Always Freewriting

We all have regrets.  They may be large or small.  Normally they live on in a box tucked away on the upper shelf in the back of your mind.  Festering slightly but largely forgotten about and too far out of sight to cause any day to day trouble. But every now and then you search out a ladder, climb it to the highest rung and forage around on tip toes in the depths of your brain for the box that you know will make you feel rubbish but you can't help yourself.  Like a wound itching beneath one of those old school brown plasters. It would be nice to incinerate these boxes of regret.  Blast them into a furnace bubbling away at the ends of the Earth never to resurface. But you can't.  One of my biggest fears in life is that when I get older (if I get that much older) I get alzheimers and these regrets play on vividly in my mind.  On a loop that might suggest they're happening right now.  In this second.  Of this time....

The house lights went down over an hour ago and the audience has long fled into the London night.  The cleaners shuffled their vacuums along as quickly as possible past the lengths of banked seating and the ushers have downed their nightcaps and headed off home for bed. He is the only remaining soul in this ancient theatre. He pads through the stalls towards the stage looming out of the half-light infront of him.  With an effortless bound he lands on it and sends a small cloud of dust into the stale air.  Velvet curtains part as he pushes his way through them and he finds himself amongst a stage strewn full of set pieces, left for organisation in the morning.  Here he sits and watches the theatre flies.  The rigging of a spotlight catches his eye and he jerks his head around the space working out a way to get up there.  Up there to where he can sit and survey his stage.  His audience.  His theatre.  Or he...