Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

Matthew took a long drink from the wine bottle. He would have gone with the absinthe, but he wanted to remember everything. He didn’t need that high at the moment. Taking in a long inhale of the fresh joint, he finally began to type.

“It all began one year ago…”

-----

It was the summer of 1899. The train that had come from Calais had finally arrived in Paris. Most, if not all of its passengers were in fact, unimportant. No one of high class or celebrity had boarded or exited the train so no one took notice of a young adult, barely 20, depart the train with a bright smile on his face. Against his father’s stern advice, Matthew Williams had traveled to Paris from London to fulfill the dream he had since he was but a young English schoolboy. With his life savings he had bought a ticket from London to Dover, bartered passage on a small ship to Calais, where on the English Channel, he proceeded to lose the lunch his mother had so kindly made him before he left. From there, he spent the rest of his budget on the train ticket from Calais to Paris.

With nothing but a few changes of clothes and a typewriter, the nearly penniless writer set out to look for a place to live. He just needed a bed really. When you were a writer, one just needed paper, ink and the imagination! Or at least this was what he told himself. Most apartments were ridiculously expensive in the metropolitan area. He could barely afford the door hinges, let alone the whole room.

With no cheap apartments for sale at the moment, Matthew began to search for a hotel, but ran into the same results. Instead of being defeated, he continued on until he found the place. ‘Hotel L’Amour~’. A perfect place to write a book about true love! He ignored the fact that it was almost completely run down and falling apart.

“One room please.” Matthew said at the counter, that large smile still on his face. The hotel manager didn’t move. He hadn’t seen the young writer considering he was busy yelling at the fat cow in the kitchen to stop being lazy and ugly. Matthew, polite as could be, just stood there and waited. Took the manager a while but he finally noticed the nearly invisible boy standing there.

“How much do you have?” The manager asked with a gruff voice. Matthew searched his pockets and pulled out the small bit of change he had left. The man just took it and handed him a key. “Top floor.”

This was so exciting! Matthew finally had a place to stay and now, now he could write that novel he had always wanted to. Running up to the room, he threw open the door, to show the tiny one room that housed a bed and a small kitchen and bathroom. The happy go lucky boy was happy. This was his first place he had lived away from his parents. It seemed just perfect. Outside the window was a giant red windmill, a daunting foreshadowing that not even the writer could see.

Setting down the typewriter, Matthew loaded a piece of paper in the machine with a smile. Now to write… um… well, this was something that was unforeseen… He had traveled the long distance to Paris, the city of love, to write the perfect novel about love. There was only one problem… He had never been in love!! Matthew only stared at his typewriter, wondering if that muse was going to come. After all it was called the Summer of Love! He should be able to write about love!

Before he could panic though, his ceiling made a horrible creaking noise before an unconscious Spaniard busted through his roof, hanging from a rope by his foot.

“M-Maple!!”

Poor Matthew had no idea what was going on when suddenly a dwarf entered the room, wearing a his blonde hair in two side pig tails. The poor boy had no idea what was going on. After all he had spent maybe 15 minutes in his room and now there was an unconscious man hanging from a rope and a midget nun.

“Oh that really is a shame! Oh ho ho~!” Walking wouldn’t describe what the man was doing when he came towards Matthew… It was more of a waddle. “Excusez-moi!! Sorry for not introducing myself~ I am Francis Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monnnnnnnfa~!” With a wink, the midget grabbed Matthew’s hand and planted a sweet kiss, much to the surprise of the naïve and sheltered boy.

“I am so sorry! Antonio suffers from Narcolepsy.” Walking to the poor defenseless body, Francis poked at the head, quite harshly, proving that the man was in fact, quite asleep. “Awake one moment, then unconscious the next!” The room was filled with his high-pitched laughter as three more heads popped out of the hole in the ceiling.

The one with wild blonde hair was the one to talk, almost irritated with the fact that the Narcoleptic Spaniard had chosen that moment to fall asleep. “What a perfect time for the idiot to fall asleep! At this rate it won’t be ready for the financier tomorrow!!”

Francis, still giggling, now poking more… southern areas of the Spaniard—who in his sleep seemed to be enjoying it—just replied with a happy, “Don’t worry Mathias~”

“How can I not worry?! Who are we going to find to play the part of the brainless scarecrow?!” Mathias did not find the Frenchman’s antics amusing whatsoever. He wanted, no, he needed this play done and the fact that none of the others were very helpful only seemed to make him more irritated.

Before Matthew knew it, he was standing in for Antonio’s part. It seemed so odd. The organ, in perfect condition, was being used as a stand for glasses filled at varied heights with an odd green liquid. The other two of the bohemian troupe who had been introduced as Tino and Berwald, played the glasses, making such an odd sound.

Francis, now in a blue dress, was walking around the makeshift stage with a poor white dog, singing to the sound of whatever those two were making.
“Some place above the refraction of the sun’s light by water droplets in the atmosphere ah ho ho ho ~!!”

Mathias had had enough. “No!! Berwald, your ‘music’ is drowning out my words!! Can we please just stick with some quiet piano or something?!”

Tino, just being his honest self, decided to make a comment. “Well, your words are not really worth being heard.”

Mathias tried to ignore that comment, but it was impossible to do. “What?!”

Francis spoke up and offered a suggestion, “What about ‘A bearing located around a natural phenomenon!”

Tino replied, “O-Or, ‘The position somewhere above the ground and the clouds where the colors make a semi-circle’?!”

It soon became a jumbled argument between Francis, Tino and Mathias as they began to argue about the lyrics. Berwald stayed silent as the three argued, nodding his head with whatever Tino suggested.

“Someplace above the spectrum!”

“Spot where the pot of gold can be seen from a bird’s eye view!”

Suddenly the Narcoleptic Spaniard woke up and sat up on the bed and began yelling his suggestion, “The vicinity where it is raining but still sunny!!” And once again, he was out like a light, asleep on the bed and the fighting resumed.

“The neighborhood where the colors reside!”

“Frank is living in my pants ho ho!!!”

Matthew tried to put in his own suggestion, but there was too much noise to do so. No one seemed to be paying attention. While still on his perch, he just suddenly began to sing, trying to get their attention. “Somewhere over the rainbow~”

The fighting instantly stopped and all eyes were on him.

“U-Uh… Way up high. There’s a land that I heard of once in a lullaby…”

It was dead quite when Francis gasped for joy. “It’s beautiful! Pure poetry!!”

Once again, the Spaniard was awake, but it seemed for good this time. Standing up in just his undergarments, grabbed the tiny boy off the stand and hugged him tightly “Somewhere over the rainbow!! I love it!!”

Mathias was not too pleased that the others seemed happy with the latest suggestion.
“Mathias! You and Matthew should write the show together!!” Francis was absolutely ecstatic. It seemed that their show would finally be written.

That was the final straw. Grabbing the script in a rage, he opened the door and screamed ‘Goodbye!!” With that the door was slammed and the original writer was gone. But there was nothing to worry about for the Bohemians. They had found their new writer who could give him a show for Zidler.

more later~ <3