Lord of the Table

I wrote this for this week's writing challenge on io9's Open Channel Concept Art Writing Prompt: A Baroque Dinner Party Aboard an Underwater Shipwreck.  I'm not sure if it's a good or bad sign that it wouldn't post to the site...  Anywho, enjoy!

***

"I want to leave, Robert." 

He looked up at her, at first surprised and then appalled.  "Cecilia!  Your elbows!"

She rolled her eyes.  "Really?  After four centuries it's my elbow--because it is only the one, Robert--on the table to provokes a reaction?"

"You know it's on the table, and yet it remains?"

"Robert!"

"Yes, my love."  He straightened, properly chastised by Cecilia's tone, and picked up his tea cup as it was the closest shield to hand. 

"I want off this ship."

"But Fredericks is still pouring.  Dessert isn't far behind.  We've made it this far, it seems a waste to miss the dessert."

"Fredericks," Cecilia all but snarled the butler's name, her molars grinding on the harder sounds, "has been pouring for over four hundred years.  If we weren't dead, we'd have wasted away waiting for dessert!"

"My dear!  Do maintain a pleasant tone.  Your sister is not well--"

"She's drunk."

"--and it would be rude to wake her."

"She's dead!  And drunk!  She's been drunk for four centuries."

"Clearly she needs the rest."

Disgusted, she threw her hands up.  They were promptly entangled with a drifting bit of sea kelp,  Cecilia swore as she frantically brushed the offending greenery from her person.

"My dear!"

"Oh don't you 'my dear' me, Robert!"

"Well, what do you expect me to do?" he asked, his own ire finally rising.

"End the dinner!  Get up from table so that we may all do so and finally, finally, reach our eternal rest.  At this point I don't care whether it's in Heaven or Hell....it can't be worse than an interminable dinner party that never proceeds forward, and never changes!"

Robert stared at his wife, aghast.  "I can't believe you find your friends and your sister so intolerably boring.  And that you would say so where all could hear."

"Well, as you point out, Maria is fast asleep.  She hears nothing.  Likewise, Althea is paying us no mind.  To my best recollection she hasn't spoken to us in well over two hundred years, if not two hundred and fifty.  The other members of our party, if they are locked into the same milieu are at the other end of the hall, and there they shall stay until some sort of resolution to this meal is reached--if ever it is.  So, yes, I do find our friends and my sister intolerably boring.  And yes, I say where all can hear, not that anyone is listening!"

"I'm listening."

One of Cecilia's painted eyebrows rose.  "Are you, dear?"

"Are you saying that I, too, am intolerably boring?"

She looked away, unwilling to speak.

"You are saying it, aren't you.  I am the only person with whom you've been able to have meaningful conversation since Althea began monopolizing Fredericks and you find it beneath you."

"That's not what I'm saying," she told a passing school of fish.  They ignored her, uninterested in the dinner party they and their predecessors had been passing for generations.

"Isn't it?"

"I haven't been talking about you at all.  For you are not intolerably boring.  I couldn't have borne being married to you if you were."

"Then what are you saying, Cecilia.  Mariah, Althea and Fredericks do not entertain you.  And although I entertain you, or at least I am not as intolerable as those three, still you find some fault in my company.  I demand that you tell me what it is.  This is hardly the first time you've asked me to end the dinner."

Cecilia shook her head.  That spooked the fish.  "No it isn't the first time."

"So tell me my deficiency.  I am here.  I am awake.  I am speaking to you."  Robert set down his tea cup.  "I am not boring."

"No, but you are a coward."  She turned to face him.  "Unwilling to face his mortality by simply getting up from table."  Cecilia stood.

"Where are you going?" Robert demanded. 

"To sit with Althea while I can.  Until the cycle starts again, of course."  She left.

Robert picked up his tea cup.

-Fin-

It was a beautiful day...

11 years ago today, I voted for the 1st time in my first major...primary election I think.  That morning is really sketchy for me because, to be quite honest, early-morning-September 11th may as well have happened on a different day or in a different universe.  It took a couple of days after the fact to even remember that I had voted at all.

