The Dinner Party

Towards the end of the lane the houses started to fluctuate in size and
shape. Meds strode along at a hasty pace, leaping over upturned bins
and weaving past idle bystanders. As his pace quickened, the pavement
spread itself ever more thinly until it came to resemble a sliver on
which he balanced, speedily walking along one foot in front of the
other. Fellow pedestrians became ever fewer until he was beating a
solitary path down the fragment of kerb remaining to him. To his left
and right residential homes strained and warped themselves into
unrecognisable, fluid structures. Great, spongy grey walls rose to
immeasurable heights, curving over his head at the pinnacle of their
rooftops and spilling back over onto Med's tightrope walkway. During
other passages, tiny figurine homes littered his path and he was forced
to kick them out of his way in irritation as he flew along. His stress
ever increasing, Meds realised he had forgotten the exact address of
his dinner party. Wheeling about in frustration, he knelt down and
attempted to peer through the tiny windows of the current row of
miniscule houses. But it would not correspond with his line of vision;
his enormous eyes could perceive no human motion, or indeed any
interior at all, beyond the stamp-sized glass windows. And even if he
were able too, how could he explain his current gigantism? Many of the
expected crowd would be new acquaintances. How was he to mingle, when
his very eye was the size of the side of a house? And to greet people,
to tell anecdotes over dinner? Surely his voice would boom and resonate
through every eardrum in vicinity, crashing rolls of thunderous sonic
noise wrenching the air itself in twine? No, I must retreat, Meds
rationalised. Where were the bigger houses again, the ones with roofs
that skewered the sky? But as he tried to rotate backwards he realised
how fragile the kerb beneath him had become, how small it had shrunk,
indeed as he gazed it suddenly seemed nothing more than a piece of
string, and not even a taut piece of string, a loose, ragged length
that snapped underneath his feet and sent him spinning and screaming
into the empty darkness below.

Lit
Littl
Little
Little sli
Little slivers

Little slivers of light pierced his eyelids as he slowly regained
consciousness. Staggering to his feet, Meds assessed his surroundings.
A cramped tunnel extended around him, as far as his limited vision
could make out, in either direction. Dark, moist stone walls rose to
meet a curved granite roof just above his head, dripping with some oily
substance. Feeling his way initially along the jutting individual
stones of the wall, Meds attempted to calculate how late he currently
was for dinner. 'If only this damned oil would stop dripping on my
suit!' He raged. Still, at least his size seemed relative to his
surroundings now. No embarrassing enormousness to contend with.

Hours seemed to slip by around him as he pawed his way through the
slimy tunnel, occassionally slipping and cursing in the semi-darkness.
Each groping hand, clasping desperately at the stone surfaces
surrounding him, drew Meds closer to a creeping realisation, a distant
feeling of familiarity and a current of human life ebbing underneath
the solid rock of the walls that penned him into this tunnel, as if at
any moment the stony surfaces might come alive with their own stone
appendages, arms, legs, hands, foreheads, eyes and mouths all straining
through the rock, clawing desperately for attention, until the whole
tunnel was a live, vibrant organism, grasping at him for contact as he
fled through it.

In the distance, through these fleeting hallucinations, he could
discern a light. And yet it was moving! Bobbing to and fro, playfully
dancing in the hollow emptiness. But was it behind him? Meds spun back
and forth, his panic spreading as the spot of light weaved its way
silently towards him, reflecting off the wet stone, flickering in and
out of consciousness, darting this way and that, ever stronger, ever
brighter, ever closer.

Suddenly there was a face in front of him. A woman's face, and she
cradled the candle in one hand, shielding its flame with another. 'Mr.
Modell?' she exclaimed. 'Mr. Modell, where have you been? We have been
waiting for you to arrive to begin dining - our guest speaker, after
all!'

Meds squinted in the candlelight as he recognised his surname,
somewhere in the recesses of his memory. He stared back at the woman's
worried expression. 'l'm terribly sorry,' he began slowly, treasuring
the sensation of words forming on his tongue, the thrill of the
exchange, 'I appear to have gotten a little lost on my way. You see, I-'

But at this his companion cut him off. 'You mustn't explain now, only
we must make haste, you see. You are to be the main speaker tonight,
and what a mess I find you in! Your clothes, wet and torn! This won't
do, it won't do at all!'

And abruptly she set off at a frantic pace, carefully balancing the
candle in one hand whilst dragging Meds forcefully with the other.
Tired after his exertions, Meds allowed himself to be pulled along,
watching the grey walls flying by until suddenly they burst out of the
tunnel and into an enormous, lavish dining hall. The walls here rose
toweringly high, displaying beautiful architecture, fabulous paintings,
ornaments and billowing curtains, a grandiosity compimented by the
astoundingly radiant chandelier that decorated the ceiling above,
casting glowing light upon the hundreds of immaculately attired guests
who lined the seemingly endless walnut dining table below.

With a bump the woman pushed him down into a seat at the head of the
huge table, and immediately guests around him began probing him with
questions. Where was he from? What was his job? Was he married? Did he
have children? Why was his suit so wet? And, embarrassed by his
lateness and unruly state, Meds diligently attempted to answer every
quickfire question thrown his way. For each question however, a voice
at the back of his mind wondered 'Why do you have to know that?' or
'Why must I tell you?' or even, 'What does it matter? There seem to be
hundreds of people here, and probably we will never even cross paths
again?'

And true enough, soon the incessant questions gave way to incessant
monologues, lengthy, loquacious stories on subjects Meds had no
knowledge of, and desired no knowledge of. The group at his end of the
table took it in turns to lecture him on far reaching, diverse,
infinitely dull topics, but at such speed that Meds never at any point
had time to be able to eat, for fear of looking disinterested. And
gradually the individual monologues began to blend until they were all
shouting over each other: words cascaded over the table, battering into
other words, convoluting, mixing and reaching such a crescendo of
tumultous noise, louder and louder, faster and faster, until the
inevitable happened and they became a single, clear note, throbbing
with a dull rumble in Med's temples. Their faces were all turned
towards him now, their eyes fixated on his own, their mouths forming
little circles as they each emitted their synchronous notes.

A passing waiter forced a bunch of paper sheets into Med's hands, and
looking down he realised they were a script, a script for his
contribution. As he glanced back up he noticed they all had them;
everyone at the table had little piles of paper balanced upon their
laps, and all had reached the same ominous note depicted on each of
their individual prompts. Meds rose uncomfortably, his hands gripping
the table's edge, and began stammering out the lines allocated to him,
but the words struggled to reclaim form and substance amidst the
vibrating frequency wailing incessantly around him, and his speech, his
keynote speech, was buried under the rising cacophony, his lips
trembling and his knuckles white as they grasped tightly at the table's
end.