things, but there was nothing at all. Just that charred circle where it landed, which looked just like someone had lit a barbecue there. We didn't have any evidence at all that anything had ever happened. Who would ever believe a group of boys who spent their lives making mischief and telling stories. We all agreed that we wouldn't say anything to anyone in case we'd be in trouble. And we never did.

  We never ever talked about it again. Not even amongst ourselves, but I reckon I'm the only one of us left now so it prob'ly doesn't matter any more. That's why I'm telling you. You see, I've never stopped wondering where those little beetle folk came from. Maybe they came from Mars, or the Moon, or somewhere way further away. Maybe they had families at home waiting to hear from them. Maybe they were the last remaining folk of their kind and they were looking for a new planet to colonise, or maybe they were just curious to
urists, like us. I don't know if we saved our planet or committed the biggest crime in the galaxy.

  I still look out every August, though, when the earth passes through the Perseid Meteor cloud, just in case. Only this time I've got a camera.

  THE END

  Barnaby Wilde July 2012

  Case Closed

  I don't make a habit of going into bars on my own and, if I do, it's usually because I want to be on my own. That means I order my drink at the bar and head for a table somewhere in the corner to drink it. I don't go out of my way to talk to other lone drinkers. I figure they're probably thinking the same as me. If they wanted to be with other people, then they'd probably be with that noisy crowd over by the fruit machine. So, I don't know why it was that night, that instead of following my normal pattern, I stayed at the bar and started chatting to the guy at the end, who was drinking on his own.

  Now, I just had a pint. I'm not a big drinker. One pint is usually my limit. A decent amount of something to hold on to, but not enough to dull my senses. The lone drinker at the end of the bar, though, had a row of shot glasses lined up in front of him. There were three empty ones and about another five that were still full. This guy was planning some serious drinking. Either that, or he was throwing a party and no one had showed up.

  "Hi," I said, "expecting friends?" I nodded towards his shot glasses.

  It took a while before he answered and I thought he'd decided to ignore me. I was about to take my drink and go over to my customary corner table.

  "Just drowning my sorrows, friend," he said. "Just drowning my sorrows."

  I hesitated, just long enough for him to push one of the shot glasses in my direction. I declined his offer by raising my own full beer glass. He shrugged and lifted the proferred shot glass to his own mouth and drained it in a single gulp before lining up the empty glass with the others.

  "Anything you want to talk about?" I asked.

  He considered the question and eyed me for a few seconds. "D'you know anything about cardboard?" he asked.

  Now I guess I've been asked some strange questions in my lifetime, but I think this was a first. As a conversation starter I wasn't sure it had legs. I couldn't think of much of an answer beyond, "Not a lot."

  "You're a lucky man," he said, as he drained his fifth shot glass. There was a long pause before he spoke again. "Used to be a time that I didn't either. They were happy days, though I didn't know it."

  I sipped at my own drink and waited for him to continue. I think the shots were beginning to kick in because his attention seemed to drift for a while. Like he'd forgotten I was there.

  "Cases," he said suddenly. "You ever hear of Cases?"

  "You mean, like suit cases?" I asked.

  "Any kinda cases," he said. "That was us. That was the name of our company. We made cases. Boxes if you prefer. Cartons, containers, whatever you want to call 'em. If you could make it out of cardboard, then we made it. Everything from little cartons for cosmetics up to packing cases for moving house and all sizes in between. We made hundreds of sizes and shapes. Actually, it was thousands. Could even have been tens of thousands of sizes over the years. You kind of lose count after a while."

  I began to wonder if this could ever turn into any kind of stimulating conversation. Cardboard boxes didn't feature high on my list of interests. I sipped my drink again and feigned attention.

  "Name's John," he said, offering me his hand. "John Case."

  "Bit of a coincidence that, isn't it?" I remarked as I took his hand. "John Case making cases?"

  "Yeh," he agreed. "I never did figure if Daddy started a case making company because his name was Case, or if he changed his name to suit the business." A faraway look came into his eyes and I thought I'd lost him again for a moment, but he continued. "John Case, he's on your case. That was his slogan." He snorted as he said it, like it was something ironic.

  "Was?" I prompted. "Have you got a new slogan now?"

  He laughed cynically. "You could say," he said. "You could say." He was looking at his reflection in the mirror behind the bar. "John Case, basket case," he muttered.

  "I'm sorry?" I asked. "What was that? I didn't catch the new slogan."

  He laughed again and downed the sixth shot glass. He took his time lining up the empty glass with the other five before he turned back to me.

  "Did you ever hear the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin?" he asked.

  I nodded. "Sure. Everyone knows that one, don't they?" I wasn't sure where this was leading.

  "I think I must have been the Mayor of Hamelin in a previous life," he said, shaking his head.

  I figured he was about to tell me his story, so I said nothing. Just took another sip of my beer and waited for him to speak again.

  "Ours wasn't a big company," he began. "We were a minnow compared to the big boys in the industry. Daddy started up the company to make confectionary boxes for his own business, but pretty soon it was obvious that the boxes were more successful than the confectionary and he sold up the sweet business to concentrate on the packaging. Diversified into other sorts of boxes and the business grew pretty much every year until he fell down dead in his office one day. I was already working in the business by then and we were employing about ten people. It wasn't big, but it was doing OK and growing steadily."

  "For a few years we added more machines and took on a few more people. The range of boxes grew and we had lines of fancy boxes as well as a range of packaging for retail and distribution. We had to move to larger premises and we were starting to get known. We were still just a minnow, but people had begun to hear about us and we were getting enquiries from some of the bigger companies. Some of the nationals."

  There was a burst of raucous laughter from the other end of the bar as the party that end began to heat up. It sounded like someone's birthday party and the noise level was going up. I had to move closer to John Case to hear what he was saying.

  "Inventory was getting to be a problem. As we diversified the number of lines and sizes, we found we were having to hold bigger stocks of raw card as well as finished and part finished boxes. You'd be surprised how quickly it all multiplies."

  I had no idea at all. Well outside my field, but I nodded knowledgeably and waited for him to continue.

  "It was beginning to become an issue. The inventory control, I mean. I was starting to wonder if we'd diversified a bit too much or too quickly. The big boys were also starting to put the pressure on our prices. I guess the minnow had grown large enough to be noticed, even if we were hardly a threat. Anyway, …" There was a pause before he resumed. "Anyway, one day this funny little guy came to see me. He didn’t have an appointment. He didn't have a business card even. I nearly didn't see him at all. I used to get salesmen calling all the time. Usually they made an appointment, but sometimes they'd just call in on the off chance. Mostly a waste of time and space, but occasionally they had something interesting to say. Anyway, on this day I said I'd give him ten minutes."

  He paused again. I could see from his face that the alcohol was doing it's stuff and I wondered if I'd ever hear the end of the story. He noticed that he still had a couple of full shot glasses in front of him and offered one to me. I still had half of my beer. I told you, I'm no drinker. He shrugged and downed his seventh. Once again he took his time lining up the empty glass with the others.

  "Funny little chap, he was. Not like most salesmen. You can usually spot 'em a mile off in their cheap nylon suits and slicked back hair. No, this guy was different. For a start he wasn't very tall. Only about five three, I'd say. His hair was curly. Short brown curls. And he had on an old crumpled brown suit. I tell you, he didn't look like any salesman I'd ever seen. Have you ever seen a salesman in a brown suit?"

  I assumed the question was rhetorical, so I just smiled and waited for him to continue.

  "OK," I said to him. "So what are you selling?" He didn't seem to have any samples with him, no case, no catalogue, nothing that I could see, but he took a fo
lded piece of paper out of his pocket. When I say folded, I mean it was just folded in two, so that it would fit in his pocket. I could see that it had lines ruled on one side at all different angles, but no writing. No writing at all. Not even a title or a catalogue number."

  "The chap – I never did get his name – proceded to fold the paper along the lines until he'd made a little box. Have you ever heard of origami?"

  I nodded.