But I digress.  The day started dark and chilly -- exactly what you'd expect early in September -- but turned into a truly gorgeous day.  By the time I got to school for my 8:30am class, people were already commenting about how lovely it was.  My Philosophy prof walked in late, as usual, and announced with something of a smile that a plane had just crashed into one of the World Trade Centers.  Curious looks along with curious chatter abounded -- really? a plane? I bet that was funny looking -- and then class went on.

I didn't have class right after Philosophy...or at least I think I don't.  The moment I was outside, I knew something was wrong.  There were too many people on the quad, a relatively small space compared to quads in other schools I'm sure, and all the conversation was wrong, wrong, wrong.  It was nervous.  It was furtive.  There were lots of milling groups, too many of them looking unhappy for early-September.  My CD walkman (hey, it was 11 years ago!) had a radio feature, and so I turned it on.  And was looking...and looking...and looking.  I don't remember if my primary local news station is the one I picked up.  By the time I got to the building where my club was housed in the basement, I'd gotten something for sure.

They weren't biplanes that had crashed into the Towers.

“Like Tony & Pepper finally realizing what they are to each other”/ Vulnerable / 3:00pm, 7/13/12

It’s the scariest thing I’ve ever had to say to you

Oh God help me
(But You’ve helped me plenty
Giving me the opening I was too scared to take for myself
Answering the whispered prayer in heart)

To tell you “No, I want forever…or nothing at all”
To your “Is that what you really want?”
To stick to a convention thought outmoded, outdated and illogical
When I’d been ready to settle for the modern, the conventional, the “smart” thing to do

But as much as I want you
As much as I want to be the one you wake up next to
I want to be that one you wake up to committed. Forever.
I don’t want to be a test run
I don’t want to try you out

All I want is to give you everything
All I’m asking for is everything in return

I’ve given you my answer
Whatever you decide to do with it—
Destroy my hope or make me fly—
Please don’t make me wait for yours

---

(I know it's probably unclear...this poem has 3 titles.  I couldn't decide on just the one :)

And then there was this...

...the last video from my gig on the 16th.  Though they aren't that great, the video takes forever to load.  Anywho, this is a bluesy cover of Bon Jovi's "Livin' On a Prayer" and probably my biggest worry of the whole night.  I mean, it's "Livin' On a Prayer"!  You should have seen me at the first rehearsal: I couldn't stop giggling.  But we changed it so much that it completely worked.  For us at least.  Hopefully other people agreed.  They seemed to.

Introducing...

...Mr. Landol, one of our band's other singers.  Like everyone else in the band, he's really doing this.  I'm the only hobbyist :-/

Blame my camera for the questionable quality of his voice, because, trust me, it was good.  I wish we'd been able to capture more.

I sing a little...

...in public, a very little. Like once a year.  In private, I sing all the frickin' time, unless someone puts me on the spot and asks me to. Yes, yes, I know I'm strange.  I'm not trying to hide it.

Anywho, last night was my one official performance for the year.  And I've got video to prove it.  Gah!  I think it's awful, but then I always think it's awful...  I apologize now for the poor sound quality and picture.  My camera's old and it shows.

I have 2 more videos to torture you with, I think, so stay tuned!  (Or run away screaming.  You have been warned, after all.)

I won't/Say you will

This is a story consisting entirely of dialogue, despite it's strange presentation.  I thought about putting in some description, if not actual dialogue tags, but I sort of like how it is right here.  I'll think on a second post with more detail.  None of the current capitalization/not-capitalization or spacings are accidental.  Enjoy!  Decipher ;)

***

-What are you trying to hide?

-What do you mean?

-Don't you know?
-Why did you run?

-...because if I didn't run away, I wouldn't have been able to walk away.

-So why not stay?

-Because you... because I won't take what's not mine.  it's not right, no matter how much I might want--

-So we keep dancing around the obvious?

-You keep dancing. 

-...you know I did all I could to keep you near me.

-i wondered.

-But you still ran away.

-I had no choice.  Was I supposed to wait for you to decide you were going to stay, or be the catalyst that helped you stray?  No.

-I'm sorry I made you feel that way.

-Are you?

-.....

Fin