Adagio

 

The Chalet

 

I was walking along the pathway that led away from the Chalet passing through pleasant fields of heather  greenery and beautiful flowers when I came to the old stone bridge overlooking a meandering lake river. This bridge was built as a pedestrian walkway leading to and from the town.

A quaint little picture perfect postcard town.

A quaint lilliputian village filled with nodding heads and knowing smiles.

Wanting to really take in that moment in time I stopped halfway across to breathe in my lovely surroundings.

Then I looked down. Catching sight of what appeared to be a package caught up in the foliage and rocks. My heart jumped whilst I took hold of my small compact spyglass that I carried with me during my walks. A voice told me not to look, to keep walking but the stronger deep shadow voice compelled me to put the spyglass to my eyes and look down.

My gaze was immediately drawn to the pink sleeved arm protruding from the package. Then miraculously more limb strewn packages appeared and as they piled up against the shore pieces of me disappeared, falling into the swift running river.

Then parts of me began to fall away. First my left arm. Then my right arm. Causing my spectacle spyglass to drop in the lane. Then both my legs disconnected from my body. Finally only my torso remained which rolled up and off the bridge down into the fast flowing water.

Many dance with the bridge. A few survive. Others Thrive.

Later that evening my host and hostess began to search for me when I didn’t return for the evening meal at dusk. As they started to cross the quaint stone bridge they shown their flashlights dispersing the dark to reveal a pair of spyglass spectacles midway between to and fro.

Rhyss

 

That boy. Really a young man of 22 but a boy to me since I had him by more than a decade….

That man boy with the shock of dark wavy curly hair, burnished skin with musculature that threatened to burst through his sartorial splendor. When nude his body was like well corded stacks of bronze wood. A living performance of immersive theater.

Spying on him through a peephole in the Male gymnastics he would oil his bronze skin until his flesh glowed with a high sheen. Such a sheen that cracks of sunlight that made it through dirty broken windows reflected glints of green gold off his body and back to the sun.

Kenda the Shipwreck

 

Kenda. Kenda short for Kendall.

 

That girl. That jealous girl or as she imagined herself his girlfriend. Every time she saw him she worried her lips and teeth with various numerous ill advised seductions which tended towards cracking her jaws with unfulfilled desires.

She trembled so much that the ground beneath her was tempted to open up and swallow her in order to stop her True Romance vibrations.

Emu-Jean

 

ImoJean or Emu-Gene as we called her. She greatly resembled a large flightless bird with a small head framed by hair that appeared to be styled by sticking her fingers in an electric socket.

Emu-Jean would ask questions of Mr. Muscles and he would give short disinterested answers.

In her swept away mindset she made paragraphs from his brief responses.

Both Emu-Jean and the Kenda the Shipwreck imagined themselves performing Red Sand Arabesques along a coral vermilion beach with Mr. Universe.

 

Despite her avian appearance Emu-Jean had one saving grace.  Her voice. Regularly pickled on the streets, beset by mob bafflegab and at times prone to threatening bafflegrab;

Her ethereal voluminous voice elicited the aid of Angels. She needed every assistance available as her protuberant eyes and tiny venomous teeth put people in the mind of imminent attack until regaled by her melodious tunes.

 

Rhyss

 

But he Mr. Body Beautiful neither shook nor shimmied. Totally ignorant of the volcanic eruptions going on around him. Truth be told he was indifferent to most female attention being in love with himself and his appearance.

One of them did it. But even now in the afterlife I still can’t remember which one?

Torso skin bubbled up bursting onto rocky pebble strewn shores as though seeking sunlight for divination or a more expansive tan on already sepia toned flesh.  Damaged dermis. Damaged dermis laid out like a carpet awaiting eager picnickers.

 

The creek was slimy with adipose tissue for a long while.

Yet my magenta cloche hat still fit prettily upon my severed head.

Watertight you might say.

We got outside passes for good behavior so I don’t understand envy or jealousy?

 

Then again maybe envy and jealousy are just the tip of the iceberg.  The Chalet took relative strangers forcing them to become family if not friends.

Puzzlement?

But there were hierarchies within the colonies. A Caste system of drones, worker bees, Queens, Kings and their lackeys.

 

Lord Dustbin. Dancing with Dunces.

 

TO BE CONTINUED