Juggling Balls

By David Hadley

Juggling Balls - a science fiction comedy featuring time travel, mind control implants and a future religion that claims an Elvis Presley clone as its saviour. 

Oh, and an interplanetary terraced house.

Martin Laws hates mysteries. 

So why has someone sent him a bag of juggling balls? 

Why has he no memory of buying a new computer?

Why has that new computer decided Martin needs to go shopping?

Why does a hairstylist he's never met before keep saluting him?

Most of all, why are so many Elvis impersonators trying to kill him?

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Hadley
• Release date: Aug 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386526339

David Hadley

A bloke who writes stuff. Fiction across and between genres.David Hadley was born in 1959. He is married with three children and lives in the Black Country, UK. He worked in the building trade and the electric supply industry. He has been a rock musician, mature student, house-husband and stay-at-home dad. 

Book preview

ONE

Martin Laws had not - as yet - quite got the hang of mornings. They had an annoying tendency to start before he was ready. By the time he managed to get both eyelids co-ordinated enough to stay open together, the morning had been up and about for hours. It was bright, alert and ready for anything, while Martin was groggy, occasionally hungover… and always ready for bedtime again.

However, as Martin often consoled himself, the mornings had taken millions of years to get the hang of time. He, though - at just thirty - was still a relative newcomer to the whole business. He was almost sure that one day he would be able to make sense of time, but he didn’t know just when it would be.

He stumbled out of his room for the first time that Saturday morning and saw Lisa, in a faded pink dressing gown, standing by the front door holding a wad of letters and a package. It was the first time Martin had seen Lisa since their brief and awkward meeting - a week and a half before - when Lisa and Fiona had moved into the vacant upstairs rooms.

‘Morning, Martin,’ Lisa smiled at him. ‘There’s a parcel for you here.’

‘Morning Li…. What… a parcel? For me?’ Martin replied as Lisa handed him the package. ‘Oh, right. Thanks.’

‘Aren’t you going to open it?’

‘What? Oh… right. Yes.’ He looked down at the package in his hands as though she had told him it was some instrument used for removing wax from the ears of temperamental gorillas. Turning it over, he found it sealed with thick brown tape. Whoever had made the parcel wanted no-one to be in any doubt it was sealed.

Lisa edged closer to him.

Martin looked up from the package to see Lisa staring into his eyes, smiling enigmatically. He felt himself blush under her intense scrutiny. He felt as though she was expecting something of him, as though she thought they were playing some sort of game. He suddenly had the uneasy feeling she was about to whisper something, something very secret and very important, to him.

Instead, she just smiled and looked back down at the package in his hands as Martin peeled off the tape. He could now get the flap open.

Lisa stuffed the rest of the letters under her arm, tucked her hair behind her ear and held out her hands as Martin upended the package. A white plastic-mesh bag containing three indefinable black shapes fell out of the package.

Puzzled, Martin looked down at the bag of ball-like objects and then into the package, it was empty.

‘They’re juggling balls,’ Lisa said.

‘What?’

‘Juggling balls. Balls… that you juggle with.’ Lisa held up the string bag to show him. ‘Who would send you something like that?’

‘What? Oh… I don’t know. There’s no message or anything.’

‘An anonymous present? Great, I love mysteries, don’t you?’ Lisa looked straight at Martin again with that smile hinting they shared some great - and, possibly, tragic - secret.

‘Anyway, I need a shower. If you find out who sent them let me know.’ Lisa stopped at the bottom of the stairs and turned towards Martin. ‘Unless they are from a secret admirer of course.’ She laughed and ran up the stairs.

Martin shrugged and took the opened parcel, and the balls, back into his room.

TWO

Juggling Balls?

Martin hated mysteries. Especially minor niggling ones like this that would, no doubt, have some mildly disappointing revelation at the end of it all. He had expended a great deal of effort to get his life boring, predictable and humdrum. Having it disrupted by something this trivial, especially on a Saturday, his day for doing as little as possible, was already beginning to annoy him.

He sat down at the desk in his room and put the package down in front of him. He stared at it a moment, leaning back in his chair. He sighed, picked up the package and tipped out its contents. He stared down at the desk.

Martin sighed and turned on his laptop, watching as the hard disk moaned lethargically into life as though it was suffering some terminal disease.

