Written last night as a speed-writing exercise at the Clacton Writer's Group with a given random title.
THE KETTLE-DRUM
The busker was accustomed to the cinema queue. It was ever the same queue. Not the same people as such, but a queue that sort of, kind of typified the area in which the cinema was situated.
He played a kettle-drum. Hard to believe, but it was a real hefty kettle-drum used in classical orchestras and he bowled it along the pavement. His upper chest, too, had perched a harmonica neck-stand. And he managed to man-handle himself and other instruments beside the queue – picking likely-looking faces to whom to perform favourite Gilbert O’Sullivan songs.
But, tonight, the queue was somewhat different. Not the same queue at all. A different look. A different range of colours. A different breed of social tone. Pale faces staring blankly. No excited joyful children. Well, there was one child – or tiny adult – that stared at the busker’s neck-stand.
“What’s that?” the ‘child’ asked.
The busker looked down as far as he could look at the harmonica beneath his chin. In the dusk he saw it dripping shiny pearls of what he assumed could only be blood.
Then he knew the worst.
This was a queue for a horror film!
He had always tried to avoid these in the past – casting careful looks in the local paper for film timings. They must have changed the performance unexpectedly...
Queues usually strung along in single file. This one now seemed to be slowly forming a circle ... around him.
He looked at the kettle-drum that he had been bowling along on its rim – and he started to pummel its skin with a drumstick in as frightening a rhythm, as thunderous a boom, as he could manage.
The best way to deal with frightening things was to frighten them even more than they were frightening you.
***
Day dawned. The city was quiet as most people had gone to bed late.
The busker sat on the pavement – his back against the cinema wall – the queue having long since dispersed inside to watch the film and, even later, come out again in cowed bunches of huddles on the move. He had watched them vanish into the night before the night itself vanished into the day ... leaving him with his remaining accoutrements of music.
He blew wistfully on his harmonica – long slow pitiful bleats punctuating the silence of early morning.
One member of the queue remained nearby – the ‘child’ – doing a hand-stand on the pavement, shirt rucked chinward – bashing its bloated belly with a fist - in sad rhythm with the busker’s bleating harmonica. Not so much boom boom boom as thud thud thud – eyes bleached and cracked with limescale.
