Leaving Tinsel Town

~Don't draw anything from the fact that I wrote this on Valentines Day. This is my first short story of 2010~

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Morning sunlight splits the shade, beaming through the gaps in the blinds it casts golden light on a landscape of empty champagne bottles and scattered dreams.
The funfair trip has passed, the child inside had been satisfied and now is the comedown from the high of adoration, the end of the ride.
On one wall hangs the poster for a movie called The Transformed Soul, a moment of pride and a delivery of the heart that the Academy had dutifully recognized.
The crowds, the masses, oh how the people had loved it. And rightly so for it had been a career performance, the peak of a life that once long ago may have slipped into obscurity.
But after that moment where was there left to go?
What was there to do?
Each passing script seemed lesser after that one shining moment, every performance more forced. The crowds dwindled and the reviews more bittersweet.
The fans less forgiving.
The morning sun hits a half drank glass of scotch, the rays scattered gold against the dark of the table.
Magazines are strewn across the floor.
They are open to articles of one who having reached the peak saw what was on the other side and tumbled ungraciously toward the valley below as a mockery of a life that could have been.
A pariah.
Fallen from grace.
Yet it wasn't for the want of trying.
Desperation for the acceptance of the crowd any job, any script would do.
To be under those lights once more, to be in another world beyond the fleeting reality of this one. To step over into somewhere better and be the center of that little universe.
To look up, a name in lights and a red carpet rolled out before a pantheon of eager journalists and adoring fans. To walk once more with the peers of the industry, to hear the roar of the crowd and to have their praise.
The sunlight hits a marble table, money lies on it next to a razor blade and an empty polythene bag.
When the crowd could no longer satisfy cocaine had been there with the whispered promise that the highs of old could be there once more. Things would be like they were before it said in the seductive words of a temptress, it said all the right things, made all the right promises.
It does not have to be this way.
You need not seek to be raised up by those equally happy to see you dashed upon the rocks.
Your circumstance could be so much more pleasurable.
A dog-eared script lies next to the cocaine, the work of an undiscovered author and could quite possibly the next great masterpiece to bring a shine back to the once silver screen.
It speaks of desire, of strife and hardship, ultimately it talks of courage and the unrelenting power of a pure love. It is of people facing the struggles of ordinary life and overcoming tribulations that seem petty in the cocaine haze.
Yet somehow it had brought tears.
It had brought weeping as it spoke words of a fathomless truth, an honesty of what is real and what is important in this harsh and lonesome world.
A letter lies on top of the script, it took some time to write for the words had to be composed with great care and thought. It was to be no ordinary message from the author but a deep expression, things that need to be said, that must be said. And it was an apology for promises that would never be fulfilled.
It spoke of loneliness and discontent.
It spoke of longing.
Once the crowd had shown their love and in the lights a name had shone with a radiance as if sent from Heaven itself, the acceptance and adulation had been overwhelming. If only perhaps had it been more humbling.
And now there was only emptiness, vast and bottomless.
Alone.
Beyond the letter was the blackened screen of a television, the expensive kind, and reflected in the great black expanse could be seen a pair of legs.
A body hanging from the ceiling.
So alone.
Nothing was left now, the house was emptiness.
In the morning sunlight on those high rolling hills stood the great white letters, the siren song for hopes and dreams.
The promise.