[Durelin]

‘Celebrity?’

What in the name of Ilúvatar were celebrities? Valde had felt his body convulse at the sound of the word, and he had felt a sudden rush of sinus pressure that made him clutch his head, trying not to look at Anakron. It was as if he had said a word of the Black Speech, which of course a civilized ear such as Valde’s could not hear. He had quite forgotten that he did indeed dwell in Mordor. Such is a daydreamer’s mind. But for now his mind was actually quite empty, and Anakron’s words bounced around inside his head. He could hear them whizzing around, springing from side to side for several moments, and then all went silent. He never had been very good at pong.

“You are to seek them out by your own ingenuity.”

By their own ingenuity, eh? Now, surely Valde would succeed in this, for he had boasted before that he was as tricky as Ulyssë. But there was a twinge of something in his stomach, suddenly sprinkled there like a bit too much of garlic, and he doubted himself. What was he playing at, in this ‘Offending Party’? Perhaps the trolls had been right in casting him as the tragic hero who lost the contest. Perhaps that was his lot in life, his role on its stage. But wait…life was a stage; life was his stage! And what an excellent tragedy it would make, for he, the great Valde, to play out his role like a true… (Here Valde paused and pictured the litter he had been carried on during his brief but tender moments of glory, licking his lips) Lead Tragic Actor. Yes, a true Lead Tragic Actor: that was Valde Delego.

“Surely I must move on and no more wait,
With courage to face my tragic fate.”

Valde announced his rhyming couplet to no one in particular, and thus ended Act II Scene 2 of his life.* A kamuraman eyed him strangely for a moment, managing for once to peel his eyes away from the strain of catching such an extremity and excess of reality on film to later reel it out.

“That was an aside,” Valde hissed, looking down his nose at the nosy man.

“You mean a real aside?” the man exclaimed, sounding excited, and hoisting his kamura around to face Valde, who only scrunched up his tragic eyebrows and stared broodingly at the electric eye. It always watched him, but surely it could not see into his mind’s eye.

“Are you sure it was real?”

“Errr…” the kamuraman gurgled.

“Am I real?”

“Well, of course.”

“Prove it.”

“Well, you’re standing right there. I can see you. And I can hear you. And if you would let me, I could touch you. I really would like to just touch you…I never do get to touch the actors…”

Valde slapped the kamuraman’s reaching hand away.

“You rely on your senses for determining what is real. But we all know that our senses deceived us. We catch things out of the corner of our eyes, but they’re not there. We mistake words in our speech and hearing and reading due to tricks from the Freud. How do we really know that we see, hear, feel, and taste what we do? How do we know if that even matters? How do you know the ground beneath your feet exists, or if your mind has simply created it because of your natural feel of falling, which is a feeling that your mind creates because you have this predisposed notion of how the world works, which is simply a fabrication of the minds of people, who we are not even sure exist.”

The kamuraman stared at Valde for a moment, his mouth hanging open. “I thought we were talking about reality. Why would I be afraid of falling in reality? There’s a stunt double for that, duh.”

“No, no, not a reality show. You can’t capture everything on that kamura of yours, you know. You see, we are all made of our special play-doh known as our ‘soul.’”

“Huh?”

“Nevermind.” Valde sighed and, narrowing his purely physical eyes at the kamura, he turned his back to it and its bearer with a swirl of his cloak, returning his mind to more important things. Celebrities? What did Valde Delego need with celebrities? He was a celebrity. But life was his stage, and his fans were waiting. He had to act, though not too quickly. He was a Lead Tragic Actor, not an Action Hero.

“Come one,” Valde suddenly heard the woman named Panakeia who had helped him in the last challenge say. He turned to her, but she seemed not to be speaking to him; or no one really, for that matter. Valde felt guilty for listening to her, in case she was performing her own aside, but as the Lead he felt he deserved knowing what everyone told the audience behind his back. They always talked behind his back. If he was not such a good stage crier, Valde had no idea how he would ever survive.

“Let’s go get William Shatner’s toupee,” Panakeia finished.

William Shatner? That name sounded so familiar, and yet… Suddenly a pair of pointed ears invaded his third eye’s vision; then a pair of eye brows that might indeed have rivaled his own. An elf? No, William Shatner was not an elf. Then who? Suddenly recognition dawned on him with a searing blue light that appeared to be what he had heard called a ‘laser.’ (Or was it ‘lazer?’ Alternative spellings were surely cursed, particularly in Mordor.) Simultaneously, words such as photon and parsec popped into his head, though he had no idea what they meant. But that was the name that fit the head between those ears, and perhaps the rest of the body, too: Spockú.

Those eyebrows…Valde had examined his own in the mirror enough times that day to know that Spockú’s did indeed come close to being as dominating and brooding as his own. He was sure they were admired, and he did not like that at all. Panakeia was after this William Shatner’s toupee, eh? And everyone knew Spockú was wherever that Shatner person was, most likely a crony who would even follow the toupee wearer to die a sugary death at the floral printed-paper clutches of one known as Dixiel. Those eyebrows were too good for a man who allowed himself to be subordinate to any other. They were alike to a crown, and must be worn like one: by a king, subject to no one, and who was thought to be schizophrenic due to his inbreeding and use of the royal we. The glorious Shadowbrow’s of Spockú would surely be a formidable prize.

“Oh Panakeia…” Valde called out to the woman, walking slowly up to her so as not to ruin the way his cloak slowly glided dramatically behind him. “First, I thank you humbly, out of the humble kindness, graciousness, and compassion of my swollen heart, for your invaluable aid in the last challenge. Would you mind if my tragic lump of flesh did join you once again?”

He peered at her from underneath the shadowy, mysterious, and intimidating brow, and considered where he might find waxing supplies strong enough for his quest.

*(Apologies to Mr. Shakespeare...if he really exists, that is.)