The history of the world- Part 1 Copyright Robert Fullarton- Taken from Our lives as fiction

The history of the world- Part 1

Copyright Robert Fullarton 2010- Taken from Our lives as fiction

It could so easily have been a dream, for it seemed so surreal for me to live through and I was always stepping in and out of them. It could so easily have been a vision, for I had always an eye for beauty and fantasy and every moment of the day passed like sand on the margin and fold of time and space. I think my mind was sinking slowly and my body was just a figment in the mind of some all powerful, seemingly ubiquitous overseer. My senses are all running amok in the conceited atmosphere of the congregation. To my left, there are two ladies, two extravagant women adorned with pearls and silver brooches, with long velvet garments, see through slips and panties (These women are loose indeed! If you know the right places, you can meet the right ladies to show you a good time!). To my right there sits two gentlemen, who are engaged in their conversations on their cars, their precious Porsches and Mercedes Benz. Both men are charismatic, smooth talking kinda guys, who make big consecutive decisions for their companies during their working week, who on their week end, take a long leisurely sojourn to the great drinking holes of the underworld. In these places men go blind on drink, men go mad and men lose their senseless touch on the glass shards of reality. Surely you might say this is a seedy underworld, where gambling and game go hand in hand, and indeed you are right, this is the land of the fallen spirits, where the lost men are betrothed to their possessive lusts. It is rather a unique place we have here, unlike any city to match. 

Here we have the vast catacombs of pubs, and wine bars, casinos and gentlemen’s clubs all fit for the modern scoundrel, a real den constructed rightly for thieves. This section of the city, slopes down to what are wide interconnected trenches and at either side of these are small enclaves to which the esteemed guest of the underworld will pay the price for his desires. This secret world stretches on for several miles, and when you look for it, you will find it, when you walk away from the main street and walk up past the brewery on Francis street, there you will meet a one eyed guide by the groggy giant pub who goes by the name of Mallory and who looks quite intimidating with his sneers and grimacing glances, his patched eye, and his swollen, pot marked face until you give the magic word, “please” and request for the whereabouts of the “magic world”. He will guide you through some of the roughest and cruellest back streets our city has to offer. Some streets should be forbidden to any, truly sane individual, but if you want to barter for you’re immense desires, then you must take a trip through the tempest’s hands to reach the entrance to the underworld, past the cruel deliberations of the city of muggers. The city of muggers is itself, a series of connecting laneways, where muggers congregate that are completely dedicated to the art of theft and robbery. A gang of ragged delinquents crouch hidden beneath the shadows, underneath the bridge on Francis Street and they wait like ravenous wolves, in perfect timing so to hoard, molest, rob and abuse any traveller that braves the journey to the underworld. These interlopers are professional crooks, who have their own teams and team leaders and they have a certain quota for the month on how much they can steal from the “ivory merchants” themselves. (Around here rich men are aptly titled ivory merchants, because their wealth in it’s abundance is a stark contrast to the abject poverty of this corner of the city and the ivory merchants have the money and they have the valuables which the muggers value like gold dust or perhaps ivory for their “trade” of choice. But many a man on his journey can be armed to the teeth with weaponry and such is his own specially selected weaponry, for some are carrying hidden guns in specially adapted holsters, some carry iron bars, meat hooks and machetes and some men pare up in gangs of two or four men, so “to beat the mob” I would say, in force of numbers. But just recently the proprietors of the underworld have started to take action and have rightly employed their own private “mob” or gang to beat back the muggers back to their corners. Since these private gangs have started to guide the customers down to the underworld, the business for each proprietor has trebled, since word has increased among the secret world of men, that the journey to their favourite destination is now completely free of it’s old belligerents and it is true, the muggers have backed off and have literally just hidden themselves in their rags while they watch the ivory dealers, the swinging bachelors and members of the all male society swagger past the damp and dirty back streets with their shaven headed, big and lofty protectors on either side. Right at the end of Francis street, you continue on to Warwick’s pass, where you’re narrow lane will suddenly and abruptly end, there you will see the iron gangways that lead down to the underworld.

 These gangways lead to a series of several sets of stairs which are set in old Venetian sandstone and at the foot of these you can see the sight of teaming men in clusters of ecstatic energy with wads of cash ready straight for disposal at the casinos (men who come to waste their fortunes on a night of rabid decadence and who get lost down the rabbit hole during the course of the night). The entire underworld is at least 12 metres in depth from the main entrance. Any innocent bystander at the top of the entrance can stand and stare down the spiral to see its seductive charm, to see this bright neon lit temptation, with its invitations for unrivalled pleasure and unrivalled fantasy and adventure for the “modern male adventurer”. It is true to say that all men will seemingly succumb to the invitations of the entrance girls that stand, slim and pretty in their lush and lavish burlesque attire, pouting their lips, watching and waiting for all the male men to be herded through by the guiding whip of the ringlady (she’s the administrator for all the entrance fees and the ladies at underworld’s entrance). I myself in the hour of my despair found this pit of consuming madness long ago. I came here in the terrible aftermath of my divorce, when I was down and out, trying to find a place to stay the night and found instead, how truly down and lost I really am and since I came to find a place to hide for a single night, I have since found a place to lose my life and drown my sorrows for an unknown future of eternity.

