Blue Songs - Poem & Sleeper - Short Story

Blue Songs

Blue songs are easy,

they roll off the tongue,

feelings bubbling to the top

mixing with the slop.

Warm songs are tough,

they fade in the rough,

But when they shift

and are sung

real music is done.

Sleeper

I hate this kind of act.

Honestly when does a suit that could be confused as drag and stage fireworks make an act impressive. Despite my own resistance at the rather lack lustre opening of 'Marvellous Mike's Hypnotism show' the rest of the audience already sat entranced as if he was already weaving his magic over them. Which I was sure was giving him far too much credit.

When you are single two things happen to you, firstly you become hypercritical of everything around you, is she giving me a 'you repulse me' look or a 'come a buy me a drink' look. It must be some evolutionary overhang that is still making it's self useful all these years later. The other thing being single makes you, and the reason I am watching a man with electric yellow hair be showered in a rain of glitter sequins, is you become incredibly accommodating. If chance against chance you convince some poor girl to go out with you, it is a down economy after all, then you do absolutely anything that they want to do.
Mary, my date for this evening, sat just as entranced as the rest of the audience to my right around a cheap circular table. Her hands ran along the neck of a large Martini glass, the kind that would look classy if the measures did not go up to the rim and the locals looked in wonder at the olive on the end. This was Las Vegas on a budget. She has heard from a friend that this act was amazing and had insisted we go along. Not quite what I would plan for a first date if I am being quite honest.

The show started up in earnest just as my own beer had made it's way through my body and started urging me to use the toilet. Needing the toilet at some thing with audience participation is like fast kid on sports day. You are essentially guaranteed to be dragged up on stage. I timed his act waiting until he was just about to start a new section. I managed to make my way out with out incident just as he was asking 'Sheila on holiday from Australia' if she was a natural blonde to much banal laughter of the other audience members.

I took the long way back to my seat, trying to work of the calculation of how long I could feasibly stay in the bar and still be on the date. I worked it out to be a depressingly short time and returned to my seat only five minutes later. Sheila was strutting about like a chicken trying to lay an egg onto a chair. At least one positive thing had come out of this night, I had discovered a local micro-brew during my sojourn at the bar. A thick head and a with much more palatable yellow than Marvellous Mike's hair. Apart from sitting with the lovely Mary it was a highlight in an other wise disappointing night.

I returned to the table with a new Martini for Mary, slightly enjoying the alliteration as it rolled around in my mind a tad too much. The lights dimmed just as I took my seat, Mary was startled as I sat as she had not even realised that I had left. She shared with me one of the smiles that had coaxed me into asking her out in the first place. A light started roaming around the room like a hunter looking for prey. Mike's voice came over a speaker system, it was heavily synthesised but his unmistakeable lisp was still there.

“Chinese mystics once told a story of a man. This man would have commune with the world beyond and have the power to entrance any one they met. That man stand before you tonight.”

The light stops on Mike, his head facing down in as a dramatic pose you can muster if a glitter covered suit. His outstretches his arm and points a finger into the crowd. The light follows his finger and it lands on someone. It takes me several moments to realise the rainbow display on my table is from the new light shining through our drinks. I look behind me. It is dark. It slowly dawns on me, the ultimate thing that someone who does not like audience participation dreads. Being noticed.

In a flash of inspiration I turned to Mary and putting on a winning smile that I hoped would work a magic similar to Mike's and convince her to go one stage. My luck was not in, she was clapping already for me to be the one for ritual humiliation. It seemed that while she wanted to come to this festival of cheesiness she did not want to participate herself. The whole audience was clapping now. There is a little known fact that people will always be compelled towards the sound of peoples hands clapping. If lions learned how to bang their paws together we would be screwed.

As I climbed the short distance up the steps to the stage I decided that I might as well play along. I might get a second date out of it at the very least.

A small hard backed chair was brought out and placed in the middle of the stage. I tentatively sat down in it. My stomach twisted as I realised that the audience looked a larger on this side of the looking glass. He makes several pirouettes around me, I simply stare at him. Not in the mesmerised way the others indulged him with but in more of a general 'get on with it before I walk of the stage' kind of look.

To my surprise I found my eyes growing tired. I convinced my self that I was only going to shut them for the briefest moments to try and block out the annoyance I was sharing a stage with.

Suddenly everything is coming to me as if through ten feet of concrete. My body is moving, I can feel the wetness on my fingers as they are plunged into something but I have absolutely no control over it. I am hit with a strong smell of home, it is not a smell I can describe, it is simply a tickling sensation rioting around my nostrils that drags one word from my psyche, home.

Everything stops. There is no more muffled sounds or sensations. There is simply a nothingness.

My mind floats, perfectly relaxed.

How long I am like this I do not know. Time stretches luxuriously around me. It is only broken by a voice coming from far off.

Three.

I do not want to leave this place it is safe and warm.

Two

Nothing can happen to me here.

One.

There is something out there that I do not want to return to.

You are back in the room.

My nostrils are immediately assaulted by the bitter iron smell of blood. A man looks me in the eyes. Shining a torch into each one blinding me. I hear the cackle of a radio beside me. The man happy with what he has seen nods to another man. The room is swarming with men and women dressed as police officers. It takes me an eternity to realise what else fills the room.

Thirty people lie in various states of dismemberment, scattered about the room. The wooden floor is soaked a burgundy red.

My hands are covered in a sticky concoction of blood, hair and other bodily fluids I don't even want to think about. One the police officers, dressed in a forensic suit, gently takes a knife from my limp hand and places it into a plastic evidence bag. I can't even bring myself to talk.

“Sir” One of the police officers try to get my attention.

“What... What happened?” I ask him through dry blood stained lips

“We found you like this sir, talking in Russian. Can you tell us what happened to these people?” He responds patiently

I can't answer him. I can remember sitting down and waking up. It is just like when I was a kid and was on holiday. I had lost a month in that hospital but it was there I had returned to in my head. That was home and I must protect it.