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A/N: This was my first piece of writing about Zalman. It was an English project from about February, and it was the reason I started reading Zalman's sconex journal. So...yeah.
Once Upon a Blackout
Inspired by Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales" and Andrew Lloyd Webber's "The Phantom of the Opera"
The General Prologue
It was a dreary day. Autumn had not quite progressed into Winter yet, and it certainly didn't look like it intended to do so any time soon. This was highly inconvenient. The skies were grey and looked like rain all the time. One day a person would carry an umbrella or a raincoat and it wouldn't rain. The next day, he wouldn't take either one, and would get caught in a thunderstorm on the way to work or school or wherever he happened to be going. Then the day after that, he would take his umbrella or raincoat, and it wouldn't rain. And so the dreary cycle continued, the moisture dampening everyone's mind and spirits.
This particular day
happened to be one of copious amounts of moisture; a thunderstorm to
be exact. A Junior and a Freshman sat on a file cabinet by a window,
filling out audition forms. The Junior scratched her head
with the back end of her pen. She was short in stature and slightly
pudgy with a round face and big eyes. She wore her coarse light
brown hair tied back in a ponytail, and sported a bright green shirt
proclaiming "Pickles" and matching plastic green beads. Several
pages of sheet music were sticking out of her bag, seated next to
her, as well as a small hardcover edition of Chaucer's The
Canterbury Tales.
The Freshman had a lot to write on
her audition form. Her face was contorted into a concentrated frown
as she tried to remember just how many years she had been taking
ballet. She was tall, about 5'9", wearing a grey t-shirt with a
Star Fleet Academy logo and written-on jeans that were almost too
short. Her thick dark braid was starting to frizz out. Her eyes
were an indeterminable grey-brown color; she had a solid build and
was also slightly pudgy. If one looked, they would see several pens
shoved haphazardly into her pants pocket.
The Junior and the Freshman sat by the window of a large room full of people. Lots of people, all filling out audition forms. The air was stuffy with palpable tension and random bits of song. Every few minutes, a person or two would be called from the room. They would exit nervously as another person or two would return to the room, collect their belongings from one of the desks that had bee lost in the crowd, and leave. Even though there was some noise, there was an air of stuffy awkward silence about the whole scenario.
A few minutes later, the Junior heard her name called. She bade goodbye to the Freshman and, clutching her form, left the room. The Freshman, left by herself for the moment, rested her forehead on the cool glass of the window. After a minute or so, however, she couldn't take the awkwardness pressing in on her any longer. She got up and left the room, taking her audition form with her. Once out of the room, she turned left, away from the theater, where the actual auditions were taking place, and off into one of the side corridors. She looked around; it was empty, except for three pianos. Setting her audition form down, she sat at a piano and began to sing.
"Nighttime sharpens, heightens each sensation," she sang, "Darkness stirs and wakes imagination. Silently the senses abandon their defenses, helpless to resist the notes I write; for I compose the music of the night." The last note ground at the bottom of her range. She frowned and picked the melody out on the piano. After checking out the hallway again, she continued singing, and playing the melody on the piano, when she knew it (which wasn't often; the Freshman was not very good at playing the piano). A few minutes passed, and she finally reached the end of the song. "You alone can make my song take flight! Help me make the music of the night."
"Hey, you're pretty good," came a voice from behind her. The Freshman whipped around; she hadn't expected anyone else. Standing behind her was a Sophomore whom she vaguely recognized from chorus.
"Oh, er...thanks," the Freshman replied, blushing slightly, "Hey, you're in the chamber choir, right? That tenor?"
