Pigs' Pearls. (a short story)

I refuse to use the new StoryWrtie, bring back the old one and i shall transfure this into a novella format. untill then it is a collum.

Pigs' Pearls.

-Chorus-
‘Ladies and Gentlemen’.
Casper’s voice boomed through the opera house and the audience, willing victims had not a change. They were under the spell; I had seen it happen every night. Each time the sun disappeared below the sheets of the earth and the opera house opened its doors. They flooded in like sheep. Casper’s mouth twitched in a ghost of a smile wicked as a kelpie who lulls you into calm water. And drowns you. He knew it too.
‘I welcome you to my opera house’ the grand velvet words mirrored grand gestures and dark velvet curtains.
‘and employ you to revel’ I mouthed the words along with him. Each night he said the same thing and each night the audience, willing victims had not a chance.
‘in the decadence that is my playhouse’ finished with the arrogant bow that could only accomplished with the confidence that is two hundred captivated faces staring hungrily at you. Devouring your every, heavy, silken, word.
Tonight the opera house was putting on a production of ‘Midsummer Nights Dream’ a play that many people believe Shakespeare has written. Many people are wrong. Casper is not wrong. He told me of the time when mortals were mere playthings for the gods of dream stuff. That was when the great plays were written. That was the time of the muses. Casper told me how they danced, how after you longed for a muse you never longed for anything else and how after their kisses. Death followed on swift wing. As anything else that touched was a poison. That had been when the plays were written. When people built temples to drama, to comedy and tragedy and worshipped the utter carnal pleasure of seeing actors play for you on a stage as if you were the only god of dream stuff. The spotlight dimmed and the curtains opened for Casper as he walked slowly into the backdrop of the stage. And all you could smell was the polish on the wood and the powder on the faces as the actors backstage heaved as an ocean preparing for the storm.
The stage was empty, it was Casper’s blank canvas, only he held the brushes his company were the paints. He would drench the stage a midnight blue, he would steep it in crimson, before the night was through.
The audience waited. The stage remained empty. Casper hovered in the wings, breathing the fear of his actors forgetting that perhaps some of it was his own. Again the ghost visited us through a twitch of his lips. He murmured to himself, words form his favourite play and behind him shadowed his primadonna, a chorus girl.
‘Oh ho, the cleverness of me’
Tonight, would be a good performance.

-Act One, Scene One-
She crept onstage, an animal perhaps straight from the woods painted on the backdrop. Surprised to find there was no way home. Her back bent in a fearful stoop as she nosed her way shaking to the front of the stage. The very front so far that she teetered on the brink, brushing the wall that separated the audience from the actor. She was dressed in almost clothes. She was Casper’s blue. The lights shone down on her and she was caught in that harsh moment shadows revealing how sunken her skin was, how thin her arms and how frail her bones. Her skin clung to her chest and sagged here and there about her prominent cheekbones. Like Casper she wore a top hat. Like Casper she sae the faces and knew they were under the spell, the old magic of the old theatre.
‘I see it’
She whispered and her voice scraped in her throat as thin and haggard as her body.
‘I see it before me like a sun, too bright to look at and too beautiful to look away from’
She raised a shaking hand and pointed a wrinkled finger towards the crowd. And each member of the audience shifted guiltily in his or her seat as images of their darkest fantasies, lust, dreams. Bubbled into the plain of consciousness. Black and thick as tar.
‘It is a madness, that burns within you’
She did not accuse. Merely put words to those mouths that could not speak, for fear they let out what thoughts were going through their minds, what secrets. She snapped her head to one side and clasped her face in her hands staring wide-eyed at the audience through spindly fingers. Slowly an insane, unsure grin fixed upon her features. She slid one hand behind her back her focus slipped into the middle distance adding to her expression of madness and ecstasy.
The audience were captivated through a few still squirmed uncomfortably perhaps having more to hide than the rest. More skeletons struggling, tearing and fighting their way to the surface, grinning as they tour away at their hosts insides. She spoke as she revealed her hand from behind her back clutching onto a tiny glass bottle.
‘in my hand I hold. The juice of a flower with petals dark as the falling star, and scented with the sweet decay of the mind, and of time, it is for my master you can feel it too, I have seen it in your eyes. In my palm I hold power. In my palm I hold love. In my palm I hold chaos. And you are terrified’
The audience shivered, the younger ones shrunk back, attempting to sink into their seats. Anything to put a distance between themselves and the chorus girl. Slowly, deliberately and still shaking she offered it out to the victims. Some so totally absorbed that they reached out to grasp it off of her. Then with a jerk, or a spasm running through her body she dropped the small bottle and it shattered into a thousand pieces. The liquid inside still glistening exploding as it too met the hard stage floor sending up a veil of chocking smoke that shimmered like a thick snow of diamonds until is wavered and dissolved into the air like so much sugar. And she was gone. Disappeared like a thought to the back of the mind.