Portrait of a Man with a Book, about 1524

By Francesco Mazzola,
called Parmigianino (1503 – 1540)

I've searched everywhere for this legendary book. In all the great libraries of Rome, Athens and China. Whenever I could gain employment in the library of a noble house, I was there, offering my services.

Now I have stumbled across it here in this miserable place. In this rainy English market town, hidden in the unused library of a brainless aristocrat. Too stupid to understand the treasure he possessed.

At last in my hands The Secrets of Alchemy. The turning of base metal into gold. I shall possess great wealth beyond my dreams. All I have to do is escape with this treasure. They'll never notice it missing: most of the books here are left rotting.

It has cost me everything to find. I have lost my precious Parma estate with its wonderful orchards and fine wine. My beloved wife of noble birth and family. All my wealth and honour. And almost my very mind.

Now it is in my hands what is the secret? That wonderful secret of the ancients. Nothing. Nothing I have not already read a thousand times. Nothing that I have not tried and has proved a dismal failure. My whole life's work is over, it is in ruins.

The Wrong Twin

Malcolm's wedding was all too rapidly approaching and he found himself inundated with details that held little interest. These were the usual boring, tedious, despicable wedding day details: flowers to order, most of which he could not tell apart nor name nor describe; places he had never heard of that suddenly became of paramount importance; people he had no idea of, had never heard of and were somehow related; seating plans with the complexity of Fermat's Last Theorem; and transport arraignments that made Heathrow Airport look decidedly simple (and potentially with almost as many bags lost). Is it any wonder Malcolm took to daydreaming and reminiscing?

* * *

Oh yes, reminiscing, back to the summer when he was eleven, was it eleven? Something like that, anyway it's not important, just that it was a far simpler time. Such summers of your youth are always bright, sunny and endless, especially the ones remembered with such deep affection. Hence that indisputable fact probably wasn't true. Most likely it was just as cloudy, rainy and dull as the one heralding his wedding and with as few miserable flickers of sunshine.

My Wives

This was the final load. Malcolm was up unnaturally early this Wednesday morning as he had been on this day every fortnight for the past few months. Throwing on yesterdays clothes and not bothering to take his normal shower he opened the curtains onto a dull day. He was now vaguely used to what six in the morning looked like and he did not find it tempting.

A heavy parcel was on the living room table where he had left it the previous evening. Then he had meticulously wrapped its contents in several black bin liners. Carefully picking up the parcel and lumbering to his first floor flats front door he opened it as silently as possible. He edged down the stairs, clinging onto his parcel, and out to the back of the block of flats. It was here the bins to the flats were located. He opened them searching for one that was half full. Having found something suitable he carefully moved some of the other waste bags to one side. Then he kissed his parcel goodbye before ceremoniously laying it flat in the bin. He covered his parcel with some other waste bags making sure it mostly hidden.

Looking down at his half covered parcel he now took time to say his farewells. Malcolm felt it was necessary to say a proper goodbye even so he was most fearful that any prying eyes should inspect his bin or see his deeply felt ceremony. Then he closed the lid and patted it, almost caressing it. The whole process was so much like loosing a much loved friend.

Please Don't Open the Box

Whatever you do, please, please don't open the box. I'm asking you, begging you, please don't open the box.

Erwin, that vindictive son of a bitch, put me in here. “A little thought experiment,” he said, “come on step inside, here, kitty, kitty. Look at this shiny bottle, here, kitty, kitty.”

That shiny blue bottle sure did look intriguing. He knows, that Erwin knows, us cats like to play with such things. He's had plenty of experience of tantalising us cats. I know that now, when it's all too late.

Then he slams the lid closed on me. Boy did I screech when he shut that lid. I fought back I did. I can be quick when I want – admittedly it's not that often – and I almost got away. But I was not quite quick enough this time.

I think I caught him a good one, just before he closed that lid, three right nice scratch marks right across his smug face. I saw the blood trickling down his cheek just as the lights went out. Serves him right now everyone will know I fought back. Yes, I fought back. And I heard him complaining, moaning, asking for help, help, help. Like a little baby he was, wanting it all bandaged up. Then he's crying like a little girl when his wife put iodine on it. Yes, I fought back.

Messages to the Leader

Shahid Rafiq Tarar was ensconced deep inside the Pavlov Institute. Here he reminisced about when this institute was bright, new and gleaming. Then it was teaming with students, with researchers and academic discussion of the most vibrant kind. Then it was something to be part of an institution named after a famous Earth scientist. The institutes' path breaking research into human and other life forms behaviour had long since ceased. Tarar was too old and cantankerous to consider moving and so he spent most of his weary final days deep inside one of the institutes' bunkers. There he might elude the worst effects of the drones.

