Hard work and establishing train of thought. About confident enough to read my posts over from the beginning. I'm reading this awesome psychology book from my pal Henry Boeh, one of the best book/computer game recommenders I have ever met! Also, typing with one hand because I'm eating cheese pretzels. I can play a pretty mean version of Surfin Safari by the Beach Boys now, and I wonder if I can put streaming videos on here somehow. Then I'd do a new song every day for you folks. I'll figure it out. Without further ado, my story starts to get interesting!
Charles pulled himself onto the top of the next pile, the monster below trying to use its tongue to pull itself up after him like a pinata hanging at an awkward angle. The cavern led into complete darkness but he pushed on. The rocks pricked him as he scooted through, arms completely at his side like a big bag of potatoes.
The ice was giving way and collapsing behind him, the giant cacophonous ripping of solid rock filled the tunnel. Charles felt his way across the inside wall, it looked like this area was carved out by complete luck. The ceiling creaked and the fear intensified. The radiant little purple people appeared at the end of the hall, reflecting light into the darkness like disco balls. They stared with large globulous gloopy circular facial indentations, appearing to point Charles way, and suddenly the room started to spin and became in essence a room.
The heavy disco beat started in the middle of the room. A fat black music box shifted its moving parts and gyrated at its self made song. Toot too too prick your finger stuck in the hole where do we die where do we go. The words only sounded like english and human minds turned them into as close to english as they could get. Charles stood at the far end of the room wearing a blue tuxedo with a white fril running down the center. He saw his reflection in the punch bowl, and smiling down at himself saw that he was not wearing glasses, and had that sheen behind his eyes which was lacking for years. His hair was slicked back in the style popular amongst people going to dances in the late 80s.
He knew in actuality he was pressed into a dead end wall in the labrynthal underground cavern, hands laying limp on his side, amorphic goo shoving its way into every orifice. He felt soft treads under his uncorporal body in a faint disconnect, but snapped out of that and focused on his dance.
The other dancers appeared one by one out of the walls like they had always been there. There was the french gentleman who looked like he was born standing upright and fullgrown, the white-dressed ballerina with her contagious smile and nervous eyes moving to each man on her flanks like a Felix the Cat Clock.
A man standing behind the bar that Charles would have been hard pressed not to call the bartended was eating mushrooms out of a small tray. Holding one by the stalk, he took a nibble out of the enormous crown, set it down and licked his teeth. He looked over at Charles standing near the tray of oeur d'oeuvres nervously picking at his neckerchief and dabbed his moustache with a nearby white folded napkin and approached, pushing the section of retractable bar up in front of him in one fluent motion.
Charles was enamored with the ballroom dancing going on. This kind of dancing was a lost art since the late 80s, no one went to organized dances like this anymore. He had never been to a dance like this, Anne being his first real girlfriend, and savored the moment by stuffing his mouth with little cocktail weiners.
The bartender put an outstretched hand on Charles back, stared down and him gallantly when he turned, and led him out of the gymnasium. Charles chewed rapidly as he walked, a sensation with was paramount to trying to drink a beverage while walking. Once they were out of ear shot of the music and only the baritone bass siren could be heard.
“Excuse me sir but it is about time you arrived. You are dressed for the dance, but there are more pressing matters we must attend to. I dare not keep you from your people in the dancing room, but Masters Purple have something they have simply been dying to talk to you about.”
Charles knew he was in a hallucination but still felt a twinge of pain imagining what these creatures had for him. Did they intend to enslave him, control his body while his mind was trapped here, what kind of wager could they have? Still, they were nice enough to dress him up in this pretty blue suit and had some access to his memory. Now that he was in the past, he may be able to retrieve the earlier life which was alluding him.
The man gestured with a hand down the hallway, his other hand holding an invisible tray.
“Who are you?” Charles said with unintended forcefulness. “Where am I, what’s going on?”
The man breathed in deeply through his nose, blinked and smiled down at Charles. He expected the man to next place a hand on his head and maybe take him out for icecream. “My name is Arthur Hartford. I am the maitre d’hotel at this residence. I have been here since the business opened, and it has been so busy over the years. I will stop to answer you although my time is very important to the business.”