Some old “veterans” of the Cosy cavern pub, (who get preferential treatment) with whom I am well acquainted with, have told me long ago that one barman told one particular gentleman that “ he could have all his hearts desire for the price of his immortal soul”, and this gentleman who was drawn back in shock, with his mouth agape, particularly frightened and disturbed by the strange foreboding announcement made to him, quickly ran for the closest exit available to him, but then suddenly he found himself frozen in a moment of complete indecision and hesitation as he returned to the barman, only to pay for the finest show on at the Aphrodite club later that night (which was run in the confines of the stage room above the pub). I believe that the very hypnotic sight of the ladies all around him were enough to make him stay, like a prisoner to his rock, within the confines of the pub. I personally believe myself that the women who arrive here either with friends or with partners are secretly employed by the proprietors as mere magnets to keep the men in line and keep the flow of business going. These women are the most beautiful, most enticing bunch of temptresses I have ever laid eyes on. All these women have some secret, some pollen from which the male honey bee come to make their nectar, but none succumb to mere invitation, for all play dangerous games here in the Cosy Cavern and all the other drinking taverns and clubs. Only the “veterans” have the right to try and win their precious time with one of these subtle beauties.

Many a man arrives in the Cosy Cavern with high ambitions on one of the ladies that he beholds and when he is flatly denied a minutes company and completely ignored, he resigns himself to the corner of the pub, where the vast majority of drunken scoundrels dwell like cretins shooting dead flies on a wall and there he sinks into his defeated ego while these beauties walk hand in hand away with the fully blown, rugged athletic build of the veteran who smirks in ignorance at the watchful glances of a team of men slouched down in their chairs with their faces sunk into their glass of ale. Yes it is indeed these ladies who keep the male consortium in check and it is their powerful and penetrating glances that make men love the underworld. For men are filled with deep unconscious desires that never sleep and when one walks into the den of the lotus eaters, one is stunned and shocked at first, but one later adheres to the madness just to figure out why so many other members have a happy face on them and then they become addicts themselves and only when the hour has turned and it is too late to turn and run do they discover that all these addicts wear their happy faces so to hide their tears and so more lotus eaters are born in mass.

The swarthy contents of the booze warm our bodies, before many of us spend the night in the bedrooms up above. Everyday the barmen work in a constant flow of labour. Whenever my eyes make a stray glance over at the main bar counter I can see them taking orders and requests, while some are straining themselves while trying to fill up the glasses for their thirsty clientele and tonight I can see the barmen handing out a free complementary drink to all the customers for their support through the years. While I ruminate in silence I can see the barmaid place several glasses of short neat whiskey measures, right before me on the great wooden table, which my associates are housed at, deep in their discussions. To my back there is a stonewall and when you look around you can see the great broad stone wall which runs around the perimeter of the bar, for the bar is like a cave. Yes it is like a cave where shipwrecked men come for hope but find themselves devoured by the monsters that dwell within the belly of the black morass itself.

I have heard that the Cosy cavern is not the most horrendous of all drinking holes, for down the cobbled streets right at the furthest reaches of the underworld, so you shall find the Black hole where the truly wretched cretins dwell in subjected slavery to the authorities and I have heard rumours that the men there are like living skeletons that simply spend all their free time in the horrid claustrophobic chambers of the Black hole indulging in it’s wretched produce I have heard that the men are permanent residents of the pub and that they rest below in their dirty sheets, half dazed and half awakened by the overbearing effects of the produce of the pub. These men are permanent residents who apparently spend many a day trying to work off their eternal debts to the proprietors by acting as personal skivvies for the managing staff. One veteran in the Cosy Cavern told me recently that a sort of specially employed slave driver beats the men back to work with a leather cord to keep the men in line. If any of the men protest, then they are beaten black and blue with the leather cord and while they whimper they are reminded by the pub landlord of their contractual agreements, which were entered into long ago and which have not been paid since the men face colossal debts. Thus they are slaves to their desires and they sleep in little cabin like wooden beds below a wide engulfing shaft where they wait to be summoned or for their moment, not to escape and run out the front door of the black hole, but to immerse their bodies, their desires and their minds in the produce of the pubs, while their desires outweigh the balance of their reality. Such stories are sad, but inevitably true and you will find that there are many sad tales to be moaned from the drunken lament of the customers here in the Cosy Cavern.

