Day 1 - Only Laugh - Chapter 1 (1,485 Words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Only Laugh When it Hurts

By Wayne Webb

Chapter 1

“You Suck!” The voice was angry and quick, loud and shades of violence implied and it broke the Comedian's stride, again.

Bugger. Time to hit back, I've had enough of this douchebag.

“Sorry, I don't do requests, and this is a comedy club not a gay bar!” The audience reacted with a laugh at the retort, it was unfortunately the biggest laugh he had got so far, but that didn't matter now, an exit strategy was required.

“Booo! You Suck!” Seriously? How drunk was this guy? Couldn't he take this elsewhere, why on open mic night?

“So where was I? Oh yes...”

“Sucking! You fucking suck!” The anger was being overridden by alcohol and the words were slurring. 

There were murmurs of annoyance in the audience now, the tide was turning.

“Dude, come on do I come down to your work and tell you when to suck? No, wait, that would actually be appropriate in your line of work?” The comedian arched an eyebrow, the people close enough could catch it and the laughter it generated rolled backwards through the audience. He was unsure where the voice was exactly but it was somewhere in the middle at a best guess.

This is going to be what people remember tonight, remember about me and my routine. This fucking douchebag. Come on, don't stop now, may as well milk it for all it's got? Oh wait, there's my line.

“Come on man, don't stop now, aren't you going to milk it for all its...” The Comedian stops and looks up and to the right, his left hand lightly touching this chin, Rodin's sculpture on stage. He can see directly the fellow comedians in the upper wings, watching him, just enough light to see them enjoying it, predicting the punchline. “... Oh great! Even more gigolo advice for you!”

He throws his hands in mock exasperation and shakes his head, the mime carrying the double entendre back to the crowd who now want to be on his side, forgiving the earlier bad material. The gag worked and the audience shakes with laughter.

It carries forward and the appreciation follows to the stage. Is this it? Oh my god, this drunk idiot is my catalyst? Is this the tear that starts the rip? He'd been told this before, sometimes laughter begets laughter. You can open the damn, get the laughter flowing and once it is the laughter that follows is easier. There's nothing like it, the first big laugh you get. Tearing the hole and then pulling the audience apart with it, letting it all out.

The heckler is silent. Do I go on? Is there any more in the well? “Nothing more to say? I mean I have 2 minutes, so feel free to use as much time as you like? Will two minutes do?”

The spotlight comes on, the lighting guy has found the heckler and he sits at the middle set of tables, sullen and now in the spotlight. A woman to his left is trying to shrink out of the light and a couple of men to his right are laughing and crying with the rest of the audience.

“Actually I should ask your boyfriends here right? Two minutes? Guys?” There's a pause and the Comedian reconsiders his offer with a question framed as a generous offer of kindness “One?” Is that all?” He makes a semi-embarassed face as if he's sorry he even asked the question and it sets off the next round.

The woman stands and tries to leave the table, but that only makes the guy angrier and he lunges and pulls her back to sit down violently.

The room goes quiet, the stage a silent pool of liquid light.

The men with him stop speaking and watch him holding the woman down, they lean over and start to intervene but not before the Comedian adds in all seriousness. “Dude, not cool.”

Then the bouncer arrives, fading into view of the spotlight and pulling the man upwards and out of the chair and separating the man from the woman, who has paled and wears a face of hurt and surprise. The friends, such as they are, check on her and leave the man to the sudden rush of strength that challenges his gravity and pulls him out and away, rapidly towards the rear door.

The man is angry and unhappy, but cannot resist the pull that drags him away on his heels, no purchase on the beer stuck velvet flooring.

The crowd applauds the removal, and there is no coming back from that.

As the curtain at the entrance is pulled around them the final view is of the Comedian, blowing a cheeky and very camp kiss across the room. More laughter erupts but the reaction of the ejected man is lost to the world as the curtain falls back again.

“Well, where the fuck was I?” More mugging from the stage, put out and broken by the interruption. But now? Now he can do no wrong. The light is flashing at the rear, but he should try for one last joke while he has them on his side. “You know what, there's no coming back from that, so I'll leave you with a joke. My favourite joke in the whole world.”

He waits, he looks from side to side. He opened with this joke and it got groans, it was the joke of an eight year old. It wasn't a funny opener, and it's not a funny closer. It did however seal his redemption that night with the audience, willing to laugh with him and not against him.

“What's brown and sticky?” The audience, primed and wanting to ride the emotional roller coaster one more time respond, hardly in unison, but certainly loud enough to carry the punchline.

“A Stick!” And the as the Comedian giggles at the punchline they laugh, clap and cheer. Jesus, it really is like a drug. Thats fantastic. “Thank you ladies and gentlemen... and drunks! You've been a great audience!” He waves and the MC takes over still clapping him off the stage. “Ladies and Gentlemen, Let's hear it for ...”

He's already gone, he's up the stairs and heading to the Green Room. A cold tide of tension is washed away by his survival. The fellow performers are there waiting for him, he's the final act of the first set of the evening, three compatriots are still nervously revising their material happy that the drunk idiot has been ejected and that the audience is primed to laugh on their return.

A few minutes of back slapping and congrats and even a little envy. Am I one of you now? Have I earned my way in? The accolades of his peers, they are as satisfying as the laughter still ringing in his ears.

He's buzzing still as he leaves the club an hour later.

The Club Manager had pulled him aside, worked him over with compliments and insisted on his return. It was the first time he had not had to ask for another night, another chance. They always said yes, let him refine his technique, his material and to blood himself on the stage.

It sharpens you, the fear and the silence of a bad night.

Head spinning he leaves the club and his friends are now many and less morose than ever before. Now it's not pity or empathy, it's envy.

Envy.

The laughter is still there as he collapses to the ground, the ringing now screams. What the fuck? Why am I...?

The world has spun on it's axis and his legs cut out from his weight as he crashes, the sideways pavement rushing upwards to slap his head, bounce it twice before laying upside the world. Jesus, where did he come from?

The man, the drunken douchebag heckler.

He stands over him, swimming in the air and then he reaches to the Comedian's midesection of out sight but moving his hand and suddenly that weird pinch he feels in his side is ripped violently open and wrenched through muscle and sinew and white light erupts behind the veil of the night.

“Not laughing now are you, you fucking...”

The sentence is left unfinished. A hulking cloud of black wool slams into the heckler, propelling him into the street and thudding, snapping him down with a crunch that sounds as bad as it looks.

The Comedian's pain is gone, the knife ejected and thrown askew from the drunk's hand, pulled backwards from the twist in his wound and away.

Relief pours into the hole left in his abdomen as blood pours out.

He can hear someone calling an ambulance, asking for the police as well as the power is cut from the world.