Juggling Balls?

Who on Earth would send him three juggling balls? Martin shook his head and looked at the postmark on the package. It was too faint and too faded to be legible. He untied the knot in the plastic-mesh bag and tipped the balls out into his hand. They were softer and lighter than he expected them to be. He was tempted to try juggling them, but only for a moment.

The laptop hard drive made a sound not dissimilar to an arthritic hippopotamus discovering the lift is out of order and the laptop died. Martin muttered a few swear words more out of habit than through any real anger and rebooted the machine.

Juggling Balls?

He looked around the room, searching for some clue in its reassuring familiarity. He stared at the posters of the solar system, stars and galaxies he had recently started collecting for some reason he was still not entirely certain of. Then he stared over at his wardrobe - solid and silent. Then at his bookshelves, at his midi Hi-Fi system and its pile of dusty, unused CDs. Then over to the guitar with the broken B string, and finally, back to the three juggling balls. There were no clues there, although there was a slight resemblance between the solid-looking juggling balls and one particular photograph of Mars and its two moons, but it was only a trick of perspective, nothing more.

Martin looked down at the desk once more, absently lifting the top of the angle-poise lamp upright; it slowly curled itself back up like time-lapse film of a plant wilting.

Juggling balls?

He poked at one of them tentatively with his finger; it rolled a little way and stopped.

Juggling balls.

The laptop sighed again and briefly considered showing something on its screen, but then decided it was far too much work for a weekend and turned itself off again.

Juggling balls?

Martin looked down at the desk, at the three balls. He hated mysteries, the way they nagged at the brain and offered the tempting possibility of resolution if only you tried just a little bit harder, thought a little more, spent a bit more time….

He pressed the button on the laptop again, this time not even bothering to swear at it.

It was no good though. He picked up the balls and dropped them back into the mesh bag.

Perhaps, he decided, a cup of coffee, or two, would help him make sense of it all. Maybe, he thought, if he left the laptop to start itself without him watching, it would decide to give it more of a go.

THREE

A few moments later, Martin was back in the hallway heading to the kitchen. A frantic banging on the front door stopped him in his tracks. He opened the door to Fiona standing on the step struggling under the weight of what looked like the innards of a knackered photocopier.

‘Morning, Martin.’ Fiona struggled past him with the unwieldy machine.

‘Morning Fiona…, what is that?’

‘It’s the innards from a knackered photocopier.’ Fiona seemed surprised he even needed to ask. ‘Oh, leave the door open, Sam is on his way. He’s got a knackered laser printer!’

Sam struggled through the door with the laser printer, which had possibly seen better days, but they must have been a very long time ago. ‘It’s a laser printer,’ he said to Martin. ‘Isn’t it a beauty?’

‘Er… yes, I suppose so.’

‘Down the cellar?’ Fiona asked Sam.

Sam nodded. ‘Down the cellar? Oh, yes. Yes, indeed!’

‘Sam?’ Martin asked. ‘Why do you want to take all this… this… stuff, down the cellar?’

Sam stared at Martin as if he had just asked Sam why he had never previously considered deep-frying his own testicles. ‘Well, you wouldn’t want them in the living room would you?’

Martin conceded the point with a nod of his head. ‘True.’

Sam opened the cellar door, flicked on the light with his elbow, and disappeared down the cellar steps, followed closely by Fiona.

Martin stood for a moment, listening to their murmuring from the cellar. The door closed slowly, cutting off Fiona’s sudden – very dirty-sounding - laughter.

Martin sighed, and shrugged. Now, he felt, he really needed that coffee - urgently.

In the living room, John was up, but probably not quite awake. He was eating dry cornflakes straight from the box while watching cartoons on the television through half-closed eyes. He was wearing just a pair of jeans and one faded pink sock. One eye opened slightly wider when he noticed Martin, and a sound, which could have been some kind of greeting, found its way through the half-chewed cornflakes.

Martin glanced across at the television where a racially balanced group of improbable cartoon teenagers were swapping earnest bland didactic maxims in the cartoon maker’s conception of contemporary teenage American street slang.

‘This is shit.’ John nodded towards the screen. ‘But Tom and Jerry will be on soon.’

