Light Music
If music be the food of love, play on and on and on.
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There was a room, if one could call it a room. It had four walls, a ceiling and a floor. What it did not have was fairly important if you wanted to get in or out. There was neither door nor window in the pitch-black space and for very good reason; the dead do not have use for either portal. Very soon however, the dead would wake.
###
Bingly-bingly beep! Bingly-bingly SMASH!
"Oh Sam!" Lady Sybil admonished her husband, who had thrown the Dis-organiser Mark 6.2 hard against the bedroom wall. "You only just upgraded last week. And look at the state of the wallpaper!" There were a series of dents and scrapes on the wall, evidence of Dis-organisers past.
"I'm the Commander of the Watch," he told his wife earnestly. "I don't need to be bingled out of my slumber. I know exactly when and where I am needed. Besides if you can't get an extra half an hour's kip when you're the boss, what's the point?"
She shook her head, smiling at her big grump and snuggled back down into bed.
"Anyway-" He looked down fondly at his Lady. "-there are nicer ways to get me going in the morning."
Sybil raised a brow. "Such as?" she almost purred.
"Breakfast in bed." His face broke into a smile before his wife swatted him with a pillow.
###
Otto Chriek and his partner in both senses of the word, Lily Ann Flach, were meeting over breakfast. They hadn't seen much of each other for the past few weeks except for fleeting moments over egg on toast. He was on the night shift at the Times working on an investigative piece in The Shades*. Lily continued to run their going concern, 'Flach and Chriek', an iconography store.
*The Shades certainly lived up to it's name; shady indeed and place known for butchery of all kinds.
They were sat in the greasy spoon not far from the Times Offices, Otto with a syrupy coffee, Lily with a syrupy tea. "So, next month it'll be a year since we opened the shop," she began, watching him closely.
He nodded and mmhmmed in response, taking a slurp from his chipped mug.
"You know what that means don't you?" she asked hopefully.
"A sale?"
"No. I mean well, yes we are going to do something special. For the anniversary," she laboured the last word quite deliberately but it seemed lost on the vampire whose eyes were beginning to close.
"That's nice darlink," he answered on auto-pilot.
"Otto?! Do you not know what day it is?"
Two plates of egg and toms on toast were plonked down unceremoniously in front of them. "Monday," their server answered. "Special on Bubble, Bacon and Beans." He gestured to the chalkboard.
"Oh um…yes, thank you," Lily replied before turning her rather annoyed attention back to her other half. "Otto, it is a year ago to the day that we met!"
Oh dear, he thought, the first anniversary of anything remotely nice in his life and he had forgotten it. Well that was not strictly true. He always remembered the day he became a Black Ribboner and swore off the red stuff, but this was different. He did what the many men before him caught in this situation did. He lied.
"Ve met at two-zirty in zer afternoon my dear, so technically it is not our anniversary until zen." He winked and gave her a sly smile.
"Oh!" she gasped. "You've planned a surprise! Oh Otto I can't wait to find out what it is!" She beamed.
Neither can I, he thought, biting into his tomato.
###
At the breakfast table in the Vimes household, Young Sam presented his father with a tomato the size of a tea-plate. "Look what the green house came up with this morning," he announced proudly. "Thanks to lion, tiger and bear dung!"
"Oh my!" Sybil responded. "Could we not keep the subject of dung away from the breakfast table, dear?"
"It's a triumph, son," Vimes encouraged. "You're green-fingered alright."
"In which case you should wash your hands before you eat!" his Mother insisted.
"Yes Mum…" Sam junior grumbled and made his way to the nearest convenience.
Sam Senior was scanning the newspaper for anything of interest i.e. anything criminal*. As he turned the pages Sybil would usually look to see if she could see anything of interest to her. Today she did. "Oh Sam, the Opera House is changing hands again!"
*Other than the spelling, grammar or the terrible way in which he thought the news was reported.
"Is it?" He knew where this was headed and knew he wasn't going to get out of it, however much he downplayed it.
"Oh we should go Sam, it's been an age since we went out together for the evening and I do so love it!" She sighed. "How wonderful would it be to see La Mayhéme again?"
"I don't know. It's pretty much etched on my mind from the last time." He kept his face firmly hidden from view behind the paper. It was undoubtedly one of the least enjoyable things he'd had to do with Sybil since their marriage and he included every single nappy, burping and snotty cold that Young Sam had ever had in that.
"Ah, but imagine the influence of the new patron's vision!"
"Yes, imagine…" But what he was imagining was more along the lines of demolishing the ornate building that stood opposite his place of work.
"Could you pop by there on your way in?" she asked sweetly, knowing full well he would, despite his gruff response. "Perhaps later we could do that thing you like?"
His head peeked over the top of the newspaper, suddenly interested. "Oh?"
Young Sam strolled back in and sat down at the table.
"Breakfast in bed," she teased with a twinkle in her eye. Old Sam very much hoped she was being metaphorical.