The Lost Restaurant Chapter from The Elemental Stones

This is a deleted extract from 'The Elemental Stones' - the blog of which can be found under my links. The prologue can also be read in this blog. 
Anyway, I was sad to lose this chapter, but ruthlessness is always needed when critiquing your work. And it doesn't really add much to the story and it is ridiculously melodramatic. (Not that the rest of the story is completely realistic!) The story just flows better without it. But because I have a great emotional connection to it, I though I would share it with you. Enjoy:


The waiter pulled out a chair and Judith sat on it. She pulled the chair forward herself, which was a relief to the waiter; Judith looked rather heavy. They were located in the middle of a restaurant that had dim lights and a deep red colour scheme. “It’s very kind of you to do this. I’ve not been treated so well for quite a while,” Judith thanked.

“It’s not a problem. I’m glad you could come. It’s about time we got away from those persistent children,” Tim joked mildly. Judith smiled. She looked around the restaurant at the people around her.

“What’re you doing?” Tim asked, glancing around.

“I find people absolutely amazing.” She suddenly turned around and faced Tim. “You see the table behind us and a bit to your right. Don’t look.” Judith snapped quickly. “That old woman has done nothing but stare at us since we arrived.” Tim took a quick glance at the woman. She was sat at a table with two teenage children: one boy and one girl. She turned away to talk to her grandchildren.

“Forget it. What do you want to drink?” Tim asked. Judith slowly turned her head towards Tim. She thought for a while before requesting a white wine. As Tim was ordering, Judith moved the silver candlestick so she could see the reflection of the old woman. She was staring at her and Tim again. A minute later, she murmured something to her grandchildren, got up and disappeared through the archway labelled Toilets.

Judith felt rather more comfortable with the bizarre, old woman gone. She tried to pay attention to Tim’s ramblings, nodding her head in agreement, even though she had no idea what he was on about. The waiter delivered their drinks and took their orders for the main course. He jotted it down and headed off to the kitchen. 

“So then,” Tim started, “Tell me about…” He stopped. His eyes had been averted to a new figure in the restaurant walking towards their table. He knew instantly who it was. The orange hair with the blonde streak, the slim body, the blue eyes and even the small nose. Yes, it was, without a doubt, Simny Rogers. Judith had not noticed her however, and it would have made little difference if she had. Simny stopped right behind Judith who felt rather uncomfortable at the new presence. She looked into the candlestick and saw the orange-haired woman, for that was all Simny was to her. Simny drew a dagger from a pocket of her pink cloak. The cloak was long, and had large armholes. Judith immediately tensed. Tim saw her frightened face calling out to him for advice. He felt scared too. He had encountered Simny twice before and there was no stopping her when she had her dagger. She spoke to him as the dagger was put at Judith’s throat: “Hi Tim. Remember me?”

Several people in the restaurant had seen Simny and the knife and had stopped eating to watch this soap opera. Judith sat petrified. The only movement were her shimmering eyes and the small tears creeping down her chubby cheeks. Tim felt useless; he couldn’t do anything to save Judith. Then Simny made an announcement to the whole restaurant: “Nobody do anything,” she projected. “If anyone so much as gets up, then the fat, little lady gets it.” Anyone who hadn’t noticed her before had done so now and stared in awe at the matter in hand. Simny grabbed a handgun from her pocket and pointed it at a waiter. The young man instantly looked terrified. His eyes opened widely and he took in a sharp intake of breath.

“Have you never seen a gun before? Now pop along into the kitchen and tell all the other waiters, waitresses, cooks, et cetera to come into here,” Simny ordered. The waiter hurried towards the kitchen. “And don’t try anything funny.” Out of the kitchen came a long queue of the staff of the restaurant. They stood in a long line at the back of the restaurant. Outside they could see a young woman taking her mobile from her pocket and dialling the police. Simny, however, had not seen this.

“No one move whilst I talk to Mr. Fox here, who will talk, won’t you, Timmy!” Tim said nothing, but looked down at his napkin. “Timmy?” Simny called in a high, singsong voice that would usually be used with children the age of four. Tim looked up. His face was empty and expressionless. 

“Now, for a very long time now I have been searching for four things. You know what I mean, don’t you,” Simny said, agitated.

“I do,” Tim said slowly.

“I kidnapped your wife-to-be, and you rescued her. I kidnapped her again with your son, and you rescued her again. I don’t want to be disappointed a third time. Where is the Elemental Stone of Fire?” A squeak came from Judith. “Maybe your little girlfriend can tell me?” she said to Tim, but looked down at Judith. Judith stared at Tim, looking for a hint as to what to do. Tim shook his head.

