Aw--No Glory

The woman asked the man whether they were getting served by a waiter, a butler or a chef, seeing that they were sitting at a small, pure-white tablecloth-covered table with a flower in the vase to the side and salt and pepper sitting with the flower vase.        

The woman looked around her. Theatre curtains the color of dragon’s blood hung from above, the lights on the right beaming down at them.

“We’re here, together! Excited, right?”

The woman looked. A stage was the color of sable, with the seats the color of dragon’s blood. A scarlet carpet tongued the floor. The woman shuddered. “It’s cold!”

“I’m hungry. Let’s eat!”

“Yeah—”  

The curtains moved, and the woman stared in relief at a suavely dressed man in a gold buttoned viridian suit with a sparkly stiff golden collar seemed to appear. “So sorry!” His very white gloves were so bright they probably outshone the lights above. Anyway, he set down a plate of sizzling steak, broccoli and a baked potato, the butter melting on top of it.

“Wow!” The woman smoothed her dress under her and pulled the chair up to the table. “What a treat, honey.”

He nodded, diving right into the meal without even thanking the waiter. He also didn’t wait for the wife to receive her meal. The waiter looked over at the poor wife. “Ma’am—would you like anything else?” Folding his hands against him, the waiter waited.

The wife started with her potato. “No thanks!”

The waiter bowed, and then left. The woman took no notice of the glint in his Xanadu-colored eyes.

The woman called the waiter and asked for wine. The waiter silently nodded. The woman took the glass in her hand. “I just want to be with you, okay? Why is that so impossible?” She reached out with it. “Can we at least toast—to us? As a married couple?”

The husband half-ignored her gesture, which she regretted with an impatient sigh, and took out his cellphone. "Sorry—my boss needs me at seven.”

“It’s only five thirty.”

“Yeah—well, I have work.”

“But honey, we’re together—”

“Hon, I brought you out. We’re together!”

“Honey! We’re together.” She threw out the truth. The husband wiped his hands on a napkin he had pulled out from seemingly nowhere. His eyes reading a text message, he became lost in his work. His wife, blinking back tears, jumped up. “Fine. If you’re not going to love me, I’m separating!”

The man ignored her further.

The woman, her eyes snapping, upended the table. The man merely shifted away. The woman grabbed her plate of food, mashed up her potato and slammed it into his face. Internally celebrating, the woman grabbed their glasses of wine and toasted them herself. Then she drank all of her wine and all of his. The man, she studied after tossing the glasses, ignored this outrage.

“He’s not coming.”

The woman turned and saw the waiter. She furrowed her brows. “What?” She checked her watch. It was only six fifteen. Couldn’t they enjoy each other until then? He was still reading text messages. Then he started responding. Even laughed at a couple of texts popping up.

“What do you mean?” She asked, swallowing. “Is this some kind of trick?”

The waiter shook his head patiently and quietly. The theatre curtains, the woman saw, turned sparkly sapphire.

“What’s going on?” She started backing away, her eyes on the waiter, whose eyes glittered all the same. The woman shivered, and blinked rapidly. She swallowed. “What—what do you want?”

The man stood right where he was. He didn’t say anything. But he did smile, and those teeth were rotten, rotten, and rotten. Pointy sharp, like miniature shark teeth. His hand jutted out, and it held an apple red as dragon’s blood.

“No!” She backed away. “I’m not going to eat it.”

You don’t have to, the man said. Just take it.

The woman took it. She frowned. “What am I going to do with this?”

“Just use your imagination. Use it to write.” 

The woman thought back. She was a writer—had written some popular stories. But those stories never went beyond the typewriter. She had dreamed—or rather wanted—such stories to be shelved in libraries, but then it died. No one really knows why. She thought about how the book in which she wanted to go wanted her to defeat the evil queen, the nasty king, the selfish prince or the greedy princess. Fairy tales were her forte. But when it came to anti-heroes realizing who he or she was, she stopped writing, as she knew they were harder to write.

They weren’t always a fun character to write. And she knew they weren’t as interesting. It was a little weird, she thought, but I just can’t explain it. The woman saw the glisten of the light on the apple. She looked up at the lights, but couldn’t figure out whether the apple was shining under the lights or the apple was glistening it was so clean. The woman crinkled her forehead, but he didn’t look at her. Grinning, he put a dirty clawed finger to his thin lips.

The woman looked over at her husband. It was way past seven.

“Honey, shouldn’t you be at work? I mean, I know I asked you to…” But she stopped. She couldn’t continue. It was like she was in a dream, where she couldn’t fully say what she wanted, or if she did, she’d felt as if she didn’t say all of it. Or something like that. She didn’t feel right.

