Saturday, May 13, 2017

Fiction

I was a guest of the groom, who was nowhere to be found. The wedding was beautiful and mostly over. There was still music playing and one cheerful bartender still manning his station alone. He told me that he had only woke up at five in the afternoon, and that after the wedding he was heading for a party at a fairly remote but trendy warehouse club. He was good-natured enough to invite me to join, seeing that I had come for the wedding alone. "No pressure at all, man! Think about it and let me know anytime if you wanna join, I'll be here!" To be polite, I said that I would consider. While doing so I walked back to my seat and was stopped midway by the bride herself, all white and lace. She looked a little emotional. A few locks of hair had fallen out of her elaborate hairdo and grazed her chin lightly.

"I don't know you," she stammered, slightly out of breath, "or do I?" She was holding me by the shoulder and had not let go by then. I noticed that without her shoes on she was quite a few inches shorter than me in height. She did not know me and in fact, we had never met before. I was a guest from out of town, an old friend of John's and we had not seen enough other in a decade.

She looked perturbed for a moment but her expression changed again. I realised then that we were the only two people standing on the makeshift dancefloor. "Do you want to dance?" she said, looking right at me. Before I said anything she put her arms around me and started singing softly with the music, "Loony moon loves Moony Loon, Moony Loon loves Loony moon." 

Placing my hand on the back of her head, I whispered into her ear, "Are you ok?" and the Moon Princess pushed her face into the bend of my neck and her muffled voice said, "Yes, everything is great, isn't it?" "Yes, it has been a beautiful night, and you are very beautiful. Everything is great." We continued our slow dance, barely moving and not speaking for a while. Then she started singing again at the exact same moment that the music stopped. "Loony moon loves Moony Loon, but at noon there'll be no moon."