And Now For A Breath of Different Air

A mysterious figure crept cautiously from his dark corner into the open space, enshrouded by a turbid murkiness as thick and dense as pea-soup. Cocking his head to one side, he appeared to be listening for something in particular: a signal or a warning perhaps. For that night, he felt instinctively that something was wrong, but he wasn’t quite sure what it was. The area in which he stood was usually terribly packed, with hardly any room to move or space to breathe. But over time, the crowds had thinned, and now he found himself solitary, and actually, a little lonely as well. While he would have never called himself a social butterfly in any way, shape, or form, the sight of the desolated square (well, what he could see of it through the gloom) filled him with sadness. Sadness? Was it sadness? Never having been much of an orator or writer either, he racked his brains for the proper words to describe his feelings. After a while, they came to him. It was not sadness or loneliness that so gripped his heart. It was a feeling of mild terror—not enough to send him screaming into the night, but enough to make the very hairs on his legs quiver ever so slightly in alertness. He must be on his guard.

He stood now before the Great Screen, claiming an enviable spot directly in front of it—a spot which, in the past, he would have never been able to obtain without a great deal of pushing and shoving, and even then, he would have been able to hold his position for a few minutes at the most. Long gone were those days, and long gone were the multitudes, jostling with each other for the privilege of a glimpse into that other world, although on a night like this, one could only make out their immense figures if one really squinted. That other world would never change. He felt sure of it. Its cycles of alternating illumination and darkness, activity and quietude, would never cease, would continue long after his own demise into the far reaches of eternity. It was this aura of immortality that had the power to draw the crowds, to hold them mesmerised until they forgot the existence of anything apart from the magnificent creatures before their eyes: strange-looking gods and goddesses who congregated regularly to feast and celebrate, and their servants clad in red and black who spent their lives perpetually setting up and dismantling for banquet after banquet after banquet. The lives of these immortals were so vastly different from their own, helped them to escape their cramped existence spent in the confines of this prison. Even now, he felt a wave of calm washing over him--a wave so strong that he felt as if he were being lifted slowly off his feet and out of the water. So this is what happened to the others, he thought sluggishly to himself. Still, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the Great Screen.

* * *

“My apologies, Madam, but this is the last lobster we have left. If you find him unsuitable, perhaps you would like to choose something else for your main course this evening?”

Murgatroyd held the lobster aloft before the guest so that she could inspect it. He held it firmly, so that the lobster wouldn’t flick water onto her clothes, but elegantly, to maintain the ambience of fine dining so assiduously maintained at L’Abattoir; not too close, so that the guest would not be subjected to the fishy stench of the tanks, but not too far away, so that the guest could easily spot any defects which might cause her to reject the lobster in favour of something else.