Martin sighed and shook his head as he headed off to the kitchen to make his coffee, hurrying in case he missed Tom and Jerry.

Sam strolled into the kitchen a moment later. He dragged a stool to the table, knocking dust off his trousers as he sat. He put his feet up on another stool and wiped printer toner from his hands. He looked up and grinned at Martin.

‘Good morning again, isn’t it a lovely day?’ Sam said. ‘You look puzzled?’

‘It’s just that someone has sent me a mystery parcel, and I don’t know who, or for that matter, why.’ Martin pulled up a stool next to Sam and sat down.

‘What was in this parcel then, if you don’t mind me asking? Not luxury leather goods or erotic literature in full colour for the discerning collector?’

‘No, nothing like that.’

‘Oh… pity.’

‘Juggling balls.’

‘What?’

‘That was what was in the parcel, juggling balls.’

‘I didn’t know you could juggle?’

‘I can’t, and what is more I have never, ever, even had the desire to even consider contemplating doing it.’

‘Oh….’ Sam was silent for a moment. He took a biscuit from the packet lying on the table. ‘This parcel - it’s not a gift from some admirer, an ex-girlfriend perhaps?’

‘No, the only balls Catherine would send me would be my own, gift-wrapped probably, with some witty and incisive gift-tag attached to the scrotum.’

‘How about your parents?’

‘No, my mother would only send out something warm and woollen, and my father has probably forgotten I’ve left home, he usually does.’

‘It is a mystery then.’ Sam shrugged. ‘By the way, you owe me some rent - don’t forget.’

‘I hate fucking mysteries,’ Martin said quietly as he stood looking out of the kitchen window at what Sam had once, in a brief burst of optimism, called the back garden. ‘I’ll give you the rent later on.’

‘Right, fair enough,’ Sam said. ‘I’m off to get a newspaper, do you want the usual?’

Martin nodded without looking around as Sam left. He turned from the window moments later, as he heard the kitchen door open once more.

FOUR

The woman was wearing the shirt John had been wearing the evening before. She smiled tentatively. ‘Hello, I’m Mandy, you must be… Martin… right?’ She ran a hand through her shaggy blonde curls.

Martin said hello and admitted he was, in fact, the Martin in question. Mandy’s smile lost its hesitancy as she spoke rapidly about how she had met John at the club Sparklers, the previous evening.

‘I said to Trish… that’s my mate. Trish, I said. Trish, doesn’t he look just like Sting when he was young? I said. Only his hair is just a bit different, brown instead of blonde and a little bit too curly. Don’t you think? This coffee jar’s empty.’ Mandy held the coffee jar upside down to demonstrate the accuracy of her statement.

‘There should be another one in that cupboard up there,’ Martin pointed towards a cupboard on the wall behind her. Mandy nodded in return and reached up to open it. The shirt rode up and Martin realised it was the only thing she was wearing.

‘Ooh, did I flash my bum?’ Mandy giggled as she put the new jar of coffee down next to the kettle.

Martin nodded, feeling a burning at the sides of his neck. He turned and picked up his mug, pretending to study the fading teddy bear on its side, as he quickly sat down at the table.

‘Only I wouldn’t usually care that much, but I’ve got this massive spot, just here. Look….’ Mandy half-turned away and bent down in front of him, the shirt bunched up in one hand as she pointed with the other.

Martin could not recall ever being this close to a naked female bottom on such a short an acquaintanceship before. He tried to focus his attention on the angry-looking red swelling and exclude the rest of the soft golden-brown flesh from his field of vision. ‘Oh, yes…. It does look a bad one. Is it sore?’ He felt his mouth drying up.

Mandy said it did hurt, especially when she sat down. She sighed and stood up, letting the shirt fall back down. Martin let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. Desperate for something to take his mind off Mandy’s smooth brown thighs, Martin tried to extract a biscuit from the packet on the table without crumbling it into crumbs with his trembling hands.

Mandy sat back on the table quite close to him, shifting from side to side as she tried to get comfortable; watching Martin fumble with the biscuit packet.

Most of the trembling in his fingers had gone by the time Martin managed to get the majority of the biscuit into his mouth. He tried not to stare too hard at the smooth brown thighs in front of him, swallowing carefully, trying not to choke on the dry biscuit.

