Behind You

Behind you, you hear someone sneeze. In the window of the building across the street you see a man sneeze. The sounds sync perfectly. For a moment, just a few fractions of a second, time stops. You, the man across the street, and the sneezer in your building, you are all frozen. And then life starts again. Time keeps moving. You’re not sure it ever happened. You’re certainly not going to ask Dennis from accounts, when he puts away his handkerchief, if time seemed to stop for him for just a moment, right after he sneezed. That’s the kind of thing that earns you funny looks in the office. It certainly won’t get you invited to the pub for a drink on Friday night. And you want this job to work out. This time, you want people to like you, not think of you as the strange girl with too many bangles who says weird things. You promised yourself that this job was going to be different. You weren’t going to have to explain that it seemed weird to you too, because you weren’t going to bring things like this up in the first place. But this, this can’t go without remarking, surely. How could you let this go? Dennis must be thinking the same thing at the moment, well, if not the exact same thing then something along the same lines, but obviously an internal narrative more specific to Dennis and his particular circumstances. But he’s got to be wondering about what just happened. “Dennis, did you just notice that? Right after you sneezed, time seemed to stand still, just for a second…”

Dennis just looks at you. His eyes look frightened, but the rest of his face is impassive…

Two Jags

It's when walking down the main street, my main street, the street through my 'burb. The place I bump into friends, the place I see those same people every day. Not friends, strangers really, but part of my community none the less. It’s when walking down this street, in this familiar and every day place that I first notice it, or notice the first one, or, whatever. That's when it starts. 

It's an old Jaguar, mid restoration, I don’t know, maybe thirty years old. The panels are all beat up and unpainted. Its exhaust is smokey and the engine sounds like sandpaper. I notice it for how cool it could be. Potentially. But what really made it memorable, that first time, was the driver. He was wearing a tweed jacket, his white beard was overshadowed by the moustache that sat upon it, tidily combed and twirling up at the edges. And in his mouth was a pipe. He looked like a caricature of himself; his appearance was not that of someone you'd forget easily. He certainly didn't look much like a mechanic obsessed with a labour of love. He looked like someone who'd been driving the same car for years. It was a cool car, but it was a tired car, that much was for sure.

Now the thing that gets to me, the part that I can't get my head around is the next day. It was a Sunday morning, and a sunny one at that. I was heading to my usual cafe, a greasy breakfast and strong coffee was beckoning to cure my hangover. I almost didn't notice it. He almost drove past me without me even realising. The bumpers were shining and the paint job was glossy. Through the windows I could see beautiful leather interior. The sound from the exhaust as it sailed past me was almost like music, so smooth and powerful sounding. I would not have even had made a connection with the day before if it wasn't for the driver, pipe smouldering away and facial hair even more elegantly groomed than on Saturday. 

I ran after him when the car stopped at the lights just ahead of me. Smiling through the window I asked the driver where his other car was today, and why two the same? Collector? He looked at me with the slightly puzzled look that people have when strangers accost them at traffic lights. "I don't have any other car son. This is the one I've been driving for nearly half my life now". The lights went green, the car in front of him pulled away, I heard a deep rumble and then his foot lifted from the clutch. The encounter over in a flash, I still can't figure it out.

The Sky

It's a quiet little town. Sure, you might've seen it in the guide books. A tourist town with plenty of people passing through, but underneath the veneer of foot traffic it's just a small town, you can walk around it in an hour or so, which has been Mr Little’s habit in the mornings since he arrived a day or two ago. 

It's a remote small town, with cold air blowing off the snow on the mountains behind it. And hot water bubbling up from under the rock beneath it. The remoteness is probably why he chose it. A perfect place to get away from it all, to shelter from what he knew was about to happen. Not that he knew how it would happen, that's why he chose to go somewhere out of the way, in case things were slow and chaotic and not the quick and final that he suspected.

