This is what I wrote for a 300-word story assignment:
Backstage, I’m Lonely
“On my own, pretending he’s beside me…”
The cleaning lady suddenly stopped and peered up the staircase. She was the only one backstage at this late hour, the cast long gone, their curtain call taken an hour previously. With a shake of her head, she continued brushing the floor, when, again, came a haunting melody, “All alone, I walk with him till morning.” The brush dropped from her hand with a clatter, her pulse throbbing, hands drenched in sweat. She peered upwards, terrified, calling tentatively, her voice cracking with fear: “Is anybody there?” Silence. The old lift, a relic from the 1920s, stood before her with its iron grate door, as if in a sardonic grin. She shuddered as she recalled a rumour that had circulated for many years about an actor who had hung himself on the secret spiral staircase that linked the second and first floors. She suddenly looked up and saw the photographs lining the walls, pictures that she saw every day but had never looked at. But now, the eyes seemed to draw her in, demanding recognition. Nijinsky, in a supreme ballet pose but with eyes sunken and haunted. “The magic of yesteryear has disappeared,” ran the message above his signature. Without warning, she burst into sobbing, Nijinsky’s private pain seemingly entering her overwrought mind. And with a gravity defying leap, she found herself face to face with another photograph: Sarah Bernhart, in full Salome costume. Imperious but broken. She had signed her name along with, “What could have been.” The silence was broken by the lift wheezing into life and then coming to a halt on the second floor. Silence again. “That’s impossible,” she said. “Somebody must activate the… “
Next morning, the stage manager found her dead.
“On my own, pretending he’s beside me…”
The cleaning lady suddenly stopped and peered up the staircase. She was the only one backstage at this late hour, the cast long gone, their curtain call taken an hour previously. With a shake of her head, she continued brushing the floor, when, again, came a haunting melody, “All alone, I walk with him till morning.” The brush dropped from her hand with a clatter, her pulse throbbing, hands drenched in sweat. She peered upwards, terrified, calling tentatively, her voice cracking with fear: “Is anybody there?” Silence. The old lift, a relic from the 1920s, stood before her with its iron grate door, as if in a sardonic grin. She shuddered as she recalled a rumour that had circulated for many years about an actor who had hung himself on the secret spiral staircase that linked the second and first floors. She suddenly looked up and saw the photographs lining the walls, pictures that she saw every day but had never looked at. But now, the eyes seemed to draw her in, demanding recognition. Nijinsky, in a supreme ballet pose but with eyes sunken and haunted. “The magic of yesteryear has disappeared,” ran the message above his signature. Without warning, she burst into sobbing, Nijinsky’s private pain seemingly entering her overwrought mind. And with a gravity defying leap, she found herself face to face with another photograph: Sarah Bernhart, in full Salome costume. Imperious but broken. She had signed her name along with, “What could have been.” The silence was broken by the lift wheezing into life and then coming to a halt on the second floor. Silence again. “That’s impossible,” she said. “Somebody must activate the… “
Next morning, the stage manager found her dead.
No comments:
Post a Comment