  "Well that's what it was. A little cube of paper, about two inches on each side. He didn't say anything to me, just folded the cube and held it up for me to see. I remember looking at my watch. I didn't have the time to waste on paper folding tricks. I was about to send him away, when he unfolded the box into a flat sheet and started folding all over again. I assumed I was going to be treated to a flying crane, or a boat, or a little chinese man or one of those other little shapes they seem to enjoy making, but he just made another box. It was another cube, but it was bigger. It was about twice the size of the first one. Maybe four inches on a side. He held it up for me to examine."

  I sipped my beer again as John Case held up an imaginery cube for me to inspect. Although I could see nothing but his thumb and forefinger holding an invisible cube, I'll swear he could see the actual cube and he inspected it for several seconds before placing it on the bar.

  "Well, it was a neat trick, I guess. He could make two different sized cubes from one sheet of paper. But that was only the start of it. In the next hour – yes, I sat there for over an hour watching him – he folded at least a dozen different cubes from that sheet of paper. I'm saying cubes, but they weren't all exact cubes. He made short wide boxes and he made tall narrow boxes and in all different volumes. I couldn't see how he could conjure so many different shaped boxes from one single sheet of paper. It didn't make sense. I was calculating the surface area of some of the boxes and they must have been four or five times the surface area of the original sheet of paper. And that didn't even allow for the overlaps. This was my business you must remember. If there's one thing I could do it was calculate the amount of raw material in a carton."

  I must have been intrigued, because I noticed that I hadn't touched my beer for a while and I still had about a third remaining. I took a hearty swig and urged hm to go on.

  "The other thing," he said, "was that it didn't seem to matter what size the box was, they were all perfectly rigid. That didn't make sense either. Everyone knows that a bigger box needs to be made of thicker card. That's obvious." He looked to me for approval and I acknowledged what he'd said with a nod.

  "OK," I said to the little man. "How much? I figured he wanted to sell me the design."

  For the first time since he'd come into my office, over an hour ago, he actually spoke. "Ten million," he said. "That was all. Not ten million pounds or ten million dollars. Just ten million."

  "There was no way I could raise that sort of money, but I wanted to find out more. So what do I get for ten million?" I asked.

  The little man just held up the sheet of paper with the ruled lines on it and waited for me to respond.

  "That's it?" I said. "Ten million for a sheet of paper?" I could see the potential, but that was just ludicrous. I began to laugh, but something in his face told me he wasn't joking. "Where would I get ten million even if I wanted to pay that?" I asked.

  "You pay by results," he said. "I'll come back in six months and you can pay me the first million. If you don't think it's worth it, you can just give me back the design."

  Now, this was the longest speech he'd made since coming into my office. In fact it was the longest speech he ever made, because he just stood up, bowed slightly and left.

  "Did he take the paper?" I asked, finishing my beer.

  "No," said John Case. "No. I just wish he had."

  I caught the attention of the barman and ordered a second pint. Almost unheard of for me. Like I told you, I'm not a drinker. This was turning into an interesting story, though. I waved my empty glass at John Case. "Another?" I asked.

  In reply he downed his remaining shot and pushed all the empty glasses towards the barman. "Fill 'em up," he said.

  The barman looked at me and said, "I think he's had enough."

  "Just get him another couple," I said, although I thought he was probably right.

  "What happened?" I asked. "After the little salesman left."

  "I fooled around with his paper pattern for a while and I found that I could make all sorts of different sized boxes if I folded down the various lines. I couldn't see how it worked, though. I didn't really know what I was doing. I just folded down what seemed to be the obvious line after picking a random one to start with and after a few folds there was a box. I must have spent a couple of hours playing with that sheet of paper. After a while I began to figure out where to begin folding to make a particular box, but I still couldn't see how it worked. By the time I'd stopped playing, everyone else had gone home. My mind was racing, though. I didn't want to go home. If we could make this system of his work on a bigger scale, just think of the reduction in inventory we'd be able to achieve. The scope for bringing down our prices was immense."

  The barman put our new drinks down on the counter. John Case immediately swallowed the first of his.

  "He's your responsibility," said the barman.

  I raised my hand in acknowledgement and waited for John to resume the story.

  "I went to the photocopier in the next office and put it onto enlarge. I made a copy of the pattern that was about four times bigger than the original and started to fold it. Somewhat to my surprise it still worked. I was able to make different sized boxes that were all about four times bigger than before. The potential was enormous."

  John's eyes were glazing over and his speech was beginning to slur. I needed to know the end of the story, though, and I encouraged him to continue.

  "We carried out more experiments the next day and we found that we could make pretty near every sized box we were currently making using just four different sized sheets of card. All we had to do was print out the pattern of lines and then fold. It didn’t take long for us to adapt our normal folding machines to cope with the new raw material sizes and we soon started to ship the new boxes."

  "We had a few complaints about the ruled lines that were showing on the finished packaging, but we found we could reduce the intensity and thickness until they ceased to be an issue. Couldn't eliminate them completely, though. If we tried to fold plain card with no lines, it simply didn't work."

  "We were able to offer better prices as our raw material inventories went down and we started to pick up some bigger orders from some of the Nationals. We had to buy new machines to cope with the volume. Business really began to boom and we started to expand."

  There was a long silence and I realised that he'd drifted away. I tapped his shoulder to catch his attention.

  "Eh?"

  "You were saying that your business started to expand."

  "Um," he nodded in agreement. "Through the roof," he said. "We couldn't keep up with the orders. Had to take on more people and get more machines."

  His eyes glazed over again as his attention wandered. I tapped his arm again.

  "The money just rolled in," he said. "It was unbelievable. It was like printing our own bank notes."

  "What happened?" I asked. There had to be a 'but'. He wouldn't be in here drinking like this otherwise.

  "He came back," he said, after a pause.

  "Who? Do you mean the salesman?"

  He nodded. "Exactly six months to the day. He came back for his money."

  I waited, but John Case seemed to have lost the will to finish his story. I took a swallow from my beer while I waited, but he just stared vacantly into the mirror ahead of him. It began to dawn on me what had happened.

  "You didn't pay him, did you? He came for his money and you decided not to pay him?"

  John Case nodded. "He said he'd come for his million and I laughed at him. I offered him a thousand, as a '
goodwill gesture', but he held out for his million. I told him that it was a thousand, take it or leave it. He just stared at me and said nothing for a while and then he said, "I thought we had a contract." I told him the contract was over. I thought we didn't need him any more."

  "And you were wrong?" I guessed.

  John turned from the mirror and looked me straight in the eye. "Oh, I was wrong OK. I was so wrong."

  "What did he do?"

  "He asked for his design back. I couldn't see any reason he shouldn't have it. We already had copies and dies. There was no reason to hang on to the original, so I gave it back to him and he left."

  I took another swig of my beer. I could guess what happened next. "And from that day on, the business didn't prosper?"

  "How right you are. The folding machines started to misbehave almost at the instant the salesman took back his design. Within hours none of the machines were producing saleable boxes. We couldn't work it out. We even tried folding some by hand, but it just didn't work any more. No matter how we tried to fold the sheets they simply wouldn't form into boxes. I had spare photocopies of his original design in my office and I sat at my desk for days trying to make the folds. I just couldn't make it work any more."

  "You tried to contact the salesman, I suppose?"

  I thought he hadn't heard me as there was no reaction to my question. I thought the drink had finally taken it's toll, but after a long, long pause he replied.

  "How? I didn't have a name or any way to contact him. I told you, there was nothing printed on the design except the fold lines and he didn't ever give me a business card. I hoped he would come back, but he never did."

  "When did this happen?"

  "Um, … about a month ago. We haven't produced a saleable box for more than a month. Today I had to lay off the whole production staff. We're being sued by our customers for non delivery and I can't get any of the suppliers to give us a line of credit for materials. … We're finished."

  He picked up the last full shot glass and raised it in mock salute. "May you never make such a stupid mistake, young man," he said as he swallowed the contents of the glass.

