This story came about via a writer's group exercise. A list of objects was provided and the idea was to write a short story around one of them. The list consisted of; a cell phone, an apple, an envelope, a fish bowl, a book and a dung beetle. I thought it would be a bit more challenging to include all the items in a story, so I set my brain to that task. Here is the end result. ~~~Airwaves~~~ She pulled the squawking cell phone away from her ear, looked at it with irritation, then looked at the fish bowl, sorely tempted. Wondered if she could get away with claiming it was an accident. Deciding probably not, she waited until the voice stopped, put it back to her ear, said "Ok" and hit the hang up button. Muttering about the evils of all things that used the airwaves to communicate, she plunked the Nextel down next to the desk phone with its eight incoming lines and took a deep breath. The wall clock was ten minutes past the lunch hour, so she pulled open her personal drawer, took out the book and placed it on top of the files, documents and other matters awaiting her attention. They could wait today, she was going to actually sit here for the rest of her lunch hour and NOT work through it. The desk phone went to an answering machine, so it could be left to ring but the cell was another matter. She hoped it would be silent for the duration. She fingered the cover of the book, it was a nondescript brown, faded, worn around the edges, picked up at an estate sale out of a dusty box. Her curiosity piqued because there was no title printed on the front, nor along the spine. As was her way, it had not before now been opened, it was a long ago acquired habit to let anticipation build, savoring the feel. But today, frustration at the morning made her decide to treat her brain to a peek. She slowly opened the cover, to the first page, noting the parchment look of the blank leaf. A small water stain along the outermost edge bled into the page in an irregular line. Flipping to the next page, the delineation of the water mark, slightly smaller than the first, was again the only marking on the paper. The third was another repeat, curiosity building, she wondered if perhaps this had been someone's journal. As she reached for the next page the Nextel gave off with a beep and irritation at the interruption caused a sigh to escape her lips as it laid there and squawked at her. Listening to the voice drone on, she continued to turn pages, finding each a bit less water stained but still blank. Mind momentarily wandering away from both the book and the words pouring out of the Nextel, she wondered what life was like before cell phones, fax machines, beepers and e-mail. Had to be a much slower paced place then, she vaguely remembered the rotary phone her Gram used to have. How you had to wait for the dial to circle all the way back to the start position before going on to the next number. She couldn't imagine people having the patience for that in these days of "quick, push that button and get instant gratification", it just all moved too fast now. Finally, the voice got to the reason for the call just as she turned another page and noticed a small envelope between the book's leaves, her annoyance at the Nextel increased. She placed a ruler across the book to hold the place open before grabbing a pen and scribbling down notes. While she wrote, out of the corner of her eye she noticed something moving, turning her head she caught a slight movement of the ruler, a small slide across the page as it held the book open. Finishing her note, she glanced up at the clock, then pulled open the drawer and removed an apple, thinking she better have it now before the hour came to a close and the small lull in the day escaped. The ruler slid again as her eyes rested on it. As she hadn't seen the pages attempting to close, it seemed very odd that it moved. Picking up the ruler, she jumped as a bug crawled out from under the small envelope sitting atop the book page. Bugs didn't really scare her; it was just the unexpectedness of its appearance that made her jump. As it stood still on the edge of the book page, she picked up the envelope intending to scoop him up with it, she noticed the small hole at the opening end of the envelope, ragged and just large enough for the bug to have gone through. Looking closer at the bug, she decided it was a beetle of some sort, dark in colour, kind of a dusty brown/black. She wondered how it had come to be in the envelope, and how long it had been trapped in it and the book. Suddenly the cell phone squawked again, picking up the cell, she spoke for a few moments, grabbed her pen and wrote another note on a sticky 3x3 post-it and stuck it to her monitor screen. As she did this the desk phone lit up with two more calls. She ignored them as she realized the beetle wasn't on the book anymore. Quickly scanning her desktop, she noticed for the first time the very faint writing on the page. It must have been under the envelope and she'd not seen it before. Curiosity made her pick up the book, squinting to make out the penciled in letters... "Dung beetle" she said aloud as she read across the page, wondering if that was indeed the type of bug that was now loose in her office. "And where is it now?" she said. Giving the desktop another quick going over, she didn't see anything moving, and her eyes were drawn back to the page. "Invoking, ...what is that word, wet? Gods who wrote this? Penmanship surely wasn't their forte." A faint noise pulled her away from the page, and she looked for its source. Finding the beetle, legs clicking as they clambered onto the lip of the fishbowl that sat upon the far left edge of her desk, she was relieved to know its whereabouts again. Picking up the envelope, she thought she could make it scoot onto it, but then what? Couldn't put it outside, it was midwinter, and for sure it would not live in the frigid temperature out there. She hated winter almost as much as these phones, wouldn't want to wish this cold on any creature. Edging the envelope towards the bug, her hand jumped slightly at the sudden ringing as one after the next, the desk phone lines lit up, followed by that infernal Nextel and the voice of her boss started rattling off again. She gasped as the bug lost his grip on the bowl edge and fell into the water. Dropping the envelope, she quickly put her fingers into the water, curled them around the bug as she once more cursed the phones, and all things modern, wishing for a time when life was slower. A sensation of dizziness, and falling suddenly took her, and the fish bowl seemed to reach up and meet her, then nothing, nothing but black. Bright light hurt her closed eyes, it was the first sensation she became aware of, as her brain swam out of the inky murk, warmth was the next. A sun-baking, bone penetrating warmth as she put her hand to her eyes to shade them before attempting to open them against the light that glared down on them. Grit fell on her face as she tried to open her eyes, "what in the world?" Blinking, she became aware of her other hand and a tickling sensation in the palm. Pulling herself into a sitting position, she opened her clenched fist, to find the dung beetle, still glistening from his inadvertent bath. She moved her hand, to put the beetle down and was surprised. Instead of her mauve office carpet, was dun coloured sandy dirt, upon which the bug crawled and scurried away. Tearing her eyes away from the bug, she blinked again in surprise at what met them on the horizon line... Wind, eerily, the only sound as her mind tried to believe what her eyes told it. Three triangular shapes, not faded and weather beaten as she knew them, but starkly pale in their newness. YZ 11-21-03