Day 18 - Only Laugh - Chapter 18 (1597 words)

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ONLY LAUGH WHEN IT HURTS

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 18

The air eddied about his legs as it was driven under the shallow diving board where he dangled his legs, looking wistfully at a reflection in the water he could not fathom.

He had woken from a coma a few weeks earlier and had been told a little about who he was, what he had done with his life up till that point and how he came to be in a persistent vegetative state.

The “Tony” the various people paraded in front of him described sounded a bit strange and quite unlikeable. The Tony that that sat here dipping his toes into the clear pool water was unsure that they could have been the same person. Was this a common occurrence? Did people with Amnesia go into denial very often? He had asked plenty of times only to get the vaguest of answers from the doctors and psychiatrists he had to endure. 

Of particular interest were the people he supposedly should have known, and known well. His agent, he had an agent who was very, very interested in catching him out. Everything he said felt like a trap and he eyed Tony with an amused suspicion. While the new Tony could not blame him based on what he knew of the other one, it was wearing him down and in those first few days he had precious little energy to spare on the paranoia of a man who wanted him to sign things.

He had responsibilities it seemed, monetary ones that were perfectly fine and taken care of when he was out of the conscious realm, yet were somehow massively complicated by him opening his eyes.

His dreams that he could recall were not of his old life, or the old Tony, but of the day he was reborn, drowned into the world. He would wake up wet from perspiration and that slick sensation on his skin only heightened his sense of drowning. Night after night the dream returned, the fear it brought never lessened, even though as he remembered he was never drowning or even swimming, he was waking up. His mind had crafted a watery metaphor for his enhanced slumber and now that was all he had in terms of a history. He could not escape the old Tony and he could not escape a dream of something that never actually happened.

It was very quiet and peaceful here and on one level Tony could have stayed here for the rest of his life. He certainly had money, quite a lot of it by all accounts. The expensive spa that was a place of ‘treatment’ for the rich and famous was open and at his beck and call almost without restriction.

There were some questions as to his state of mind, as he could not recall who he was and how he had made the money, some people questioned that he should have control of it. There were definitely people trying to get at his money, take it away from him. More than once he was tempted to give it away, all of it, to charity. It seemed like a good idea, it’s not like he liked the look of how he made it. It all seemed insane that he would put himself through all that self-inflicted pain and suffering. It was crazier that people laughed and cackled at it so heartily. Looking back, he had seen videos and even documentaries about himself. That was truly bizarre, even though he had no basis for comparison to see a film filling an hour or more of time with clips and commentary on his life. He recognized none of it.

In the documentary he saw again his agent, his assistant and various people said to be influential in his life but they were like introductions to strangers. He saw video footage of himself, sometimes laughing and happy, but mostly seriously thinking or brooding. Then there were pictures of him working with, walking with these same strangers. He had a serious girlfriend, he thought she was cute but still she could have been a cut out from a magazine and he would have felt as much attraction. Everyone was an unknown and therefore not to be trusted.

His company, he had a company that managed his intellectual property and licensing, had invested his money wisely so that it perpetuated his fame, paid for his care and developed new material in his name. There was even a fellowship in his name, one for the starting performer with an avant garde act. He had no idea and no say in any of this, it was a machine that just carried on even though he was back in the realm of the awake.

Now he needed to find out who he was again. He could reclaim his life, and reclaim his old self, though he had no idea where or how to do that. The idea of standing up on stage covered him in a drowning dread. How on earth had he managed that before? The film of him standing, speaking in the voice he could hear when he spoke filled him with detachment from reality. Any minute now the curtain would be pulled back,  there would be a candid camera on him, a set and a director pulling the puppet strings of his life. If that fourth wall was rent and proved to be an act, that he was the Truman of his own show, at least then it would all make sense.

The camera lights never blinked, the curtain never rose and as time wore on Tony was tired of not knowing who he was or why he had been the way that he was.

Time to let go and move on.  Now he was glad that he had resisted the urge to give all his money away. How he could disentangle new Tony from old Tony was going to be a tricky proposition. Running away was an effective method, but unsustainable as an expense.  An unpopular move would be a light way of describing his plan. He needed to kill old Tony so new Tony could have some peace.

That meant putting some people out of work. It meant pulling the rights to his image and material where he could, and fighting, likely in court the man who wanted to seize control of all his assets and rights. His agent and manager, a man who like a relentless phantom haunted him about the old Tony.

Every time that man came into contact with Tony it came with a sneaking suspicion that this was all an act. The coma, two years long and medically secure it’s authenticity, was not faked, he had come to accept that. The amnesia though? That was another question. The Tony he knew never did as expected and never did the sane thing. He was ultimately looking for the most honest twist on the act he could find and the weirder and more unexpectedly surreal that next change was, the more real it was in his eyes.

He did not look shocked or offended when Tony told him it was time to end their relationship, and that all his holdings were coming to an end. He just nodded and smiled like this was part of the gig, part of the written performance that select few had read the script for. The more new Tony insisted that this was the best way to get on with a life, out of the shadow of the old, the more that his agent assumed it was the new Tony working a new angle. Self destruction, disassemble the empire to rise onto a new high once more in the most unlikely way you can find. Very Reginald Perrin.

Tony appreciated the freedom that this allowed him, they expected a fall and then a rise. The fall was much more gentle though, more of a floating landing safely than any kind of crash. A controlled descent into normality and banality.

Quietly they shredded the video deals, the links were dropped and the original content was no longer for sale. DVD and Blu Rays were shelved and sent back to the distributors. They ate the cost on those, but it was marginal on the profit they had made to date. His people, hanging on to the dream to the bitter end, matketed the “time is running out” message and drove up the price on whatever copies and items were being traded now in a rare limited fashion.

He owned subsidiary companies, ones that had mothing to do with comedy or entertainment. Some franchises, some property investments, things that made money quietly and required little maintenance. They would never make him a billionaire, but they would be the fuel that would keep him idling in the millions.  He repurposed his PR people to keep him out of the news, to change his foundation that provided support for aspiring talent and renaming in the grand tradition ego projects and naming it after agent he had fired, gicing the glory and the power over other talent to him. A prize to slink away with and play in the corner, his own corner away from the main table, now closed for business.

For almost 2 years he had wasted away in a coma his body deteriorating, withering while his body of work had grow giant-like in his tragic absence. He had starved it of oxygen and in 6 months he had made people forget, new things had come along and he went about unnoticed once again.