  "There's something worse," he said, as he lined up the empty shot glasses on the bar. "It's not only that we can't make any new boxes." He turned from speaking to his own reflection in the mirror and spoke to me directly. "The boxes that we've already shipped are simply collapsing back to flat, unfolded card."

  He stared at me blankly, as though I had become invisible, then turned and stumbled out of the bar before I could finish my drink. By the time I got to the door he had disappeared completely.

  As I walked home alone in the rain, I noticed the headline on the newstand. "Case Factory to Close."

  Huddled in a doorway across the street was a homeless man. He was struggling to make some sort of shelter out of an old cardboard box, but it refused to form itself into any sort of structure that would give him shelter. I was about to walk by, but John Case's story was still running around my head.

  I took out my wallet and removed a twenty note. "You might need to find a better shelter, my friend," I said to him as I handed it over.

  THE END

  Barnaby Wilde July 2012

  Benny

  Emily had to admit that men sometimes had their uses, as she struggled to fill in the trench in the back garden. They were good for lifting heavy things and carrying shopping, for example, and they seemed to know about things like cars and computers and mending washing machines, though, sadly, they didn’t seem to have the same instinctive knowledge about to use washing machines. They were good for changing light bulbs and reaching high shelves, even if they weren't so good at picking up discarded clothes or shutting down toilet seats. Sometimes they even came in handy for unblocking drains or tuning in the television, even if they did walk across the white carpets in outdoor shoes, or seem to have a complete inability to understand how to work the vacuum cleaner.

  She sighed as she continued her work. Life was a compromise, she supposed. Men had their plus points even if they also had just as many, if not more, minuses. The last one hadn't been too bad, though. At least, until she'd found him using her lady shaver to deburr his pullover. That had been the final straw which broke the proverbial camel's back and cooked his goose.

  She raked the soil level over the newly filled trench and patted it down gently with the back of her spade.

  She would be lonely, though. She knew that. She wasn't built for living on her own. She knew that some women were. Some women went a whole lifetime on their own and claimed to enjoy it. Some preferred to live with another woman, but Emily was a traditionalist. She did like the company of a man, irritating as they could be. She liked the conversation, if they could be bothered, she liked the companionship and, yes, she liked the sex, when they could be bothered.

  She gave another sigh as she put away the garden tools in the shed. How long had it been now since she had been with a man? Almost a month, she concluded. Too long.

  She wasn't an unattractive woman. About five foot five inches tall, slim, blonde – well, bottle blonde if we're being strictly accurate, and she always presented herself well. Smartly dressed, but not expensively dressed. Couldn't afford to be on her income.

  She needed a man. Preferably a tall one with money and a decent car. Hers was definitely showing signs of age now.

  The last man had come courtesy of a speed dating evening, but she wasn't sure she really wanted to put herself through that experience again quite yet. It seemed that you had to kiss an awful lot of frogs before you found a slightly less objectionable one. She'd almost given up thinking that she would ever find a prince.

  Over the years she'd tried the lonely hearts ads, she tried the dining clubs, she'd gone out on blind dates set up by well meaning friends and she'd even gone into a few bars on her own, though that seemed to attract the wrong kind of attention. She'd tried learning bridge, gone to the gym, and played golf. She tried the holidays for singles and had even gone roller blading in her search for the perfect partner over the years. And there had been some successes, for a while at least. She'd been married three times and had had a series of partnerships of differing levels of intensity or duration. They all started with promise, but eventually, there was always something that brought the relationship to a close. Usually, she simply got bored with them, and they did seem to be an unlucky lot. Not one, but two, had died from eating poison mushrooms and one had fallen off a cliff. A couple had simply left, or been thrown out when their annoyance factor had exceeded their entertainment value.

  She was ever the optimist, though. The next one would be the one. The next one would be loving, kind, considerate, generous and wealthy. Yes, definitely wealthy, she thought.

  Idly she scanned the lonely hearts ads in the local paper, but they were the usual hopefuls and losers. Every one of them with a great sense of humour, wide ranging interests and good looks, … until you got them home, of course.

  She tired of reading the lonely hearts and drifted on to the 'miscellaneous for sale' items. The usual assortment of three piece suites, bicycles, table lamps and hamster cages. And then she saw a small advert hidden in the 'under a tenner' section. Grow your own man, it said. That was all. Grow your own man. £5. and a phone number. Had to be a joke she smiled and put the paper in the pile for the bin.

  Sometimes, though, an idea gets under your skin. A tune that goes round and round in your brain all day until it drives you mad. A craving for bacon when you're nowhere near any sort of eating place. An advertising slogan that just seems to pop into your mind every five minutes.

  All Emily could think of the whole day was that advert to grow your own man. It had to be a joke. Couldn't be anything else. But she couldn't let it go. Eventually she found herself unloading the dustbin and searching through the thrown out papers for the advert. Even when she'd found it again she delayed phoning for hours.

  Afterwards, though, it seemed so trivially easy. There were no length
y explanations. No difficult conversations. No embarrassing questions and the voice on the other end of the phone made the whole transaction as matter of fact as ordering a take away pizza. She paid by MasterCard, gave her address and that was it. The instructions would be in the packet, the voice said.

  When she put the phone down she could hardly believe she'd been so stupid. Oh, she thought. It's only a fiver. What can you get for a fiver these days? Not even a take away pizza, she laughed.

  That would probably have been the end of it, but two days later a small package dropped through the letter box and inside it was an even smaller brown packet, anonymous apart from the hand written words 'Grow your own man'. There was a typed, folded scrap of paper, too, with growing instructions as promised by the voice on the phone.

  Emily laughed at the joke. Inside the brown packet there were five beans. They looked just like the runner beans she'd recently planted in her vegetable garden. Ah well. An expensive way to buy runner bean seeds, perhaps, but it had made her smile.

  She put the packet on the side by the sink, but, just out of curiosity, she pushed one of the beans into the pot of soil that was sitting on the windowsill. It had once contained parsley, but that seemed to have died out. For weeks there had just been a pot of tired compost sitting there that she'd been meaning to throw out. She watered the saucer under the pot and watched the water level drop as it was sucked up into the dry compost.

  The following morning she was doing the breakfast washing up and was surprised to notice that the soil in the flower pot was already bulging slightly, as though something was coming through from below. It can't have germinated already, she thought to herself. Nothing grows that quickly.

  By lunchtime, however, it was clear that the seed had indeed germinated. A shoot was clearly showing above the soil. By teatime two seed leaves had appeared. Emily retrieved the typed instructions from the packet and read them for the first time.

  Grow your own man, it read. Plant beans singly, two inches deep, in a large pot, in a frost free greenhouse, or, outdoors when danger of frost has passed. Do not allow to dry out and feed with general purpose fertiliser when six true leaves have appeared. When the fruit has formed, ensure that the plant gets maximum sunshine. Do not pick until fully ripe.

  There was a bit more about pests and diseases, but Emily didn't read that far. She looked back at the small pot on the windowsill. It must be her imagination, but the seedling looked bigger already and it was clear that it would quickly outgrow the small pot. Fortunately she had plenty of large pots and bags of multipurpose compost in the greenhouse. Transplanting beans wasn't usually a good idea, but if she did it now, before the plant got too big, she'd probably get away with it.

  By the following morning the shoot was already six inches high and had four leaves. By lunchtime it had grown another two inches and a further two leaves. Emily had never seen anything grow at such a prodigious rate. Not even dandelions.

  Now that the plant had six leaves, she followed the typed instructions and began to feed it daily with a dilute solution of general purpose fertiliser. The man bean responded by growing even faster. It was not only growing several inches taller each day, but it was putting on new leaves, and the leaves were getting larger. She had to move stuff around in her greenhouse to accommodate the exuberant growth. It was already taller than her tomato plants and after only a week had almost reached the roof. She worried that the leaves might scorch in the sun, but the instructions did say full sun, so she let it be.

