James Douglas Ashelford and the Eclectic Chair introduce
Tales From The Midnight Forum
“Three men walk into a bar…”
- traditional
Moral Disclaimer: The Asda bag in scene three, whilst plastic, is reused.
i.
Queen of her Castle
Click.
The lights come on one by one, flickering slowly into life from one end of the bar to the other like even the electricity in the place is getting ready to relax after a hard day’s work. Harsh halogen strips glare down on the tall round tables in the centre of the bar while intimate spotlights throw a softer light into the booths along the back wall. Highlights are struck from wooden surfaces and metal finishings diligently polished and scrupulously cleaned.
Her finger still resting against the light switch, Mary surveys her kingdom from behind the mahogany bar. With practiced ease she moves along the bar, connecting and testing the feed lines to the casks, checking the spirits are all in good order, filling up the crisps and testing the temperature of the fridges. Moving out into the bar, she picks up a broom as she goes, giving the place one last sweep before opening time.
She enjoys the quiet, the space to think that opening affords her but she knows that the quiet will never afford her the same pleasures as the noise: the buzz of conversation, the ever-present undertone of music from the jukebox, the click and thud of a game of snooker, the thump of darts embedding themselves in the board. She can spend a half an hour alone in the silence with her thoughts but she can spend endless hours in the company of others.
The clock on the wall ticks up to the hour and she rests her broom back in its corner, plucks a key from her pocket and moves to the pub’s street doors. A flick of the wrist unlocks the door and she moves back to her bar. The door remains shut, no one comes in and she isn’t surprised. Long experience has told her that only one person opens up for a reason. In time they’ll come, one at a time at first and then in groups, staking their claim to a good place to sit with coats thrown across the backs of chairs and newspapers thrown down on tables.
That is what she loves, that sea of people. Some come to drink, some to meet friends or to make them, some come to talk and some come to listen, some stay a few minutes and some stay all night and each and every one has a story to tell.
You just have to listen…
ii.
Getting Started
Felix sat slumped back in his little swivel chair at an angle that was absolutely useless for typing. This was nothing if not convenient because he wasn’t typing, he was brooding over the blank word processing document in front of him. It was getting to that point where in spite of all rationality he was starting to believe that the computer was mocking him. The nearest he’d come to writing in the last hour had been the few times he’d leant forwards to tap a single key whenever the screensaver popped up. He was coming to hate that screensaver.
Sighing heavily for the benefit of no one but himself (and possibly God), he kicked out his chair from beneath the desk and got up, making for the kitchen and another cup of coffee. Flicking on the kettle he caught a glimpse of the world outside and discovered that night had fallen sometime during the endless eternity of his writer’s block. He wasn’t surprised, the only shock was that the buildings on the other side of the street were still standing, he’d expected some natural disaster or the simple passage of aeons to have wiped humanity from the face of the Earth while he was sitting at that desk.
Two thousand words, he brooded, riffling through the small forest of cups on the draining board for the least filthy. Selecting one where the bottom of the cup could just about be seen through the stains, he rinsed it out and went in search of coffee.
Two thousand words and so far he didn’t even have a title for the article.
He didn’t have any coffee, as it turned out.
There really was no alternative.
He had to go to the pub.
* * * * *
Felix turned up the collar of his coat as he stepped out into the rain. It was coming down but rain had never really bothered him. As his grandmother said, he was one of the true genetic Englishmen, that rare and hardy breed who had actually managed to adapt to the weather conditions that had afflicted their race for thousands of years. It had always seemed odd to them both that on an island so used to rain the people could be so averse to it.
You never heard of an Inuit who wouldn’t leave the igloo because it was snowing.
It was a healthy walk from Felix’s house to the pub and he spent the time listening to his MP3 player and the album that was so frustrating him. Ten tracks past him by as he walked with no real urgency down the steep hill of the town. He nodded to people he vaguely knew, stepped unhurriedly out of the way of a cyclist obviously confused by the fact that both pavement and road were tarmac around here and he pressed ever onwards towards the pub and a chance to clear the cobwebs from his head.
Two thousand words.
