Work Text:
Tommy wants to talk, he really fucking wants to talk. But he can’t, he’s afraid that if he opens his mouth the horrors will never stop... his childhood, his life, the war. If he talks, he might expose something that he has kept hidden inside himself a very long time. He’s scared that if he opens the door for people, he’ll never be able to close it again. Others feel comfortable letting people in, but Tommy’s not like that. If he lets one person in, the others will just keep coming and coming and coming, and the door has to stay open because there’s no way he can close it when there’s so many people who want to hear him, who are interested in how he’s doing.
And if he’s able to shut that door again… well… he knows that they will keep banging and banging and banging until he opens the door again. The door inside him will become like a fucking pub door. The people want it open regularly… and every fucking day he has to open that door, because if he doesn’t open it, something’s wrong, or the things just aren’t right.
The people who come to his pub will drink… a lot. And he’ll have to serve and serve and serve, until the people leave, satisfied. Tommy knows that they will come back. They want to kill their thirst. Perhaps they order the same, or they want Tommy to bring them something new. Nevertheless, they expect the door to be open for them again.
Once he gets tired of all the people and he blows up his pub. He blows the fucking door to the sky, just to keep the people away… and away they go. Meanwhile he has time to reshape the pub. He changes the tables, he adds new paint, new mirrors, new windows. Everything becomes golden. And the new people that come to visit don’t even know that something else sometimes existed. They only know the new tables, new mirrors and the fucking gold… they don’t see what’s under it all. They don’t walk in and say ”this place has changed since the last time i came here.” They can’t see the old pub under the new. That’s a relief for Tommy. His plan has worked and he succeeded to cover the old.
He doesn’t even think that he’s in trouble until the old customers come in. They just walk in, and they start to remove the golden paint with their fucking pocket knives, exposing the old colors and the blackened walls. It doesn’t take long before the pub’s fucking ruined, the golden paint has turned into golden flakes that are now covering the floor. The pub is stripped from its new tables and the rocks have destroyed all the windows. The new customers leave when they realize that there’s something ugly under all the gold.
In that night, after all the customers have got out, Tommy closes the door again… this time, it stays shut, and he’ll never open it again.