  The single flower appeared on the eighth day. It was trumpet shaped and a delicate pale blue. She wondered whether it needed pollinating, but there was no instruction about this and with only the one flower there wasn't much opportunity to do any cross pollination, so she left it alone. By the following day the flower had already wilted, but there was a bulge at it's base that looked very much like the start of a swelling fruit.

  The plant's take up of water and feed was remarkable. Emily found herself watering it at least twice a day. Now that the fruit(?) was swelling it seemed that the plant had stopped growing taller or adding more leaves. That, at least, was something of a relief. The swelling of the fruit continued apace.

  By the end of the second week the fruit had reached the size of a grapefruit and began to elongate. There were protrusions and knobbles beginning to show on it's surface and Emily worried initially that they might be signs of disease. It quickly became apparent, however, that these knobbles were turning into limbs.

  "Oh, my god!" she said. "It really is starting to look somewhat human like." She had no idea how it had been done, but someone had clearly managed to engineer a plant with a fruit that looked vaguely human in shape. She laughed. "Good joke," she thought to herself.

  The fruit continued to swell, however, and the limbs continued to grow. Each day the fruit looked less like a fruit and more like a person. It had a distinct 'head', though there were no facial features and four limbs that differentiated themselves more day by day into two legs and two arms. As the fruit continued to elongate and gain weight, the plant began to bend over under the load. By the end of the third week the 'feet', for that was indisputably what they now looked like, were resting on the ground and the man bean stood about three feet high.

  He was joined to the plant by his belly, or what would have been his belly if he'd been a real man.

  His features continued to develop as he grew. There were now facial features like a nose and a couple of sunken patches that were where his eyes should be. He was developing fingers and toes, too, and he was now indisputably a 'he'. She blushed the first time she noticed his 'he –ness', but found herself inextricably drawn to checking it out each time she watered the plant. She decided that she should apply some white greenhouse shading to the glazing on the greenhouse on the side facing her neighbours. The bean man, for he could no longer be described as a man bean, would have been clearly visible to the neighbours had they looked over the fence and she decided to fend off any embarrassing questions before they arose.

  Bean man was now nearly as tall as she was. His features were becoming more clearly defined by the day and she began to wonder whether he would continue to grow much bigger. Apart from his skin colour, which was pale green, like an unripe tomato, he was looking remarkably life like.

  He stopped growing when he reached six foot one. By then, Benny, for she had somehow given him a name, was well developed in all departments. He had fingers and toes, nose and ears and even rudimentary hair. His other attributes seemed to be anatomically correct, too, as far as she could see, though she was too shy to examine him too closely.

  She reread the growing instructions. Do not pick the fruit until fully ripe, it said. She wondered how she would know. She also wondered quite what she would do with him when he was fully ripe. Somehow it seemed a bit churlish to consider eating him. That's if he was even edible, of course.

  The question of ripeness turned out to be ridiculously simple to judge. The pale green skin gradually turned to a pale pink over a couple of days. She took to squeezing Benny's buttocks gently to see whether they felt any softer and one afternoon on the fifth week he simply came away from the plant like a ripe apple lifting gently from a branch.

  One moment she was running her hand over his bottom and the next she found herself losing her balance as he detached. She was astonished when his arms reached round her to stop her falling and stood for a few moments in shocked silence. A middle aged, blonde haired woman wearing her gardening apron being embraced by a naked, perfectly proportioned, six foot Adonis who looked about thirty.

  It was clearly ridiculous. The whole notion was ridiculous. Growing a man from a bean was ridiculous, but here he was. Benny. A vegetable man. No, not a vegetable man. A moving, living, breathing real man. No. It was too ridiculous for words.

  Benny released her from his grip and smiled. She eyed him from top to toe and back up to .., well, just back up. Benny seemed to become aware of his nakedness at about that m
oment and blushed slightly. He turned and broke off his mother bean plant near the base and tied it around his waist so that the leaves formed a short skirt. A bit too short, thought Emily, but not bad for a bit of improvisation.

  "I've got some of my husband's old clothes indoors," she said. "They'll be a bit small, but they'll be better than nothing." Benny just smiled and held her hand as she led him indoors.

  She quickly got used to having a man about the place again, especially one who was totally uncorrupted, literally naive. He very soon learned to speak, probably because he'd absorbed so much of Emily's chatter as she talked to the plants in the greenhouse. He was also very willing and able to pick up new skills around the house. She showed him how to load the dishwasher, how to operate the Hoover and how to make the beds. They shopped together, new clothes for him and groceries for them both. She did decide that it would probably be better if she kept the driving. Her initial worries about what to feed him on proved to be unfounded. Apart from being a vegetarian, he ate what she ate.

  She introduced him to romantic films on TV and to the weekly soaps. He lapped it up like a sponge.

  She explained away his presence to her admiring girlfriends by saying that he was visiting from abroad. They looked unconvinced, or, maybe the look was simply envy.

  She had to show him how to use the shower and the other bathroom features, but he was a willing pupil and always flushed the loo and replaced the seat.

  The sleeping arrangements had bothered her initially and on the first few nights she'd put him into the spare bedroom, however, it wasn't long before they somehow found themselves sharing the same bed. Now, if you are expecting this to be some sort of salacious description of strange practices with single ladies and vegetables then I have to tell you that this isn't that kind of story. Suffice it to say that she found that all his features appeared to be in full working order, and we'll leave it at that.

  For a few weeks everything was fine. In fact it was better than fine. Emily hadn't been happier. Benny was the perfect man. He always agreed with her. He always wanted to do what she wanted to do and she'd even taught him how to do the ironing. She had constant companionship and even bed time was something she looked forward to now. Could life get any better, she wondered?

  It was probably about three months after Benny had been picked that she first began to notice the change. She found him in the sitting room gazing at the television. Surprisingly, it didn't appear to be one of her films or soaps he was watching, but a football match. She supposed he had switched channels by accident and flipped it over to a daytime soap, however, when she went back out to the kitchen it sounded as though he'd switched it back over to the football.

  And that was how it began. Little things. One day she found his socks on the floor. The next day there was hair in the washbasin. Little by little the relationship changed. He didn't seem quite as enthusiastic about going shopping with her as he had, and when she got back one day from shopping on her own, she found that he'd forgotten to empty the washing machine. Also, he appeared to have greenfly, despite the anti dandruff shampoo she bought him.

  The conversation dried up, too. No longer would he stand for hours listening to her chattering on. Sometimes he would appear not to be listening at all, or even wander off while she was still talking.

  One night he didn't turn in at bedtime when she did and she found him watching a late night horror film on the TV.

  She found herself thinking about some of her previous relationships and realised that her arrangement with Benny hadn't, perhaps, been quite as perfect as she'd thought. He'd never bought her flowers or perfume, for example. He'd never arranged any surprise outings, dinner or theatre. He hadn't introduced her to any new friends. He didn't have any money. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more shortcomings she thought of.

  Benny took to slouching about most of the day in front of the TV, flicking aimlessly from channel to channel. He never wanted to watch the same programmes as her these days. She couldn't remember when he'd last done the ironing or emptied the dishwasher. In fact, he was beginning to get a bit irritating.

  The summer drew to a close and she found herself raking leaves off the lawn. She did enjoy the autumn, almost as much as the summer. She enjoyed the cycle of life in the garden, the gradual winding down in preparation for the winter, the anticipation of new growth in the spring. She'd asked Benny to do the raking, of course, but though he'd muttered something, he was nowhere to be seen. She began to resent his presence in her house.

  She needed a bit of space. Some time on her own again. Men were fine, to a point, but it seemed that they always reached their sell by date, sooner or later. And it was more often sooner than later. He didn't even look as good as he had originally. That fresh faced bloom he'd had in the beginning was now looking distinctly sallow and his skin was already showing a fine wrinkling, like an apple just past it's best, she thought.

  Over the next week, Benny's lethargy grew at about the same pace as Emily's resentment. It was time for him to go, she thought, but she had no idea how to get rid of him.