But such stories do not surprise me at all, when I recall the sheer level that this absurd place extends to and when I see the look of jaundice on the faces of certain men here, I know truly that the black hole does exist and that these men really are most likely prisoners to their vices in their unconquerable situations trapped away in their cabins like dogs called to serve the master. Life can be an asset to the management to control the feelings of the customers that are merely dispensable, while the desires of the customers are twisted and toyed with so to prevent the customers from truly parting with the underworld.

Some men it is true love the underworld and they have made it their home, but such men have hidden their worn eyes away from the omniscient truth that these individuals are now addicts and are now in the pocket of their own preferred pub, which they haunt day and night, simply living for every moment in their newfound home. It is the general rule for many men here, which have been here as long as I have, that, first you are infatuated with this myriad of masculine desires and invitations but after awhile the very atmosphere dejects out the sense of self inflicted punishment. The tone shows our self-made abasement. But we come back time and time again for many reasons, even if we loathe our commonly sought destination. One reason may be that the women lure us here like great creatures bearing huge nets to catch the poor beleaguered salmon. They set the bait and we take it hook, line and sinker. We are like moths to the vain beauty of the lamp; we wander through in mere human fancy and find ourselves trapped in the enveloping light that blinds us.

If you think that the police would do anything about this underground “racket” you are simply mistaken for they will often stick their hands in the tills of many of the pubs. All will accept whatever is given their way. Don’t think that the majority of the police in this city, have no knowledge whatsoever of the mysterious whereabouts of this “land of decadence.” In fact it has come to my knowledge that there is a special tavern specially designated for the private enjoyment of policemen and all pleasure given is supposedly “on the house” for the “boys”.

I am tired of rummaging through these tales of my past-spent existence and I certainly cannot tell my own elongated tale of discovery. But maybe soon my mind shall recall and reimburse the story itself.

                                                                   II

If you look around the room, you will see the great assortment of lonely men, worldly men, chauvinists, hedonists, womanisers, alcoholics and simpleminded victims who have strayed too close to the gravity of our dying star and such men have been sucked in with our fading supernova as we in time all implode in that fateful season of our life. Today the Cosy Cavern is packed completely with customers. People are crammed up against the very stonewalls themselves, as their stools and bar chairs have been pulled and pushed into tight spaces so that more customers can have their very own tight pocket in this place. The delicate sounds of piano keys can be heard in the background amid the milieu of laughing faces. The sounds of groaning, squabbling characters can be heard behind my back and this commotion has accelerated over the past twenty minutes when one of the men behind me accidentally knocked into another man when passing and in consequence spilt his drink all over his shirt. The arguments flew immediately from both parties to the affair and little reason was shown by the venomous accuser who would not forgive nor forget the incident, even after an apology had given by the unfortunate gentleman in question.

Now while I think I can hear the saxophonist warming up in the corner of the room.

I only realise now, after all this time spent pondering that I am in the company of others and though they have left me in the silence of my thoughts, it is quite congenial for me to simply ignore them and enjoy the current state of reticence which I can only imagine within my wildest dreams.

These people are mere strangers to me, for I have just met them tonight and I don’t conclude on spending my remaining hours with these men, these social climbers and suave sophisticated businessmen. The two men are wearing pinstripe suits, probably Ralph Lauren; they have fine Armani watches and they keep on stocking up on brandies, double whiskies and Martini’s. Their hair is all slicked back, so finely combed and meticulously driven back by the teeth of a comb that their hair literally bears the greasy shine of some company executive out on the town to pick up some low life escort girls. I have to admit that these two clowns, look like twins, a complete carbon copy, with their suits and their gelled slicked back hair and their almost matching, identical personalities that have emerged together almost as one gross Frankenstein like monster. The ladies are devious and almost certainly employed by the management as a little ruse to keep big spenders like these boys in the bar. They are both extremely beautiful in their complexion and they seem to have gotten Frankenstein to place large notes down the nearest crevice in their evening ragout.

These boys have been paying for numerous rounds of drinks and I cant fathom out how they keep going, knowing fully well that they have spent a solid fortune in the last two hours for the vainglorious efforts of amusing and seducing the two beauties. But in reality these executive clones had drunken more than they could stomach and from what I can see their very skin is turning raspberry red and their speech has turned to a terrible drunken slur.

This deeply pondered, pensive moment, which I have embraced for over the last half hour past, won’t last long, especially since one of the girls has withdrawn her firm glances off the two gentlemen beside me and is now directly gazing right into my eyes.

