The Armchair Epiphany

A Magical Monolith

There was a brisk spike in the jazz corner that he couldn't see but felt the ecstasy of the strings that throbbed in the hands of someone jolly and eccentric.

He couldn't see the band who were yapping their hands in the air, shrieks of funk and excitement stabbed the darkness.

It was darkness for him since he could not see anything but the thin lining of the sack that was pulled over his head in a careful manner. But the stitched clothing was chosen at the same time so that an accidental glance, a snicker of an image, a flash of someone's dress could be easily spotted.

And that jazz prodded everyone in the open slings of arms, joyous staples of laughter of faceless men and women passed him as if he had not existed in the room.

"Come on, Roxy."

"Oh, Richard. You look absolutely grand!"

The man in the chair couldn't make sense of the showers of names that were passed around, joined by an array of compliments and the sharp sound of loud kisses on cheeks as the shrill laughter broke out here and there.

Since he couldn't see, the claustrophobia strapped onto the clanks of his mind as the clothing on his face seemed to taken a turn of a sour taste, where the gulping gashes of air felt too constipated, too coarse and too unbearable.

The platter of the orchestra had taken a fever before the chattering feet depleted away and away, to such a distance where the hums of their slow moving bodies buzzed into the corners of his ears.

"Where am I?" He found his lips sealed off, the work of someone else since he had drifted away in his little, knocked bed last night without suturing his flanges.

A last flutter of dress seemed to cross where he was sitting and under the clothing of the lines, he could make out the silhouettes appearance as the yellow shined blur stroke a whiff, a brief indication that he or she was late to join the herd.

The man in the chair was quite assured that the blur was a she, since a jumble of hair flowed downwards as she knelled.

He tugged his arms in crude desperation to set himself free as the legs charged at the bars with no indication of stopping.

He understood the effort to be futile as his attempt of escape or to alert the nearby creatures, the jolly bands of people, the endless names of Jack, Carla, Henry, Moira, Moiret, Madame This and Prince That came to a conclusion where no one acknowledged his presence.

He felt the produce of a string of tears on the lagoon of his left eye.

But the tears were halted rudely as the clicking ballad of sharp knotted shoes stopped its song beside him whilst the delineation of the yellow dressed creature vanished to an unknown place.

"HELP!" The crackled lips of his produced not a bit of a sound as the lumps convulsed anything and everything from becoming audible.

This time the tears got away in the wild hope that someone in this foreign, alien place that was jolly in its own bones but perceived to be the most scariest thing in his life. The wild hope disappeared.

Then came back as the curtains of his face lifted of without an announcement.

The woman with the contour of an architectural perfection looked down upon him as one often peer down in a word or a line of a book or a misunderstood poem.

Her attentive portrait did not feel threatened, even defeated itself from being worried and anxious as she granted the man in the chair a soft, long, clueless smile.