Mandy asked him about his job, where he went to school, where he had lived as a child, if he had a girlfriend, where he had been for his holidays and explored several other topics while they watched the kettle, waiting for it to boil. Mandy said she was a hairstylist, which, to Martin, explained her practised ease in interrogating him so thoroughly. He answered briefly trying to keep himself from looking down at those thighs. The kettle finally boiled and Mandy jumped off the table.

‘Whoops,’ she laughed as Martin caught an accidental glimpse of her dark, but neatly-trimmed, pubic hair. She smiled and winked at him and poured the boiling water into the three mugs. She turned to pass the teddy bear mug to Martin.

‘Thanks,’ Martin said, trying to think of something else to say as he reached to take the mug. ‘Someone sent me a mysterious parcel this morning.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Mandy said, ‘I wish I got mystery presents from secret admirers. What was in it, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘Some juggling balls.’

‘Jugg…?’ The mug fell from Mandy’s hand.

‘Shit!’ Martin screamed as the hot coffee splashed his legs. He looked down at the smashed teddy bear mug on the floor, then up at Mandy’s blank staring face.

‘Juggling balls,’ she whispered in a faraway voice.

FIVE

‘Sorry,’ Mandy said as Martin tried to wipe the hot coffee from his jeans with a towel. ‘I just don’t know how that happened.’

‘It’s all right,’ Martin said. ‘But I think I’ll have to go and change these trousers.’

Mandy knelt down in front of him to mop up the steaming pool of coffee on the floor. ‘I’ll make some more coffee for you when I’ve done this.’

‘All right.’ Martin felt the soaking jeans steaming wetly against his leg as he shuffled out of the kitchen, trying not to think about the way Mandy was just kneeling in front of him. His trousers were already tight, hot and damp enough as it was without having those kind of thoughts.

Back in his room, Martin found a clean pair of jeans, then eased himself out of the coffee-soaked ones that were already cooling tackily on his legs.

He heard the doorbell ring.

A moment later, as Martin finished fastening his trousers, Sam put his head around the door. ‘It’s for you.’

Martin shrugged in surprise and walked out to the front door. A man in a nondescript blue-grey uniform was standing on the step, holding a delivery-tracking device. He was picking his nose with the end of a plastic stylus as he stared up at the bedroom windows of the houses on the opposite side of the street. Martin coughed and the man turned to face him.

‘Mr Laws?’

‘Yes.’

‘Mr M. Laws?’

‘Yes.’

‘Mr Martin P. Laws?’

‘Yes.’

‘Mr Martin P. Laws, 12 Keats Terrace?’

‘Yes.’

The courier stared at him, as though he was waiting for Martin to break down and confess to being a compulsive liar, fraud and – quite possibly – a fugitive from the law. A few moments later, satisfied by the lack of an immediate confession, the courier nodded once.

‘Right…. Sign here, here, there, print your name there, your address here, and your phone number in that box in the bottom corner.’ The courier made various ticks and crosses on the device before handing it, and his nasal-exploration device, to Martin.

The courier leant close over Martin, watching carefully for any sign of trickery or forgery as Martin filled in all the necessary information and ticked the required boxes while trying to avoid holding the stylus too tightly.

Martin handed the device back to the man, who flashed a brief smile, before turning away, giving Martin a chance to wipe his hands down his jeans, before remembering they were clean on only a few moments before.

‘Come on, there’s a parcel for you.’ The courier looked over Martin’s shoulder at Sam, who was standing in the hallway. ‘You can help as well. I can’t lift anything heavy…. Doctor’s orders.’

‘What is in the parcel?’ Martin said, but the courier was gone, stowing the delivery device in the front of his van.

‘What is this parcel going to be then?’ Sam stood by Martin at the rear of the van.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Ah, another mystery,’ Sam said. ‘This must be your lucky day.’

The driver ambled slowly around to the rear of the van and opened it. He climbed inside the van and pushed four or five boxes towards Martin and Sam. Martin recognised the name of the company on the side of the box. He shivered in excitement. Only a few weeks before he had been dreaming of owning an ELITE BOLD X350 as he meandered through several computer retailers’ websites with his laptop seemingly on the verge of total collapse when Martin – rather unreasonably – expected it to go to all the trouble of displaying yet another web-page.