"Yep," the Sophomore said, "and I also happen to know that those aren't the words to that song." The Freshman mumbled something about highlights lyrics. The Sophomore laughed. "Eh, don't worry, I'm not one of those Phantom of the Opera freaks. That would be...kinda odd," he said, "I personally like that song played faster, I think it's funny. Can I?" He nodded at the piano. The Freshman half-stepped, half-jumped aside as the Sophomore sat down, playing from memory the accompaniment that went along with the song the Freshman had just been singing, but twice as fast. It was indeed amusing. Then the Sophomore's fingers got a bit tangled up, and he stopped playing. "Can't play tremolo that fast."
"What, like this?" Came a voice from a little farther up the hallway. The Freshman and the Sophomore turned around to see a Senior by one of the other pianos. The Senior turned around and played what the Sophomore had been trying to play a moment earlier, but with much more accuracy. The Senior was tall and very skinny. He was one of those people that you think they'd fall over if you blew on them. He had messy wavy hair, small hazel eyes behind narrow rectangular spectacles, and long, spindly fingers that ran over the piano keys like spiders. The Freshman suddenly realized she knew him as well; he was the pianist for the chamber choir, and the piano god of the universe. The Freshman blushed; it was all she could do to keep from dying of embarrassment.
"Oh, hey," the Sophomore said, greeting the Senior with familiarity. There was really only one thing memorable about the Sophomore at first sight. He had coffee-colored skin, relatively normal-looking features, and eyes that danced with a sophomoric air of immaturity and immorality. And he had a puffy blonde afro. It was completely out of place, but the Freshman thought it was hilarious and was resisting the urge to poke it.
"Hi," the Senior replied, "What are you guys doing back here?"
"Auditions," the Sophomore replied. The Senior nodded knowingly.
"Say," the Freshman said to the Sophomore, "Do you know what number they're up to?" The Sophomore shook his head.
"Twenty-something," came the Junior's voice. The Freshman looked up the hallway and indeed, the Junior was skipping down the hall towards them. The Freshman waved and glanced down at her audition form.
"Yeah, I'm in the fifties, so we've got a while to wait-"
All of a sudden, the lights flickered out.
"...That would be bad," said the Junior.
"It might just be somebody playing with the light switches somewhere," the Freshman remarked. The others nodded, and the Sophomore went out to look. He came back quickly, though, shaking his head.
"Nope," he said, "All of the lights are gone. It's crazy out there, we should stay back here." The other three nodded. The Freshman and the Junior, who were used to sitting in hallways, simply sat down on the floor. The Sophomore grabbed a folding chair from a little farther down the hall, and the Senior sat on the piano bench. The four students sat in silence for a moment.
"Now what?" the Junior asked. The Freshman turned to the Senior.
"You've been here the longest," she said, "Did anything weird happen then?"
The Senior's Prologue
The Senior fidgeted a moment; it was obvious he did not like talking to people, especially ones he barely knew, and underclassmen to boot. He figured, though, that they might be there for a while, and that there wasn't anything better to do. So he talked.
"Yeah," he said, "This totally doesn't even compare. I was a Freshman. Ms. Hall had me singing tenor in the Chamber Choir to work on sight-reading. I don't know why, my sight-reading was fine. But anyway, I sold my soul to Ms. Hall early on. I practically lived in the chorus room; I spent my frees in there, sorting music, playing the piano, all that jazz. I suppose it makes some sense, I was a bit of a social outcast at the time, and that piano was like a friend to me. Anyway, when I was a freshman, there was an amazing Soprano in the chamber choir. I'm talking coloratura here. You might have heard of her-" he turned to the Freshman, who shook her head.
"Nope," the Freshman replied, "I sing alto."
"Whatever," the Senior continued, "Well, anyway, there was an amazing Soprano by the name of Carla. She was a senior and one of the shortest people in the chorus. Except me, being a short, freshmany tenor. Well, I saw her disappear. This is what happened.
The Senior's Tale
Well, when I was a freshman, Stuy was a lot different than it is now. It was a lot more independent. You only had to take two years of a language, and you could go out during frees, stuff like that. So nobody worried too much if they couldn't find you anywhere.
