The Eulogy that could have been for LaikaThere was once an all-black spaniel that believed he was a butcher that lived on the other side of a big fridge. He woke up one day and spilt milk all over his lap. Instead of looking for a pair of new trousers, he decided to go back to bed and start again. Within seconds he fell asleep and dreamed that he was in a bubble bath made out of soya milk. After drinking the bath dry, he noticed the bath tub was taking off, spinning and tumbling out of the window. In the moment of confusion and desperation, he grabbed the goldfish with him, the goldfish that was minding his own business watering his plants in his miniature Japanese garden. "I promise you will have a outstanding time with me," The spaniel said to the goldfish. The goldfish did not know what 'promise' meant, nor 'outstanding'. "Now that's convenient, ha ha..." The spaniel thought to himself. "'Promise' is something that will live longer than you, and 'outstanding' is something you look for when you take a breath. "Yeah, right, whatever," said the goldfish, "Just give me a plant, and I will water it like I am still at home..." The spaniel obliged. And 10 minutes' silence ensued. The spaniel did all the ooohh, ahhh, woow, admiring and describing all the views outside. The goldfish went u-huh u-huh, as his standard response. That seemed enough for the spaniel to think he was not alone after all. And that alone was enough to put a smile on his face. For once, he was truly happy. One innocuous fish on one side and one ever changing view on the other, with the wind flapping his ears, he was wrapped up in this thick blanket of warmth, joy, and three-coated europhria, so much so that he had some compassion to spare for all the living beings beneath him, above him and around him. So much so that he was not even aware that the air was fast thinning and the temperature was dropping to below 30 degrees. When he did turn around, he saw the goldfish already frozen in that perpetual bliss marked with an upward turn at the corner of his mouth, which the spaniel had decided to remember as a smile. 'Yes, he is frozen happy. Of course he will defrost happy, of course...' the spaniel noted down in his journal, almost arguing with himself about what's the first line to say to greet the goldfish should he defrost later. And the upward journey continued. 'We are reaching for the sky,' the spaniel chanted, so persistently that his voice must have trickled into the radio wavelength that got transmitted into all the household radios at 809pm that night. If you were born in the 2040s, you may have recalled a few barks here and there coming out of your local radio station on one icy winter night in an unremarkable year that may have caused you to drop a pin on the floor or forget the iron was on, the kettle boiling, the wife nagging and the baby crying.
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Don't Push the Old man off the PlatformA:Look at this. All white. Nothing else in sight. Just white.
C: This is like the sort of place where a great romance can happen. If I am making a film, this would be the background. A: An all-white background? C: We have to eliminate all possible illusion that we are in heaven of course. A: Of course. C: Of course. A: And what would be the first word after the awkward silence? C: Who is talking about silence? A: No, alright then, so he or she would be bubbling with thoughts in his/her head, dying to speak the moment she/he steps into this..(cut off by C) C: For crying out loud, it would be her. She. Let's say 'she'; She would be the first one to speak... A: Alright. She would be bubbling all day with words in her head, making up for all the conversations and pillow talks that they would have had, if they had met each other earlier, and conjuring up all sorts of senario of how to best respond to him with such maticulous balance between elegance and enthusiasm without running any slightest amount of risk of coming across too desperate. C: Desperate... no we don't want that. Not in a woman, not in our comapny, not in this century, not in this lifetime, not in our film. A: And of course, the poor sod does not have the faintest idea that she has a soft spot for him. C: After all, he is still recovering from his recent break-up with his girlfriend of five years. A: So any feelings with any resemblance of amour would be too much to handle for him. C: Even one lingering look. One over-the-top giggling with the wrong pitch, A: Would immediately set off the alarm. C: And he would retreat to his little shell of self, for he is a cancer, a crab after all. A: On the zodiac sign, you mean. C: Of course. A: Of course. C: So the fact that she got invited at all, the fact that she was the first of his female friends to step into the proximity of his new abode, A: New bachelor's pad, C: Was enough to send her giddy with glee and unsurmountable joy. A: All of a sudden all the shit that she had been through, all the adversity that had come upon her became so trivial, C: So insignificant, so in the past that she was feeling so light, so ready to take off on the wing of love, ready to dance A: The sing of love? C: the dance of cha-cha with the dandylions and the A: The wing of love? C: What about it? Man, I was on a roll here. A: Clearly. And I don't see you sharing. C: And... what are you saying? (A is staring at C. C takes it as ominous.) C: Is this where we... A: Break into a fight (Pushing C onto the ground, and the wrestling starts) TBC |