Martin knew he really needed some sort of new computer, even though he couldn’t really afford one on his current salary. In fact, Martin had concluded that on his current salary, even a child’s toy abacus from the toyshop in the High Street was probably beyond his reach.

Surely, there must be some mistake; Martin almost called out to the courier. For almost a complete second, Martin thought about complaining, refusing to accept the computer until he knew where it came from, and who had paid for it.

‘I know what you are thinking,’ Sam whispered. ‘Don’t be stupid. If anyone’s made a mistake, let them sort it out. Meanwhile, grab the other end of this box.’

‘You’re right.’ Martin took the other end of the box. ‘There’s an old computer hacker saying: Don’t look a gift computer in the expansion slots.’

‘What?’ Sam said.

Back in the house, Lisa was standing at the foot of the stairs. ‘What’s going on?’ she stood to one side of the hall, watching them struggle through the door with the awkward boxes.

‘This bit of trouser you secretly fancy has got himself another mystery gift,’ Sam said. ‘If I were you, I’d try to stick with him. He seems to be a lucky bastard.’ They carried the boxes into Martin’s room and put it down on the floor.

Back outside, the courier was sitting in the back of the van staring up at the bedroom windows of the other houses in the terrace. He tapped a pile of three more boxes.

‘There seem to be a lot of young woma… er… people living around here,’ he said as Martin stacked up the two smaller boxes.

‘Oh yes, there are a lot of students around here. In fact, a couple of female post-graduate students share this house with us.’

‘Students, eh?’ He winked at Martin. ‘Is it true what they say?’

‘Is what true?’ Martin passed a box to Sam. ‘Who are they and what do they say?’

‘Oh, you know. The drink, the drugs, the parties, the sex orgies and all that?’

Martin had never really seen anyone leer before. ‘Oh yes, I see. Definitely, it’s non-stop shagging all the time, basically. All instead of getting a proper job as well, of course.’

The van driver leant closer. Martin smiled and looked at his watch. ‘I’d love to tell you all about it, but I don’t want to miss the early-morning orgy. Is this all of it? Right. Goodbye and thanks.’

SIX

Martin and Sam sat side by side on Martin’s bed looking down at the boxes.

‘Well,’ Sam said.

‘Well.’

‘I found this in the hall,’ Lisa said, coming into the room and giving Martin a small padded envelope. ‘It must’ve fallen off one of the boxes.’

‘It must be the bill for all this.’ Martin waved the envelope at the pile of boxes. ‘Not that I could ever afford it. Still, it was a nice dream while it lasted.’ He opened the envelope and frowned. It contained a single, unlabelled, USB memory stick.

‘I just don’t understand today at all, any of it,’ Martin said. ‘First, the juggling balls and now, all this.’

‘I can see the connection between that memory stick and this.’ Lisa tapped one of the boxes with her foot. ‘But what about the juggling balls. Do they really fit in to it, and if so where?’

‘I don’t know.’ Martin stood up. He put the stick down on the desk. ‘Perhaps this will explain it all. Let’s get everything unpacked and set up.’

They ripped open the boxes and fought their way through the packaging.

Once it was all unpacked, Martin put everything on the desk. ‘Whatever it is,’ he said. ‘…it is not an ELITE BOLD X350.’ He looked closer at the plain cube. It looked as though it was made of some sort of metallic plastic. He was not sure if it was even the right way up.

‘These though are right.’ Sam pointed to the keyboard, monitor and what could be a printer. ‘Although, I’ve never seen a printer like that before.’

‘Hang on…. This may sound daft, but those three holes in that… that box, aren’t they the same size as these?’ Lisa picked up the juggling balls to show Martin and Sam.

‘You’re right,’ Sam said. ‘It does sound daft.’

After plugging the monitor, printer and keyboard into the cube, Martin ducked under his desk and plugged the power cord into the socket. He paused for a moment and looked around at the setup, making sure he’d got it right and he’d connected it all together properly.

‘What are you smiling at,’ Lisa said to Martin.

‘I really enjoy things like this. It’s just like getting a complicated new toy for Christmas. I feel like a kid again.’

‘Don’t you need a whatchamcallit… a modem or something to connect to the Internet?’ Lisa asked Martin.

