Party On The Moon

(At the risk of embarrasment, my 17 year-old efforts, an attempted novel taking in an impossible underworld with alternate royalty, businesses and entertainment, existing secretly on Earth)


Chapter One

In all the areas and institutions of entertainment and the arts there are none so qualified or able as the Scarab sisters. Even in today’s vastly altered and intelligent society they are relatively unknown, and back then they even more obscure, although their charismatic agent Bill Bakehouse assured them that the world of blind fools could not remain so ignorant for so very long. And this was not entirely the language of his professional persona speaking, he felt very sincerely about the sisters, and the second he caught sight of them he knew he was on to something.
He certainly wasn’t mistaken. Theirs was a talent that could only be described as a spiritual experience, producing in their audience the effect of some kind of oblivion, a madness of beauty. Many lucky enough to have witnessed these legendary performances foolhardily attributed their skill to some strange sorcerous magic or a kind of supreme celestial understanding. However the truth of the matter was at once far more simple and just as unbelievable. There was an amazing connection between the sisters, one which bound their abilities and created incredible possibilities. They could not, since their birth, find reason to be apart, and once together, they could not find excuse to not reach their greatest potential. This studied perfection meant that they had worked at least 500 percent more than any other human beings, with a concentration that few have had the chance to imagine.
Their longest running and most acclaimed show, Sharks, was an hour long performance in which the sisters created such a convincing and hypnotising impersonation of sharks that members of the audience thought that were going to drown. Some panic stricken couples lying in strangulated poses across the theatre floor had to wait some time before medical officials could be contacted to treat them for shock, and a few cases resulted in permanent neurological damage.
It was perhaps these sorts of events that made it so difficult for the sisters to find the chance to work. However, on Friday the 8th of December, Mr. Bakehouse found them something incredibly prestigious, if rather dangerous. It was the event of a great feast for the King of Europe at the hall of the Diamond Court. Not many people knew a great deal about the King of Europe, or indeed what his function was at all needless to say he lived in majesty somewhere on the mainland and his reputation was as a dangerous man.
The Scarab sisters arrived in a black limousine in the dark rear garden entrance of the Diamond Court, and cautiously approached the door as the car pulled away. They were stately blond twins with softly Germanic faces, their expressions still and calm, in black evening dresses that appeared purely functional, as if they were doing no more than being worn.
An incredibly short man let them into the building through a door. He smiled a lot. It was rather an unceremonious artist’s entrance into a well lit warm yellow kitchen. Two kitchen servants in white garb attended to the finishing touches of his highness’ feast, of which what had not already been laid out in the banquet hall was sitting impatiently on the giant kitchen table. The little smiler closed the door, and without giving any further indication to the sisters shuffled out of the room through a small door up a few steps at the end of the room.
The cooks busied themselves creating garnishes of fresh mint and radishes at the opposite end of the room and the sisters looked at one another. They knew not to ask questions, nor assume to enter the adjoining room, to do so would put upon them the responsibility of the following discourse and wherever it may lead them. The cooks, one tall and young with a trim blonde moustache, the other an old squat man, began to apply their finishing touches to the dishes which graced the table. Huge meringues sat by puzzlingly exotic salads and quivering mountainous meat, cooling, congealing by trays of giant snails with pomegranate seeds and musky brown cases of truffles.
The older cook sang a few bars of something in an old Persian dialect that the sisters did not recognise whilst the younger muttered and grumbled. Flaring his nostrils in disdain he hefted one of the silver-plattered meat-hunks up into his arms and carried it away into the hall. The older kept singing as he placed sprigs of parsley onto plates of a purplish ham, his voice the only sound in the room. “You are here to entertain his highness?” he asked without looking up from his work. When no reply was forthcoming, the kitchen no longer seemed a place of safety, a dangerous intrusion was taking place. The old man turned his head warily, making no sudden movements or any facial contortion that might purport to his inner thoughts as the faces of the sisters were finally revealed to him as from behind a curtain of silk.
They were certainly women, his capacity for lust had never worn down with age but his status and duty demanded his expert control. They stood on the far side of the kitchen wide spaces on either side of them which they appeared to fill.
“I wondered,” he began, and smiled in a friendly manner, “are you here to entertain his majesty?”
“We are the Scarab Sisters”
At this he turned completely to face them quizzically, and beamed once more, “come,” he gestured to the few stools around a smaller table, “can I get you anything to eat?” Of course they declined. All three moved across to the table where they sat and watched one another’s eyes. In the middle of the table sat a bowl of fruit from which the man took a green apple and proceeded to peel it with a knife that he took out of his jacket pocket.