  The weather forecast came onto the TV. The day had been bright and sunny but the lack of cloud meant that things were cooling down fast and the forecaster promised a cold night ahead. At the end of the forecast the presenter mentioned that it would be an excellent night to do a bit of stargazing due to the lack of cloud and the new moon. Apparently it would be possible to see at least three planets with the naked eye.

  Emily had an idea and after considerable effort managed to persuade Benny grudgingly to join her outside with a pair of binoculars to study the night sky. She managed to keep his attention for about twenty minutes, but then he began to complain about the cold. She continued to point out constellations and stars to him, but he began to speak less and less coherently and seemed to be becoming somewhat disorientated. Half an hour after they had first stepped outside he said he felt dizzy and sat down on the cold ground. Instead of showing concern and getting him inside, Emily merely affected not to notice and continued to sweep the sky with her binoculars looking for satellites.

  The following morning, the ground was frozen solid. In the middle of the lawn was a blackened, shrivelled mass that looked as though it might have once been vegetable in origin. Emily glanced at the brown packet, which was still propped up in the corner of the windowsill. Not frost hardy, she muttered as she stared out of the window. "Sorry, Benny", she said, and she sighed gently to herself. She almost, but not quite, shed a tear.

  She picked up the packet and peered inside. Still four beans left, she noted. 'Plant when all danger of frost is past' she remembered. Next March or April, maybe. She filled the kettle and hummed gently to herself and thought that she might have a bonfire after she'd had her cup of tea.

  Yes, it looked as though it was going to be another fine day for a spot of gardening after all.

  THE END.

  Barnaby Wilde July 2012

  The Accidental Bank Job

  We never really intended to rob the bank, but you know how it is. One thing just sort of leads to another and before we knew it we just couldn't seem to stop ourselves.

  It was just a game we used to play, at first. Me, Kevin, Terry and little John. We'd known each other for years. Used to go to school together right from the day we started Primary. Me mum told me that Kev and me even went to the same mother and toddler class, though neither of us could remember that far back. Anyway, the four of us were mates. We were about the best mates that four blokes could be. Ha. Ha. Not in that way. You know what I mean. Anyway, I was saying. We were mates right through school. Always in trouble. Nah. Nothing serious. Just the usual mucking about. Talking in class, flicking ink pellets, that sort of stuff. The four of us got caught once lighting up fags behind the girl's toilets. We got publicly flogged. Well, caned anyway in front of the whole school 'as an example'. Couldn't stop laughing, which got me two more strokes. But that's kids for you, innit? Anyway, where was I?

&
nbsp; Oh, yeh. Anyway, the four of us were mates in school and we just stayed mates when we left. We all got different jobs, eventually, but we still used to meet up every week for a drink and a laugh. Kev turned out to be a brickie. Even worked for the same company as me for a while 'til he lit off on his own. Terry was a chippie. Still is. And little John was a driver. Inevitable that he would be, really. Spent a couple of years nicking cars – never got caught mind you – but it was pretty inevitable that he'd have to end up doing something to do with a driving job. Oh, yeh, an' I'm a sparky, but you knew that anyway.

  So, we used to meet up every Friday, wives permitting, at the Dirty Duck. (That's the Black Swan to you). We'd have a few jars, play the odd game of darts, but mostly we'd just talk. All those years and we never ran out of things to talk about. Amazing really. Of course a lot of it was about football and I s'pose there's always something to say about that.

  Anyway, every Friday we'd be there chatting away about something or other. No. Not just football. We'd talk about jobs and current affairs. Yeh. Ha. Ha. We do read the papers, you know. Well, the sports pages, anyway. And then when Kev's wife went off with that bloke from the chip shop, of course, we had to spend a bit of time talking to him about that and how difficult it is to maintain a healthy relationship and mutual respect and all that. OK. OK. I do have a sensitive side you know.

  Where was I? Keep losing me thread with all your interruptions. Oh, yeh. Every Friday we'd be chatting and one day we were talking about some bank robbery or other that was on the news. This gang had got away with fifty million, or ten million, or something. Whatever it was, it was big and we were just talking about what you could do with all that money and Kev said, d'you think you'd be up for it? Robbing a bank, like? I think it was Kev, anyway, but it might have been Terry. Anyway it doesn't matter who started it, we just sort of continued talking about how we'd do it if we ever got the chance.

  It turned into a bit of a game after that. Every Friday, whatever else we talked about that day, we'd always end up talking about how we'd go about robbing the bank. We came up with some pretty wild ideas and it was just a laugh really. Four blokes on the piss having a bit of a joke about robbing a bank.

  Little John was all for going in hard, like a ram raid, using a tank or something, but he never worked out how he'd get hold of a tank or how he'd manage to hide it so that the cops couldn't trace it back to him. I never got beyond saying you'd have to fix the alarms somehow. Since none of us knew a thing about bank alarm systems and we didn't have an insider in the bank, that idea was pretty much dead in the water, too.

  Terry rather fancied explosives and I did seem to remember that there was an incident at school one time, with an explosion in the girls toilets. Very funny. I meant a real explosion. No one ever got to the bottom of it. Ha ha. But I always reckon Terry went around looking a bit pleased with himself for a few weeks after that. It was another non starter, though, 'cos we had no idea where to get hold of explosives and even if we had, we wouldn't have known how to use 'em.

  We drew the line at guns, though. We didn't want to get caught up in any shooting.

  I always favoured some kind of fraud or con trick. Trouble is I could never work out how to do it. I s'pose you have to know how the system works before you can defraud it. All I knew was that money went into my account one week and by the next it had all gone out again.

  Anyway, we just to used to toss these daft ideas around and, like I say, it was simply a game. Every week we'd try to come up with a new angle. The dafter or more bizarre, the better. Like I said, we never really intended to do it. It was just the idea that was interesting.

  Then Terry got the job of making the new doors for the bank.

  That was when it got really interesting.

  It's not a big town where we live. There's three bank branches, though, in the High Street and they're all sort of vying with one another to be the best, or the best looking, anyway. So when one of them had new front doors fitted, it stood to reason that it wouldn't be long before the others decided they'd have to have new front doors, too. I don't actually know how these things work, but somehow Terry got the contract to build the new doors for one of the banks. Some kind of bidding process I expect. And we're not talking just a couple of six panelled neo Georgian domestic front doors here. We're talking something really rather grand. Great huge solid oak doors with brass escutcheons and hinges and great stone porticos.

  Anyway, like I said, we were mates, so, if one of us got a contract like that and there was any subbing to do, then we'd use each other if we could. As it was, this seemingly straightforward job to replace a couple of doors had a bit of work for all four of us. Terry, of course, got the main deal 'cos he had to make the actual doors, but there was a bit of brickwork and making good to do around the entrance, which Kev took care of. I had a couple of new lights over the entrance porch to install, and little John used his box van to bring the doors and materials to the site. That's what mates do for each other. You help me and I help you.

  Well, on the Friday evening before the grand installation we were having a jar or two, as usual, down at the Dirty Duck and, as usual, we were putting the world to rights, talking up the football and, naturally, discussing how we would rob the bank. Especially now that we were more or less insiders.

  The ideas were as wacky as ever. Kev suggested putting a fake panel in the door with a secret button that only we could open, so that we could crawl through it during the night. The problem with that, and most of the other ideas of course, was that getting into the bank was the easiest bit. We didn't have a clue what we'd do after that. I don't s'pose they leave little piles of bank notes lying around for any passing bank robber to help himself to. Little John suggested putting lift off hinges on the doors, but, apart from each door weighing about half a ton, it had the same problems as Kev's idea. My ideas were as daft as theirs and just as impractical. And that was it, really. Just four blokes having a harmless bit of banter in the pub. After that we played darts, I remember.

  Because the doors were so big, Terry roped all four of us in to help him fit them on the Saturday when the bank was closed. The job had to be done at the weekend and finished in time for the bank to reopen on the Monday morning. On the Saturday we got the old doors off and got the new ones in place and made it secure again. All that was left for the Sunday was to finish off the light fittings, take away the old doors and a bit of rendering around the new frames.

