Back on Track with Words to Spare!

[triedunture]

12401 / 50000 words. 25% done!

They drank and drank. Their straws got tangled with other straws and had to be unknotted with clumsy fingers. They giggled madly, rocking on their haunches on the hard floor. The old Thai men attempted to tell them stories or jokes in a broken mess of English, Laotian and Thai, and Chris pounded his fist on the low table as he was wracked with uncontrollable laughter. A new song broke out between two men, then a third took up the strange, fast-paced chorus, and then everyone was singing it, even Leon, who didn't know the foreign words, even Leon who was the most tone-deaf drag queen in all of Sydney.

"I love this country!" Chris hollered. "I love these guys!"

The men shouted back to him in a sort of call and response, and it seemed perfectly clear to Leon that they loved them too. That they all loved each other. He felt blissfully untethered, like a piece of wood bobbing in the river. His stomach bounced pleasantly, and he drank more.

Chris struggled to his feet, wobbling unsteadily, and Leon tipped his head back to stare up at him. "What are you doing?"

"We need to be dancing," Chris said simply, and attempted to mount the low wooden table. The men encouraged him with cries of joy, and they began clapping their hands and singing a new song.

"Wait, be careful," Leon warned, grabbing onto Chris's knee, trying to steady him from below.

"Let me dance!" Chris shouted. He broke away from Leon's grasp and began doing a strange jig on the table, pounding his feet up and down, over and over. The old men, wild with passion and love, called for more.

Chris danced. Leon saw the wood of the blocky table buckle. He looked up blearily, seeing Chris silhouetted in the light from the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, and he felt fear spike into his floaty stomach. "Watch out!" he cried.

Too late. With one more stomp of his foot, Chris splintered the wood of the surface of the table. His foot went straight through, and he toppled over. Leon tried to stop his fall, but he couldn't move fast enough in the crowded room. Chris fell hard on his arm, a sickening thud on the thin straw mats. The huge vat of lao-lao tipped from the table as well, smashing to the floor in a million pieces and pouring its clear liquid across the floor like rainwater.

Leon looked at the damage caused to the table, and he froze. He felt the blood drained from his face and his hands began to shake.

The broken wood held in its grasp a dead man, his slack face peering up from between the crack in the board.

"Oh god," Leon whispered. He looked around the room at the astonished faces of the men: all looking at Chris, not even looking twice at the corpse. "Oh, Jesus."

"Ugh, I'm okay. I don't think I broke anything," Chris slurred. He began to prop himself up on his hands and knees.

"It's not okay," Leon said. "This is a funeral."

Comments

[tobegone.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. I'm cringing on behalf of your characters. And I really want to read the rest of this scene.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

This is just a perfect anecdote even by itself. I look forward to the rest of the story!