Arthur gestured toward the dancehall, and sure enough a new platoon of enlisted men dressed in suits similar to Charles’s in quality, but not in color, moved in and out of Charles’s view through the doorway. The dancers had also become more plentiful, and the music grew slightly louder as Charles focused his attention on the room. When he looked down the hallway, the noise would die away, and the dance would leave his mind completely. A tiny metal stick seemed to be pushing him by the brain onward, like a cow to a slaughter.
“I will make this as succinct as possible.” The man said and then paused, shaking his head at an unconscious realization. “You are looking for meaning and we have that meaning for you. We will train you, we will accept your weaknesses. I myself am not sure what they see in you, but they insist and they will have their way regardless of what I want or do not want. If you would please…” He gestured down the hallway and began taking long aimed strides.
The man with the magnifying glass and deerhunter cap stalked past them intently following a trail. Charles looked at the ground he was surveying as Arthur dragged him up a flight of linoleum stairs, and could make out a glowing blue line of guidance on the ground. Not that he knew what the man was following, but at the very least he had a direction.
The deerstalker hat man disappeared behind an elevator door at the end of the hallway, as Charles continued to walk and talk with this Arthur character.
“If you want to save your girl, you work for us. If you want to make money, you work for us. If you want any kind of security, you will benefit from working for us. We have a goal, you will work with us toward this goal, you therefore will work for us.”
Charles listened stupidly to Arthur’s laundry list of persuasive sentiments. Arthur craned his neck backwards and shuffled sideways up the stairs, life his words were what was drawing Charles forward.
“But what if I’m not satisfied working for you?”
“Well, first, you must hear what they have to say. Secondly, if you choose not to belief in our cause, you choose not to believe in yourself.”
“What if I want to start my own business, provide my own service?”
Arthur laughed and put a hand on Charles shoulder, slipping backwards when he failed to notice that the stairs had ended. He righted himself with all of his weight on one foot, and looked at Charles with a knowing gaze. “We all help eachother out, you see? You’re helping me right now and you do not even know it.”
Charles walked by enumerated plaques on the wall, each a carbon copy of the last except for the engraved numbers on their heading. They were honorary doctorates, Charles could gather from across the room, though Arthur prevented him from stopping to look at them. All the same, they were probably pretty boring to look at.
In the middle of the hall, the loveless unadorned cold marble floor shifted into a regal carpeted, specious accomodating hall. The hall itself was framed with a wooden boundary, the ceiling with miniature pearl chandeliers. The fake candle lights in the candle might as well have been real candles, the facsimile was so perfect, Charles warily avoided the drip of burning wax that he knew wouldn’t drop. Arthur rolled his eyes and made for the end of the hallway in a headlong gait, silhouettes visible through the opaque glass with “Pink Brothers” scrawled across it in New York Times style typeprint.
Charles’s blue tux transformed into a suit, and he felt a moustache bristle out like the pages in a popup book. The suit wrapped itself around him, fitting itself snuggly into him like it knew his exact measurements. He was wearing a blue power tie, which was neat to him, considering he always liked the idea of wearing a blue power tie. He didn’t exactly feel like himself anymore, and questioned silently whether this get-up had really changed from the pillow cushion suit he wore to impress the bird in a different era entirely.
Purple dust and colorless fog creeped out like a light when the door opened. He looked back, seeing nothing in the distance, as if he was in the only moment of his life that mattered to this point.
“My boy, my boy!” The two purple men looked exactly like they did on the outside, only now their slime was cemented into a permanent figure. They sat on the other side of a fat bulking grey metal desk, which easily could have been used for cover in case a war broke out. They were watching themselves on TV, dragging Charles’s ridiculous body out of the head of the statue.
Arthur snapped his fingers and the TV turned off, and they spun back towards him and Charles with raised eyebrows. Or, atleast, the eyebrows would have been raised where their eyebrows were supposed to be if they existed. The silence dragged on for a few moments when the one on the left, who had a red bump on his forehead, cleared his throat.
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