Carla, I've heard, had a tendency to disappear. She might miss a class or two, and nobody would notice. I mean, she was a senior. And not one of the nerdy kind, like me. But she would never miss chorus. Ever. She might run in, windblown and flustered, at the beginning of the period, but she was there. Nobody noticed anything odd.
That year, the chamber choir was singing something with a big soprano solo in it. I don't remember exactly what it was, but Ms. Hall threatened the Sopranos, as usual, with giving the solo to the Tenors. Of course, neither the Sopranos nor the Tenors were happy about this, but when none of the Sopranos satisfied her for the part, the Tenors got it. Of course, anybody could have gone up and asked to re-audition for it, but everyone was so intimidated by Ms. Hall that no one did. So the Tenors were stuck with it.
But, about a month before the spring concert, Ms. Hall announced that the Tenors no longer had the solo, that one of the Sopranos had finally bucked up and tried for it again. As you may have guessed, it was Carla. One of the other senior sopranos, named Antonia, was very annoyed. Carla and Antonia had been rivals for a very long time. Antonia was a diva. And, like any diva, she didn't like to be shown up. So she goes and auditions also.
This couldn't have been a stupider thing to do. Ms. Hall, not realizing the bitter rivalry between the two or the trouble her actions would cause, gave them both the solo. Not smart. There was even more tension among the Sopranos. Each one of the two took out her infuriation in a different way. Antonia, on the one hand, would constantly complain and shamelessly show off. Sometimes, most of the sopranos would stop singing in the middle of the piece and no one would notice because she would be singing so loudly.
Carla, however, did probably the worst, most infuriating thing she could have done: she kept getting better. Every day she would come in knowing the piece a little bit better, being a little bit louder, something like that. Antonia was infuriated by this, and kept complaining and showing off.
It was also around this time Ms. Hall had me start actually playing the piano for the chorus. I was the youngest of the three pianists-one was a junior, and the other was a senior. But because of this, I would spend more and more of my free time playing the piano, whether it was in the chorus room or out here in this hallway. I was assigned a piece for the concert, and I practiced relentlessly. Once or twice, while I was practicing out here during a free, Carla would come back here, looking quite dazed, and disappear through the door onto the stage. I never questioned anything, Sing was going on and she was probably in it.
But then it got weird. It was one of those times when Carla came back to the stage door. She hadn't been there for a few days. She got there, opened the door, and a voice came out. This wouldn't have been weird if it had sounded like a student. But it didn't. It was a deep, resounding voice that sounded like it had had a lot of training. The conversation that followed went like this:
"Where have you been?" the voice said, annoyed, "I have been waiting."
"I'm sorry," Carla replied, "I've had lots of rehearsals..."
"There is still so much for you to learn," came the voice again, "you must make choices."
"But..." Carla pleaded, "You don't know Ms. Hall! She would've ripped my head off!"
"I know Ms. Hall better than you think," the voice said softly, "We're not alone. Come." And Carla disappeared through the stage door once again. I was nervous; the voice had said they were not alone, did that mean me? I had no way of knowing. I went back to playing the piano.
Apparently, over the next few weeks, some other people began noticing some odd things going on, especially regarding the theater and the stage. For instance, one period the chorus came into the auditorium, fully prepared to pull out the shell and set up the bleachers, but it would already be set up when we got there. Sing tech crews started talking about how they had possibly seen a random person in a dark sweatshirt wandering around backstage. Of course, no one believed them. But people were starting to get nervous.
And then, faster than was comfortable for anyone, it was concert night. No one was allowed to sing in chorus that day, and we were all under strict orders not to shout, whisper, eat fried foods, dairy products, or do anything involving dirt. After school, everyone had an hour or so to pass the time before the concert. Most people went out and sat in the park or something, but I came back here and practiced my piano piece. At 5:30, the choruses crowded into their rooms, the concert chorus into the chorus room, and the chamber choir into one of the music rooms down the hall. Attendance was taken, and we were given half an hour before the warm-up rehearsal to go do stuff, but not leave the music hallway. I went back to the piano in the hall.
