Standing in the veranda, looking out over the garden, he took it all in as if it were a breath of air. The sight was wondrous. Trees daubed in green, red and bronze – the birch balding before the others, as it did every year. He loved all seasons, but no colours touched him quite so deep than the palette of autumn. Merely driving the streets of his small hometown , with showers of falling leaves brushing his car or blowing around him as he walked, awoke a deep sense of peace and serenity within him.


Today, however, the joy was overshadowed by an all too familiar gloom. A dark veil of despair he wore like a cloak and closed in on him like a curtain. It had stalked him for years, this colossal entity he had simply called ‘The World That Should Not Be’. Omnipresent, sometimes lurking, sometimes towering over him, threatening to crash down and bury him under its weight. It usually got to him when he’d been subjected to the news. He tried to avoid watching or hearing it as much as possible, but the media have a way of sneaking up on someone, only to shower him in the most vile rubbish. If it wasn’t your weekly child molester/ psychoparent/ kidnapper it was environmental havoc, political fuck ups or futile sensationalist trivia that made you wonder why they had it on the news when there was all this child abuse, environmental decay and political fucking up to report!


And so, as he stared at his (rather messy) backyard, it came over him again. This time, it was triggered by the Future. For as long as he’d grown up there’d been a garden around the house. He never imagined himself not having one of his own. But, with mankind increasing in number every day and authorities seeming unwilling to use words such as ‘overpopulation’, he could not help but worry about his descendants. Would his potential grandchildren be able to sit, dine and relax in the sun, or enjoy a cold beer on a sweet summer night the way he did? Would one day all the backyards be claimed by the state to be turned into building plots? Would the birch, the hazel, the cherry tree and all the other things he’d plant over the years be sacrificed in favor of concrete and steel? He let out a sigh. It could really bring him down. But, he figured, if that was the worst it did, things weren’t too bad. There were times when all this had him depressed, suicidal even. Of course, that was before…


The sound of little feet hurrying near changed into the a chirp as they almost missed a corner. He turned around and saw his three-year-old daughter in the doorway. Her eyes lit up when they met his and she dallied near.

“Daddyyyy…” her lovely little head was held in a corner of about eighty degrees, her big blue eyes armed with cuteness.

“Yes, pumpkin?”

“I want somming…” culm-coloured curls gently danced as she nodded, biting her lower lip in expectation.

“Do you now?”

“Yes.” Fervent nodding took away all doubt that might possibly still linger about. “Fom the fwidge.”

“And just what might that be?”

“Choclat!!” she exclaimed in a high-pitched yelp of joy, hands thrown skyward.

“Really. Alright then.”

She jumped him, grabbed his left leg with both arms and hugged it with all her might.

“You’we the sweetest, daddy!”

Just like that, the cold, hard world went soft and warm as his hand slid toward her shoulder, patting her head on the way down.

“You are, angel.” he smiled. “You are.”