mouldy rye inside

It was birthday cake time at The Party.

A beautiful, tiered masterpiece created by his Wife. When I say 'created' I mean it in the sense that Caesar 'created' the Roman Empire - it is more an infliction of terror on surrounding subordinates to make things happen as the Emperor(ess) wishes. Regardless, her minions had done her proud.

His Wife wasn’t a silly Empress either. She knew why the Secretary was there.

“You know, I thought about it,” his Wife told me as she watched the monkey dance across the room. “I thought about getting my tits lifted up to my chin and my scalp all kind of tucked back underneath, look a bit more like her. But when it came down to it, it’s all really like cake.

“You can have the most divine cake – amazing texture, succulent taste, perfect and pleasing in every way. But once you ice it – that wonderful-on-the-inside cake becomes a heavenly treat to behold.

“So when I thought about it, the tit and scalp thing, I had to figure out whether it was maybe just the frosting I need to ice my cake and be delectable again.”

Her gaze drifted back to the monkey dance. Cloudiness over her brown eyes. A heavy swallow and a forced smile.

“These girls, with their tans and their bleached hair – they are already mighty fine cake and that icing is perfection. But would you bother icing old, stale, mouldy rye bread? It just seems like such a waste of icing. Iced or not iced. You aren’t going to turn mouldy rye into cake.

“I used to be cake. I used to be the creamiest, richest, most desirable chocolate mud cake. I didn’t even need icing. But now I know it’s going to take more than just icing to disguise the fact that I have become rye.”

It seemed awful. Do we all become rye? And would we always be second best to cake? And the what about the worth of icing? The worth of the illusion?

“Of course this is all hypothetical.” Strength returned to his Wife’s voice. The Empress was back from her reverie. “We have too many shared assets to worry about silly sweets.” She winked and went back to entertaining his guests.

A Tragedy

The tone had mellowed at The Party. The string quartet was still playing under the marquis, but the mellowing was something else. The Professor was rolling pipe smoke around his mouth. He breathed out through nostrils that flared. The combination of the plumes of smoke rushing from his nose as he exhaled and the deeply crinkled, leathery skin that folded around his eyes and jowls led to the obvious connotation of a wise old dragon.
The little ones were asking him questions in awe. "What is another word for laughing?" their words would tumble out across each other.
"Chuckling." More dragon plumes.
The older ones stepped in - trying to test the Professor to see if they could catch him out.
"What is another word for genius?"
"Prodigy."
"What is another word for tragedy?"
Alas! A pause...

The Professor leaned forward. The string quartet were in between songs. Silence thicker than the pipe's purple smoke descended. The folded leathery skin suddenly seemed less papery and more frightening.
"The truth is, no words for 'tragedy' more elaborate than "very sad" have ever worked."
The baldest of the older ones: "That is because no tragedy is the same."
"Aha! This is a false assumption. It is too erroneous to conclude from this that anything we call tragedy have nothing significant in common."
"And what on earth would they have in common?" the baldest continues, though not so baldly.
The Professor sunk back in his chair. "On earth..." The purple plumes rose into the afternoon sky as the string quartet started up again.
The baldest one shrugged his shoulders and turned back to his canapes - but we didn't miss what he had - did we?

A Pair of Red Shoes

I was walking to The Party when a homeless man called out to me.
"Nice shoes," he said.
It was startling.
And genuine.
His sandy blonde beard was nearly down to his shoulders.