Not long after I began practicing, someone else came down the hallway. It was Carla, already dressed in black and white concert attire, eyes glazed over as if she was sleepwalking. I tried to tell her that it was a bad idea to disappear now. She couldn't hear me. I doubt she would've listened to me if she could. So, being an idiot freshman, I decided to follow her.
It was dark backstage. I'd never been there before. The work lights were off and the shell was out, so there was very little light except for what was coming in through the stage door. I followed Carla up some stairs and around a few corners into the catwalks. It was quite nerve-wracking; I had no idea where she was going, and if I was going to be able to get back. Finally she stopped in a little alcove on the other side of the last catwalk, the lowest one with nothing but a row of lights in front of it. I was a few seconds behind her; I got over there, and there was a man there; only a few years older than Carla, from what I could see, which wasn't much; he had a dark hooded sweatshirt on. He was seated behind a small electric keyboard. Carla did a series of vocal warm-ups, and ran through her solo. Not knowing what to do, I crouched down and hid, being as silent as I hoped possible.
After running through her solo a few times, Carla shifted her weight uneasily, and turned to the man.
"I can't keep coming to see you," Carla said, "People are suspicious. And I'm graduating in a month. I just can't." The man was infuriated.
"What do you mean? After all I've done for you, for your voice...I love you, Carla..."
"I'm sorry," Carla replied, "I can't." She turned to leave.
"Carla, wait-" the man started to follow her, his voice filled with a mix of anger and pleading. I looked at my watch; it was too dark to see, so, covering it carefully with my other hand, I hit the light button. Apparently it wasn't carefully enough. Both the man and Carla froze.
"We're not alone," the man said, "whoever is there, come out." I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to show myself, but I was too scared to do anything else. I stood up from where I had been crouched behind a piece of yellow foam. The man laughed a little. "Well, this is interesting...I'll make you a deal," he said to Carla, "It's you or the Freshman." I stood there openmouthed.
"You promised me no one else would get involved!" Carla shouted. Distress tinged her voice. She looked at me quickly, and back at the man.
"You know my terms," the man said.
"Let him go," Carla pleaded, "He means nothing to you-"
"No," the man said firmly, "Stay here with me, and he can go, I don't care. But it's him or you. Make your choice." I was really scared then. I wanted to turn around and run, but I was too scared. And I didn't know my way back. I watched Carla; I had no idea what was going to happen. Carla hesitated a moment, walked up to the man. Slowly, she pulled off the hood of his sweatshirt; one side of his face had several large, unsightly, twisted marks that looked like burns. His hair, which was longish and dark on the other side, hung lank and pale. Carla looked at him for a moment, and then kissed him, deeply and passionately. I was so shocked, I turned away. Then before I realized what was happening, Carla had grabbed my wrist and was dragging me in the opposite direction, back through the catwalks and down the stairs, into the backstage area. Carla turned to me.
"I don't care why you were following me," she said, breathlessly, "But not a word of this gets out to anyone, do you understand?" I nodded, dumbstruck. Then we both headed to the warm-up rehearsal as if nothing had happened. No one suspected a thing; everyone was slightly frantic when we got back, and Antonia was a bit disappointed, but nobody else had any idea what happened. This is the first time I've told this story since then. Now, sometimes, if you go into the auditorium alone you think you hear a deep, sad voice singing Carla's solo. It just goes to show that under such a twisted exterior can exist passion and beauty."
"Wow," the Junior said in wonderment, "I wonder if he's still there, the man."
"We could go see," the Sophomore said, but the Freshman shook her head.
"We'd never be able to find him in the dark. It's really dark in the catwalks, and it'll be even darker with no light coming in from the theater."
"Then I guess we'll just keep wondering," the Junior said.
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