Well, this is strange and awesome and creepy...
Hanging on the walls, the wedding portraits are the only reminder of La Belle Époque. Anna P. wanted to see Pina B. and stopped by Café M., once again reactivated for the Permanent Vacation, to be closed soon after its over. The clock stopped ticking some time before, leaking red toxin from the Mignon batteries, making the ladies at the bar – Virginia W., Laura B. and Clarissa V. – once again count the Hours like in the analogue age. At the same time, the regular customers, sent by Edward H., have their traits digitally enhanced after the countless rehabs at the Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, while the pastel girls from Edgar D.’s class went all pale from dancing to somebody else’s tune. Now they only stamp their pointes out of compulsion. Other girls are busy: Sarah K. had to go to the loo, Nina S. is tearing feathers off her shoulder blades in the dressing room upstairs, while Sylvia P. is preparing the fruit of fall for breakfast, fiddling with the oven at the back. A broken vinyl Peter T. is lying on the floor, while bridegroom Tim B. rots away in a DVD box. No point in looking for contestants for a new Ready For Love show. Count O. and Josephine A.? Due to A Series of Unfortunate Events she got torn apart by leeches somewhere at the Lake Lachrymose and stopped going out altogether (although hirudotherapy was fashionable already in the times of Napoleon, for instance as a beauty treatment, and is now very popular and recognised by the National Health Fund under the catalogue number 99.991 in the classification of therapeutic procedures ICD-9), while he vanished in thin air, and the delivery advice with the invitation to a black coffee wastes away in the spam box. Only the well-known resident Grass W. perched himself somewhere in the corner and silently pours handfuls of white rice to lure two swans. Every now and then, he looks outside the window, hoping that Marylin M. will once again step on a subway vent for the blast to blow up her dress, revealing the shapely legs. Finally, the birds decide to sit down on the window sill and blindly peck away, intoning their bittersweet song. Fin de siècle. www.krzysztofskonieczny.pl
