Banquet (standard:horror, 5021 words)
Author: Lev821	Added: Nov 30 2010	Views/Reads: 2926/2022	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A vagrant recieves an invitation to a feast. Should he accept it?

A biting chill breeze made him shiver, but he never got used to it,
despite being homeless for six years. The clothes he wore were the same 
he had had on for two years, his unkempt appearance making him look as 
though he was in his seventies, although he was 58. 

Clement May leaned in the shop doorway of an empty newsagents shop.
Ahead, across the road was a small square with a central fountain 
spouting from the mouth of a poorly formed dolphin. People milled by, 
but no-one looked at him. They never did. It was something he was used 
to. 

No-one cares, he always thought, not about us, the homeless, the tramps,
the alcoholics. Clement did like a drink, perhaps more than average, 
but he was not a dependant. There were far worse drinkers out there 
than him. He was quite mild in comparison. 

Leaving his doorway, he walked across and sat at the fountain. A nearby
mother pulled her daughter away, even though the nearest he got was 
seven feet away. Yes, he thought. I'm finally noticed. It was all very 
well for the rich folk out there to swan past with their nike trainers 
and rockport shirts, and not give two flying fucks about the haggard, 
scruffy, unwashed person on the bench. That's what we are, he had 
thought. People. Are we not human like them? Are we not composed of 
flesh and blood like everyone else? There was a hierarchal system 
inherent in every society, and Clement knew it was no different. 

The royals looked down on the members of parliament. The members of
parliament looked down on the bosses of companies. The bosses of 
companies looked down on their employees. The employees looked down on 
the unemployed. The unemployed looked down on the tramps, the homeless. 
By definition, there was no way on this planet that a royal would look 
at a tramp. If so it would probably be to order a subordinate to shoot 
them as they were offending the eyes. This was Clement's reasoning, 
even though he knew it would not strictly have been the case, it was 
perhaps close. 

Yet, he, and a thousand other tramps before him had accepted their place
in life. This was who they were, and that was that. Although in their 
minds they would always dream of higher things. A trophy wife. Millions 
in the bank, a private jet and island. They couldn't get much lower, so 
in his philosophy, the only way was up. 

One day, he thought, I'll be back where I belong. I'll be one of those
people walking past. Except I'll stop and look at the person, and give 
them whatever I can, because I will have known what it was like to be 
there. 

For twenty-five years he had been in the royal air force, rising to the
rank of air vice-marshal, and being sent to the Falklands war where he 
would command a tristar air-to-air refuelling craft and use radar and 
computers to direct aircraft over the enemy. Although he was only there 
for two weeks, most of his army time spent in England, he loved every 
minute of it. It was a kind of family life that he had grown accustomed 
to. He also married before he joined up and had two children. While he 
saw her quite often, most of his time was spent away, in army life. So 
after the Falklands war ended, he was let go to make way for somebody 
else. He had expected it, and took it gracefully, but his experiences 
out in South America had had an effect on him, because it was real, 
genuine conflict, and he had seen and experienced things there that he 
had heard and read about in war, but not faced in cold, hard reality. 

Like many wives and girlfriends of soldiers of the first and second
world war had said, the man that I left before he went away was not the 
same person who came back. He wasn't the Tommy I knew. Clement's wife 
felt the same. He was more broody, would get angry at the slightest 
thing. So for three years she had put up with him, stood by him, 
understood why he was as he was, but even she had a breaking point, and 
left, taking the children who felt the same as his wife. They didn't 
know their father. He had become almost a stranger, so they had all 
left for Eastbourne. Clement with no forwarding address despite his 
declaration of rights. She simply left, so he had no way of finding 
them. The bank repossessed the house, leaving Clement standing at the 
gate without a key. 

He longed to go back in the army. He felt he belonged there, and had


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