Mime Spent Apart

Part 2

Those nights spent watching the moon waiting for a signal from his 'real' parents waned as Menhaus got older, of course. Other things took up his attention, like books, computer games, playing in bands and girls. On the night the mime was breaking free of his mental box, Menhaus was celebrating his twenty eighth birthday with a small group of friends in a small Korean restaurant called 'Tonsil Hockey'. Menhaus looked around the table. His cousin Peter was there shoveling noodles into his face as fast as his chopsticks could reach them. His friend Tina was there as well, watching incredulously as he did so. Continuing to look around the table, he saw other friends he saw maybe once a year, normally around his birthday.

"Hey Menhaus!" One of them called out.

"Hello Patrick"

"Happy birthday!"

"Thanks! Thanks for coming."

"Don't..." Patrick stopped and appeared to be focusing. Menhaus guessed that he'd had a bit too much to drink.

"Don't?"

"Don't mention it. I think I need to step away for a short while."

Patrick stood up and started to walk away from the table. Menhaus noticed items on the table beginning to shift with him, then noticed that Patrick had the tablecloth tucked into the front of his pants.

"Patrick..."

A bottle of sweet chili sauce crashed down onto the ground. It bounced once and thankfully did not shatter but it did let loose a torrent of sauce on the floor where it landed.

"Oh... oops" Patrick spun around to see the damage he had caused, twisting the remainder of the tablecloth around him. Dishes spun off the table like a conveyor belt, along with sauces and chopsticks to a general groan of "hey..." from the assembled eaters. Peter, being a focused eater, managed to pluck his bowl of noodles from the table before it flew off the edge and continued pushing them into his mouth at disturbing speed and volume.

Tina squealed and stood up. There was a long streak of what looked like sweet and sour sauce down her dress. Everyone went quiet, the only sounds were the various foods on the floor sloshing around, the sauce bottles emptying themselves out and Peter continuing to shovel food into his mouth like it had become illegal and he heard tell of an impending raid. Tina stomped her foot and exited to the restrooms, stepping into a small dish of soy sauce on her way and cracking it. Patrick took a step back from the carnage causing an all new waterfall of condiments and Korean food. He looked down and dislodged the tablecloth from his belt buckle.

"Oh." He looked up and shrugged. The rest of the table glowered at him.

"Err... happy birthday, Menhaus?" He pulled a packet of cigarettes from his back pocket. He tapped it against a palm and pulled the resulting smoke, placing it in his mouth. "Well, I'm going out front," he said, and disappeared. By this point the servers in the restaurant had noticed that there was some sort of commotion and sent someone over to deal with us.

She was a young girl in a little red flower print dress and her hair tightly pulled back. She was holding a notebook and had the pen poised as if she was hoping she could write away this whole tragic mess. 

"What happened here?" She asked, bewildered. All Menhaus could do was gesture at the carnage under the table and over the party's shoes, now leaking steadily towards a nearby table. The floor must not have been completely level. "You want to order more food?" She asked as she waved over several of the kitchen staff who were now armed with buckets and brooms and contemplating a plan of attack for our saucy battlefield. Menhaus looked around at everyone else. They didn't seem too thrilled at the prospect. Tina chose this moment to stomp over from her restroom experience. She had actually done a pretty good job of dabbing away the majority of the sauce across her dress, although it was still lightly stained pink in the spots it had hit. If you squinted slightly though, you could convince yourself it was a fashion thing done on purpose.