  Working with the guys was a laugh. I don't think we ever stopped ribbing one another and joshing all day long. We came up with ever dafter ways of robbing the bank and the stupid thing was, that in the end, we didn't need any of 'em.

  We'd put up some barriers around the entrance to keep people away from the door while we were working, and we left 'em there overnight. Just before we packed up and went home, someone, I think it was Kev, stuck up a handwritten sign over the hole in the door where the letter box would go which said, 'Night Safe. Leave your cash here' with a big arrow pointing at the letter box. Typical builder's humour.

  Trouble is, someone took him seriously.

  When we got back on the Sunday morning, there was a large package that had been pushed through the unfinished letter box. It was one of those zipped plastic pouch things and there was no label or anything on the outside. Now, I'm not saying this was right. We should have just left it there. I know that. But, you know how it is. One of us said it was probably full of fivers and then someone else said, nah, prob'ly tenners. And it sort of escalated from there to being used fifties from some 'cash only, no questions asked' sort of business. And somehow we just had to know what was in it.

  There wasn't any kind of seal on it. Like I said, it was just one of them plastic pouches with a zip fastener on it. So, we had a little look inside. That's all we were gonna do, I swear. Just have a look. And it was. Used fifties, I mean. Hundreds of them. Bundled up with rubber bands.

  Even then, we weren't going to take it. We were just looking.


  Terry zipped up the bag and said to little John to put it in the van for safe keeping. He muttered something about handing it back into the bank on Monday morning. Well, we didn't know what else to do with it.

  The strange thing was, though, that after little John had put it in the van, we didn't talk about it any more. In fact, we didn't talk about anything much. All the ribbing and joshing from the day before sort of died away and we each got on with finishing our own bit of the job. Apart from little John, that is, who didn't have much to do except drive the van and make the tea.

  Anyway, around about ten o'clock, little John called us over to the van and said he'd got tea for everyone. He was quiet for a bit and we were all sitting in the back of his van warming our hands on the teacups. No one was saying much, and then little John said, "It's a hundred grand."

  No one said anything 'cos we all knew what he was talking about. We just sat there, warming our hands and supping our tea. "That's twenty five grand each," he added a couple of minutes later. No one said anything then, either, 'cos we were all thinking the same thing.

  Apparently there was nothing in the bag except the cash and a paying in slip with a bank account no on it. No names. Nothing.

  We just nodded and finished our tea. Everyone got on with their jobs. All pretty much in silence. That was the first time in about twenty years that the four of us had been together and no one could think of anything to say. Except when Daniel had the heart attack on the football pitch, that is. I do remember us all standing round at his funeral staring at our feet and no one could think of anything to say then either. That's what it was like for the rest of the day. No one talking, just like at Daniel's funeral.

  Everyone was thinking, though.

  We cleared up and packed our stuff in little John's van when we'd finished. The new door was magnificent. Terry had done a great job. He's a pretty fine chippie, by the way, if you ever want anything done. Anyway, we rode home more or less in silence. Little John dropped us off one by one at our homes and Terry took the bag of money in with him. Well, we couldn't just leave it there could we. He said he'd take round to the bank on Monday.

  Yeh. I know. Why didn't we just put it in the correct night safe at the bank? I don't know. It sort of felt like we were responsible for it somehow. Or, maybe, we were already planning to keep it.

  We didn't actually get together again until the following Friday evening at the Dirty Duck. Everyone was still very subdued. We did do a bit of banter and talk about the football, but it was all a bit like we were trying to avoid saying what we were all thinking. After about an hour, we were just sitting there, four mournful looking blokes just staring at their pints.

  Then Terry told us that he still had the money. I remember that everyone just nodded. No one said anything. It was like we all knew that he would still have it.

  He said he kept meaning to take it in to the bank, but somehow he never got round to it. We all agreed with him when he said that there was still time to take it in next Monday, but we all knew that wasn't going to happen either.

  And that's how it came about. Somehow, we'd accidently robbed the bank.

  We met up two more Fridays after that, but the joy had gone out of the meetings. There was no ribbing any more, just a bit of talk about the football. No more discussing how we'd do the bank job. No more darts. No one even got a text message from his wife asking when he'd be home, 'cos we only stayed about an hour before we all drifted back home anyway.

  And no one from the bank ever asked us about the money, and we didn't get any visits from the Police. Nothing. It seemed that whoever had put the money through the wrong slot had either not missed it yet, or, maybe the bank had compensated them, thinking it had made an error, or …?

  I have no idea why no one ever came after us.

  It was the end of our friendship, though. We shared out the money, twenty five grand each. We agreed not to splash it around. Just a modest holiday, change the car maybe. Present for the wife, perhaps, but small amounts, spread out so it didn't attract attention. And we agreed that we'd never talk about it to anyone. Never even discuss it amongst ourselves.

  And we never did. In fact we never discussed anything amongst ourselves ever again. You see, that accidental bank job cost us our friendship. We'd lost our innocence somehow. I don't think we could actually look one another in the eye. We never met up again in the Dirty Duck, never shared a job again, never went round each other's houses. It just ended. All for a measly twenty five grand. Was it ever worth it?

  I see 'em around sometimes, but we don't even pass the time of day now. Just nod and cross the street rather than risk having to say something. Kev has moved away and little John is driving the big trucks now, I hear, so he's away more often than not.

  That was about ten years ago, before I got into wiring up security systems, so I guess it's pretty safe to assume that no one's gonna come after us now. The money was spent a long while ago. I've never told anyone about it before. Not even my wife.

  She did ask why I didn't see Terry or Kev any more, but I just said we'd drifted apart. She didn't even question where the money for the car came from. Just assumed I'd saved up, I s'pose.

  Why am I telling you, now, after all these years?

  Well, I s'pose I never really did give up the dream of the really big bank job and I've just heard that there's a contract coming up to rewire the other bank. It's a big job. Too big for one man on his own, I reckon, and I just wondered if you'd be interested in coming in on a bid with me. I reckon we could make a few grand on a job that size. Only if you're interested, of course.

  THE END.

  Barnaby Wilde July 2012

  Onwards and Upwards

  Now, I know I'm not the world's most technical guy, but even I know how stairs work. At least, I thought I did, until that day.

  I used to work in a department store, just a janitor, like now, and a woman was stood at the bottom of a flight of stairs one day. "Tell me young man," she said to me. "Can you tell me, do these stairs go up or do they go down?" Of course, I gave her some smartass reply like, "It depends which end you start, madam." But, if that lady is reading this, I'd like to apologise to you, madam. Maybe you knew more than I did back then.

  My name's Jeph, by the way. Yeh, that's with a 'J' at the front and a 'ph' at the end. Short for Jepherson, Jepherson Thomas. No, that's OK. Folk are always getting it wrong. They think it's short for Geoffrey, or Jeffrey, or whatever. No matter. Jeph it is. Or, a lot of folks call me 'JT'. Hell, I've been called pretty much everything in my time. I don't take offense. If none's intended, then I don't take it.

  Anyway, I was saying about the stairs. Everyone thinks they know all there is to know about stairs, but I know a bunch of people who'd disagree with you about that. That's if they'd talk to you about it at all.

  It happened about two years back. I was still working as a janitor. Still am by the way. I reckon that's prob'ly how I'll end up, too. It may not be much, but it suits me. I was working for a little research company called Vertigo. Not the smartest name for a company, if you ask me, but then nobody did. Anyway, Vertigo was just a small company, only about twenty people working there, including me. Actually, it was exactly twenty people then. I remember precisely.

  I have no idea how Vertigo was funded, because they didn't actually produce anything. Not anything tangible that is. They were pure research. Maybe they were funded by the government or something, not that it's important. Anyway, you need to understand a bit about how the company was organised in order to make any sort of sense of this story. Not that it makes much more sense after you've heard it, to be honest.