“I’ll go back to my typewriter. And crank out those words…”

The woman found herself in front of her typewriter. She stared at the two paragraphs already. “Maybe with this apple...” As she wrote, she took bites of that apple. And before she knew it, she’d had eaten all of it. Right down to the core. She then stood up, feeling empowered and ready to take on anything—even her husband’s workaholic attitude. Even this novel of a story, as it stood now.

She was back at the theatre. The waiter was standing there, his clawed hands perfectly poised. The woman didn’t flinch. She merely walked past him.

“Your husband will love that dragon’s blood-colored dress. It’s beautiful! I also like your heels. The straps wrapping right around your feet.”

She examined herself, and then pulled up her dress a little. Yes, they were a gorgeous red. Her husband suddenly looked up, and whistled, authentically in awe. She thanked him. She sat right down across from him. “Honey? Can we at least have dessert? I’m ready!”

He took his fork and stabbed a piece of potato. It went into his mouth, and he lay it down flat on his plate. It was black and silver, the woman noticed. She looked around her. Everything had changed—at least in color. The tablecloth was silver with streaks of black and white. The chairs were wisps of grey with evergreen sprinkled into the place. Even the curtains had faded to a gold. Beautiful gold, but it wasn’t the same.

“Honey, the whole theatre’s different. Different colors. Different…” The whole theatre was turning into a whole castle. Then they were in the library, and the library held different colored books. Each book had a different feel—satin, velvet, muslin, cotton, broadcloth, peachskin, mink, African print, basket weave and more. And not only were they different fabrics, but also different colors—viridian, glaucous, Xanadu, coral essence, cinnabar, Meadowbrook, mauve and others. Brilliantly beautiful colors. Exotic colors. Extravagant colors.   

Every book had a different fabric and a different color. No two books were the same.

 The woman was giddy with excitement.

“You like it?”

“Yes, yes!” She ran up to the waiter. “Yes, I can’t wait to continue my story. Soon my books will be just like these—read by my readers.”

“Did that apple help?”

“Yeah!” She bobbed her head.

“Good.” He nodded. “Now you have all the imagination in the world. You can write whatever you want. Go—have the dragons light your birthday candles. Save the prince. Go do whatever you want. Just have fun—and use the apple! It’s your friend. But don’t eat it yet. Let it serve you, and then you can eat it, becoming omnipotent in imagination.”

The woman headed right back to the typewriter. She wrote and wrote, her fingers flying. When she was done, she got up, feeling she never needed to study anything or get inspiration from anything. She dashed away, exclaiming to her husband that she had finished a draft of her novel! Her hands shaking, she steadied them as she put the draft down in front of him.  

He took a bite of his pumpkin pie, gave the paper a blink and then returned to the phone. “Oh nice! What a beautiful piece of art!”

“Writing’s a craft—honey.”

But he put his phone to his ear, chatting with only the wife could assume a coworker.

The woman returned to her typewriter. She read her writing, blown away by her amazing fantasy imagination. She tried getting her husband’s attention, but he didn’t even look! She cried out to him, shoving the paper in his face, but he grabbed it and threw it down, ripping it with his shoes. No! She dove for it, snatching it just as he walked away, no longer chatting on the phone. No one would ever destroy this piece of paper.

The woman looked back at the waiter as she got up. “Where’s my husband?” She felt smoke emanate from her nostrils—at least it was the heat of her anger. She felt powerful as a dragon, and wished she could turn into one. The waiter shook his head, his clawed hands in front of him, poised perfectly. “You can turn into a dragon, or a—”

“Unicorn? Well, mister, I don’t want to. My husband’s obsessed with his work!” She pointed to him. “All he does is work. All he does is…”

“Do you really want a workaholic husband, or no husband at all? Is it worth it to be married to a workaholic husband?”

The woman looked the waiter. “What do you know about marriage?”

“I am married. I just don’t see the point of it, if you can make it better.”

At that moment, a beautiful black woman in an amaranth-colored dress—a ball gown—came out from the shadows. She smiled—her eyes an evergreen shade but cold and intimidating—and the woman boldly responded in kind.

“Lady, please listen to me.”

The woman closed her eyes as the woman talked, imagining herself free from such a marriage to a workaholic husband. Not divorced, but just gone back in time. To the time she met the man.

She wished desperately for herself to reject the marriage proposal. No, that first date. That one single time they said yes to Saturday night dinners. She yelled, begged and eventually told herself over and over it’d be okay—maybe one day they’d make it—but the woman told her this was good: she didn’t want to be miserable, right? Remember those books. You can be like my husband and me. Just tell your husband you’re the most powerful writer of them all—no one’s got your imagination. He’ll read your books because he’ll know you’re amazing, too. He’s got the green, and you’ve got the words. If you want your husband, just accept him—and he’ll accept you!

When she wrote those novels, she ate it. And when she did, she was the most powerful writer. She didn’t care that her husband worked. He worked, but he also read her novels. Soon, she was a star! The best writer, selling billions of copies of her novels. Children and teens read all her stories, multiple times. Libraries everywhere had filled their shelves with them. She wasn’t envious of those vibrantly colored books anymore. She had vibrancy in her own life—through her stories.