The bunker he had chosen was large and almost empty being built when the Institute was first starting its decline. No star light could penetrate the kilometres of rock and the artificial light was extremely dull. To Tarar shame everything was covered in dust and he was too old – and too proud – to demean himself cleaning. Sitting at a makeshift desk he was writing a message in the ancient style, a style that was once fashionable well before the institute was ever conceived. Tarar was still unskilled in this ancient art of writing with Biro on paper.

I Want To Go

My little flash fiction story I Want To Go has appeared today on 365tomorrows. This site publishes a daily piece of flash fiction in the science and speculative fiction genre. It's something of a mix with miscellaneous types of science and speculative fiction. Also the quality varies from many intriguing pieces all the way to the occasional why-the-hell-did-they-bother.

The hominid life forms at 365tomorrows must be super brave and have hardened arteries of lead as this is the second story of mine they have dared published – such is their reckless abandon. The other piece was A Quiet Drive.

14 February 2096

It was here again. After years of evasion; years of hoping he was free; years of knowing it was out there, somewhere, waiting, always waiting; Hasif knew it was here again; he just knew. It had found him. There was no real evidence, nothing you could say was proof, definitive; just a murmur, a rustle in the stillness, something watching in the blackness, waiting. It was back again allright. And it wanted him.

He would have to go on the run again; before it was too late. This really annoyed Hasif; he was just starting to get his life back together again; again after the last time. He had a new name, a new job, and a few new friends. The job was nothing special: he was just some anonymous clerk performing tasks considered too lowly for the main computer; still he got by, just about, and it was better then nothing. The friends, also, were nothing special: just some people he could have a conversation with; but he would never let them close, they could never be trusted. Could they have? No: he was sure he had given nothing away. It had just found him; hunted him down; just like the last time.

Hasif returned to his small cramped apartment and started, sadly, packing his things; he would not regret leaving this place, it was not much for all his years of work. So far he had not seen the whatever-it-was; the murmurs were enough, or was he overreacting? Then he glanced out into the walkway below the apartment block. And there it was; waiting, lingering, looking up. It looked older, more tired, battered; he supposed even androids or whatever-it-is must grow old, wear out. It was still recognisable from the first time he had seen it. That monstrous brown sludge of an android. The thick set legs; unaccountably fast from Hasif's past experience. The hollowed out muddy brown face; if you can call it a face, and Hasif did not want to get close enough to find out. Hasif stepped back and out of sight, then peeked, It was still there; waiting, lingering, looking up.

With God on Your Side

Father Nick Portman arrived hurriedly and late to take confessional. Wednesday was the day Pete intoned his weeks miscellaneous trivia and Father Nick was not looking forward to it. The one saving grace was that Father Nick had managed to twist his schedule so Peter Crane was the only Wednesday recalcitrant. The more interesting and mostly female reprobates being reserved for other days. That way Peter's monologue could be cut short with claimed urgent pastoral duties. Usually a comforting glass of sherry. But there would be no sherry today as Father Nick had a prior appointment.

Flinging the church door open and Father Nick did not see the dullard he expected. Harry Tate was anxiously pacing the aisle. The sudden sound causing the thick set Harry to spin round and almost loose his balance.

“Got to see you Father,” he said, his large hand grabbing a pew to steady himself.

Harry Tate was robust, mid forties and not one to argue with on his way home from the pub. A couple of times a week he had his regular nights out at the village local and this only encouraged him to become belligerent. Fortunately it was only late afternoon so Father Nick hoped there was some reasoning with him in his troubled state.

The Fermat Solution

Eekhout pondered his solution, it was elegant, very elegant, he was pleased with this morning's deliberations. A simple solution to Fermat's Last Theorem. Short enough that even the eminent Pierre de Fermat might have scribbled it in the margin of some ancient manuscript. Nice.

Back in the late twentieth-century, three centuries ago, when a solution was first proposed, no normal person could understand it. None but the most hardcore mathematician grasped its real significance. Eekhout solution would have been understood by any twentieth-century geek. Nice.

Leaning against the cold tiled wall he dreamed of fame and glory, accolades and prizes; and a nice swanky office here on the 32nd floor of the Wiles Mathematics Department.

“What you doing?” Swanwick, his boss, growled.

“Sir.” Eekhout straightened himself up. If he had not been daydreaming he might have heard his boss coming, such was Swanwick's thundering ponderous walk.

“Think you're some kind of genius do you? Well I can tell you: there are hundreds like you. Not worth nothing.”

Eekhout grabbed his mop and started pushing it around the floor in aimless circles, following some random path. He did so wish he was back in the twenty-first century. Then he would have been considered a great scientist, would have won the Nobel Prize or something. But they had stopped giving those out when every school kid was getting one for their end of term paper. That's progress, he supposed.

Swanwick wobbled with indignation. “You want this job? Do you? Well, get that mop moving.”