Halfway to the pub he stopped and fiddled with the minimal controls of the player, switching from sequential to random, pretty much the only special feature on the stripped down model he’d picked up from the market. As a body of work the album had failed to impress him but maybe track by track, in a new order, something would occur.
At this point he’d be grateful if just a few hundred words would care to occur.
Nothing happened.
Reaching his destination, he pulled the headphones from his ears, stuffed the player into one of his coat’s many pockets and pushed his way through the old wooden door and into the pub to be greeted by the friendly barmaid whose first words to him were:
‘You look like hell.’
‘Evening, Anne.’ Okay, he had to admit that she had a point, though the rain didn‘t bother him it‘d done a number on him, plastering his long hair across his face and down the back of his neck.. She also had a pint ready for him by the time he squelched the last few feet to the bar. Taciturn and borderline evil though she might be, she was at least efficient bar staff. Neat and well-presented with a bearing that hovered around the regal end of dignified she could put the fear of God into just about anyone pretty much regardless of relative size, blood alcohol level or chosen football team.
Millwall scarves had quailed at the approach of this woman.
‘If you’re after Mary’ the statuesque barmaid told him, turning away to stack glasses, ‘she’s over by the fire talking to Dean and Shakespeare, chatting away, leaving me to do all the work. Now pay me for the pint before you go looking for kisses.’
‘How much?’
‘Two seventy, same as always.’
‘Take your blood money,’ Felix said, fishing out a handful of change, old receipts, bus tickets, unidentifiable fluff and hairs of dubious origin from his jeans pocket and set it down on the bar. Anne glared darkly at the pile of various detritus as she tried to determine its actual monetary worth. Her eyes flickering briefly to meet Felix’s look of good-natured innocence before declaring:
‘Go.’
‘Gone,’ he assured her, taking a quick sip as he moved off.
iii.
First Round: Love and Pastry
The fireplace was one of the things Felix loved the most about the Midnight Forum. It was large, fashioned from wrought iron and the constant crackle of it on dark winter evenings combined with the sound of rain outside was probably the most comforting sound he coulkd imagine. There was something romantic about a real log fire.
Of course, it would be more romantic if it were him and his girlfriend in front of it in some private place like their living room instead of the middle of the pub with Dean and Shakespeare for company.
Although it seemed the group was about to be diminished by one.
‘I really should go,’ Dean said, checking his watch for the third time since Felix had pulled up a chair to the little round table. He drained his glass and picked up a large Asda bag from the floor. ‘Pastry night.’
‘I’m sorry, what?’ Felix asked with a raised eyebrow.
‘Couple thing, not interesting,’ Shakespeare informed his slowly drying friend with a dismissive gesture that was rather spoiled by the fact it involved spilling a significant portion of his drink on his sleeve.
‘I’ve never told you this?’ Dean asked uncertainly. ‘All the years I’ve known you and I never told you this?’
‘He’s told you this,’ Mary assured Felix with the certainty only lovers have that they know every fact ever told to their partners.
‘In my defence, I probably just wasn’t listening at the time,’ Felix told them candidly.
‘Because it was a couple thing,’ Shakespeare said slowly and deliberately, ‘and boring.’
‘It is a couple thing,’ Dean confessed as he shuffled into his bulky winter coat, ‘but I think its sweet.’
‘You’re part of the couple,’ Shakespeare reminded him as if the fact weren’t obvious, ‘of course you think its sweet, that’s how it works. Outside the parties actually involved its just some little ritual of no real significance and completely boring.’
‘Its sweet,’ Mary cut in with the natural authority of bar staff. ‘Now shut up and let the man tell his story.’
‘I have somewhere to be…’ Dean reminded her.
‘Then get on with it.’
‘Okay, okay… back at university when I was skint I practically lived off reduced stuff from supermarkets. Cheap bread, cheap milk, cheap everything. If I’d had a particularly good week and had something left over I would go in to the supermarket late in the evening and treat myself to reduced pastries.’
‘I thought this was a couple thing?’ Felix put in.
‘Well, time comes I meet Michael. We’re on a few courses together and we get to studying together. One night I suggest we take a break and go down the supermarket, get some pastries. It becomes a regular thing. Neither of us have to be up particularly early on a Friday so every Thursday we’d get a big bag of pastries for like ten pence each and decamp to one of our rooms to talk and study and play video games. One of those Thursday nights with pastries and study he leans over and kisses me for the first time. Now its (yes, Shakespeare) a bit of a ritual.’