She told her husband all this. He was elated. They shared the great news—that she was an amazing author, and he was a powerful business tycoon—with the couple. They congratulated them. Soon, they became consumed with their own gifts, selfishly talking about themselves all the time. Soon, he started wanting to be with her, and she with him. When they tried getting together, they said they had their own work to do. She wrote that they could be together, but they also had their business and writing. Soon, they got sick of their own loves, and wanted to love each other. They tried so hard, getting away, but they couldn’t. He begged her to rewrite them, but she felt that if she did, she’d lose her omnipotence as a fantasy writer.

“But,” the husband pleaded, “you can. Just write us into the book.”

She grabbed the eaten apple, and started writing with it, the man who used to have married his cellphone staring wide-eyed at her in anticipation. When she looked up, he was still her husband but whiteness was all around.

They were in the book.  

She wrote and wrote, bringing joy and gladness to both of them. When her husband said he wasn’t as powerful as she, the woman wrote up a new apple, telling her husband to eat it. He did. When he did, he possessed all the ability to become an omnipotent businessman, doing anything to please his boss.

The woman soon learned she was writing and writing, and everyone loved her. But she was just writing and writing, barely having time for her husband. Soon, she had no time at all, selling one book after another. She only saw him at night, when they went to bed. She wanted to be with him, but noticed he didn’t have time with her soon thereafter, too. She stepped out of the book. Went back to the waiter. “So long, mister. I’m done.” She burned all her writing. The waiter smiled, his wife at his side. She turned on him. “I know what you’re doing.”

She wrote him away, but realized she couldn’t erase the typewritten words. She stormed towards the wife. Slapping her in the face, she screamed, “Give me back my marriage!”

The waiter rescued the wife instantly, rubbing the pain away. The wife, who looked up lovingly into his eyes, smiled, thanking him, and, the waiter lovingly gave her his right arm, around which she wrapped her arms. The woman gulped, stepping back. She didn’t like this woman or man. At all.

The couple looked at each other in their bathroom mirror. His eyes were shimmering with madness.

The woman ran back to the waiter.

“Can we? Can we rewrite ourselves?”

The wife, looking up at her husband, invited her husband to dance with her. The woman returned to her husband.

They stabbed the woman and man repeatedly in the chest and then she wrote themselves away into happiness and bliss. Soon, they couldn’t do two things and be happy. He wanted her, and she wanted him. Never coming up with a solution, they drank mercury.

She left a note, the detective said.

No matter what I do, I cannot be happy. My husband and I are forever tormented. We want both, but… The detective took the note back to the office, where he sat down and wondered. What was this woman even talking about? She died over a complicated marriage? He killed himself because he couldn’t love her enough? What?!

Self-healed, the waiter’s wife was with her husband.

She spoke tenderly. “What are we going to do, honey, now that we’ve got them under us?”   

“We’ll wait for others to come to dinner, too.”

“Give them apples?” Her eyes shimmered with malice. The wife pulled her husband close. “Why don’t we just go and bury them? We have time.”

“Yes, honey. I’m always waiting.” He followed obediently. She entered the library. The note was still there. The woman shredded it. She put her hands behind her back, and mentally wrote that she held a glass of wine. When she pulled her hand out from behind her, she held a pen. “Huh? What is this? I—”

“Is a better way to write?”

“I wrote a glass of wine into my hands.”

He embraced her. “Just follow my lead. Those idiots will never know. Besides, why didn’t you wear that woman’s dress?”  

Her anger having cooled, she donned it, showing it off, her husband instantly taking her hand in his, complimenting her. She feigned humility, verbalizing stories that would be written into these books. He happily soaked up all the sweet lies those poor peasants would listen to as they sat before her librarian form, listening to all these tales. When they heard these amazing tales, they would want those books’ characters so badly they’d go into the stories themselves.

And get lost in those fantasy worlds. Kill themselves over a simple collection of imagination.

Please, she wrote to the woman, know I freed you. We’re going to let you be whoever you want. Besides, I’m actually from a different dimension, where it’s all about the best person winning out, as the gods and goddesses don’t appreciate weakness. They’re always striving to be the best, as we all do. That’s why I married this man. He’s the best. We’re the best.

The woman, like the waiter’s wife, never left her husband’s side, always looking lovingly up into his eyes, and him looking lovingly down into hers. They deceived their innocent victims. They were terrified of such a sinister couple, but they worshiped them. The man continued working, but not obsessed.    

The waiter never failed to pay him, like he had especially done at that dinner at the theatre.   

“We’re just too different.” The man and woman’s last words.

Suicide—one couple down. Millions more to go.

“Who’s next?” The waiter’s wife asked patiently.