He wasn't scared. He knew that he had a reputation for being scared but he felt the reputation was not wholly warranted. Sure things scared him from time to time, but no more than anyone else. It was just that they always pointed out when he got scared, especially if it turned out in the end to be unnecessary. They called him chicken, he wasn’t, he was just sensible. And if they thought that made him a chicken then that was their problem, not his. But that was behind him now, he wasn’t scared and he'd come to this little town for some peace and quiet. No one knew him here and no one was going to tease him or call him chicken if he was scared. Which he certainly wasn't. 

It was after a late lunch when he noticed. He was heading back to his hotel and saw a strange sky. Nothing you'd particularly perceive to be a danger, not unless you were constantly scanning sky for a sign that it would all come falling down. He knew now that the time had come. He didn't even bother going back to his room. The hotel sprawled in two wings over flat and tidily kept lawns, he headed straight for the wing that housed the bar. It was a beautiful old building, but while it obviously received a lot of maintenance attention it still couldn't shake the aura of faded glory that it appeared have picked up some time in the last thirty years. 

On the ground floor of the eastern wing of his grand old hotel was a bar and restaurant which faced out towards the gardens. At the end of the room was a large fireplace that put out a comforting heat. He took a large cosy seat close to the fire and ordered himself a drink. The waiter was distracted as he came back with the drink. People were gathering near the window and talking in hushed, panicked tones. The waiter almost tripped as he approached "your champagne Mister Little. Shall I charge it to your room?"

"Yes, thank you" there'd be not need to settle this particular account. 

As the waiter scurried back to the bar he thought he heard Mr Little say something, he was too panicked by what was going on outside to stop and go back. But he's sure he heard him say, "I told you all, this would happen".

Inventing Love

She came into Seven’s office with such a lack of confidence that he thought she must be lost. She was below average height without being short. Her hair was a dull blonde that hung just above her shoulders and was straight across the fringe. A pale yellow dress and light tan shoes, she almost dressed as though she was trying to blend into something. Steven wasn’t quite sure what she could possibly blend into though, pretty without being glamorous, and a look of sensible honesty about her. “Ah, hello, Mr Stevens?”

Trying to put her at ease he smiled, pointed towards the chair in front of his desk and said “call me Steven” Shit! He thought. He hated it when he made that mistake. “Oh sorry, Mr Steven” His attempt to put her at ease had failed entirely, she was now more tense than before, outwardly she looked more tense than he can remember anyone looking. “No ‘Mr’, just Steven” he added, trying to sound casual and breezy. Why did he always make this mistake? “Ah, oh right, I was told the second door was the office of Mr…”

“You’re in the right place” interrupting her was the best thing to do, get it over with as quickly as possible “I’m Mr Stevens, but call me Steven. I know, I know, Steven Stevens. No, I don’t know why my parents thought it’d be funny”. She smiled, they always smile. But then she kept smiling, usually it moves from smile, to smirk, and then inevitably to laugh. Not this time though. She just looked him in the eye and smiled at him “That’s a lovely name”. Not through any skill of Steven’s, in fact by doing what he usually avoided doing, he had achieved his aim of putting her at ease. She was at ease and was struck by the man with the unbelievable name who sat behind the desk in front of her. He wore a brown three piece suit and no tie, his hair was parted on the left hand side and combed very carefully over a hairline that was ever so slightly retreating from the site of the endearingly large eyebrows he sported. The two of them sat quietly for just a moment as the large clock on the wall of the office let out a couple of click clicks in the softly loud way that office clocks do.

“So…” clearing his throat and shuffling the papers on his desk “you’re Dorothy right?” she nodded confirmation “and what can we do for you here today Dorothy?”

