Page Six: People who Lunch

…the Darqlands were being eating away, consumed in small pieces; chewed and nibbled by an unseen hunger. The Shadow and the Darqness fed on Despair, and now something was feeding off them. As the souls escaped from the Darqlands, they took their Despair with them, leaving the Darqness famished. Like a voracious fledgling with its mouth agape for a constant supply of food, it implored the Shadow for sustenance. Its hunger urged the Shadow to return to the Waking Lands to replenish the dwindling Despair…

She had rapidly lost interest in events and conversations at her own table and was soaking up the atmosphere from adjacent tables. The restaurant was a buzz with noise, an avant-garde melody of chinking glasses and clattering cutlery that sang over a symphony of voices rising and falling in a babble of concurrent conversations. Staff dressed alike in black silk and denim, arms laden with plates of steaming food, or trays of mutlicoloured glasses filled with mutlicoloured cocktails, effortlessly pirouetted between the tables. At the bar, clutches of people met and parted with air-kisses and faux-hugs, carefully avoiding disruption to their pristine make-up and fine tailored clothes, before being guided to their reserved tables by an equally reserved Maitre'D. At small tables near the walls discreet couples practiced their illicit intimacies within the unspoken restriction of eye contact alone. Their need to be secretive defeating their desire to be together as conversations dropped to clipped whispers of frustration and sweet-nothings gave way to sweet-nothing. While at larger central tables, groups engaged in the rituals of bonding were free from this guilt. Individuals exchanged morsels on fork-tips with the person sitting next to them, with tender offerings they fed each other, guided by a primeval instinct of sharing. Intimacies were openly proclaimed as finger-tips casually touched on arms or brushed faces in nonchalant friendship and heads touched heads in knowing laughter. With others, playful exchanges of risque remarks between couples where loaded with coded messages, testing for the promise of something more. While her mind was focused on these scenes, Ashiya idly pushed the beautifully presented scraps of monkfish around her plate, her hunger for food replaced by a stronger desire. No longer content with being a casual observer, she was slowly being drawn to the courtship rituals being displayed on the other tables. She was beginning to feel the need to participate in the game and yearned for the thrill of the chase. With predatory eyes, she searched for a suitable victim. She had already shared some degree of intimacy with most of the people she was dining with: longing kisses; passionate dances; nights of bliss and on one occasion, an erotic threesome. Yet they would not provide that tingle of the first tentative touch from an unknown lover that she desired. Of those she had not seduced, none appealed. She scanned the adjoining tables, most were filled with groups and couples but at one sat a lone girl, who Ashiya felt certain had been looking directly at her. Ashiya's eyes lingered on the girl's youthful body longer than is polite as non-verbal communication passed between them. Even though the possibility of sapphistic pleasures appealed, she felt the need for someone older and more experienced so broke the contact. Trapped within the social confines of her circle of lunchtime friends, she would have to wait until later to find someone to sate her appetite.

…the Shadow began the journey…

The girl sat on a small back-street vegetarian restaurant with the proceeds of yesterdays' sales clutched in one hand and the gold coin in the other. She had carefully scrutinised the menu and selected the cheapest and most filling meal she could afford. The staff here where kind without being condescending and did not appear to mind her presence, occasionally. Having cleaned herself in the toilets of a nearby department store and dabbed a couple of spots of cK-one from the testers on the perfume counter (under the constant watch of a floor-walker), she at least felt presentable. Even then as she sat in the darkest corner she was self consciously aware of everyone looking at her. To ease herself she took a sip at the glass of Coke, 'One-eighty for a soft-drink!', she though, 'I had to sell three crappy magazines for that and that one little sip was probably cost me 10-pages'. As she put the glass down she noticed a smudge of grime on the back of her hand that had missed the washing. Wiping a finger up the condensation on the glass, she rubbed away the smudge with the wet finger just as the waitress arrived with the largest bowl of steaming pasta she had seen for quite some time. The aroma of garlic and basil was intense, the shreds of pasta gleamed with olive-oil and tomato sauce and where slowly being buried as the waitress piled on layer after layer of parmesan cheese, waiting for the girl to say 'When'.