“No? Then there’s really no point in keeping her alive,” Simny explained carelessly. She tightened her grip on the dagger and pressed it into Judith’s neck a bit more.

“No!” Tim cried, leaping out of his seat. Everyone in the restaurant winced, waiting for a gunshot. But Simny smiled. She loosened the pressure of the knife against Judith’s throat.

“Ah. A new love of your life, eh? Maybe I should kidnap her as well. That may…persuade you to tell me the location of the Stone.” Tim saw a woman outside with a mobile phone in her hand, pressed against her ear. “But then, you’d probably rescue her again. I mean after all, that is your job isn’t it? To rescue people from those who threaten Dimensions. You are a hero, a good one at that. Have been from the age of 14. About the age of your son. Joe, isn’t it? Yes. I remember the time I kidnapped him. I thought Naomi would give in as soon as she heard him scream like a girl,” Simny jeered. Tim realised that he had to buy time for himself, Judith and the police. How long would they be?  

“If I tell you where the Stone is, then you’ll still kill Judith.”

“Tim. I don’t kill anyone just for the sake of it, that is, unless they could go and blab about me.”

“What about these people?”

“My theory will not matter in this case. When I leave here with the location of the Stone, I will get the Stone and leave this Dimension.”

“And if you leave here without the site of the Stone?”

“I have this place under my thumb. Can’t you see that? Anyone who moves, then BANG!” Everyone in the restaurant flinched at the shouted final syllable. “The longer you take to tell me, the longer these people will be here, and the tighter my knife presses against your girlfriend’s neck.” Tim looked at Simny in horror. “It’s your choice.” Tim looked at Judith. Her face hadn’t changed much. She still wore the terrified face; tears still trickled like small brooks down her face. Tim twitched a side of his mouth, trying to signal to her that everything would be fine.

“I know a song,” he eventually said. “My dear wife used to sing it to Joe when he was a baby.”

“And?” Simny encouraged. 

Where is that damn police force? Tim thought. “In the song is a tree.”

 The restaurant door burst open. “Don’t move,” a police officer ordered.

“They’re doing that under my instruction,” Simny smirked. The police officer looked at Simny. She winked at him. She swung Judith off her chair, not cutting her throat though. 

“Terribly sorry, but I can’t stay.” She pushed Judith forward, who collapsed into the police officer and his squad. Then Simny ran into the toilets. Total confusion reigned for several seconds. Tim helped Judith up and the police squad ran through the flurry of restaurant staff and customers. The officer tripped, causing the other policemen and women to fall like dominoes again. 

When they eventually did get to the toilets they found the white haired, large nosed lady who had disappeared earlier. She was sitting by the wall, a hand to her forehead.

“What happened?” the officer shouted.

“She…she ran through here. She pushed me…pushed me out of the way and…and…”

“And what?” the officer cried. The old woman, who was apparently out of breath, lifted her other arm and pointed to the window. It was open, an orange feather floating down on to the sill.

It was almost midnight, and a policeman was escorting Tim and Judith home; they had taken a bus to the restaurant, because Tim didn’t have a car of his own. After the confusion that took place after Simny had fled into the toilets, everyone in the restaurant and the woman outside had been interviewed. Of course, a lot of people exaggerated a bit. Tim said nothing but what had happened from where he was seated. But he, unlike everyone else, was forced to explain what Simny wanted. He was able to come up with a legible story, rather than explain things he was forbidden to discuss. The police officer insisted that Tim be escorted home, in fear that Simny was still out there.

“Officer. I know who Simny is,” Judith said, out of the blue.

“So do I. A woman who wants to kill your boyfriend for a precious stone he stole off her when he was going out with her,” Judith looked at Tim confused. Tim shook his head. That was the alibi.

“Yes, but it’s the lady who you found in the toilets.”

“Simny Rogers is a middle-aged woman with red hair. That old woman has white-hair.”

“Which is a wig!” Judith claimed.

“Darling. It isn’t,” Tim said, trying to get her to be quiet, but failing.

“Yes it is! That’s why she was staring at us! Then she went to the toilets to get changed.”

“How do you explain the fact that a few minutes afterwards we found her in the toilets with a bump on the head?” the officer asked.

“She bought herself time.”

“How?”

“By pushing me into you, and then her grandchild tripped you up!”

“Where the hell have you got these ideas into your head from?”

“I saw it with my own eyes,” Judith replied. The police officer sighed and said no more on the case. The three adults continued their journey in silence. He dropped them off outside the main building before driving back home. What a night he’d had.

Tim marched through the foyer with Judith trotting behind him, apologizing for her persistent pleads of innocence. 

“That’s what I saw.”

