Cricket

It's a funny game. As the days roll on the nature of it seems to change, the ground gets browner. Dust starts to kick up from his opponents as they hurl themselves across the pitch. It feels to him as if there are more people around. Maybe there are more, at the very least they're less spread out. No, he thinks, there are more than there was a few days ago. There's certainly fewer from his team. They've fallen slowly, but they've fallen, it's just him and one other now.

It's hot and the sun burns through his whites, he can feel it on his skin. His sweat has turned to a sticky dry salt feeling. Granules stick to his head, and his hands, and well, everywhere. 

It's the fifth and last day. He feels like a win is within reach. There's definitely more of them today, surely, but he feels like the end is close. Things happen at a slow inevitable pace. He can taste victory. No, maybe that's just salt. He swings wildly at times, forgetting the value of concentration. But their concentration is dimming as well, so he gets away with it for now. Slowly, inevitably, he inches closer. Not to victory, but not to defeat either. He inches closer to that hollow feeling of not having won, that is still so much more preferable to the only alternative now. All he can do now is avoid the bitter, the sweet is out of reach. 

Fishing

He lives close to the city, right on the edge of the action. He likes it more here, where things are going on, he likes to watch. The others live out deeper, away from all of the people, but it’s become his home here under the marina. It’s an upside down world for a fish, overhead are smooth bulbous forms and a ceiling that he can only peek through. Below him it’s muddy and craggy and changes in a non-uniform way. He doesn’t bother too much with the bottom though, his interest is above.

Near the surface the fish swims along peering at the distorted view of the world outside of the sea. He prefers the still, calm mornings, he can see things more clearly when the surface is so solid and reflective. Occasionally he’ll see something that he takes particular interest in. Breaking the surface briefly his eyes quickly adjust to the light and dryness as he snaps a mental picture that’ll feed his thoughts and imagination for the days to come.

As much as he cherishes these glimpses he tries to keep them to a minimum, they give him away, they let the people know that he’s there, he worries that people will realise he’s watching them. He swims around the edge of the marina, staying close to the path that they walk each morning and night. This particular morning he is overcome by curiosity and breaches for a second time just before the woman he’s following heads back inland. The splash causes her to glance over her shoulder. He can see her searching the water with a squint, these moments cause him great fear. He’s seen what people can do to fish, seen friends hauled up to the other side of the sleek hulls he swims around. But he needs to watch, he needs more information, desperate that one day he’ll figure it out. One day the fish is going to catch himself a person.

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".