“Well, I’ve had this idea”

“They usually do when they come here” he was on autopilot, one of his standard lines to help move things along. The thing with working at the patent office is that everyone who comes to see you thinks that they’ve had a flash of genius. Almost always they haven’t. It’s actually quite difficult to invent something new and worthy of the legal protection of a patent, most people haven’t even bothered to look up whether their “brilliant” idea has been thought of before, or already exists, or even if it’s readily available at the corner store. So Steven spends most of his time speeding up the meeting so he can more quickly get to the part where he tells the applicant that they can’t patent whatever their idea is. But he doesn’t feel like that today, he wants to hear Dorothy out, he’s regretting his reflexive sarcastic response. “Sorry, carry on. What is this idea?”

Initially she’d felt relieved when she met Steven, he seemed like a quiet and straight forward person like her, maybe a little bit shy, but that was also like her. Now though, he was being short with her and she wasn’t sure he was going to be the best person to hear about her invention. Although, she did have the feeling that maybe he was putting on the gruff face. It was probably all part of the job, and she’d come all the way down here, she wasn’t going to stop just because the nice man at the patent office wasn’t as polite as she’d like. Forge on, deep breath. “Well… you wont laugh will you?” her confidence has left her again already, she looks like she might actually cry “I mean, I’m sure you hear all kinds of silly ideas, and this one’s silly too. But it works, I’ve thought it all through. I’ve even built a prototype”

This was a good sign for Steven, almost all of the successful applicants had made some kind of plan or prototype. At the very least they’d done their research. “No, no, don’t be shy. You’re right, I do hear some silly things, it’s all in a day’s work here. And I pride myself on my professionalism” The extra height in his posture wasn’t a show to put Dorothy at ease again, he really did feel pride. “Well, I’ve invented… I’ve made, well. It’s a Love Machine”

Click click click click

Clearing his throat and looking down at the papers on his desk, Steven asked “Ah… Dorothy, sorry, Miss Boulder. What exactly do you mean by Love Machine?”

“Please, Dorothy’s fine. Well, I guess it’s exactly what the name says. It’s a machine, about the size of a jewellery box, and well, it’s for making someone love”.

“I… see…” Steven Steven’s wore an expression on his face that made it quite clear to any observer that he did in fact, not see at all. He clearly had no idea what Dorothy was talking about but was determined to push ahead. “And how does this Love Machine of yours work then?” Regaining himself slightly he pulled out a form with a series of check boxes down the right hand side.

“Well it’s hard to explain really. Do you know about… Does your office deal much in the field of replicable anomalies?”

“I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about” And he was afraid, he didn’t take her for a crazy. How could this lovely woman in front of him be another one of the weirdos who wanted to patent their latest imagined magic trick?

“Hmm. Look, I know what you’re thinking. I thought it was crazy myself. But it’s all very sensible when you break it down to rational pieces. The problem is that there’s so many of the pieces.” She was sure she could convince him.

“Well. Perhaps you could show me how it works? That often helps to clear things up” Something about the idea intrigued Steven “who is it that is compelled to love? And what is it that they love? I mean, how do we know if it’s worked?”

“It’s a two person thing really. One person, the operator, holds it from the back and opens the box up towards the subject. The mechanism begins to move when the box is open and when the subject looks into the box they then… They then feel the effect of the Love Machine.” Dorothy was on a roll now, she felt confident, or at least she felt how she imagined confident people must feel. She took a deep breath to fuel her explanation. “When the subject looks into the box they will fall in love with the operator. It really is a Love Machine Mr Stevens”.

“Please, call me Steven” Gr, why did he always have to bring up his name. “And have you tested this machine?” He was intrigued now. He couldn’t tell you why, but something about the idea appealed to him. Love, he thought, what a nice idea.

“Yes, well, no. No I haven’t tested it yet. It’s just that, well I haven’t found someone to try it on” Dorothy blushed, just a little.