“Tired, honey”, she says and all I can see are her soft delicate glossy lips blow me a little kiss. “No”, I reply hesitantly with a squirm, “It’s been a long night and I’m simply shattered and anyway you’re two executive buddies are starting to make me wish I were elsewhere.” “Oh don’t worry about them they’re leaving soon, and when they leave both me and Beth will both give you all the attention you want, because it’s you we really came to see. Don’t worry were going to spend the night with each other, so lets have a good time, isn’t that what life is for, to have a good time.” She drew me close and drew her hand over her mouth and whispered in my ear, stating “she would tell me a little secret later when the boys had gone back home.”

I have to admit that these ladies certainly can get a man in a flush; they are a pair of professional flirts, whom I have only known for the first time tonight.

Finally, I can see that my two male acquaintances have finished their long withdrawn valedictions to the ladies on my left. “Au revoir”, I shout as I wave at the two gentlemen as they step out the front door, and they part with a smile. My face gave out a grin with one of my spectacularly forged smiles to the two gentlemen, while secretly I mutter “gits” beneath my breath.

“Now we are all yours!” said one of the girls as she moved her chair around so to face me directly against her own.

Both of these young ladies are exceedingly attractive and they surely can smell the intrepid waves of anxiety, which are flowing out of me every iota of a second.

The girl with the brown flowery dress and the silver broach holding her hair apiece is called Beth and she’s almost an amiable sort that can prevent a middle aged midlife crises induced individual like myself to want to stay all night every night in a place like this. The other girl, the brunette with the pearl necklace, lovely scarlet red nails and ruby red lipstick simply sat to my left hand side sipping her wine while she let the other girl Beth do all the talking.

“So you’re finally liberated, now that they’re finally gone. It’s a breath of release isn’t it?”

“Oh I took little notice of them two after awhile. They remind me of what I used to be like, in my former life”, I said wearily with a little grin of pretence.

“Well it sounds as if you have a few stories to tell us and we have a few to tell you ourselves”, she said as she smiled and glanced over at the other girl beside me, who was no longer distracted from our conversation since she seemed to nod and grin in confirmation and appreciation to what Beth said to her.

“Well no story comes without a good bevy to soften up the senses and help the mind what it needs to forget and what I need to remember I will invoke under the influence of the alcohol”. The girls giggled and drank their wine while I turned my head and bade the barmaid to my table, to order a pint of ale and two glasses of fine Cote de Rhone whine.

The thoughts had finally entered my mind that I better expose the false identities of these ladies who I had only met on this one occasion but yet I had quite certainly seen them before with other regulars of Cosy Cavern.

“Ladies, I am going to be blunt with you. I know that the Aphrodite club up above employs you to go and seduce certain naïve rich men so that you can reel them in for business and even permanent membership and maybe even form residence in their hostel above. Now I know I am right?

“Every man is naïve here, because he is enslaved to his desires for the women of the underworld and the numbers proliferate every time we go on the job. We are the most successful members from the Aphrodite club and the reason is simply that no drug is needed to convince any man, because its in you’re nature to fantasise and indulge in our company. The men who come to the underworld are infatuated with us. In fact the ringlady is the most desirable of all the madams, not just for her costumes and her little entrance routine, but because she possesses what every man desires for his perfect fantasies. The customers at the underworld are the greatest specimen in sleaziness and their perversion is the common perversion of middle class men who seek to escape their boring office jobs and come to underworld once they hear that there is a land where pleasure excels all boundaries and where little college girls like us can be exploited and manipulated by big bankers like your two friends that just departed ten minutes ago.”

“I thought they were company executives”, I said rather casually and coolly in my demeanour, with no tone of surprise or shock at all, because I foreknew that their confession was coming once I had blown their cover.

“Well”, she said. “You seem to be enjoying yourself. Aren’t you surprised with how open we confess our true motives”, said the quiet brunette that now sat on the edge of her seat, edgy and anxious, but still bearing a cunning smile.

“No I am not surprised in the least. I knew you’re game long ago. I have been frequenting the main strip of the underworld for the past two years, each consecutive weekend on the trot and I have known for quite awhile that all the ladies in the underworld are the secret to its success. But what makes you so exceptional amongst all women, that is beyond me, for that is the real secret, which I will never know.”

“You will know every secret in this establishment once you have gotten to know me and Karina here”, said Beth rather as confident as ever in her little ways.

This woman is certainly a smooth talker and she’s clever than I give her credit. She’s not as conscientiously distracted as I am over every decision I make.

“Well, I really want to leave this place. I really want to leave and return home to my apartment”, is aid rather pathetically, trying to raise myself up from the counter in hope of having an easy escape.

“No, that excuse wont do, don’t hide from me, I’ll find you. You cant run from you’re life forever”, as she said this her friend Karina pushed me back against my chair in an act of joviality and yet somehow it seemed to be an act of aggression.

“What are you heading home to? Are you so excited to see you’re cat in that one bedroom apartment. That poorly insulated pigsty?”

I thought I had imagined her words and in my mind I wanted her to repeat that very sentence she just uttered. Was she a spy? Was her friend a spy for the underworld? Did the underworld track down each and every customer back to his own private existence in order to report back to the management?

“Things are getting a bit too strange for my liking! So you’re both spies recruited by the management here? Is that what they do here? Do they investigate each and every private life of each and every customer?”

“Yes, you see this is no ordinary pub. This is the underworld and the underworld is owned completely by one man. This man’s conglomerate is like none other around.

It is in our orders to keep you here, with every available option. You see this underworld has a secret that’s sacrosanct, which only every worker knows and keeps with an utmost level of secrecy. More and more men shall become lodgers in this paradise of pleasure and they will work for their pleasure and never will they leave. Every need shall be given with food and drink to every man who stays with us.

Isn’t it all too good to be true and if you play you’re cards right, you may have a mistress of your own one day. But I doubt that you will be accepted, for you will wait you’re turn in the queue and you may wait you’re whole life to be loved and adored by one of us, but that is the way it is and will be forever”, her cunning and conniving state of mind had finally been found and while she spoke she grinned throughout as if by mere charm that she could succeed with every word and command to control me.

“I am not every man. I am not like every weak man out there. You are all pathetic, pathetic and weird. I have come here for the past two years, but I wish I had never set foot in this hellhole. I a divorced man and I have no interest with ever getting involved with another woman again”. All I can do is fulminate with anger.

“There’s no need for you to be angry with us, were just mere subordinates working for the will of another. I suggest that you may as well spend the night with us, because we both want to talk with you privately in the Aphrodite club later. I suggest that you meet us both in half an hour up stairs at the entrance hall to the Aphrodite club and there and only then will we discuss your problem in depth. Anyway we want to introduce you to a few people who may interest you in some manner or form.”

Immediately after she had finished speaking, a barmaid came over beside our little table to leave a round of drinks. This woman spoke with all the confidence and arrogance of the underworld. She was a wolf in sheep’s clothing and far more devious than any man could speculate. As I stared at her with an incredulous display of disbelief, I noticed that both Beth and her friend Karina, were drinking back their glasses of wine like they were knocking back mere shots of vodka. Both smiled and gently bowed their heads as they gathered their coats and their belongings from off the coat hanger that stood immediately adjacent to the main entrance of the Cosy Cavern.

                                                     

                                                              

 III

It was approximately ten o’clock, and the night was young, for the sleepless voyage of the pleasure seekers who frequented the underworld. I remember my messy marriage and how it never brought me much gratification or joy of any kind. I guess in my conclusion that we were just two souls in the universe, two souls of a very different kind, who should never have got married in the first place. I myself was once a fully qualified practising barrister. I was a fine orator in the High Court, for the prosecutions council. I would wake myself up at five in the morning like clockwork, and would catch the earliest train connection I could catch, would walk with pride in my finest suit and present myself before my colleagues at my law firm Samson solicitors. I myself did not own the firm itself but was employed to work with several of their highest and most professional solicitors for claims in both Tort and Employment law. I once carried all the pride of the world around my shoulders, with my upstanding and professional record for excellence, I would rarely lose a case and was earning thousands a week from all the cases which I had become affirmed with.

It is true that I hated having to give legal aid to lowlifes and for my personal beliefs I rarely every gave it, because in my opinion it was only the worst kind of men in this city who went out to milk the system of everything its worth and such men were criminals, petty thieves, swindlers or men from a family of crime and fraud. So yes I hated to give legal aid. Every cross examination I have ever made has been my act for an inquisition into the nature of the accused, so to alter and rebuff the arguments of the accused, and for the judge to see the undeniable proof that the accused were not innocent but were guilty with the potential Mens reus for the crime.

                                                                 IV

At the very back of the Cosy Cavern, you will find a small series of wooden stairs that proceed upwards and into the Aphrodite Club itself. At first glance these stairs look like the entrance to some small amateur theatre, since they are semi-veiled behind a grand wide curtain that almost covers the very concealed entrance sign itself. When the half an hour passed, like protocol I went to the back of the Cosy Cavern and preceded up the stairs in search for the Aphrodite Club. At the top of the stairs, I immediately walked unto a series of narrow landings, each with closed doors on either side. No immanent sign or even mere indication of any club could be seen. It looks more like a small-unfurnished apartment block to me, for I have been up at the Aphrodite club before. At the end of the second landing, you must turn right and then after you proceed down a couple of steps, then you will immediately see Chester the “happy go lucky” clown, who stands watch on the entrance to the Aphrodite club. The clown wears a roaring bright red wig, a red nose, wears plenty of white foundation and eye liner and he always wears his big green poke dotted baggy pants while he sits on his chair while propped up on a mound of feather cushions so to boost his physical appearance for the eyes of customers. While I stood at the entrance to the Aphrodite club, the clown sat propped up on his cushions, looking just as ever like something that had escaped out of the local Romanian Travelling circus, rather than the typically dour attentive figure of authority which he executed on a daily basis as the administrator and the doorman to the exclusive Aphrodite club. When he saw me his eyes lit up and immediately he became distracted from his list of errands, which he was methodically studying before my arrival.

“I know that face. You must the man from the other night! Ah! A Mr. Hopkins, is it not?” I immediately replied with a nod and insisted to him that I had come to simply see a girl called Beth, who had asked me at half ten to meet her at the entrance to the Aphrodite club. “Oh, Beth, why she’s one of the great professionals here in the club, a good high earner. She’s man bait, she’s dynamite and what a sly thing, have you ever met a lady that that can assess you better than you’re self? Well Beth will have checked you’re wallet by the end of the night and she will have every piece of information on you by the end of the night.” As Chester laughed, the tears streamed down his face, while his lung gave out a little wheeze with excitement.

“Who is on tonight Chester?”

“Oh first of all we have Eliza the Contortionist, performing on centre stage and then we have some fine jazz to be performed by the Alpha band at about eleven o’clock.

At midnight we will have Venus Lamoure perform her dance routine for an esteemed party of gentlemen and then the entertainment continues on, but I don’t want to bore you with such long winded facts. Go and see for you’re self and this time don’t leave us, stay with us for as long as you like. I am simply overjoyed when I see another committed member like you’re self, returning home.”

“No, I am not staying long, I am not here for mere pleasure, but just to see Beth and her friend Karina. I want to have a word with them. Could you go and fetch them for me please, it’s very important”, I said with a tone of urgency, as I tried to persuade him to oblige my command.

“ Oh no! I can’t leave my post; it’s my job to keep a watch on the number of customers streaming through. I manage the lines and queues and observe the profiles of the customers that come through here.”

“But there are no customers queuing up! In fact this place is exceptionally quiet tonight and from what I can see you don’t have a lot of work to do at all. You look a tad bored to me. So why don’t you just do me a favour since I am a seasoned customer to this club and go fetch Beth for me. You have nothing better to be doing and you know that I am right.”

“Hey don’t get aggressive with me or else I’ll have you permanently dejected from the club and then you’ll never get to see Beth for this important meeting of yours.

Do you hear me?”

“I am not being aggressive in the least, I am just stating a fact that’s all. I need your help, I just want you to peek inside behind the curtain there to see if Beth is around anywhere, because I want to talk with her, alright.”

 The clown merely nodded in approval after my almost apologetic response was made and left his post for a mere moment to glance in behind the thick velvet curtain of the entrance, where he disappeared through for a few seconds searching for Beth. The cantankerous clown returned to his post a little disgruntled in manner, but he immediately waved his hand and summoned me through, after he had told me that Beth was just “hanging about” somewhere in the main ballroom itself.

“What’s the charge?”

“No charge, go on through, before I change my mind”, said the clown as doleful as ever.

Through the great velvet curtains at the entrance to the Aphrodite Club, you will only have to walk a few paces before you are immersed in the sights and sounds of a great wooden ballroom. A wide stretch of freshly polished, wooden flooring fills the room with a wide array of wooden chairs and stools that are finely and precisely arranged to perfection for the audience. At the very back of the ballroom, there stands a large stage, a backroom and stairs where the performers would enter and exit on cue for each nights entertainment. The room was only half full; mostly gentlemen frequented the room, loitering in the bar that was allocated to the extreme far left corner of the room from the entrance. A couple of drunken louts were staggering about by the bar, while they argued with the barman over the price of their drinks. Who would have thought that such wide spaces, occupied with a huge vast, expansive ballroom could be located down here in the underworld and above the Cosy cavern which was only half the size of the Aphrodite club in length and width. On the stage itself, there stood an amateur magician pulling white cotton handkerchiefs out of a black top hat before an audience of bemused characters who only resounded with a half a clap, every now an then to the great anticipation of the performer. Through the crowd, barmaids came delivering rounds of drink and went gathering up empty trays up off their customers.

I stood alone near the entrance room, and watched and waited to see if this girl or her accomplice would turn up at all.

Then as I stood complacent while observing and applauding that truly desperate magician on stage, I beheld Beth’s approach and looked stunned to see her looking so well. She was dressed in a pink bunny suit that went down to her waist, had fancy pink leggings on and on her head she had little matching ear tufts, that made her look more sumptuous than ever. She was the most attractive looking girl in the Aphrodite Club, by a long shot, and perhaps the most beautiful in the entire underworld, which is something to say! Her smooth and delicate mane of blond straight hair came back over her shoulder like a golden river of hair. Her cheeks were gently painted with a little faint rose coloured foundation, so to beautify her porcelain white, fine shapely face in perfection.

“Well are you impressed or aren’t you?”

“I most certainly am. I would like very much for you to accompany me tonight.”

“Accompany you where?” She asked surprised.

“Anywhere you like, anywhere you fancy I will go with you. We’ll make it a night. We’ll lose ourselves tonight.”

“We’ll I don’t want to lose myself at any time at all, but I do accept your invitation. By the way I thought you hated me and my friend as well”, she asked inquiring.

“Well I don’t trust you. You’re a menace to every man that walks, but I am in you’re, lap tonight, especially after seeing you in you’re fine ragout, you leave me breathless.

My old inhibitions on you seem to have wavered, because I have the irresistible urge and the temptation to spend the night with you and perhaps every night at the rate my attraction grows to you”, I said blurting it out without thinking twice.

“You don’t seem to possess any skill whatsoever in seducing a fine lady like myself, that is why you have never managed to attract even one barmaid to your side. I am right, am I not?”

“Yes, you’re absolutely right. I am too serious, too dull and morbid for a young ladies’ affection. But I am a writer of stories, a good conjurer of jokes, a good listener and a great romantic. Before we do anything I want to know the reason for this meeting. What do you want to say to me? Is it important at all?”

“Yes of course its important, but lets just discuss things over a drink at the bar, all right?”

“Fine, then.”

Both of us sat opposite each other at one of the tables at the Ballroom bar, while we both occasionally gazed at the acrobatic displays being produced by the contortionist on stage. The bartender approached our table and asked for the order, I ordered double bourbon with ice, while she requested for a vodka Martini.

“So what have you to say then?”

“I called you here because I wanted to meet you alone and because I wanted to talk to you in private, about a little proposition I have to offer you”, as she spoke she leaned forward over the table and started to whisper into my right ear, almost as if she were trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, as if she were about to divulge something purely confidential, a secret of some sort.

“What are you trying to whisper, I’m sorry I can’t hear what you’re saying? If you want to speak, just speak to me, there’s no living soul listening to us and anyway I don’t believe that anyone would care to hear what we have to say. Why whisper in a place like this, no one can hear anyway, with the sound of the music in the background and the constant monotone of human voices, don’t whisper”, I uttered very bluntly to her, to watch to my dismay that she had a somewhat disappointed look on her fine oval face and her demeanour alone suggested to me that she was starting to shrink from my very hold. As I tried to kiss her on the hand as a gesture of my affection, I watched her with a jolt of motion, remove her hand back to her knees.

She sat in her chair, with her arms folded, with a particularly austere expression from her countenance.

Then she leaned forward to tell me something.

“I want you to spend the night with me. That’s why I wanted to get you alone, simply to state this. I have been watching you for a while, you come here three nights a week, every week, and you usually sit alone at the counter of the Cosy cavern, lamenting you’re troubled soul to death. You’re on friendly terms with that barman Oscar, I know because he told me everything. He told me about you’re divorce, your messy marriage, your loneliness, your struggle to relate to women in general and your certain sense of nothingness that wells up within you and has probably done so since you lost your youth long ago. I would watch you even when business called me off to entertain certain overnight clients, I would be lying in bed at night at the Castle bridge pub, just thinking on your whereabouts wondering what you were doing and when I would make my move, just to introduce myself. Back in April of last year, I met a man, an impoverished old vagrant, who came to work part time at the Castle bridge pub and during the course of his brief employment, I got to know the man quite well and even offered him a small, meagre promotion for the honour of my requested wish to my employer Vince. I informed the man that he was to simply sit as close as he possibly could to you in the Cosy cavern so he could listen and discover any information on where you might reside and any other facts on your private life.