‘See,’ Mary cut in smugly, ‘sweet.’
‘It’s idiotic!’ Shakespeare exclaimed, sacrificing yet more lager to this latest outburst. ‘His boyfriend is a professional chef, they own a baking oven and he picks up discount pastries at a supermarket!’
‘You have no sense of romance, man,’ Felix said, straight-faced. He and Shakespeare sat silently for a few moments as Dean picked up the last of his things and made his way out. A few minutes of agreeable conversation followed before the almost concussive force of Anne clearing her throat informed Mary that her break was now more than over and she returned to the bar. It was only then that Shakespeare quietly asked Felix:
‘You agree with me, don’t you?’
‘Oh, God, yes.’
iv.
Second Round: The Lack-Of-Opinion Piece
‘You get this drink,’ Felix said as he held the next round tantalisingly inches out of Shakespeare’s reach, ‘if you listen to something for me.’
‘This breaks every rule of the society of men,’ Shakespeare pointed out.
‘True.’
The battle of wills commenced: two men, each holding a position of power over the other, one holding liquid refreshment, the other holding the aid so urgently needed in the other’s endeavours.
‘I’ll do it, just give me my drink,’ Shakespeare caved. Felix plonked the lager down on the table before resuming his seat. A few moments digging around in his coat turned up the MP3 player. ‘All the rules, man, all the rules of-’
‘- the society of men, I know, just listen to this, will you?’
Shrugging, Shakespeare picked up the headphones and flicked the play button. Sipping his drink, Felix watched as the track numbers flickered one after the other across the little screen of the player. By the fourth track, Shakespeare’s expression was so neutral that Felix wouldn’t have been surprised if the man’s face had faded from its usual rich brown to a bland, show house magnolia.
‘Yeah,’ Shakespeare said as the last track faded out in a characterless instrumental, ‘that was music.’
Nothing else followed. Felix sat, watching his friend expectantly, hoping against hope that more was forthcoming.
It wasn’t.
‘That’s all you have for me?’ Felix asked, not angry but rather in a pleading tone like a child who can’t believe that all he got for Christmas was socks. ‘Did you like it?’
‘Wellllllllll,’ Shakespeare said, drawing out the syllable for all it was worth just to put off the moment when he would have to try and articulate his feeling on the subject, ‘I didn’t not like it. You?’
‘Same,’ Felix confessed. ‘I have to have a two thousand word review of this in by Monday. It isn’t good…’ he trailed off, trying to think of a way to continue.
‘… it isn’t bad…’ Shakespeare supplied.
‘… it’s just… there!’ Felix concluded with mounting frustration. ‘How is it possible? Seriously: how is it possible to create music that has no emotional impact whatsoever? How was this achieved?’
‘It ain’t in the laws of physics,’ Shakespeare agreed. ‘I think this may be Lovecraftian music. You take emotion away from music and this is what you get and the only things capable of that must be creatures from outside all known time and space with an agenda known only to themselves and bonkers writers from Rhode Island.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘There’s a Shoggoth in your MP3 player and its singing, man. Ditch the thing before it eats New England.’
‘You are no help.’
* * * * *
‘I hate this music,’ Anne said, staring with open hostility at the MP3 player she held in the palm of her hand. So fixated was she on the hateful player that she didn’t even notice Felix punch the air as she spoke the words. ‘Not for any fault in the music itself but because I can’t think of any criticism of it. It has no saving graces and yet it has no faults. This is an irresolvable paradox.’ So fixated was she on the hateful player that she didn’t notice Felix visibly deflate.
‘All that can save us is the forbidden knowledge held within the library of Miskatonic University,’ Shakespeare whispered hysterically. ‘And no man may hold that knowledge and remain sane!’
‘Shut up!’ Felix snapped, snatching back his MP3 player.