…slowly winding out time from the Heart of the Darqlands…

Feathers and scraps of flesh litter the grass as the Raven picks over the remains of a scrawny city pigeon. How the pigeon became lunch is of no concern to the Raven. It was probably the result of successful hunt by a one of the many cats that patrol the parklands. The Raven had nothing but disdain for cats. It was not because they presented a threat, the cat had not been born who was the match of the Raven. No, it was their callous waste of life that angered, killing for the pleasure and not for survival.

… slowly its mass and energy return to their normal levels…

What the fuck does that thing eat? Thought Philip, as he spat out another mouthful of dust encrusted cobweb. On hands and knees in the narrow crawl-space between eaves and loft, he was looking for the shoe box he had hidden there several years ago. Not normally afraid of spiders, well not afraid of normal ones anyway, the thought had been instigated when an extremely large specimen walked across his hand. Phillip froze. The house-spider was the largest he had seen of any kind outside a glass tank and one he had voiced the desire not to meet some moments back, as he crawled through its large and sticky cobweb. Undeterred by his hand, the spider continued on its away into the darkness and Philip continued on his, still pondering the possible sources of nourishment for such a monster. And what happens to all that spider-crap? He thought, After all, spiders must defecate and the shit must go somewhere. Then he remembered the gritty taste of the mouthful of cobweb earlier and spat again. Apart from the spider incident, locating and retrieving the box was easy enough. Later, still covered in webs and dust, he sat at the kitchen table where he began to remove the wrappings of yellowed newspaper, followed by layers of oiled cloth to reveal the craftsmanship of a double barrelled 4/10 pistol. Barely ten inches in length, this was not the crude butchering of a sawn-off, but a purpose made weapon, designed for the gentleman farmer to dispatch vermin. Its compactness proved it to be highly popular with poachers as another tool of their trade, later it attracted the criminal elements for similar reasons, which lead to it final being outlawed. His father claimed the gun had been used in a notorious east-end gang war, but his uncle had told him that their father had used it for poaching rabbits and his father had only used it for taking pot-shots at rats by the dock-side. Philip had never fired it himself and was not sure he even knew how to. He also doubted it would be that effective against ethereal beings, even if he could get any silver buck-shot, if that is what was needed. Holding the weapon at arms length he took pretend shots at the door and various pots and pans around the kitchen, blasting away imaginary Angels as they infringed on his life. The without thinking, he slipped the barrel into his mouth, to taste the cold metal on his tongue and to imagine the effect of pulling the twin triggers. Suddenly realising what he was doing, he carefully removed the gun from between his lips and broke it open to reveal two cartridges still in place. Shaking, he pulled the brass end-cap of the first to remove it from the barrel. The rotted cardboard of the cartridge crumbled to dust and shot and gunpowder scattered across the table. The second had suffered the same fate and its contents added to the mess. After a very stiff drink of brandy, he re-wrapped the gun and place it back into its box. Through a combination of fear, inability and his own morals, he knew he could not use the damn thing. It was too illegal to own and even more illegal, if not dangerous, to sell. He did not really want it to end up in the hands of the kind of people who would buy it, only to come face to face with it one night in some dark alley. Whenever the police announced an armistice on offensive weapons, he was always too scared to hand it in just in case they decided to ask questions, or worse still - put him under surveillance. Depressed, Philip pushed the box into the middle of the table and resigned himself to hiding it back in the attic.

…slowly it moves forward through time to the present where it can sublimate the boundary into the Waking Lands…

The grease-proof paper crackled as Sam hurriedly unwrapped his lunch in the cramped room that served as the factory's canteen, rest room and coat-room. Often he would eat his lunch in the carpark, but today he was missing his quota and needed to eat quickly to return to work to catch up. He had daydreamt again. This time of his plans to send off for a wife. His six uncles would make all the arrangements, their wives would choose the perfect wife for him and use her dowry to smuggle her into the country. Then, at last someone to look after him, someone to prepare is lunch. But first he had save enough money and the only way he could do that was to become line-supervisor.

…effortlessly, the Shadow entered the city and fuelled with an increasing hunger, was ready to dispense with codes and rules…