311210: Stage Life Syndrome
"Good evening sir, and how may I serve you?"
"I need to find... a hospital?"
"A hospital?"
"Yes you see, I think I might have hurt myself..."
"Excuse me sir but we are a restaurant, the hospital was three scene's away-"
"But I..."
"Norton! Over here!"
The waiter spun around, noting the person who had called, and turned around again to study the man before him with renewed eyes.
"Mister Norton? Excellent. We have all been awaiting your arrival."
There was a slight leer in th way the waiter carried himself, one that Norton would have noted unfavourably if he had been in more favourable circumstance, which he wasn't presently, and so allowed himself to be led towards the middle of the crowded restaurant, its upper class setting taking a backseat to the rowdy atmosphere created by its cast of unlikely characters, to the effect that he had almost forgotten altogether his immediate concern as he sunk into a soft cushion of a chair waited on by the same man who had led him there.
"I'm hurt."
"Oh, don't be silly," said a woman's voice beside him, "the pain's there to remind you that you are still alive."
The whole town had comeout to fill the diner, although Norton wasn't sure which town he was thinking of. The diner was arranged in about twenty little round tables, draped in white cloth, furnished in silverware with its own type of customer taken to seat. A group of orderlies who would fit well in a psychiatric ward were pushing their faces into a circular arrangement of nurses, who smiled politely at the advance, sipping on martinis, their white uniforms prim and stainless. By one table not far from where Norton was seated he recognized a Class-7 Mood Destroyer, tablecloth stained with pork-rib sauce as it handled giant handfuls of meat the size of fists by each side, itsmouth a yawning chasm that swallowed its meal whole, bone and all. Underneath and in stark contrast to the tablecloth, at least the part that still maintained its native white cut, a black dog the stood chained and waiting.
Moving among the seemingly endless buzz of waiters who took and delivered orders without pause for contexting was a troop of men, heads like tigers, clad in armour of scales and bright ivory, who moved with such grace that it was almost impossible to pick them out at first. Studying the crowd with its feline gaze Norton felt his life a split second away from crumbling beneath the pounce of any one of these creatures, the wings on their back doing nothing to rescue an image of a predator circling its prey. It was a sensation no doubt shared by others present, albeit made manifest in an entirely different manner. In this way was reasoned the appearance of the Anya, off to another side of the room where the tension of instant death being no less taut, now saw it with one parcelain hand buried inside the opening of its companion's blouse, squeezing hard, while her hand beckoned to and fro in no uncertain terms through the opened fly of the Anya's designer pants. Around them men and women continued in their rounds of conversation, the display of lust between the two accepted more than ignored; halfway through a conversation with a male companion, the woman seated on the Anya's other side broke off to take a sip from her wine glass, before leaning over to insert her tongue into a perfectly sculptured alabaster ear.
"No, I really am hurt," said Norton, but the seat beside him was not empty, and instead he found himself staring at the next tble, where the Adversary was making short work of anyone who came close to it; it appeared to have consumed by then its own table, and Norton watched as cracks spread out across the floorboards beneath it, giving into the strain of an inhuman presence conceived expressly to invite collapse onto the laws of certainty, nevermind that of physics. Very soon now and a black hole would be all that was left of its seating area, visual stimulus greeting the eye mere narrative to fill in the gaps while being reflected off an ever emerging event horizon.
Returning to his own table Norton -his preoccupation temporarily forgotten- recalled something that he had once heard, that spoke of a person's worth as measured solely by the depths from which that his opposite was borne, when the distinctive sound of ice cubes clinking in a glass was put towards him, delivered together with the strong whiff of stale cheroot.
"'View from the sea' or some other, quarter casket, whatever that means," said the weathered voice of Edward Spaghetti.
"Here. Might do you good."
Norton accepted the glass with a smile, raising one blood stained hand as he uncovered the side of his belly he had been clutching. The Sheriff said nothing, expressing neither alarm nor surprise as he took the seat so recently emptied. In his hand was a similar glass, its contents the same but for the want of any ice.
Norton raised his glass.
"Girl's right you know."
The liquid went on his tongue smoothly. The room adjusted itself for a half-second.
"Oh?"
"Easy to forget that a man's alive."
"Ed, I'm bleeding to death here," said Norton, considering the glass in his hand. In the little while that he had been here he had already managed to powder the place where he sat with the chalk from his uniform.
"But that's how it is, need to remember; cats're doing us a favour by showin' themselves tonight."
"I thought the rule was to live in *spite* of death."
The Sheriff's glass came down on the table, empty, and with cold eyes that never seemed to soften he said, "Same thing."
"Have you seen Johan around, Ed?"
"Backstage, waiting on the band, know how them young ones are." The Sheriff looked around, raising his empty glass to a passing waiter who acknowledged him with a nod. "Mom's here too."
"I'm not so old myself."
"Then drop the act, it doesn't suit you."
