Day 7 - Only Laugh - Chapter 7 (1495 words)

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ONLY LAUGH WHEN IT HURTS

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 7

Tony paced about the stage, microphone in hand. “I'm not sure I even have to be funny any more.” He looked up into where the audience should be, sees only the black halo of the spotlight and then down at his feet as he contemplated his escape. There was no way out, but now he had the centre stage.

“I mean I'm not even sure I was that funny to start with.” There was no reaction, instead there was an expectation of a punchline.

“I can be periodically funny instead, then bleed for the rest of the time. Kind of like reverse menstruation. I can be funny for 5 days out of 28 and the bleed for the other 23 for your entertainment.” He sat down on the edge of stage and dangled his legs near a table, the four women there no in the light with him.

“No bitching about period pain then eh?” he directed this casually to the nearest of them and she blushed as her friends cackled at the joke. He stood again and faced the audience and cheekily added to the men in the crowd. “There you go boys, one free pass in the next bout of PMS, courtesy of me.” He turned about and walked back to centre stage. “Just the one though, after that you are on your own.” The audience warmed to his conversational tone, they wanted to laugh as much as they wanted to see the oddity of it all.

“There's that old joke about women, you can't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die right? What does that make me?”

He shook his head in mock disbelief and exclaimed “Jesus.” Wearily.

Then he started, and looked about fearfully over the top. “To be clear, I am not saying I am Jesus ok? Just swearing, blaspheming, not claiming to be god.” He slowed down again still looking bemused by his situation. “Other people have called me that, that’s on them, not me.”

“I have heard so much about myself in the last couple of weeks, generally from people who have never met me or seen my act.” He pauses, and sharpens his face, narrowing in on his point “I know this FOR SURE because only about 20 people saw my act before I was stabbed and I pretty much know ALL of my audience.” He made each point three raised fingers on his left hand. “My audience were alcoholics with no life, sad patehtic existences that had to hide in comedy clubs on a dead monday night crowding around like usless moths to a talentless flame!”

Tony pauses again and slowly, painfully slow, switches his microphone to the left hand, keeping the remaining fingers curled and tucking the mic in between them and the three extended finger points he had made. “My critics on the other hand are media commentators. Alcoholics, with pathetic existences that spend EVERY night like useless moths to talentless flames, not just Mondays.” Now with both hands extended he tried to show the difference between the two and fumbled he microphone and it clattered to the ground.

He makes a show of picking it up, the physical comedy of trying to do so while keeping his finger-points gathering a growing laugh of slapstick appreciation from the crowd. He regains his position and shakes his points away and runs his free hand through his hair, exasperated.

“They have referred to my 'act' as a circus of cruelty and blood-lust. They have said it's like the Roman circus, where the audience is baying for blood the whole time. I'm pretty sure that's not true though, my audience (that's you guys) are more interested in beer than blood. Aren't you?” This gets a cheer from the crowd. Glasses clink and a few hearty souls shout unintelligible appreciation to their drinking.

“And It has become a bit of a circus for me, people DO want to see me bleed.” He contemplated his feet again.

“But I can only really do it for a little bit, like if I am on stage for ... an hour ... I can realistically only bleed for maybe a minute before I'd faint from blood loss.” He looks about. “Not particularly helpful or entertaining right?”

Tony mimes his entrance to the stage, flourishes his hands and opens his shirt to expose the wound. There is a collective gasp from the audience, finally seeing the evidence of his infamy red, inflamed and aggressively staring back at them. For a second or two he lets that hang and then mimes blood spurting out of his side while blowing a raspberry sound effect for the blood-gushing out.

He looks at a watch he is not wearing, then begins to wobble and stumble.

“SLAM!” He fell so hard and violently to the floor his head cracks on the stage and the gasp goes round again. The force of it rattles him and it takes a few seconds to get up again. He looks sheepishly at the crowd. “Glad I decided not to open with that!”

The audiences roars with laughter, the tension of his sudden and shocking fall burst and released into joy.

“I'm a bit like motor sport, you come for the crashes but you stay for the... what do you stay for in motor-sport? I've never really understood that. Am I like going to fastest car races, you wait for 45 minutes for a car too zoom past you at 200 miles per hour, and you rate watching a blur 2 seconds at a time as entertainment worth paying 50 or 60 bucks for.”

More laughter, it has a life of it's own now.

“So if I am the circus, the roman circus I mean, not the big shoes and squirty flowers circus, then shouldn't I be facing a gladiator or someone? Bit hard to have a circus when you arrest the guy who stabbed you in the first place right?”

There's a couple of boos, but they want to see where he is going with the bit.

“Imagine how hard that would have been. We who are about to die salute you! Ave Caesar! Then away it goes and the first prick to stab someone gets arrested. That would have seriously slowed proceedings in the old Roman circus, stopping for every incidence of grievous bodily harm, and arrest the poor sod just doing their job right?”

There is no laughter as they are unsure what to make of it.

“I feel sorry for the poor sod that stabbed me, no really I do. He was just doing his job apparently. And now he's in jail and I am making millions of dollars on you tube. Seriously, millions of dollars. Watch the news, the manufactured outage of media commentary about how rich I am getting because I am exploiting myself. Let's not forget I am the victim here, don't I deserve a little bit of a pay-day? I mean shouldn't the victim get something? I mean it's not like I am streaming my rape as pay-per-view porn now is it? No, that would be wrong. But murders and murderers make good movies and books, why not victims? No more movie of the week survivial stories, how about some good old fashioned hero-worship of victims?”

Now he stops for maybe 5 seconds or so and paces in silence. Then he goes back to centre stage and faces his audience and addresses them out side of his act. He is standing up straight, but swaying slightly. He rubs the back of his head and feels it wetting up. He keeps his hand there for his next few seconds of silence.

“I've stopped being funny apparently. Maybe it's time to bleed?”

When he brings his hand back to the front it is red with blood, not dripping, but enough blood to be seen by the people close to him. He wipes it absent-mindedly on his white shirt, still open slightly to see the edges of his stitches.

He continues, but his voice wavers.

“Christians, shouldn't we be sacrificing some christians? I'll get flak for that I am sure, I already get plenty of it for being in a coma for 3 and a half days. Seriously, I was in a coma for 3 and a half days just after Easter and that was a deliberate ploy by me to commit blasphemy and irritate christains apparently.”

“I was stabbed in my side, was “dead-to-the-world” for three and a half days and then rose to be worshipped by people who have absolutely no clue for … oh wait that does sound a bit christian-ish, I see your point – my bad!” He looks embarrassed by his sudden realisation and the audience love it.

Again they laugh loud and long as he drinks in their applause in the black halo.