Nightmare to romance at the comedy club - a short flash fiction romantic story about life as a stand up comedian by Rob Hopcott

Some of the audience almost stopped talking when, in a last ditch attempt to make at least some of them laugh, I accidentally walked backwards off the stage.

The rest of the audience at Larry's Laugh a Minute Comedy Club just continued to eat, drink and ignore me, as they had from the faltering start of my comedy routine to its ignominious end.

Gingerly, I picked myself up from the grimy wooden floor. My skinny body didn't seem broken anywhere so the pain probably wasn't terminal. Hoping the audience had already forgotten about me, I climbed through the drapes to back stage feeling sorry for myself.

One look at the club owner's face, who'd unsuccessfully tried to mark the end of my act with a round of applause, removed any fantasy I'd had about getting paid and my heart sank to my well-worn boots. Without even expenses, the late night bus would have to travel the several hundred miles back to my aunt's home town alone and I was left high and dry.

My night as a standup comedian was looking more marish by the minute.

Earlier, as I watched the mousy brunette who went on before me die a thousand deaths with her cheerful comedy routine about anorexia and a tent dress that looked as if it had been made out of dishcloth material, I'd realized my comedy routine about the foibles of my dachshund were doomed to extinction before birth.

The audience were straight out of a standup comedian's nightmare. They were drinking too much to understand the jokes. They were talking too much to hear the jokes. Probably most of them were mortuary attendants, accountants or psychologists who didn't even do jokes. At best, they'd undergone surgery at birth to remove their joke genes.

Walking on stage under the dim lights of this tatty North of England comedians club was like climbing out of the trenches and going into battle, except it was more certain you'd end up defeated.

Disconsolately, as I stumbled through the dark corridors back stage looking for a way out that avoided going anywhere near the audience, I fell over a body curled up on the stairs.

"Outch," the voice was female. "You're just as clumsy as you are a crap comedian."

It was the mousy brunette.

"Crap comedian or crap audience, you choose," I said. "However, it doesn't really matter, either way there's no money and I'm walking home."

"I heard you fall off stage," she said. "They almost thought it was funny."

"It wasn't even part of the routine," I admitted, sheepishly.

She looked up at me in the darkness - a delicate vulnerable figure with a tiny voice cloaked in an super-sized dress designed for the sort of woman she'd never want to be.

"I only stayed to see if the audience would bomb you out too," she said. "It was supposed to make me feel better but it hasn't and it's still raining outside so I'm still going to get soaked."

"Not as soaked as me," I said glumly. "I was relying on getting some expenses to pay for the bus fare home."

"So you're not a rich entrepreneur in disguise who is going to sweep me off my feet, carry me away and bedeck me with expensive diamonds and untold luxury?"

"Sadly not. I'm an out of work author called Royston from nowhere in particular and with nowhere to stay the night. My shoes let in the rain and I've a habit of falling over things - even when they're not in my way."

"Dead loss then ..."

"Yup!"

"I'm called Lara. I'm not really a comedian but I do have anorexia and I got the stupid idea that, if I went on stage and made people laugh, it might help. It's been six weeks and nothing has changed except now I'm getting panic attacks about bright lights too."

"Life sucks."

"Shit happens."

"You're not an Axeman are you?"

"No, I had to pawn it to buy lunch. Why?"

"If you really, really promise to behave, you could stay at my camper van in the next street for the night? It's small and about as leaky as your shoes, plus it gets scary when the drunks bang on the side of the van in the early hours of the morning, but an extra body might just raise the temperature above zero tonight and save me from hypothermia. I could owe you my life and you'd be responsible for me for ever. What do you think?"

I held out my hand to help her stand up by way of acceptance. Right now, she looked like an angel of mercy.

"I was responsible for a rabbit once," I replied, conversationally. "We had to take it to the vets."

"Why?"

"I dropped it..."

As we walked the dark corridors of that scruffy old building towards a rain swept North of England night and a small leaky camper van parked somewhere by the side of the road, I looped my arm around her shoulders in a brotherly manner. She didn't seem to mind. Perhaps together the world could be a better place for both of us.

"There is one thing we could do to scare off the drunks," I said, philosophically.

"What's that?"

"We could tell them our jokes..."

The End

All comments welcomed :-)


Bye for now

Rob
(Rob Hopcott - free online stand up comedy romance author)


Enjoyed this? You may also enjoy my 'Blogging Strogonoff' story - a humorous stand up situation comedy about a blog job.

Have you found romance in strange places? I'd love to hear your experiences in the comments below :-)

This short flash fiction story about life as a stand up comedian and romance is copyright Rob Hopcott 2008, all rights reserved. All characters and places in this short flash fiction romantic story about life doing stand up comedy and other free on-line humor, short stories, flash fictions, science fictions, micro-fictions, sudden fictions, post card fictions or very short stories on this site, are fictitious and no reference is intended to any person or organization, living or otherwise.