Norton smiled, not from Ed's answer but because he had spotted Jeanette Miles, her table somewhere in the back, next to Schiele who was again drawing Klimt, the Pennys having a table somewhere in the same area too. A meal had been laid out for her, and she appeared to be eating, sitting across the table a man with blond hair, somewhere in his mid forties and seeming to reflect Norton's own sentiment, though probably for entirely different reasons.
Rather warm to be wearing a trenchcoat in here, thought Norton, the comment forgotten just as quickly, a warm sensation bursting within him, filling in his cheeks as eyes rested on the person standing across the room, her dark comb of hair falling about her neatly, the front just shy of her brow. Then all he could remember was that day at the beach, the smell of brine, the blue sky, the moment that never was as it could have been, should have been, and so always is just a word away from being unwritten; he recalls it now, knowing that to step forward, to reach out would be another pebble to disturb the surface of a calm lake, the ripples resettling but never to reveal that very same face, smile a gently drawn line, a line ready to be found and replicated on any other person for another hundred days and more,and it would be any other person, except her. But for this one moment.
Oh god.
In the next table the woman had climbed onto the table, evening dress hiked up above her knees to the applause of its diners, and Norton found his imagination wanting to conceive what the Anya had talked her into doing, even as he perceived somewhere in the halls of the restaurant the explosive slaps of hands against a rubberized floor, the tumbling of bodies with a different kind of cheer. He raised his glass in no particular direction, vision grown foggy he let the tears fall. He had come here thinking he would die, but instead found that life had grown itself a new eddy.
The chatter of the room dropped an octave, lights dimming as a lonely voice started the first words of the first verse, picked up by the next person, and then by the next:
"Ha-"
"-py"
"Birthday-"
"-to you..."
And it was so that the tune arose from the breasts of all of those gathered, and Norton found set before him a cake that was dark brown with its centre dipping slightly inwards, his name spelt over it in pink cream, a single candle dripping wax to chart a course over the pastry's velvety surface. A knife had appeared in his other hand, and the words caught in his throat before the decorum of the occasion reached out and saved him.
"Make a wish."
Rhianna Rue stood next to him, so close that it seemed like it was only the two of them now, catching up after an unkind day spent playing roles and changing constumes, lights dimmed over the kitchen table, a remembered occasion fitted for this one moment they had managed to spare, somehow.
Of course, she would never say, "Blow out the candle."
In spite of himself, Norton smiled. Then he made his wish, and blew out the candle.
"I need to find... a hospital?"
"A hospital?"
"Yes you see, I think I might have hurt myself..."
"Excuse me sir but we are a restaurant, the hospital was three scene's away-"
"But I..."
"Norton! Over here!"
The waiter spun around, noting the person who had called, and turned around again to study the man before him with renewed eyes.
"Mister Norton? Excellent. We have all been awaiting your arrival."
There was a slight leer in th way the waiter carried himself, one that Norton would have noted unfavourably if he had been in more favourable circumstance, which he wasn't presently, and so allowed himself to be led towards the middle of the crowded restaurant, its upper class setting taking a backseat to the rowdy atmosphere created by its cast of unlikely characters, to the effect that he had almost forgotten altogether his immediate concern as he sunk into a soft cushion of a chair waited on by the same man who had led him there.
"I'm hurt."
"Oh, don't be silly," said a woman's voice beside him, "the pain's there to remind you that you are still alive."
The whole town had comeout to fill the diner, although Norton wasn't sure which town he was thinking of. The diner was arranged in about twenty little round tables, draped in white cloth, furnished in silverware with its own type of customer taken to seat. A group of orderlies who would fit well in a psychiatric ward were pushing their faces into a circular arrangement of nurses, who smiled politely at the advance, sipping on martinis, their white uniforms prim and stainless. By one table not far from where Norton was seated he recognized a Class-7 Mood Destroyer, tablecloth stained with pork-rib sauce as it handled giant handfuls of meat the size of fists by each side, itsmouth a yawning chasm that swallowed its meal whole, bone and all. Underneath and in stark contrast to the tablecloth, at least the part that still maintained its native white cut, a black dog the stood chained and waiting.
Moving among the seemingly endless buzz of waiters who took and delivered orders without pause for contexting was a troop of men, heads like tigers, clad in armour of scales and bright ivory, who moved with such grace that it was almost impossible to pick them out at first. Studying the crowd with its feline gaze Norton felt his life a split second away from crumbling beneath the pounce of any one of these creatures, the wings on their back doing nothing to rescue an image of a predator circling its prey. It was a sensation no doubt shared by others present, albeit made manifest in an entirely different manner. In this way was reasoned the appearance of the Anya, off to another side of the room where the tension of instant death being no less taut, now saw it with one parcelain hand buried inside the opening of its companion's blouse, squeezing hard, while her hand beckoned to and fro in no uncertain terms through the opened fly of the Anya's designer pants. Around them men and women continued in their rounds of conversation, the display of lust between the two accepted more than ignored; halfway through a conversation with a male companion, the woman seated on the Anya's other side broke off to take a sip from her wine glass, before leaning over to insert her tongue into a perfectly sculptured alabaster ear.