“Well, do you have it here?” Steven’s curiosity was stronger than his belief but there was something else in the mix as well. And hope is a strong force. Dorothy for her part was almost shaking. She couldn’t remember how she thought her trip to the patent office would go, but she’s sure her imagination hadn’t conjured up a scene like this. “It’s right here” she reached into her large handbag and pulled out what, from the outside had all the appearance of a jewellery box “I converted my jewellery box. Now my bedside table’s a mess of rings and old necklace’s I haven’t worn for years” Dorothy had never been the kind of person to get chatty when she was nervous but now she had forgotten to be shy. She placed the altered jewellery box on Steven Stevens’ desk and looked across at him. He looked back at her with an enquiring tilt of his head “Perfect. Well, do you want to show me how it works?” Dorothy leant forward, faced the broken clasp at the front of the box at Steven. She took a nervous gulp of breath, closed her eyes and opened up the Love Machine towards him. 

Luck

The man in the hat walks through the city and feels a sense of community. You may not know him very well, most people don’t, but he’s there, hat resting on his head and umbrella sitting comfortably in his hand. As he goes about his day to day life he has an impact that is more than could be imagined by the people he comes across, those vague acquaintances who give him a smile or a polite nod then carry on their way. Small but good deeds are his doing. It makes him happy to leave a small trail of joy. That bus that turns up just as you get to the stop? That's him. The chance encounter with a friend you’d been meaning to catch up with? That’s his doing too. He makes small coincidences and fortunate timing seem like they happened for no reason, that’s a part of his skill, the casualness that makes you believe it’s just chance.

He likes to give out his good luck. It makes him feel much better than the other trail he leaves behind. There has to be balance, of course, but he'd prefer if he could deal only with the good. Sometimes he tries to hold the bad in, but that only makes it worse when it does come out, better to let it drip in small but cruel drops. He's the bus that you miss when you're running late, and the car that splashes water on you as it drives past on a cold winters evening. He’s also the responsible for that note you thought you had in your wallet but must have dropped. He doesn’t take the note, no nothing like that. You did drop it, he just helped it slip from your grasp.

He hasn't let the bad out for a while now. It's building, no, built up already and it needs to come out. Luck is like that sometimes, it can be come all at once. The man in the hat feels the bad luck coming and he can also feel the force of balance taking over. There’s a reason you don’t know the man in the hat very well, and trust me, you wouldn’t want to. No single person should have too much luck, and certainly not all at once. If you get the occasional pat on the back from him, well you also get the occasional trip. Most often the good outweighs the bad, luck isn’t a deciding factor, it’s a randomness that keeps life interesting.

But there’s one person who the man in the hat has touched more often than he knows he should. They’re almost what you would call friends, or the closest that the man in the hat has ever had to a friend. They got on right from the beginning, meeting when they were just young. The man with the hat was more helpful than he knows he should have been. The Friend has become successful, very successful by almost any measure. This success of course has been won mostly by his own hard work and skill. He’s amassed a fortune and has been living a full life. But along the way, growing up and through his early career, the Friend had much more help from the man in the hat that he should have done. The man in the hat has kept his distance in the more recent years, happy to watch the Friend from afar and try not to think about what he’s done for him.

Balance always takes over. It’s weight tips the scales slowly but it can’t be stopped. As the man in the hat leaves his café with a wave to the barista he heads towards the intersection at the end of the block. He see’s the Friend approaching in his sports car. The man with the hat, as often is the case, isn’t recognised, the car carries on through the set of lights. Somehow, the driver of the truck coming from his left doesn’t notice the red light. The driver doesn’t even slow down, if anything his foot gets a little heavier on the accelerator. Even at city speeds, the weight of the truck, plus the weight of the six Porsches stacked on top of it, plus the not insubstantial weight of the driver himself, all together they are too much of a force for the Friend and his little car. Physics takes over the situation efficiently, but far from cleanly. All of the Friend’s luck has come back to him at once. The man in the hat walks on, he’s more solemn than usual, he still smiles and waves at people he recognises or those who recognise him, but he doesn’t stop to chat. He doesn’t want them to get to know him, or he them. It’s much safer to keep a distance, friendly but not friends, yes, definitely safer that way.