Charley Mitchell the Bar Stool {Part 5}
by phill
Dave did as
he was told, and with each fevered whoof! of effort found himself struggling harder to lift the stool. Suddenly it was a concrete block, a lump of steel, a lead elephant whose fierce trumpet weaved its call around the beat of his heart. The effort was too much for Dave in his hungover state and he collapsed, rolled to the side, and vomited up his breakfast.
Charley exploded with laughter. ‘So I see you haven’t the strength I did back in my heyday. Hardly surprising given the tube encircling your gut. Go on, clean yourself up and we will talk of your training regime for the coming weeks.‘
Nodding and looking miserable, Dave went and did as he was told. He stared blankly out of the bathroom window onto the grey sand of his backyard while he washed off flecks of congealed egg yolk with fingers fat from the same. His eyes glazed and he smiled a crooked smile at a pigeon being harassed by a couple of sparrows. He was quite comfortable with the idea that he had finally gone insane. If that was what this morning meant then so be it; he would howl at his landlord and wear a suit of saucepans and dine thoughtfully on the bark of the palm trees dotted awkwardly around his suburb. He had been searching for a new start to life, and it didn’t matter to him if that start was anchored in reality or not. What troubled him were the implications that a talking bar stool would have if he hadn’t slipped over the edge. The sky was blue, the Earth was spherical, and Furniture Could Not Speak. Even allowing for sentient sofas, what boggled him further was the insistence of this particular piece of pine towards his self-improvement. Dave looked at himself critically in the mirror. It was obvious that his body had seen better days, but whose hadn’t? Of more immediate concern was his mind. Prior to the arrival of Charley, Dave had been travelling the long, slow spiral down into the bottom of the bottle. The only reason he had ended up at the Griffin was because he had already been banned from all the other, more respectable pubs in town.
However, the more he thought about it, the more the appearance of Charley made sense; where better to hide a guardian angel of alcohol abuse than in one of the scummiest pubs in the city? And who better to know the woes of a lush than the one object lower than him? There was a certain rationality in the way the wooden workhorse insisted he had to clean up his act, which caused Dave to start nodding and murmuring. Yes of course, it all made sense now! Whoever it was that ran things upstairs had obviously noticed his unfortunate situation and had sent the spirit of Charley Mitchell to remedy it. Dave head bobbed up and down quickly now. That must be it! With this revelation, there was nothing else for Dave to do but accept his new guru and move swiftly towards whatever goals the stool wished to set for him. He bustled back into the living room grinning widely. ‘My wooden wunderkind, so sorry to have kept you waiting while I cleaned up my little accident. I have come to the conclusion that I should believe my senses on this occasion. Humans are prone to suspect deception when faced with unbelievable things, and I must apologise for my unfortunate following in my race’s footsteps in that regard. Please, allow me to set you up in a nicer location within my abode.’
With this, Dave lifted Charley up onto the laminate of his small dining room table with the intention of providing the stool with a view. Once he had him up there, he hesitated slightly, before asking Charley if the scenery was to his liking. ‘I wouldn’t know,” replied Charley, ‘You’ve faced me with my back to it!” Dave hurried to spin the leather seat around, but Charley merely laughed at his efforts. ‘I have no eyes, you daft fool. The view is fine, but I could see it from the moment you dropped me on the way to your slumber last night. Stop your fawning and be seated.’
To be continued next Friday!
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