Midnight At The Bar of Lost Souls
You know, I spend a lot of time talking to people who don't exist. People from stories I've told or have yet to tell, people from games, people from the very back room of my crawling subconscious.
I ask their advice. I joke with them. We fight. We make up. We share our dreams -- sometimes literally, when I dream as them. And when I don't get to spend time with them, as them, I get pent.
Either I am blessed with a profoundly and irrepressibly creative spirit, and a vivid and witty personality (or three), and a unique, possibly even effective way of coping with the weirdness that is the world we know,
or,
I am a pathetic, sad husk of a woman without enough social contact in her life, who for so long had so few people she could trust that she will no longer flash her underbelly to any flesh-and-blood humans beyond the one she married?
Nights like this, where I sit and talk to the best of my imaginary friends, and he gives me good advice, and I listen, I really wonder which of the above it is. On a scale of one to ten, is my dysfunctional score ninety-proof, or what?
At any rate, here at the Bar of Lost Souls, they're serving Irish coffee, some tawny port, and this peat-tasting crap that is supposed to be whiskey but suspiciously resembles the bog man's throat-scorching urine. It makes me wonder. I don't completely trust the gent who's pouring, you see (well, I do, but he's not above giving you what he thinks you deserve, politesse be damned).
Nick is behind the bar tonight, but I don't think you've met him. Don't let his little schoolteacher grin fool you. He's not as harmless as he looks. Damon's actually sitting at the bar, talking to Argent. Arguing, really, but after a couple of centuries, who splits hairs? They're disagreeing about movies. Again. Henry Lee's on piano, Stormy's singing, and Ulysses is fighting a losing battle with the old pinball machine. We have bit players, too, dropping in to say howdy and schmooze with the locals. Captain Blade's just passing through on his way to Radium Station, and he's nose-to-nose arguing piracy with Thedara, who's not taking any of his shit. ("You're not the only one with a flying ship, Mister.") I don't see John-Martin around. I think he's out writing his name in the snow, though he could be reverting to his former wolf-hunting ways. Probably why werewolf twins Raph and Ella are inside, not out.
Times like this I wish I could let other people into the party. I wish I could think of a way to share it. Stand-up night, guest spots, an advice column, something. Because I don't get lonely or bored so much, really. But they, my daimones, don't have much of anyplace else to go most of the time, and they sort of do.
I will never be as productive, creative, clever, eloquent as my characters deserve.
I ask their advice. I joke with them. We fight. We make up. We share our dreams -- sometimes literally, when I dream as them. And when I don't get to spend time with them, as them, I get pent.
Either I am blessed with a profoundly and irrepressibly creative spirit, and a vivid and witty personality (or three), and a unique, possibly even effective way of coping with the weirdness that is the world we know,
or,
I am a pathetic, sad husk of a woman without enough social contact in her life, who for so long had so few people she could trust that she will no longer flash her underbelly to any flesh-and-blood humans beyond the one she married?
Nights like this, where I sit and talk to the best of my imaginary friends, and he gives me good advice, and I listen, I really wonder which of the above it is. On a scale of one to ten, is my dysfunctional score ninety-proof, or what?
At any rate, here at the Bar of Lost Souls, they're serving Irish coffee, some tawny port, and this peat-tasting crap that is supposed to be whiskey but suspiciously resembles the bog man's throat-scorching urine. It makes me wonder. I don't completely trust the gent who's pouring, you see (well, I do, but he's not above giving you what he thinks you deserve, politesse be damned).
Nick is behind the bar tonight, but I don't think you've met him. Don't let his little schoolteacher grin fool you. He's not as harmless as he looks. Damon's actually sitting at the bar, talking to Argent. Arguing, really, but after a couple of centuries, who splits hairs? They're disagreeing about movies. Again. Henry Lee's on piano, Stormy's singing, and Ulysses is fighting a losing battle with the old pinball machine. We have bit players, too, dropping in to say howdy and schmooze with the locals. Captain Blade's just passing through on his way to Radium Station, and he's nose-to-nose arguing piracy with Thedara, who's not taking any of his shit. ("You're not the only one with a flying ship, Mister.") I don't see John-Martin around. I think he's out writing his name in the snow, though he could be reverting to his former wolf-hunting ways. Probably why werewolf twins Raph and Ella are inside, not out.
Times like this I wish I could let other people into the party. I wish I could think of a way to share it. Stand-up night, guest spots, an advice column, something. Because I don't get lonely or bored so much, really. But they, my daimones, don't have much of anyplace else to go most of the time, and they sort of do.
I will never be as productive, creative, clever, eloquent as my characters deserve.