Three Scenes From Lost Plays (580 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.6 on 15 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Zampano (View user info) at 2007-08-23 14:06:45 EDT
Three Scenes From Lost Plays
A man sat naked and dirty in his cage that hung from a copper chain over an abyss in the heart of a mountain. Daily his captors brought him a crust of bread and a tin cup with a swallow of wine in it, and he would spill the wine on the cage floor and grab at his captors, swearing wildly in Russian while they responded in a mad sort of sparrow's language, and when they left there was a whisper of fluttering wings and long toenail clicks. One day, when the man was little more than a skeleton wrapped in a drumskin, his captors had on their tray a glazed doughnut and paper cup of coffee.
'Thanks.'
* ** *
The last astronaut crouches atop his boulder that was once the summit of a great mountain and is now the last of terrestrial Earth, scarred on the bottom by moss. The last astronaut holds in his hands a violin, warped with age and faded from cherrywood to mottled leather, with strings that, when bowed, produce oily tears. He has left all things behind him; he holds no knowledge of skies or oceans, beaches or countries, or cities with buildings that tore the clouds, or the people that might live in them. He gibbers away in musical notation, and when his hand grows too limp, the splintered bow of the violin drops out of the golden bubble that is his vessel and turns end over end into a dying star.
'G-Flat,' he whispers to the nebula that swallows him whole, and returns to cosmic dust.
* ** *
The lights are oil lamps, and in their brilliance the stage becomes an amber-filled pool. Too much light for so little fuel, he thinks, but he is watching from the entrance to the theatre. On stage, Eros is soliloquizing in Latin, for the head of fair Psyche, or the pallid lips of Thisbe, the secret love we never knew. He might be crying beneath his golden mask, and the chorus behind, with their faces smeared by the lees of old liquors, watch on. Eros is singing now in long howls, and never do the eyes of his mask leave the man in the entranceway, who cannot move, who is struck by the fear of this production, in a theatre in which every seat is empty, and a bastard's orchestration whimpers from out of the walls, and the streets outside are littered with the ash-and-glass bodies of the dead, the thousands dead, the millions dead, stacked a hundred feet high and three lifetimes long, laid end to end.
The city has long been emptied, but Eros does not seem to notice, and his bones are all exposed, his skin clear like glass. His stilled heart hangs limply between his ribs. The man cannot even scream.
And the chorus watch on.
User Reviews
Submitted by sicosemen (user info) at 2007-12-13 13:32:19 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Also, email me. I have a proposition for you. sicosemen.at.gmail.com
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2007-08-23 19:28:43 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
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Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2007-08-23 19:28:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by i_can_get_you_a_toe (user info) at 2007-08-23 17:19:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Anyone here ever woken up in the morning and thought 'where's my pants'?
Submitted by icarus1987 (user info) at 2007-08-23 17:08:07 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by JulsInsane (user info) at 2007-08-23 15:54:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by JulsInsane (user info) at 2007-08-23 13:27:00 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Today has been really boring around here so Im going to respectfully request that one of you have a emotional meltdown, post nude photos of yourself, fuck another uberuser and then create ensuing drama, or post a photo of yourself in general touting your beauty despite your inability to fit through a standard 3-0 x 7-0 door frame.
GET ON IT!
MUSH BITCHES MUSH!!
Submitted by DirtyHarry (user info) at 2007-08-23 16:05:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
No Comment
Submitted by JulsInsane (user info) at 2007-08-23 15:54:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by JulsInsane (user info) at 2007-08-23 13:27:00 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Today has been really boring around here so Im going to respectfully request that one of you have a emotional meltdown, post nude photos of yourself, fuck another uberuser and then create ensuing drama, or post a photo of yourself in general touting your beauty despite your inability to fit through a standard 3-0 x 7-0 door frame.
GET ON IT!
MUSH BITCHES MUSH!!
Submitted by simple_catalyst (user info) at 2007-08-23 15:41:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
"e" for effort
Submitted by Fey (user info) at 2007-08-23 15:40:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by SgtHartman (user info) at 2007-08-23 15:24:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
#2 = nice, i want to hear more
just sci-fi enough to make me drool.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2007-08-23 15:06:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Erastothenes, you're not
Submitted by Ballare (user info) at 2007-08-23 14:54:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by scourge (user info) at 2007-08-23 14:39:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
i liked one and three best
Submitted by DudeThatsBOSH (user info) at 2007-08-23 14:20:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by SunnyG (user info) at 2007-08-23 14:18:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2