Not Much Honour

By Lindsey van Heerden

These quick reads are designed to be light-hearted and fun. They feature interesting beings, awkward people and some pretty shrewd animals. Oh, and do be careful if you are sneakily nasty – you never know what awaits you ….

Ten Flash Fiction stories - not much longer than 800 words each.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lindsey van Heerden
• Release date: Feb 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9781540196873

Book preview

MY WIFE WAS ABDUCTED BY ALIENS

Constable Marais gaped down at the ground in wonder. His shock of red hair stood like a halo around his pink, scrubbed face. Next to him stood Hannes Mouton, a young sheep farmer - and Auntie Kotie. Hannes pointed at a patch of sand between the dry Karoo scrub saying, ‘It was round about here that I saw them take her...’ He shuddered slightly.

Auntie Kotie, a wiry little woman, rubbed Hannes’s arm sympathetically. She lived alone on a neighbouring farm and had been a friend of the Mouton family for many years. With her tangle of iron-grey frizz pulled back in a bun, one would never have guessed that this woman had once been married to Fanus Villiers, the most handsome man in the district...

They stood silently together staring at the sand. The ceaseless wind and the heat of the sun had made its mark here. Low-lying trees and scrub leaned drunkenly, and the dryness was etched into the rocks. A little way off a clump of hardy-looking sheep stood grazing.

Auntie Kotie spoke sadly ‘Constable. Hannes can’t talk about this much as it upsets him so. You know, people wouldn’t believe it when I told them 40 years ago that Fanus was taken by aliens... and what is more my boy, it was round about this same spot!’

She looked at Hannes with caution in her eyes and then at the Constable - but his thoughts were elsewhere. Constable Marais’s fertile imagination, fuelled by the science fiction books, comics and magazines he read, was creating an eerie scene in his mind’s eye.

He could hear the shrieks and yells as Poppie, Hannes’s wife, and the handsome farm equipment salesman, Petrus Deetlefs, were dragged into the spaceship ... by what? He tried to imagine the aliens. Perhaps reptilian predators - or would it be ‘grays’? Then there would be the sound of grinding metal as a section of the spaceship heaved closed. Then ... the earth vibrating as the huge bulk lifted and its alien-made engines roared! He shivered excitedly.

Constable Kobus Marais had worked this district for ten months now and had been earnestly investigating each and every case that came his way. The small Police Station served a few farming villages in the district and ever since he had been there, the reports of mysterious minor infractions were coming in far more frequently. He was very suspicious and felt certain that there was an alien presence in the area.

He could not have known however, the loneliness of the