  Anyway, Vertigo was situated on the edge of the technology park. It was built around a sort of a tower. It was just a small tower and I have no idea what it's original purpose was. Whatever. It was just a circular brick tower, with three floors above ground and a basement. Leading off the tower at an angle were two single storey wings. The easiest way to imagine i
t, is to think of it like a letter 'V'. The tower was at the vertex of the 'V' and the two wings were like the arms. I always wondered if they'd called the company Vertigo because of that 'V' shaped plan, or maybe, it was the other way round. Or, maybe, it had nothing to do with the layout of the building at all.

  Where was I? Oh, yeh. The main entrance was at the base of the tower and there was a reception desk and an admin office on that level. The entrance to the two lab wings was from there, too. I'll tell you a bit about them in a moment. As much as I know, that is.

  Anyway, above the reception area, on the next level in the tower, was a small dining room area, with a couple of vending machines and a couple of offices and, above that, on the top floor was a meeting room and the boss's office. Down in the basement were the toilets, male and female, and a little store cupboard where I kept my stuff. Connecting the four levels of the tower was a spiral staircase right down the middle. One way up and one way down.

  My job, basically, was limited to the tower. I was never allowed into the lab areas. I guess they did their own cleaning, or not, as the case might be. The only way you could get in there was with one of those magnetic passes. We all had them, even me, with our photos on, but if yours wasn't coded to open the lab doors, then you couldn't get in.

  There were two labs, like the arms on the 'V', remember? They were just called 'A lab' and 'B lab', though pretty much everyone who worked there called 'em 'Onwards' and 'Upwards'.

  That was the slogan of the company, by the way, 'Vertigo – onwards and upwards'. I'm still not sure that it was such a brilliant slogan, but that's just my opinion, like I said before.

  Now, I told you that I'm not an engineer, so I don't claim to understand what it was exactly they were working on in those labs. In any case it was secret. We all had to sign the official secret act in blood when we were hired. Ok, maybe not in blood, but you know what I mean.

  What I do know is that 'A lab' was working on magnetic levitation propulsion systems. They just called it 'maglev' for short. 'B lab' was doing something to do with anti gravity. They used to call it 'AG'. So you see, that's where the slogan came in. 'A lab' was Onwards, and 'B lab' was Upwards. It was a sort of a joke I s'pose.

  There was always rivalry between the two labs, there's no doubt about that. I wouldn't go so far as to say they hated each other, but they kept apart. They didn't sit at the same tables in the dining room, for example and the 'Onwards' magnetic stripe cards couldn't get into the 'Upwards' lab and vice versa. The 'Onwards' team used to say that the 'Upwards' were always trying to get above themselves. And the 'Upwards' used to say that 'Onwards' couldn't tell if they were coming or going. Mostly it was just friendly banter like that, but they definitely did not share information about their research projects. Maybe if they had, we'd never have had the problem with the stairs.

  During the day, I was mostly to be found on one floor or another of the tower, sweeping floors, dusting, cleaning windows, wiping down tables, that sort of thing. Every hour, though, I had to go down to the basement to check out the toilets. Like I said, being a janitor isn't the most glamorous job, but it suits me.

  All the toilets for the whole building were down in the basement. At the bottom of the spiral stairs there was a sort of a lobby area and leading off that on one side was the door to the women's rest rooms and on the other side was the door to the men's. There was nothing very unusual about either area. Four stalls in the women's side, with four hand washbasins, and two stalls and two urinals in the men's side, with hand washbasins. There was also a door to my little store room, where I kept all my cleaning stuff. Yeh, and I'd got an old office chair in there, too, where I used to escape sometimes for a quiet coffee and a sandwich, not that I couldn't use the dining room or anything. It's just that sometimes I like my own company for a while and they don't provide offices for janitors.

  Anyway, all the rest rooms were in the basement, so, during any day you could reckon that everyone in the company would be making at least one trip down to the basement. So, it was important that I made my hourly trips to keep it all looking clean and smelling fresh.

  That day, the day the stairs stopped working, began just like any other. I'd already done a couple of the hourly checks in the basement and I decided to retreat to my little cupboard for five minutes for a coffee and a sandwich. I heard footsteps on the metal staircase as people came and went outside, but it was just background noise and not unusual. Until I became aware of someone crying, that is.

  Now, that wasn't that unusual. Not in itself. From time to time I would find some woman or another in tears down in the basement. It was about the only place they could escape to in private if they were upset about something and it seems to be in the nature of women that they get upset about things on a pretty regular basis. OK. Maybe that is a sexist comment, but I'm only speaking as I find. I don't ever remember finding a man sobbing down in the toilets, but I keep a box of paper tissues permanently on the side in my little cubby hole for the times I find myself consoling one or another of the girls. I think they see me as non threatening. Actually, most of the time, most folk don't really see me at all.

  Anyway, I digress. I could hear sobbing, so I pushed my door open a little and I could see that it was the girl from reception. She was stood at the bottom of the stairs, pale faced and sort of whimpering. "Tanya," I called across softly to her. I had to say it a couple of times before she heard me. I beckoned her over to my cupboard. I reckoned she wouldn't want other folk seeing her like that.

  "What's the matter, Tanya?"

  To my surprise she threw her arms about me. "I can't go up the stairs, JT," she sobbed.

  I had no idea what she meant. Had someone upset her and she didn't want to go back up, or had she hurt her leg, or what? "What d'you mean?" I asked.

  "I keep trying to go up," she sobbed. "And I just end up back down here."

  She seemed genuinely frightened. I did my usual avuncular thing and gave her a tissue. I heard more footsteps on the stairs and pulled her into the cupboard a little. I figured she wouldn't want to be on public display. I heard someone crash in through the door to the men's toilets.

  "I think I'm going mad, JT," she said. "Do you think I could have Alzheimer's?"

  Now, Tanya, I should tell you, was all of about twenty two years old. I've heard of early onset Alzheimer's, but I don't think I recall it affecting anyone of twenty two.

  "What do you mean, Tanya?" I asked her. "Did you forget something? Hell, I forget something every day."

  "It's the stairs, JT," she sobbed. "I can't get up the stairs."

  I heard the door to the men's room crash open again and footsteps start up the metal staircase. A few seconds later more footsteps coming down, followed by a mild curse.

  "Do you want to tell me about it?" I asked.

  The footsteps started back up the stairs again, but a few seconds later there was more cursing from the lobby. I pushed my cupboard door open with my foot and saw that it was George Williams from the Onwards team. He was a little bald guy, about forty. I knew he was a family man and not one given to cursing. I wondered who'd rocked his boat.

  I watched through the part open door as he began to walk slowly up the stairs until his feet disappeared from view as went round the curve. A few seconds later those same feet reappeared heading slowly back down.

  "What the f***?" he said, as he landed back down in the lobby area. I coughed loud enough for him to hear me, but, apart from a quick glance over in my direction, he just stood there shaking his head. I noticed that Tanya had stopped sobbing and was watching George from behind me. We saw him put his foot on the lowest step, like he was testing it. Reassuring himself that it was solid. He shook his head gently, grasped the banister rail and began walking up the stairs. He was taking it real slow, though, as if he was checking the integrity of each step as he went. Just like before his feet disappeared from view as he rounded the corner and, just like before, they reappeared a few seconds later, heading jus
t as carefully downwards.

  "It's happening to him, too," whispered Tanya. She was still gripping my arm I noticed.

  George stood there at the bottom of the stairs for a while, doing nothing. He looked across to me and Tanya, but didn't say or do anything to acknowledge that he'd seen us. For the fourth time he set off gingerly up the stairs and, for the fourth time, reappeared in the lobby. When he looked across to me, his face had turned white. I don't mean he was a black man that had suddenly bleached. He was a white man who'd gone even paler.

  "What the f***?" he said again.

  "Ladies present, George," I said.

  "That's what happened to me," said Tanya, releasing her grip on my arm. "It's happening to him, too."

  George looked from me to the stairs and back again. "Can you sort these stairs out, Jeph?" he said. "I think it's your job to keep this area clean isn't it?"