Tim was obviously annoyed. He snapped back at her: “I know. I thought you were right, but I’m having second thoughts. I think you are right in believing that the white-haired woman is connected.” He continued walking.

“Then why didn’t you back me up?”

“It wouldn’t make any difference. If you knew Simny the way I know her then maybe you’d understand,” Tim called back.

“Simny could be under lock and chain by now. Now I’ll be in fear of my life forever whilst she is at large.”

“I’ve had a bad night. Sorry about the date.” Tim made his way to his room. Judith gasped in anger.

“You’ve had a bad night?” she cried. “I’ve been on the verge of death, and you’ve had a bad evening! How many enemies do you have, because frankly, if I have to risk my life on every date with you, I don’t think I want to go to dinner with you ever again!” She marched past him with her head held high. Tim stood still for a minute before continuing the long trek to his room.

Prologue

They were savages now. Dependent on anything they could find. Food was becoming more and more scarce in the dark, barren wasteland, aptly renamed as “Nothing”. It really was a nightmare for the civilization. But the past for these human beings, though now they were barely human or being, was far from great or powerful.

The older “Nothingmen” told stories to the younger ones, before they were eaten. Stories of tyrannical queens with powers beyond belief. Powers over the natural forces. Elemental powers.

“They were tyrants,” the old men would say, in cracked and husky voices. “They ruled over with a fist of Jumbantine. But at least we were fed and watered.”

The old men would then sigh, dreaming of those days when life consisted of heat, woods, water and winds. Then they would speak of the revolution.

“We were angry. Furious at our oppression.”

The old men recounted the stories of the angry mobs that gathered at the base of the Temple of the Queens, shouting for freedoms. The youths of the civilization sat around the fire, listening to the elders. They daren’t interrupt. The longer the story took, the longer it was until it was time to eat.

“The Queens did not react kindly.”

The old men could remember the outrage in response to the action the Queens took to suppress the revolution – to create a new land, a mirror image of the original.

“Further riots led to the degradation of our home, and the enhancement of the twin.”

As the Queens removed their power, forests had withered, lakes and rivers had drained away, the sun and stars stopped burning, and the air stood still, dry and stale.

For many, the extreme suppression of food, water and happiness was too much. They abandoned the protection of the community and wandered away into the darkness. “We could remember from our glory days what lay beyond the darkness – mountains, that we rarely crossed. We had no reason to before – we were in paradise!” But that paradise had long since gone, and many felt that nature may still exist beyond the peaks and left us. The remaining community, stayed in their cove in the corner of the land surrounded by mountains and the walls of the world.

“All the beautiful qualities of our home…were gone.”

The elders always seemed to weep at this point, and who could blame them? The Nothingmen had been belittled to little more than rats and pests living in sewers. The Queens had continued to live there, gloating in their palace that continued to be filled with wonders and life.

“We made sure that it wouldn’t last.”

A group of rebels had been planning this move for months and it was finally ready. They had created four orbs – one for each Queen. They had made a crude fire with what dry wood still existed and had melted the sand and dust from the ground with the titanically strong metal, Jumbantine. This coarse and crude mixture was the material that made the orbs. The rebels had stole into the palace and, through a process lost through the years, imprisoned the Queens within the orbs. The orbs began to glow with the life of the elements and what life had existed within the palace walls died.

“We sent three of the orbs away over hundred year periods, over the mountains to be scattered and lost.” It would only be at the reunion of the four orbs at the summit of the palace that the Queens would be released to restore their powers.

“Now, the fourth and final orb, the one we decided we would keep as a symbol of our victory over the Queens, is gone as well.” It had been sent away after fears it was sought after to be stolen. A stranger asking questions. Simny, she called herself. A ginger-haired woman. A bright colour we hadn’t seen in our land for so long. She wanted the Orbs. She never gave a reason. She just wanted them. “We didn’t want anyone outside our species to take the Stones. What if our fears came true?” But the fourth orb is gone, and with it the unanswered questions and the woman.

“We entered a time of even greater and desperate need – the state that we are in even now. Resorting to cannibalism for food and petty raids upon our homeland’s twin for everything else.”

The Hall had not suffered. The Queens, sly in their actions, had each invoked their power into a single being – a creature that would keep the Hall full of elemental life. This creature would taste the pleasures and displeasures of immortality until the reunited Queens so decided. “We do not intend for the Queens to be reunited though. The damned creature will live for always through war and famine and disease.”

The traitor to nature was amongst the first of the inhabitants of the Hall, and will be the last as well. The Birds command ultimate power over both lands. “They have grown careless, however, and have forgotten about us, despite our continuous raids on their land.” The old man sat up straight and stared into the darkness. “There, you have our story. Devour me.” And he was no more.