Day 2 - Only Laugh - Chapter 2 (1,347 Words)

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Only Laugh When it Hurts

By Wayne Webb

Chapter 2

“Are you sure you're ready for this Tony?” Her concern was bleeding into her voice, despite her best efforts to sound supportive. Fear was her biggest emotion right now.

It had been just under 3 weeks since Tony had been stabbed outside the comedy club by a deranged drunken audience member. So much had happened, it was like time had sped up and years worth of content had squeezed themselves into Tony's life.

The man himself was in jail, remand waiting for the eventual trial and media attention that came with the deal. Tony had made the news and when he woke from his 2 and a half day sleep of recovery he found more than just seven stitches had been added to his existence.

The man, the drunk man who had assaulted him, his name was Roy and he had a history of domestic violence and drunken assaults. The police had picked him up off of the pavement where the Bouncer had slammed him down, cracking 2 ribs and breaking his arm in the process. His name was Ali Aloa and made an imposing picture in the paper as he tried to shy away from the cameras and the incessant flashing of digital reporting. They started calling him “Mohammed” Ali due to his size, and let's face it colour. He shared little else in common with the braggadocio boxer, Ali wanted to fade into the background. More than once he said “I was doing my job” but that mattered little in the end, he had saved a man's life in spectacular fashion. The broken ribs and arm came from the fall as Roy was crushed under his weight to the hard concreted ground. Ali had felt the snap and heard a whimpering cry from Roy underneath him.

The Knife lay meters away thrown by the impact, Roy had a firm grip on it and was trying to twist it further when Ali had careened into him. It was still there, untouched when the police arrived seconds ahead of the ambulance. The footage on TV also covered the distance from the stabbing to the knife, reduced to a chalk-mark on the pavement once removed, but an effective illustration of the force, the irresistible force of Ali as he dove into the attacker.

There was little sympathy for Roy though and before Tony awoke for the first time with a repaired stab wound he had been painted as the Victim, the Bouncer as the Hero and Roy was the Villain of the piece. His arrest record had been fodder in the news before dawn, an officer well versed in his history had insinuated enough to the reporters who knew where to look for the paper trail. Battle lines were drawn, but most of the combatants were essentially on the same side, fighting amongst themselves. Drinking Problems, Inadequate Sentencing, Cultures of Violence, pick a cause and hitch it to the comedy stabbing for some attention.

His girlfriend Jane had saved the headlines, and there were many to cut and keep. Television reporters were crossed to live to the pavement outside the club, as passers-by walked through and around the spotlight blemish on the pavement where Tony, an innocent entertainer, was attacked brutally and lay at deaths door before the Heroic Ali had muscled the heinous Roy away from what would undoubtedly would have been murder.

The doctor who had been treating him had lectured him long and carefully about the stitches and the repair time needed for his jagged wound to heal and for the flesh to be string again. The stabbing was forceful and unfocussed, had skewed as it entered. That had caused the tearing searing feeling that had got his attention before shock had flooded over the top of all sensation. It had been followed by the wrenching of the knife as Roy's rage had tried to pull it out and re-stab, but had settled on twisting the knife as his drunken inability to form fluid enough motions with his limbs prevented him from drawing his arm back in any helpful way. When Ali had freight-trained into the fray it pulled on Roy's arm, drawing it and the iron-grip on the knife and it had flicked up and sliced through the flesh above where it had entered, not deepening the wound but lengthening it by a factor of five or so.

Tony slept through two and a half days, missing the lion's share of the week and rising in time for the Easter weekend on the Thursday, good Friday knocking on the door. Jane was not at his bedside when he awoke, instead he saw his agent first.

Except he did not have an agent before he woke up.

While he was out a number of people wanted access to Tony, and the fact that he was a comedian meant people were scrambling to see if they could make something of that. Shaky hand-held footage of his comedy routines were scraped from YouTube and made into a greatest hits reel and cycled endlessly on the news. No one had footage of the performance that night, and for that Tony was grateful. He had been bombing pretty badly before Roy had spoken up. Jane had been fending off offers from various vultures and it seemed the path of least resistance to accept the offer (“provisionally based on Tony's personal acceptance when he woke up of course!”) that provided her and Tony the most protection, the most insulation from the pressure bearing down on the hospital walls.

All media queries funnelled through him almost instantaneously. He became a black hole of attention, and he arranged the video clips, the quotes, press releases and liaised with the people who all of a sudden wanted to book Tony on stage.

Just like that he had gone from a stand-up still working open-mic and free gigs to blood himself to a working, paid comedian. He was in demand from before he awoke.

Tony awoke to a world gone mad, mad for him.

There was no mistake though, this was not based on his talent or his material at all. This was based on attention and curiosity.

Now he had to deliver the goods. His agent could have made them wait, but he knew better. Strike while the iron was hot. He gave him a laptop, and advance on the money they would eventually make on stage and TV appearances. He needed to write new material. John had seen the unedited movies of his act, knew it would not be what Tony could build a career on, so back to the drawing board they had to go, time to create new jokes. They didn't have to be funny, they just had to be new and preferably relating to the incident.

They brainstormed material with some of John's other talent, working on blood and stabbing puns late into the night after the clubs let out. It was all making Tony hungry, for more of what he got that night. The biggest laughs of his career were on that stage, and that's where he wanted to go again.

The manager of the Comedy Club was paying for the privilege of hosting Tony's return to the stage, as soon as he got out of the ward and back home, bandaged and trussed up they booked a date. 3 weeks to the day that he had been stabbed a special night was being pimped out via the news, the internet and plastered about town. For the first time ever Monday Night in autumn was booked out. A night they never took bookings for before, was now the hottest ticket in town.

They were not shy in promoting the angle in the most obvious way the could capitalise on the notoriety of the incident.

“Tony Eaton, Taking Another Stab At Comedy!” screamed the posters and the web-ads. There would be cameras and web-casts through a pay-per-view service hurriedly plugged-in to the Clubs web-pages.

Now all he had to do was deliver.

"I have to be ready for this." He was answering her, but talking to himself.