Sad trombone plays to the empty tables, looking on with a two drink minimum. The cigarette smoke coats a fine layer of angst and worry. Last call, too late. Nobody is left to hear the wah-wah.
The busboys stack the chairs in voxels. On tables and on sweep duty. They're the kind of crew you find in an Escher sketch. Shake them down and you're looking at yourself again. These are the kind of nightmares purchased by old ladies to insert into the brains of their sons and daughters' sons and daughters. They don't come cheap though. Only a song, and all the love in the world buried deep within your aorta. Bypass surgery renders the contract null and void.
Trombone packs itself away into the case. Neat, tidy, and with years of wear on the inner lining of felt. The only contact it's ever made. The lid closes. The lights go out.
Out back, in the alley between the steam and rainy wet, you can hear the clinking of cats going through the bins. Chasing away the rats their preprandial. You've got to work up an appetite in order to lose it at the sight of what you find slushing about at the bottom and slick sides of the dumpster.
Watching them is a newly planted triffid. It's grown large from the pollution of hate and gossip that swings between the doors of the night club. People talk, couples bicker, the young lot at the back whisper and trade stories of other people's misery. It's the din of a smokey club. It's the atmosphere. It's what happens when you turn your television into the primal 3D model. Right off the showroom floor.
One of the cats finds a stereotypical fish skeleton. Still dripping with blood from one of the line cooks. You have to watch your step when you're working barefoot. But you can't be pregnant about it. This is why they make you wear shoes.
The cat with a fish is a dish that wishes it sat on its hat and not in the plant filled with rants that you can't take back in the heat of the night.
Trombone wakes up to play a tune. The triffid spits out a hairball.
Written on Friday, 22 February 2013