‘Yes, more or less.’ Martin nodded. ‘But I can’t see anything to connect. Anyway, there is a modem and router out in the hall. Maybe this thing…’ he tapped the cube, ‘has something internal… or something…. Anyway, we’ll see.’

Lisa kicked her way through the discarded packaging and sat down on the bed. ‘What about these?’

‘Oh, those are manuals. We don’t need those.’ Satisfied as much as he could be, Martin crawled back under his desk and switched the power on. Sitting down at the desk, he turned the cube on, smiling as he saw everything power up and the fans hummed.

Martin frowned, then tapped at the keyboard. Nothing happened.

Sam and Lisa sat side by side on the bed watching Martin. ‘Are you getting jealous yet?’ Sam nudged Lisa.

‘Why?’

‘‘Cos he seems to have found true love with that machine, and you fancy him, don’t you?’

‘What? Oh no, well… maybe. There’s something about him that….’ Lisa shrugged. ‘I’m getting confused now though. Where is all this stuff coming from, and what does it all mean?’

‘It will all work out, probably.’ Sam shrugged. ‘These things usually do. There will be some dull and boring answer to it all.’

Martin turned to face them. ‘Pass me that memory stick please.’

Sam tossed the stick to Martin who inserted it into a USB port. He frowned, grinned, tapped a few keys. Nothing happened. He turned towards the others, sighed and put his feet up on the bed.

‘Well, what’s happening? What’s on the mystery USB stick?’ Lisa said.

‘I don’t know yet.’ Martin glanced at the screen. ‘It’s still unpacking.’

‘Has it been on its holidays then?’ Sam said.

‘No, I mean….’

‘Don’t explain it to me. Please. Just tell me when it’s finished doing whatever it is supposed to do.’

‘I hope it will explain what is going on here,’ Martin said. ‘I don’t like mysteries at all.’ The cube beeped and he turned back to face it. ‘What the…?’

‘What’s the matter?’ Lisa stood up. They crowded around the monitor. Martin pointed to the screen.

** Hello Martin, xxx**

Please insert the juggling balls into the holes in the cube.

Lots of Love

Hermione.

Martin picked up the juggling balls as Lisa stuck her tongue out at Sam. ‘Daft?’ she said.

Sam shrugged. ‘Sorry.’

‘Do you think it matters which ball goes in which hole?’ Martin inspected the balls.

Sam shrugged again. ’They all look the same.’

Martin put one ball in each hole. There was a whirring noise from the cube. A few moments later the coverings of the balls were spat back out of the holes.

‘Well, that’s buggered those balls, then,’ Sam said, prodding the fragments with his fingers. He looked up at Martin. ‘Good job you didn’t want to juggle with them.’

‘Hang on a minute, darlings,’ the computer said, in a slow, sultry female voice.

‘What the hell is going on here?’ Lisa squeezed Martin’s arm as she stared at the computer. She turned and glared intently into Martin’s face. ‘This isn’t some weird joke you two have cooked up between you, is it?’

‘No, honestly. I’m just as confused as you.’

‘Ahhhh,’ the computer sighed languidly. ‘That’s much better. Still, it is a bit cramped in here, but I suppose it will have to do for now. Lisa, my darling, don’t worry all will be explained as soon as possible, I promise. I’ll just say that again: do not worry, and by the way, my dear, Martin loves you.’

After a few moments of silence, the computer started to hum a little tune under what would have been its breath, if it had any. ‘Oh, silly me, nearly forgot…. I’ve a reminder here saying Annabelle will be in touch very soon. Bye for now, my darlings. Kiss, kiss.’

Less than a second later, the email icon flashed on the screen and the computer sighed ‘Oh, hang on, darlings. Looks like you’ve got an email, Martin, my love. Would you like me to show it to you?’

‘Y… yes…. Yes. Please.’ Martin wondered if the computer could hear him.

‘I knew you would,’ the computer purred. ‘By the way, there’s no need to be so formal, my angel,’ the computer chided him. ‘After all, we’ve known each other for sooo looong, haven’t we?’

Martin, Sam and Lisa look at each other, puzzled. Martin just shrugged and shook his head.

‘Anyway….’ the computer breathed.’ The email says: