Ron Takes A Bow

An Oily Sheen

He wore big pants and a small hat, and high heels. He was forever planning the demise of those around him, faulty brakes, poison, economic annihilation, falling safes, window falls, electrocution, a bullet. It isn’t possible to see what’s truly going on in another person’s mind. Not yet. The common just all sort of assume the best. How else the commercial success of horror movies? Might be that everyone around us is plotting our extinction but at the moment it’s inconvenient, not beneficial or perhaps just messy. When he strode into a room in his expensive, fancy pants and the rest of his silk slick three piece suit, most heads turned his  direction if but to try to see over everyone’s shoulders what they were turning their heads to see. Ron had always been right, and there are those who always agree with those who are always right and help to make the heads roll, not just in their own private thoughts but in actuality. These also are who we should watch out for for these are us, falling over ourselves, falling in line. On a bad day. In an evil age. We should start with no dancing. Dancing is licentious regardless of the step. In short order the skirts are diaphanous and whirling. Glances, glares, gloms and the males are all as dogs in their smooth tuxedos and pointy, pointy, patent leather shoes. Diane, the exotic, and I, the dim wight, watched it all from the perspective of one of many possible dismaying alternative universes. The binary aspect was ludicrous. There are yes’s and no’s the same as there are male and female and then there’s the long tail of the bell curve in which anything is possible yet little probable. Diane, the svelte, wore bright, vibrant colors and who wouldn’t look? She was, after all, Diane. I wore once starched and functional, now soft and comfortable and down and out. Somehow we fit right in. Dance we all did. Then, after forbidden dance, intoxicants. To be banned also all that affects the body or mind. Sped up or down, seeing things or feeling better, the earth should consist of grit and grain and bitter salts and little smooth and lubricated. The dragging of the stones of pyramids, they say was done by a rough clan of beer drinking idol worshippers whose primary solace was randy neath the cool stars after a tough day sliding stones up muddy ramps for a wooden scoop of gruel. Ron, the three piece suit, had not a feather out of place. Most in the room were oohed and awed but Diane, the vamp, could well read his face. He was divine god come to slum among his foremen, serfs and engineers, the rest of us to be humoured or replaced.

 Ron sent someone to check the restroom, never a good place for PR, to make sure the coast was clear then went in himself, the price he paid was dear. Someone had cheaped on the plumbing, methane had pooled. Ron lit his final considering cigarette and his throne…… Then, an oily sheen.