The Playful Games of Theo Buchmann

I didn't even really know what to make of this place. I mean, it was a nightclub, but there was no stage. No dance floor. No bar. Just a small fireplace with a sofa in front of it and six chairs arranged around it. One of the chairs had a woman sitting on it. She had a glass in her hand and she was looking up at me expectantly.

I put my hand in my pocket and fished around for the invitation which had mysteriously appeared in my mailbox the day before, then *snap* there it was. I waved the card in front of the woman's face for a second, then put it back into my pocket again. I walked over to the chair opposite her and sat down.

"Sophie," she said as she leaned forward to kiss me on the cheek. "Remember me?"

It took me a moment or two to remember where I might have seen her before, but eventually I remembered that I'd met her at a party some weeks ago and then fucked her against the wall in the bathroom afterwards before never seeing her again.

"Hi," I said as she took a sip from her glass, then set it down on the table between us. "You're really pretty."

She smiled at that and looked back over to the fireplace, where an old man was sitting on an ornate wooden chair, looking through a stack of cards that lay on his lap.

"I'm sorry," she said after a while, "but we are all here to see you tonight." She turned her head back towards me and smiled again, revealing a set of perfect white teeth between which sat a studded ball gag held in place by straps around her head behind her ears and under her chin against her skin tight black dress that fit like skin itself. Her hair flowed straight down from her head in long brown curls until it just brushed against her firm breasts under which rose and fell two nipples pointing at me as if they were trying to search for something inside my mouth with their tips until finally one pointed at each of my eyes with its very tip and whispered "see?" before being sucked into my pupils where they were extinguished and sent off into space like so many dead stars searching for life among their brethren until they were overtaken by an emptiness even more profound than themselves and so became nothing once more, leaving behind only their memory as they faded off into blackness with no hope or thought otherwise other than that somehow they might return to be again as they had been before they died out - although still not alive - but instead slowly turning into something new and strange: images of worlds unknown where nothing remained familiar any longer except for what our own imaginations could tell us about ourselves if we would just listen hard enough to hear them calling out to us across space - but how could we? After all, we're humans running after dreams rather than ever walking towards them: chasing phantoms across our human scale galaxies in an eternal attempt to find something real because we know deep down inside that nothing else is real unless we can touch it with our hands! We know because we've tried to dream without touching anything and even half-way through the process we couldn't help but feel ephemeral - like ghosts passing through solid objects without their knowledge or consent just because that's what ghosts do - passing right through people without feeling anything more than their touch on your shoulder as you brush past them on your way home every night only to disappear into your room so you can sit alone in darkness thinking about your problems until you fall asleep... And suddenly you wake up somewhere far away from home - unable to explain what happened during those hours spent dreaming alone - but realizing that somewhere along the line you forgot something important because now reality feels different somehow: fragile - breakable - unsafe... So you start telling yourself stories about your life: about friends who care about you, who want you around with them for as long as possible because you're funny and kind; about parents who love you no matter how messed up things get; about lovers who would do anything for you; about perfect things hidden somewhere in wait for us all... You start telling yourself these stories because you want them to be true... Because deep down inside you know that truth is just another version of fiction anyway: only slightly less imaginative than inside our heads... And so when someone looks at us like Sophie looked at me right now I know exactly what she sees: someone worth doing everything she can think of to be with because she doesn't have time for anyone less interesting than Theo Buchmann himself... Someone whose attention is always worth fighting for... Someone whose eyes always seem lost even when they're looking right at you... Someone whose smile is always slightly sad even when he means it when he smiles... Someone whose hand always wants yours even though he doesn't move his arm toward yours anymore because he's too self-conscious now... Someone whose voice sounds almost broken sometimes even though he tries not to let it show... Someone whose body moves slower than everyone else's even though he knows how fast he used to be able To move by watching old videos online... Someone whose personality changes overnight sometimes without any warning whatsoever so sometimes he says things with such conviction making him sound absolutely sure about whatever silly idea he has going on inside his head that other times he seems like precisely nothing more than a lost child wandering around aimlessly searching for something that would please him more than anything else except maybe finding some kind of purpose in his life beyond breathing air into his lungs every morning so he can do something stupidly mundane like going outside every day and buying groceries or driving home from work or eating dinner or going somewhere else or meeting up with friends or getting married or having kids or dying alone after living alone after losing touch with everyone else's lives except maybe family who don't really count anymore because family are just part of the background noise no one cares about anyway after everything goes wrong... But knowing all these things hasn't stopped Sophie from wanting Theo Buchmann tonight so Theo will do whatever Sophie tells him tonight no matter how embarrassing it ends up being for him because Theo has already forgotten why this whole thing started in the first place..."