“Where are you going?” the girl calls out as she followed me deeper into the forest. I didn’t know! It was just trees and more trees, and there weren’t even birds in said trees! I just knew I didn’t want to watch the play anymore. There’s something off about it!
As I turned around a large oak tree, I was back on the stone path with the stage at the end of it. “H-how? I didn’t even-” I stutter, spinning around the girl was standing behind me with both her arms crossed.
“Look, I know you’re confused and probably scared, but I swear to you, you’ll understand what’s going on in due time. But you need to trust me, and you need to keep watching the play.” She held out her hand to me, swallowing hard I lightly take it.
She leads me back to our seats as I glance up at the stage and coming to a stop in the middle of the aisleway. The branches and vines that made the roof were dying. The branches looked like rotting wood as the vines started to turn a dark color and were curling up like a dying spider, and the leaves on them began to fall off, then slowly float to the ground or blew away in the breeze.
The girl looked at me then at the roof. She mumbles something under her mask before gripping my hand tightly. “The play is going to start on Act three!” She giggles and lightly pulls on me towards our seats. The curtains were swaying slowly, but their bottoms were now ripped up as the bits of string move on the wooden floor. As the ruined curtains slowly came up like they were having a hard time, the lights flickered on.
The man wasn’t standing on the side but started to speak from somewhere in the dark he sounded sick, “The daughter and her new boyfriend fell head over heels for one another!” The girl crossed her long legs, putting one hand on the side of her head and rested her other hand over her stomach like she was bored.
“Where one was, the other would be there!” he spoke, then cough and wheezed a little, “damn it! Sorry. Where was I? Oh yes, they went on dates every Friday nights and every Saturday nights! They would do lunch together at school! They even had the same classes together! Their families welcomed them for game nights, dinner, or a happy cookout! Their friends said they were so cute together!”
I sat up a little watching the scenes intently as they were repeating faster and faster. The chills were beginning to form inside me like ice. In every scene, the actors and actresses weren’t alone because that same dark figure was always there in the darkness, still twitching and rocking.
The scenes started to speed up quicker, all becoming a blur. I yelped, covering my head when there was a loud pop, and the lights abruptly went out, leaving everything in darkness.
“Get up, you look ridiculous,” the girl sighs. Removing my hands then slowly looked up. That smiling mask was staring down at me. Not realizing I fell out of my seat, I stood up, blushing.
“Guess three of the light bulbs shattered, which flipped a breaker or something, so they’re taking a small intermission,” the girl explains. I blink at her, then at the stage. The curtains were closed they looked more ripped up than before. “Hey, did you see that… shadow thing? That was behind everyone?” I ask the girl didn’t say anything. She looked at the stage as a red light started to flash. “Time to sit back down,” she mutters.
When the curtains rose, a woman wearing a puffy pink and white dress stood under a light, her hair was white, pink, red and curly, and had colorful long nails that she moved around a lot. I think without her mask she would’ve bright red lips and white eyeshadow… No, that’s how she would exactly look like, but how do I know that? And I also noticed that her mask had one thing that differs from the others, a bright pink heart that’s over her right eye.
As she spoke, she seems more chipper than the man, “The daughter was happy. She was in love! The most wonderful feeling of them all! How could she not be in love! I mean, look at this lovely man!” Another light turned on a man wearing a business suit stood there, he looked up as he straightens a red tie before putting his arms down at his sides.
“He’s tall,” the woman held out her arms like she was showing off a new car like someone does when another person wins it from a game show. The audience instantly begins to boo. “He’s handsome, sadly you can’t see his face because of the-” She stopped because the girl beside me started to tap her fingernails on the chair’s arm. “He’s handsome!”
Again, the audience boos. “When he got out of high school, he got into a great college!” Louder boos! “Then got a well-paying job!” The audience was nothing but boos! “He makes the daughter happy!” More angry boos.
I don’t get it why are they shaming him, why are they humiliating the daughter for loving him? The woman lowered her arms as she looked at me like she knew what I was thinking. With a painful giggle, she spoke slowly, “He… Asked… Our… Beloved creator to marry him. She forgot us all…!” The lights turned off immediately as there came the sobs of a woman.
“Stay put. I’ve to take care of something,” the girl sighs as she stood up. She walks in front of me. I watch her walk down the front rows of seats then disappear behind the stage, I felt weird sitting there alone, but it wasn’t long before she came back. Dropping back in her chair, she rubbed the forehead of the mask. “Is everything alright?” I ask she shrugs. “Performers,” is all she answers.
The same woman came on stage. Her hands cupped in front of her, she sighed. “I am sorry for cutting that scene short, my lovelies, but I let my emotions get the better of me. As I left off, the daughter’s love asked her to marry him! He told her when she was done with college. They’ll be wed… isn’t… that… sweet…” The woman sounded like she was going to cry, the girl sat up a little the woman looked at her. “It’s alright,” the girl whispers the woman nods slowly.
The scene changed. The daughter stood in a bedroom. There were dirty boxes all over with junk in them, or they were empty, the broken bed and dresser were still there.
“Going to be married soon, maybe we should move in together?” the woman spoke, “that was the daughter’s soon to be husband’s plan. So, had to clean out her old room… Going through things she had never seen in such a long time, things she thought she had thrown away a long time ago, and so on…” the woman looked away as the light turned off that was over her when the daughter picked something up.
The daughter sat down on the broken bed she held a ruined book that looked like it was holding on by a thread, she was flipping through it before closing it again. There came the faint sounds of people crying and screaming. She pulled over a trash bag, then shoved it into the trash bag the cries and screams fell ominously quiet once the book was gone.
The daughter’s fiancé came in from the dark, holding a banged-up suitcase. “You ready to go, love?” he asks.
The daughter stood up, taking his hand. As they leave the room, the lights in front of them flicker on but turned off behind them. That dark figure followed the couple out, trying to keep up but was falling behind. When they were off the stage, the figure dropped to its knee then screamed out, “DON’T LEAVE ME! PLEASE DON’T LEAVE ME!”