A Short Digression

I couldn't tell you the exact time it started. I think all sense of past and present have sort of mingled and merged in my mind. I want to say that it began with a movie. A story told by projection onto a large while canvas screen with an orchestra of about thirty beneath it, adding sound to the mute. I was sitting in the back row – my personal favorite place to sit when viewing such a spectacle – completely alone and quite at ease with myself. The day had been full of running around, shopping for items that would either be appreciated with joy or discarded with dread in a months time. I’d gone to all the big department stores around the city, making sure I walked the halls and rooms of each one before deciding on what to buy and where to buy it. Most of the stores were competing with each other now. If one had a certain price the other across the street, or a few streets over, would have it for dozens of dollars cheaper. It was their ploy to get the world to go out and buy more. They wanted their own Christmas specials to go on and on and laden their own pockets with as much money as they could. The bonuses they would receive from the increased sales would go over well with the poor sales people they only hired for the season. Most of them didn’t work outside of the holidays. Sometimes the huge paychecks that came from just the two or three months lasted them well through to the next big sale that was bound to happen when the lover’s holiday (loosly termed because I still have work and children still have to suffer through the lectures of their teachers) made it’s way into the new year. Everything had a season and a place, and somehow the retail and merchants always found a way to exploit them for all they were worth to get their sales and merchandise up and out of the store.

But, I digress.

This story is not about the retail market and how it hungers to make its numbers. Nor is it about those poor sales people who work long hours and yet still manage to have time to smile and say thank you. No, I will leave those fanciful tales to the bards of old: Shakespeare (the bare himself), Dumas and, more to the letter Dickens.

My story is more about what happened when a projection failed to perform its task of taking away a theater full of hundreds of people to a different land for a few hours. My story is about the world beneath and often directly in front of our noses that we often and very realistically neglect to see.

My story is about Eyowls.

Now, I know what you’re probably (or at the very least most likely) thinking of me by now.

‘What sort of man goes about talking about things called Eyowls?’

‘Really, he should leave off the pretend for the little ones.’

‘A man of his age and position can not afford to believe in something so fanciful and unrealistic.’

I have to admit, my favorite comment was given by my last employer. To get to his comment I must first explain something of the man. He is of old money, a term given to anyone born into a family that has always had wealth and fortune. He never did anything odd or unordinary. In University he was a respectable man who never took to drink, drug or the smoke. He stayed very clean and neat, just like his father, and his father’s father, and so on all the way back to the twentieth or fiftieth father. Their family was made up of normal, ordinary men who did things with their money to ensure they stayed part of the ‘old families’. They married members of other  Old Families and never bothered with who they hired or what happened when one of them was laid off. My old employer was nearing thirty in years, had a wash of sand blown hair and a neat mustache to match. He had inherited his mother’s blue eyes, which is quite natural for a man in his position. The men often inherited the eyes of their mothers and the statures of their fathers. It was the same for him. He knew he was rich, looked rich, felt rich and was by the very definition rich.

The day after the extraordinary event with the projection and my first encounter with the Eyowls I went into work, believing the whole episode to be nothing by a hazed dream. Unlike those around me in my profession I gladly took the odd drink now and again. It often helped to get my fingers fluid enough to perform the work of the day. Journalists seldom made any real money and I was waiting for an editor to make me more than just a broke journalist. My boss, a Mr. Ranchet, often told me that I would never go anywhere in the world as a mere writer. He would often tell me, ‘Journalists can go almost anywhere they like or choose to go. They don’t need to find an excuse – there’s always a story happening where they go. They can just pick up and be gone in less than an hour. But writers? What else can they do except sit in the pubs and take up space and good ale? I’m not a drinking man myself, but I can tell you that most chairs in the pubs these days are wasted with writers who’ve spent all they had and are looking for a free handout.’

What does he know?

He may be a lord and have a fancy house and a title, but I am much more than a writer now. I am the keeper of some secret world that children will often dream about. They go to the most fantastic places a person can imagine and have the most wonderful adventures! The sad thing is, when they wake they find the grim reality of their lives before them. If they are lucky they have enough money through which to keep on being fanciful. If they have some luck their parents will let them continue with the dream until they head off to school. If luck is even present then it is often quelched by the reality of the jobs they have to perform to keep their own families above the receding water line. The final group has no luck, no hope, nothing at all to keep them from their fantasy. They have nothing to begin with, and then they have their wonderful adventure. After that happens they will always have that hope, that sense of something greater than them, of the world. They are the ones that the rest of the world look upon as fools, the insane and often the homeless.

We live in a sad time when the dreams of the few are often squished aside for the power hungry of the many. The world races by in front of them, leaving them to often regret what they’ve dreamed. They become lost in a world of cynics and strangers. Their eyes are the dull round orbs with a bright center. They are the ones who long to share a story, but because of the cruelty of mankind withhold their precious tales until they die and the dust and wind obtain them forever.

Once again I find myself thinking back to that day at the theater. I was enjoying a day deserved away from the offices, trying to lose myself in a fanciful tale only a true liar could appreciate (for are not all actors and actresses liars? They are some of the best and would put even the hardiest of spies to shame with the stories and identities they could use!). When the picture frizzled out I groaned with the masses, and looked around like the masses. I saw the orchestra members falter in their music. The conductor paused and turned to look up at the booth above my head. It was still dark in the theater so there was really nothing that we could see. I finally got up, excused myself through the line of other patrons, apologizing to the women and men I was upsetting. I slipped out into the hall, turning away from the garish light of the gas lamps. They were unusually bright that afternoon and it stung my eyes something fierce. I found the stairwell up to the projection booth after a failed attempt at finding one of the workers of the theater. No one seemed to be on duty to attend to the patrons in the main hall. When I reached the top of the stairs I was flustered and ready to give my mind to the man who had neglected the film strip. I had a full argument and disapproving speech prepared for those who were in charge.

I placed my hand upon the knob and pushed it open.

What I found inside the room was enough to startle me speechless. There were no men in the room, only three Eyowls.