Chess masters unite! The evening unfolds again on the bustling arena that is the Denny’s restaurant. Vapid blondes with their equally uninteresting male escorts giggle and make remarks that would make a toddler seem genuinely verbose and intelligent. The old couples making the young lovers jealous at the thought of a long and successful relationship sit talking of things that we immature to the ways of romance would never understand unless put in their place. And we have the solemn chess players. Ridiculed for their habits and hobbies yet still they are more oft respected and admired for their mental prowess on the board. At last they leave. Their presence makes one uncomfortable at the thought of their judgments and ideals of what “attractive” is. Cruel self-consciousness rears its ugly head as they glance over. Are we ugly or just an oddity in their 2AM eating rush? We are not somebody with whom they would associate. We believe. We know. This is the way the world has become and has been for quite some time now. It saddens us that a person of even plain attractiveness is spat upon for not being up to social par with the snobs and pretentious person of today. Fall not prey to their thinking. They continue playing chess. We wish we had a better game. Does someone lurk in the corner in the hallway? Nobody can tell and it’s frightens us that some creature of this night could be examining our actions this very moment. Did they see that? Do they see me writing about them? They could be making me write this very sentence. We’re unsure if these are our words and ideas. Is this our writing? We’ll go along with it. Partially hydrogenated soybean oil. Languid stock brokers. Cackling opera singers. Erudite zen philosophers. They’re all here we bet in one form or another. All being watched and seeking attention even if they know it or not. That’s why we’re here. That and to see them all and cater to their needs. I look and record. Wethinks we shall say wethinks at least once more. Wethinks we should stay up all night in another sleep deprived experiment. It’s only 2:20AM. We need something to occupy our minds other than writing, crosswords and a sci-fi book. We need psychic powers. Zzzzzzap!! She’s instantly attracted to us. No, stay there and just look over occasionally. I want you to know how we feel. We want to be the temptation and savior of your night. We are your midnight Jesus. Your evening heretic with a coffee cup. We want to play poker. We have money. We want the thrill of Vegas on the small screen, which is a poker table in a garage. Geoffrey Chaucer would laugh at us and ridicule our writings as childish idiocy and a failed attempt to express ideas in an intelligent manner. He is a fool. Chaucer too. Writing is writing and each kind has its audience no mater how drivel, inane or boring it gets. 2:30AM. Our eyes don’t seem to want to completely unfocus. Hitting head upon the table doesn’t work. It confuses us and shocks fellow Denny’s patrons. But it does make a few of them try it for themselves. Silly fools, it does nothing!!! This world is trivialized by the complete lack of a planetary soundtrack. Pink Floyd should be playing in the background as we write this. Beethoven should assuage our mind as we pour ourselves through our workday. Drink up, it’s nothing special, just a big cup of a lost life that needs a refill and some sugar. This coffee is getting cold and this cold heart is getting warm. Not a good combination. It only leads to a stagnant cup o’ joe that never gets drunk and becomes the bitter, fetid nightmarish thing it once was. No need for the dramatic. We’ll let everyone else take care of that department. We’ll just sit here as usually and watch the storm ravage around us. We would reach out to others but the gale would rip our limbs off. We must call them to us. How many games have they played? Far more and at a better skill level than us. We envy those unknown strategists. See how they run. Why would one run off with the butcher’s wife? She’s not nice we hear. They keep watching us. Quit it!! She has nice hair. He’s obnoxious. They’re weird. That one’s too loud. He doesn’t deserve to be with her. She’s getting a tip. Our nails need to be trimmed. This pen expresses our feelings better than this writing can. Our stomach aches. Life must begin soon or certain aspects of our life will become unfixable and severely unreliable for mental treatments. Vida irae: life’s wrath. It will reign hell upon us and our own. We will conquer the slow implosion of our life and consciousness. Angels live in my world and we don’t have the right net to catch them with. Mine is made of spite and broken dreams. That leaves too many holes and spaces where even the Titanic could’ve sailed through with room to spare. Build a better mousetrap they say. Why would we trap an angel. That would be crueler than even we would like to be. We like our own pain. We wish to share but nobody deserves that. Nobody wants a volcano of anguish and bitter hared poured into them. Don’t kid yourself, you wouldn’t like our darkness. You look like I feel. Sorry, that was mean. Our heart beats too fast at the moment. A strange quirk would be a person who eats french fries and leaves the tips of them on the plate like one does with shrimp. Fry tails. Weirdos. We miss our friend who did this with us years ago. Alas, such is life. Beating much too fast. Placate the ego and your conquered a man. Be wary of the man with none, he’s is nigh unbeatable. These guys have been here longer than we have. They are dedicated to the sport of chess. Interesting. We wonder if they’ll mind us using their likenesses in this writing. Someday, they’ll come out of hiding. That’s when we’ll catch them.