  "Sure is," I nodded. Was that the problem? Something unsavoury on the stairs? Wouldn't be the first time that someone had thrown up on their way to the bathroom. I picked up my bucket and mop and headed for the stairs. George stood aside to let me pass and I headed on up.

  But the next thing I knew, I was back down in the lobby with George and Tanya. How did that happen?

  George just stood there nodding and Tanya just stood there. I felt a bit foolish, like I'd forgotten what it was that I was s'posed to be doing. I turned about and started back up, but, just like before I ended up at the bottom with the other two. I have no idea how it happened. One moment I was heading up, one step at a time, and, then, without any noticeable change I was no longer heading up. I was heading down. I wasn't even aware of it happening. There was no break. No blackout. No dizzy spell. It wasn't like the stairs suddenly flipped over or anything like that. It was just a continuous action. Walking up just became walking down. About halfway up the stairs, up became down. It didn't make any kind of sense.

  Footsteps sounded from above and feet, then legs came into view as one of the Upwards team came clattering down the staircase. It was Jack Carroway, one of the boffins from 'B lab'.

  "Hi," he said as he bounded on past us into the men's rest room. We just stood there, the three of us, me still holding my pail and mop, Tanya with a tissue still in her hand, and George stroking his bald head. We didn't say anything. We just waited for Jack to come back out of the rest room.

  When he emerged a few minutes later it was to find three people staring at the rest room door.

  "Is it a private party, or can anyone join in?" he quipped as he rushed past. He took the stairs two at a time and, two at a time arrived back down at the bottom a moment later. There was a look of astonishment on his face as he regarded the three of us. We all nodded before he even had a chance to ask the question.

  Unlike the three of us, Jack seemed to find the experience one of exhilaration rather than anxiety. He tested the stairs two more times, with the same result, before he said anything.

  "Seems to be around the eighth step," he said. "Some sort of reversal field."

  Now, I have no more idea than you what a 'reversal field' might be, and I'm not even sure that Jack had any idea. I think he just kind of made up the name on the spot. You could almost hear the cogs whirring in his brain as he thought about the paper he'd be able to publish about this.

  Meanwhile, Betty, one of the admin girls came daintily down the stairs. By the time we were aware of her coming down, it was too late to stop her coming further. She seemed a little surprised to find four people waiting to greet her at the bottom of the stairs, but her need was clearly great and she didn’t waste time in conversation as she headed into the ladies rest room. Needless to say she was even more surprised to find us still there when she came out, particularly when we just stood aside and watched her head back upstairs. She was almost as upset as Tanya had been when she found herself back at the bottom.

  Over the next couple of hours we tried every way we could think of to get back up those stairs. During that time, ten more folk had joined us in the basement. I told you we only had one set of rest rooms in the place. Some of the folk had come driven by natural needs, you might say. And some of them had come looking for colleagues who hadn't reappeared. We tried hollering up the stairs to get help, or to stop other folk from coming down, but it seems that Jack Carroway's 'reversal field' not only bounced people back down to the basement, it bounced sound and light back too. Nobody heard us hollering until it was too late and they were trapped along with us.

  We did some experiments with my mop, too. Jack tried walking up the stairs holding the mop handle out ahead of himself, but, right about the eighth step the handle just sort of disappeared, like it was being pushed through the surface of a liquid and, at the same time, the tip would reappear heading back the other way from a spot just a bit over from where it went in. Well, of course, once he'd done this a few times with the mop handle he tried it again with himself. It was really odd seeing the back of him disappear into the 'reversal field' as the front reappeared. All he kept saying was "Incredible. Amazing."

  The rest of us weren't quite so impressed. It was getting a bit crowded down here. The only good thing was that we had plenty of toilets and plenty of water.

  The mobile phones wouldn't work, of course, since we were underground and no one had thought to install a fixed line phone down in the toilets. There didn't seem to be a need when they were built. There was also no other way out apart from the metal spiral staircase. A bit of a fire hazard you might think, but then toilets don't catch fire that often, I guess.

  The women gravitated to their own rest room. At least there were seats for four of them, I s'pose. The men were mainly still hanging about at the foot of the stairs. Every so often one of them would try something new, like throwing coins or paper aeroplanes to see if they could get anything past the eighth step or whether the 'reversal field' had switched off.

  After another hour we had pretty much a full house. Nineteen of the twenty people who worked for Vertigo were now trapped in the basement toilets.

  Now, I told you that there was a lot of rivalry between the Onwards team and the Upwards team and that they never discussed their work with one another, but the interesting thing was that there were now animated conversations going on between two or three groups as they tried to work out what had happened. There was also an atmosphere of calm, on the whole. Mostly these were scientists who found the situation intriguing rather than frightening.

  Every so often I'd get asked questions about whether there were any conduits or passages leading away from the basement, but, hey, I'm the janitor. I didn't design the building.

  There was a ventilation duct, fortunately, but it was too small for a person to climb through. I guess that they'd be able to drop food down it, though, if anyone ever found us and if we couldn't figure a way to get up the stairs.

  As far as I could gather from listening in to the various debates, both the Onwards team and the Upwards team were running experiments that day and there was a idea emerging from the scientists that somehow the experiments were interacting. Somehow the 'maglev field', whatever that was, was interacting with the 'antigrav field' and it was producing the 'reversal field' at the focus point, which just happened to be the eighth step of the spiral staircase.

  Well, we all sure felt a whole lot better knowing that, I can tell you.

  Trouble is, that all the people who could turn off the power to the experiments were trapped down here in the basement.

  Now, we had some pretty fine minds in the crowd down here, but let's just say that they were more interested in the hypothetical side of the problem than the practicalities. Some of us were getting mighty hungry, though, and wondering how we were ever going to get home.

  "How long are these experiments going to last?" I asked. There were a few sheepish looks.

  "Ours isn't on a timer," said Jack from the Upwards team. "How about yours?"

  There were head shakes from the Onwards team members. "Nope. Ours is on ma
nual, too."

  They spent another hour discussing how to turn the power off remotely. The ideas were as whacky as digging tunnels, or, somehow, trying to manufacture a long enough rod to feed up through the ventilation duct with a sign on it saying, "Please turn off the power."

  Well, like I said at the start, I'm not a technical man, but I have had the odd bad experience with electricity before. Mostly it's been light bulbs exploding or toasters catching fire. Little stuff, fortunately, but enough to teach you a little respect. However, I thought that maybe it was time for me to drop the respect stuff.

  I went back into my little cupboard and retrieved the aluminium foil wrapper from my sandwiches and wrapped it around the end of the wooden handle to my broom. I took the bulb from the lamp socket and jammed the end of the broom into the socket. There was a small flash and a bang and the basement was plunged into darkness.

  I guess I should have warned the folks first. There was a bit of screaming from inside the ladies restroom, but the emergency lighting kicked in after only a couple of seconds. It wasn't bright, but it was enough to see our way around. I think it was Jack Carroway who was first to react and he raced up the stairs.

  This time he didn't rebound. He reappeared by choice. "It's gone," he said and then charged back up to see what damage I'd caused in his lab.

  There was a scramble up the stairs as everyone pushed to be up first. Pretty soon it was just me left behind.

  I still work there, at Vertigo. They're still working on 'maglev' and 'antigrav'. The two teams are working together these days and they're trying to recreate the 'reversal field'. I think they blame me, for some reason, because they can't get it to happen again. Apparently they think the sudden crash when I cut the power off has altered something, only they don't know what.

  They've never actually accused me directly, but I notice they no longer call me 'Jeph' or 'JT'. Everybody calls me Jepherson these days. Somehow it just sounds a tad more formal. A little bit more distant. I don't spend so much time in the basement these days, either. I eat my sandwiches in the dining room and I keep most of my supplies in a cupboard up above ground level. Of course, I still have to go down to the basement to clean the toilets or, like anyone else, to use them. But I notice that most people go out to the temporary toilets in the car park now. There is talk about putting a second staircase down to the basement, but it doesn't seem to be a priority.

  THE END

  Barnaby Wilde July 2012

  Swaycrazy