Swanwick wasn't so bad, not so long as you kept quite during one of his rants. Later on, in the staff cubbyhole, he'd have forgotten all about it and, if Eekhout was really lucky, be almost pleasant.

Eekhout loved working at the university, in building 704, up here on the 32nd floor, just being around all those wonderful minds, and he did not want to give that up. Even if it did mean having to clean the toilets. To have done a proper job here, something recognisable, you'd have to do a bit better than solve Fermat's Last Theorem – yet again. Such feats were so commonplace.

* * *

With Swanwick gone Eekhout could relax once more. He lent against the cold tiles again, mop in hand just in case, and began to ponder his other favourite subjects; some that were even more perplexing. You'd think, with all those so very superior minds, they'd find a better method of cleaning urine off the floor. Mop and bucket: so very old fashioned. Eekhout had other theorems to ponder: why couldn't all those great minds aim straight? Why did they keep missing the toilets?

Always Leaving

From the first I was determined to leave. It was not the most comfortable of interviews. Alice was a thin and starchy and appeared used to getting her way. It was hardly the most engaging of jobs: being a trainee at a hairdresser's. A hairdresser's with pretensions of being an upmarket salon. Basically I was expected to sweep the floor and make the tea. Even for that role she made me feel distinctly unqualified.

She was not a pleasant interviewer. She looked at my arm.

“You'll regret that,” she rasped.

I did not need to look where she was gazing. I was proud of my tattoo. The pain was worth the wonderful green snake coiled through one eye of a skull and hissing joyfully having twisted its way through the frontal lobe. I did not dignify her pathetic attempt at art criticism with an answer. Being twenty years older she was unlikely to understand. At least that's what I believed in my naive late teens. She looked harshly at me.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “you will. In time.”

I can't quite remember why I got the job it all seemed such an inauspicious start. There must have been plenty of girls willing to work at a hairdresser's – even without all those pretentious.

At first I did little more than sweep, clean and be constantly admonished for loitering with a sullen expression. A few weeks later and I had saved enough out of my meagre wage packet for a second tattoo. I'm not sure if this was simply to spite Alice.

This time the tattoo was just above my ankle and was smaller and less painful. I remember strutting into the salon defiantly. Just waiting for someone to notice the blue and gold butterfly its wings emblazoned with large green eyes. Alice did not say anything and remained taciturn all day. How I felt so pleased with myself.

Alice had money, some kind of social position, mostly assumed. With that came her expectation of being looked up to, of being treated deferentially, as some kind of authority. Me, nor the numerous other girls who passed through the salon, ever reciprocated. This only annoyed Alice and cause her to escalate the haughtiness. Behind her back it all the became something of a macabre joke. A comedy quickly pushed aside when she strode into the salon. Soon followed by fleeting, knowing smirks.

Fast forward twelve years of drudgery and being looked down upon. It was difficult to hate Alice even though I desperately wanted to. All this time I wanted to leave but somehow it was never the right time. Next week, month, when I had a bit more saved, when holidays, Christmas, that weekend festival was over. Then I'll swan up to her and tell her what I really think. Then depart never to return. A shocked Alice left behind standing mouth open. It was only a daydream, a vague aspiration.

The cancer and Chemo were having their affect. Alice's hair was just starting to fall out. She was always thin and starting to look emaciated. Little absences become more frequent with her constant trips to hospitals and doctors. These made the salon a more friendly, chatty, place to work. At least until her haughty and brisk return.

It was late one Friday afternoon and time for the weekend to begin. I made the mistake of not absconding quickly enough with the other girls.

“Off,” Alice said, looking in a mirror, “take it off, all of it off.”

It was starting to get dark and really I wanted to be away. Alice untangled the tight mop on her head and sat in a chair waiting. She had never trusted me with her hair before.

“You're absolutely sure?” I asked, hoping above all she would have second thoughts. It was not like her to be impulsive.

Alice nodded. Her black hair danced for the final time. I picked up the shaver and started. Alice never once sneaked a look in the mirror. The black, presumably dyed, hair cascaded to the floor I had recently swept.

I felt the pressure of the confessional: to divulge my hidden life and troubles. But the moment was far too unbearably intimate for me. Some things, many things she had no right to know. Pity was not on the agenda, neither for her nor me.

“Done,” I said, not an instant to soon.

The pity remained unspoken.

She looked incongruous, the smart designed dress and atop the skinhead look. The fine black follicles waiting to bristle and the occasional white blotches where all hair had already departed. She looked so much older the lines in her face highlighted and now no longer in shadow.

As soon as was decent I left. Alice locked up the salon with a thin scarf tied round her head.

And those tattoos: how I so regretted them now. My tastes have evolved and they no longer express who I want to be. Forever they will be a reminder of what I never was. How Alice – sitting in that chair and with me shaving her head – would have gloated over that confession. But I could never have tolerated that. It's impossible for her to know now. That, at least, is one good thing.