"No, I really am hurt," said Norton, but the seat beside him was not empty, and instead he found himself staring at the next tble, where the Adversary was making short work of anyone who came close to it; it appeared to have consumed by then its own table, and Norton watched as cracks spread out across the floorboards beneath it, giving into the strain of an inhuman presence conceived expressly to invite collapse onto the laws of certainty, nevermind that of physics. Very soon now and a black hole would be all that was left of its seating area, visual stimulus greeting the eye mere narrative to fill in the gaps while being reflected off an ever emerging event horizon.
Returning to his own table Norton -his preoccupation temporarily forgotten- recalled something that he had once heard, that spoke of a person's worth as measured solely by the depths from which that his opposite was borne, when the distinctive sound of ice cubes clinking in a glass was put towards him, delivered together with the strong whiff of stale cheroot.
"'View from the sea' or some other, quarter casket, whatever that means," said the weathered voice of Edward Spaghetti.
"Here. Might do you good."
Norton accepted the glass with a smile, raising one blood stained hand as he uncovered the side of his belly he had been clutching. The Sheriff said nothing, expressing neither alarm nor surprise as he took the seat so recently emptied. In his hand was a similar glass, its contents the same but for the want of any ice.
Norton raised his glass.
"Girl's right you know."
The liquid went on his tongue smoothly. The room adjusted itself for a half-second.
"Oh?"
"Easy to forget that a man's alive."
"Ed, I'm bleeding to death here," said Norton, considering the glass in his hand. In the little while that he had been here he had already managed to powder the place where he sat with the chalk from his uniform.
"But that's how it is, need to remember; cats're doing us a favour by showin' themselves tonight."
"I thought the rule was to live in *spite* of death."
The Sheriff's glass came down on the table, empty, and with cold eyes that never seemed to soften he said, "Same thing."
"Have you seen Johan around, Ed?"
"Backstage, waiting on the band, know how them young ones are." The Sheriff looked around, raising his empty glass to a passing waiter who acknowledged him with a nod. "Mom's here too."
"I'm not so old myself."
"Then drop the act, it doesn't suit you."
Norton smiled, not from Ed's answer but because he had spotted Jeanette Miles, her table somewhere in the back, next to Schiele who was again drawing Klimt, the Pennys having a table somewhere in the same area too. A meal had been laid out for her, and she appeared to be eating, sitting across the table a man with blond hair, somewhere in his mid forties and seeming to reflect Norton's own sentiment, though probably for entirely different reasons.
Rather warm to be wearing a trenchcoat in here, thought Norton, the comment forgotten just as quickly, a warm sensation bursting within him, filling in his cheeks as eyes rested on the person standing across the room, her dark comb of hair falling about her neatly, the front just shy of her brow. Then all he could remember was that day at the beach, the smell of brine, the blue sky, the moment that never was as it could have been, should have been, and so always is just a word away from being unwritten; he recalls it now, knowing that to step forward, to reach out would be another pebble to disturb the surface of a calm lake, the ripples resettling but never to reveal that very same face, smile a gently drawn line, a line ready to be found and replicated on any other person for another hundred days and more,and it would be any other person, except her. But for this one moment.
Oh god.
In the next table the woman had climbed onto the table, evening dress hiked up above her knees to the applause of its diners, and Norton found his imagination wanting to conceive what the Anya had talked her into doing, even as he perceived somewhere in the halls of the restaurant the explosive slaps of hands against a rubberized floor, the tumbling of bodies with a different kind of cheer. He raised his glass in no particular direction, vision grown foggy he let the tears fall. He had come here thinking he would die, but instead found that life had grown itself a new eddy.
The chatter of the room dropped an octave, lights dimming as a lonely voice started the first words of the first verse, picked up by the next person, and then by the next:
"Ha-"
"-py"
"Birthday-"
"-to you..."
And it was so that the tune arose from the breasts of all of those gathered, and Norton found set before him a cake that was dark brown with its centre dipping slightly inwards, his name spelt over it in pink cream, a single candle dripping wax to chart a course over the pastry's velvety surface. A knife had appeared in his other hand, and the words caught in his throat before the decorum of the occasion reached out and saved him.
"Make a wish."
Rhianna Rue stood next to him, so close that it seemed like it was only the two of them now, catching up after an unkind day spent playing roles and changing constumes, lights dimmed over the kitchen table, a remembered occasion fitted for this one moment they had managed to spare, somehow.
Of course, she would never say, "Blow out the candle."
In spite of himself, Norton smiled. Then he made his wish, and blew out the candle.