The Story

TO BE EDITED BY BOX OFFICE STAFF ONLY

In the days of the old box office computer there was a word document containing a story that was traditionally appended to by the (bored) box office staff.

Now, the high tech online version!

Click edit at the top of the screen!

Chapter One

In the beginning there was a daisy. A daisy like no other daisy, because this daisy had the ability to converse with small cats. The bounds of this particular power were peculiarly specific. For instance, a feline of 2' or less would be comprehensible, whilst a moggy of more than 2'1" would be entirely oblivious to the daisy's ranting. Lucky for the daisy, who by the way was called Daisy or Dee to her friends, a kitten of just this description was passing by.

First Interuption

In days of yore, when the box office story was young, it was also interesting...

Chapter Two

As that lucky kitten, named Lucky ironically, paw-footed by Dee was in her usual full-flow rant about Buttercups and, because she'd had a couple of drinks, Jaffa Cakes.

Chapter Two Point One (Graeme says it's not kosher to extend previous chapters)

Daisy and Lucky debated politik for a good half hour, exchanging many a rhetoric among their frivolous debate. However, before long Unlucky the Militant Hamster turned up and laid into Lucky and Dee with his AK-47. The tattered remains of the happy debators lay, turning the ground crimson with their spilt blood and slowly the garden turned to the browned wasteland of despair.

Emma woke up sweating, damp against the stained fabric of the sofa. The red dawn of the post-urban streets of Edinburgh creeped through the gaps in the fraying curtains, patterning the far wall's peeling paper. She wrestled herself free from the sofa and its sheets as if from the web of a huge spider.

The air was humid. She stood in the centre of the room with arms aloft, shaking off the nightmarish vision of the hamster, teeth gritted and emptying his machine-gun's clip into the innocent flower and kitten. The wooden floorboards were warm under her feet as they always were these days. The summers were much hotter now and rain was rare. Jack and Fred had rigged a crude system of gutters and pipes the week before to catch what water could be yeilded from the smudgy clouds.

Claire pushed her head into the office around the door.

"Emma?"

Emma pulled the sheets up from the sofa and around her body.

"Good," said Claire, casting her eyes unappreciatively over her momentary view of Emma's body, "you're up at last. I don't even want to know what you did to deserve the sofa last night. You were supposed to be getting lunch ready half an hour ago. So get moving."

Claire's head disappeared as fast as it had arrived and Emma was left alone again. She pulled on yesterday's clothes and pushed her way through to the kitchen where Michael and Fred were already up and preparing vegetables.

"Emma," said Michael, a good deal more kindly than Claire. "Potatoes need peeling, carrots need chopping. And how are you?"

"I'm still getting them," she replied.

"The ones with the hamster?"

Emma nodded.

"Well, put it out of your mind if you can. We've got lunch to prepare and we're doing a run outside today too. So it's especially important that the runners get fed and fed well."

"Got it," Emma replied. The potatoes were already stacked up on the bar next to the largest pan and the peeler. She set to work and after the first few potatoes were peeled, Fred turned from his work at the sink and began chopping them into the cavernous pan. He remained silent, as usual.

The kitchen, like the office and much of the building, was damp. They used it for preparing food for all of the refugees in the theatre, bringing in what raw vegetables and tinned products they could on the so-called 'runs' out into the Edinburgh wasteland and then processing it into vats of soup for the pack. The runs were dangerous, nobody liked to go on them save a few - the hardest of the pack - those with experience of conflict. Watching people leave on a run was almost as frightening as being on it - you could never be sure who would come back, and who wouldn't.

Things were certainly different these days, different since the collapse and the forming of the packs. Despite all of the changes, the far more remarkable part of the revolution was those things that had stayed the same.

Second Interuption

OK. This is bizarre.

Third Interuption

ya think?

Fourth Interruption

Post-Apocalyptic Theatre Sci-fi is obviously the way to go.