The vagrant failed to report much, he lied to us, excessively and spent his time drinking and just loitered around the pub, to waste our time and efforts. One day I took drastic measures in to my hands; I decided quite recklessly to follow you out of the underworld and out past Francis Street. I tailed you for sometime, until you caught a bus, the number 55, to be precise and then I took a ride on the bus and got off at the Dalesbury estate, which is your stop, isn’t it? I followed you further through the thick winter fog and the cold frostbitten night up a small narrow laneway to your apartment complex and glanced over at you straining and struggling to turn your apartment keys in the front door, as a final confirmation for my successful operation. Now you must confess the sheer audacity and the brilliance of my little operation. You were too intoxicated to even notice my beautiful, delicate little shadow following closely behind. You men never doubt twice a beautiful woman, now do you? You simply look into the eyes of an attractive woman, to see the makeup, the mascara, the eyeliner, the hair hanging down or pulled tightly back like fine silken drapery and all you see in us is an image of us caressing you, body to body, in a steamy hot moment of passion and desire, in your perfect dream. Well I am a dream, I am now your dream and after months of searching for my moment to make you surrender yourself to me, I chose this very night to finally make things happen. I took pity on you and I felt that you deserved something worth living for even if you had nothing much to live for. To me you seem to be a washed up alcoholic, a defeated man, a deserter of the legal profession and a bad husband, to me you constitute the very archetypal character that comes to flourish in the underworld, once word is known that we exist in this island of pleasure, you become immersed in our festivities and our flowing energetic atmosphere of freedom and revelry. You all come to escape from you’re burnt out lives and you become so inebriated from your growing visits that you realise just how far out from life you have traversed over time, that you are too far away from your intended destination, and yet you are too far away from home to return to the fleeting memory of the life you once lived and the man you once possessed, so you are trapped in a purgatory of indecision, because you cannot move, either forwards or backwards and after time passes you begin to realise that you are fettered to your troubles and shackled to your fate and you realise that your only option available is simply indulge in the temporal and the short lasting, vain joys and pleasures within your reach. This is why men cannot leave the underworld, they know their fate and they know they are powerless to defeat to the prevailing winds that face them, so they slouch down and indulge themselves in their final, last request, as they fade like a dying ember from the burning blaze of the world’s wreckage. They drink their wine, they eat their food and they lament with what money they have. This fine establishment here at the underworld caters and cares, protects and provides everything for such cretins like you. Only our land can provide a home for the dispossessed men of this indifferent city.”

After she had finished talking she started to light up a cigarette and sat back on her chair as she watched with a gleam of great satisfaction in her eye my expression of sheer surprise and amazement. I had not expected her to nearly know my life story, to know my desperate situation and to have all so coolly infiltrated my very corner of the city with her bizarre tactics in your typical female game of espionage.

My throat was dry, my heart pounded and my brow was drenched with sweat. Time was passing it was nearly half eleven all ready and the night seemed stale and the surrounding congregations seemed too distant to be real in any sense. An apathetic atmosphere filled the room, through every nook and cranny in the great majestic ballroom. I had to admit that she had me on a tight leash and that she had timed her moves on this chessboard of events and affairs so correctly and meticulously that I struggled to find the words to rebuke and respond to her.

“Well I wont argue with you”, I spurted out nervously.

“Good that saves time and it makes things so much easier for me and so much easier for you. Listen to me closely. I want you to escort me to my bedroom chamber at the Castle court inn, where you will be my privileged guest for the night and tomorrow morning I will introduce you to my boss, Mr Alexis Vladimir Andrecovich, the supreme overlord and master of the underworld. He wants a word with you and with my direction you will find just how to approach such a magnanimous figure and find the man to be quite agreeable to your tastes.”

“Why would I want to meet the owner of the underworld?”

“Oh he’s not just some owner, he’s a master. A master of human life and a legend that all women want to just gaze their eyes on. He’s the most successful business tycoon of the century. When you become that powerful, you can do whatever you want, have whomever you desire and you ultimately become a master. It takes many years in the making to become a master and you yourself are the furthest a man can possibly be from becoming a master. You are at the lowest ebb of the spiral and you cannot creep up its web until you know the power to success, which I might show you someday soon. But first I want to spend the night with you and I want you to relax and be yourself with me, because it will all be worth your while once you can cooperate with my every command. My roommate Karina is working tonight, with some rich Americans, so she won’t disturb us at anytime in the next 24 hours.

You have nowhere else to go so you may as well come with me and be guest for the night. Lets me make it the greatest night of your life, for it would be mine too if I could fulfil your greatest dreams and fantasies, for that is my fantasy too.”

I could not pry myself from her tight grip. I was lonely and it was true I had nowhere to go and nothing better to do. I was nervy and scared of such a woman, yet as I looked once more at her extravagant beauty, the bunny suit, the makeup, the pouting of the lips, the youth, her well formed features and her smell of cherry blossom which filled my scent completely, the luscious image of us both at the Castle court inn together for, “the greatest night of our lives”, appeared to be an attractive offer I could not refuse. She took her hand in mine, and laughed as she gave me a quick peck on my right check, before we both rose up from the table, walked off quietly and gracefully, hand in hand like lovers together out of the big sweeping ballroom and off to the Castle court inn.