* * * * *
‘Right! Everyone in this bar, listen up!’ Felix declared from his position atop the most central table in the Forum. All eyes turned in his direction and whilst not all conversation ceased at the sound of his voice, a good percentage did because the insane behaviour of others always draws a crowd. He stood, one hand balled into a fist and the other holding a complicated-looking lash-up of his MP3 player, the speakers from the PC in the bar’s back office and more wires than seemed strictly necessary to connect the two. ‘You are going to listen to this music and one of you is going to have an opinion!’
Mary watched his performance from the bar with silent approval. Anne watched as well, with moderately less approval and significantly less silence.
‘What the hell is that man doing?’ Anne asked, scowling up at the unforgivably demonstrative man causing a disruption in her domain.
‘Getting his two thousand words any way he can,’ Mary told her.
‘Your boyfriend is insane.’
‘Yes, yes he is.’
‘Track number one!’ Felix declared, the light of insanity in his eyes. ‘The Grey Night.’ He pressed play and watched the apathy commence.
* * * * *
‘NOTHING!’ Felix screamed into the hardwood bar, slumped over it as he was face down with his hands folded atop the back of his head. ‘Not one single, stinking opinion from the whole lot of them!’ A gentle hand patted his head and the dull vibration of a pint glass hitting the bar by his head told him that Mary and Anne were at least humouring him even if they weren’t actively sympathising. What the hell, he thought, after tonight I’ll take whatever I can get.
‘There was the guy who fell asleep during track seven,’ Shakespeare pointed out.
‘Graham’s ninety-seven,’ Anne pointed out, doing her best as always to be completely unhelpful, ‘he falls asleep all the time.’
‘That’s like pointing out that Anne is a judgemental, snide cow,’ Felix sighed, picking his head up from the bar. ‘Not an indication of opinion, just a statement of reality.’
‘Felix!’ Mary chided.
‘No, that’s fair,’ Anne conceded the point. ‘So, in that vein: get writing, you floppy haired dickhead. You got forty-odd people to listen to the music and got not one opinion except an idiot who thought your MP3 was possessed, an old man who fell asleep and the fact you nearly broke my brain, for which there will be retribution later.’
‘You’re right, you know,’ Felix admitted, the light dawning.
‘Also, you made a fool of yourself doing it,’ Mary pointed out, ‘so write that up and your audience might be amused enough to ignore the complete lack of any real judgement of the music.’
‘Except to warn them it’s the work of Azathoth on Earth,’ Shakespeare reminded him.
‘Shut up!’ Anne snapped.
‘I’ll see you later?’ Felix asked Mary as he made to leave.
‘I’ll be home in a few hours,’ she said, kissing him lightly on the cheek. ‘You get to work, now.’
v.
Third Round: A Bedtime Story
‘That man of yours is insane,’ Shakespeare said as the door swung closed behind Felix. The sound of the rain intensified for the moment the door was open and everyone in the bar felt a little colder, more out of sympathy for the lunatic who was leaving than through any appreciable drop in temperature that five second’s exposure to the outside world caused.
‘“Intense”, I think is how he would prefer I use to describe him,’ Mary said with a smile.
‘But when he’s not in the room…?’ Shakespeare hinted.
‘Then I go with “insane” like everyone else, if I’m honest.’ She started to laugh, not because she actually thought she was being funny but because she knew that when someone laughed Shakespeare felt honour bound to laugh with them, which he obligingly did. His hand shot to his ribs, just as Mary had suspected it would. ‘Who hit you?’
‘What? No one.’
‘You’ve been favouring your left side all evening. Now, Felix’s elastic has snapped and Dean was looking forward to pastries and a long romantic evening with sex at the end so they didn’t notice and, frankly, we both know not to distract those boys under those circumstances but I’m me and we’re alone so tell me what happened, you’ll feel better.’
‘Talking actually hurts just a little bit, right now.’
‘I meant emotionally,’ she clarified.
‘You promise not to laugh?’
‘I promise,’ Mary told him, hand on heart.
‘I don’t,’ Anne told him, hand on hip.
‘Okay… you remember that girl I met Tuesday, right? Catherine: nice girl, wavy blonde hair. Anyway, there I am reading the manual for my self-defence class and she sidles into the booth, says hello and we get to talking. The next morning–’
‘The next what?’ Anne snapped. ‘Aren’t you missing out a few salient details?’
‘You want to hear about the sex?’
‘No,’ she said after a moment’s hesitation.
‘You want to hear about the sex,’ Shakespeare persisted with a smile Mary very much feared was about to be wiped from his face, quite violently if she knew Anne.
‘Shakespeare…’ Anne growled menacingly.
‘Envy’s a bad emotion, Anne.’
‘The conversation, Shakespeare, the conversation! She sits down, she says hello and you skip straight to the morning after. You don’t think that’s just a little insulting?’
‘To who?’
‘The woman! Catherine!’
‘I end this story with a concussion. To be perfectly honest with you I don’t really remember all too well. Now, do you want my fuzzy memories of her seduction technique or do you want to hear how I got the shit beaten out of me?’
‘Well,’ Anne conceded, ‘if you put it like that.’
‘Okay,’ Shakespeare continued, settling back onto his barstool, ‘so the next morning comes around. As you might expect I’m not in my own bed and I most definitely ain’t in my pyjamas. Whatever that girl did to get me back to her place worked, not that I remember all too well what she did or what we did once we got there, which is a bastard because remembering might have made what comes next kind of worth it. Probably not by much but she could have been fantastic and I’ll never know.’
‘She was a brunette,’ Anne put in.
‘The hell is this now?’ Shakespeare sighed, his flow once again broken.
‘You said she had wavy blonde hair, she was a brunette.’
‘How would you know?’
‘I was the one serving you the drinks, you prat.’
‘It was Gina on the bar that night.’
‘It was me and Marcus. How could you mistake… Gina is six foot seven and built like a brick–’
‘Concussion!’ he cut in, pointing with exaggerated jerking motions at his temples with both hands.
‘Yeah, okay, continue…’
‘Thank you, very kind. So, not remembering the night before I don’t know what I was expecting from the morning after: cuddles, perhaps or maybes a chat, maybes even a repeat performance of whatever it was happened last night. I’m guessing I didn’t expect to be hauled naked out of the bed by her boyfriend who pins me up against the wall with his hand around my throat.’
‘Pins you against the wall?’ Mary asked, shock in her face.
‘Naked?’ Anne asked, laughter in her eyes.
‘My feet are a foot off the floor, I’m not kidding. Guy was strong, I’d’ve been well impressed except for, you know, the oxygen issue. Anyway, he must’ve slammed my head pretty good against the wall because I black out and the next thing I know I’m in an ambulance with a paramedic urging me to stay awake and the happy couple having a merry shouting match somewhere around about my feet.’
‘Oh, you poor boy,’ Mary said with genuine sympathy.
‘Skip straight to the end,’ Anne urged him with a glance at her watch. ‘I got work to do.’
‘Next time I’m conscious I’m in an A and E bed and Catherine is begging me not to press charges. I’m guessing I was on a whole lot of painkillers because I agree, either that or my subconscious remembers her being absolutely mind blowing even if my conscious mind can’t and figures I owe her a favour.’
‘Romantic,’ Anne commented. ‘Well, that’s made my night but I really have to be getting on.’ And with that she left.
‘All heart, that woman,’ Shakespeare commented dryly.
‘You want another?’ Mary asked, nodding in the general direction of his pint.
‘No, I’m fine.’
‘On me, medicinal.’
‘Okay then.’
vi.
Closing Time
The end of the night has come around and all the drinks have been drunk, all the stories have been told; Dean falls asleep with a very full stomach and Michael in his arms; Felix sits at his computer and taps out an impassioned rant about an album so completely lacking in qualities of any kind (and yes, he does include some of Shakespeare’s Lovecraftian pronouncements); Shakespeare walks gingerly home, wondering if he had a good night with Catherine, the question nagging at the edge of his thoughts as it has for two days.
And in the bar, with everyone gone and the atmosphere reduced to silence once more, Anne turns out the lights.
Click.
End. Three Men Walk Into A Bar
*****WRITER’S BOX*****
This story is the work of James Ashelford and may not be reproduced, archived, reposted or otherwise used without his express permission. Azathoth, Shoggoths and the institution of Miskatonic University are taken with respect from the Cthulu Mythos of H.P. Lovecraft, all the rest is my own work.
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