The theatre is dark.
Not just unlit — dark. As though light never belonged here, and never will. The red velvet curtains hang heavy with dust, the kind that tastes of memory and something forgotten. The seats, all five hundred of them, curve upward into silence, empty as a casket.
Still, the man performs.
His name — if he ever had one — is not important here. What matters is the mask. Porcelain-white, cracking at the corners. He wears it even when he's alone. Especially then. Tonight, like every night, he bows before the echo of applause that never comes.
Somewhere above, the ghost light flickers. And in the rafters, something watches.
He recites lines from a play no one wrote. They fall from his lips like wet paper:
"And I loved her — yes, with teeth,
but love is a kind of hunger, isn't it?"
He pauses. Waits for silence to respond. It does.
Behind the curtain, behind the veil of the stage, she waits. Or maybe it isn't a "she." Maybe it's just the feeling. The sensation of her — all velvet skin, dark eyes, and violins made of ribs and regret.
He remembers the taste of her breath.
The way she said his name like it bled.
"I died a little when I let it go."
He doesn't know if he said it, or if she did.
She first appeared after his fifth performance. He was practicing alone, whispering a soliloquy to the mirror in the dressing room, when he saw her — not reflected, but behind the reflection. Tall. Pale. A halo of blood drying across her shoulder.
She had wings. Not divine ones. These were burned, jagged, and wrong. One dragged behind her like a wounded limb. The other looked stitched from shadow. And in her right hand:
An axe.
Still dripping.
She didn't speak. She never did.
But her eyes said: "You know why I'm here."
And he did. Of course he did.
The stage floor creaks beneath his feet. He drags a prop chair to center. The ghost light above swings slightly, even though the air doesn't move.
He can feel her watching again tonight. From the wings.
The bleeding girl with the axe. The one who never blinks.
Maybe she's a hallucination. Maybe she's guilt.
Or maybe she's the audience he's been begging for all along.
It happened in the green room.
She came to him like smoke. No footsteps. No sound. Just her, lowering her body onto his, lips like poison fruit, eyes closed like prayer.
"You're bad for me, but I still want you,"
she whispered — or maybe it was his own mouth moving.
It wasn't love. Love is soft. This was sharp. This was carved into his spine. He remembers arching into her, like a marionette twitching on strings too tight.
He came undone.
And afterward, when she stood — naked, blood-slicked, ethereal — she said nothing. Just touched his face gently with the axe and left a thin red line along his cheekbone.
"I died a little," he whispered, "when I let it go."
He meant his control. His fear. His name.
Now, each night, she returns.
Not to touch. Not to speak.
Just to watch him act.
Even when he breaks. Especially when he breaks.
Tonight, he doesn't follow the script.
He throws the chair across the stage. It shatters against the back wall, and dust explodes like ash. His chest rises and falls. The mask slips halfway off his face.
He screams into the void of the theatre:
"The seats are empty.
The theatre is dark.
WHY DO YOU KEEP ACTING?!"
The silence answers:
"Because you don't know who you are when you're not. "
He drops to his knees. The mask clatters beside him. He looks up and sees her again — center aisle. This time closer. The bleeding figure with wings that drip shadow and eyes full of ancient sorrow.
She begins to walk toward the stage.
Each step echoes like a heartbeat.
He doesn't move. He lets her come.
She climbs the stage like it's a memory. Like she's been here before. Her fingers trail the velvet curtain — and it hisses.
When she stands before him, she leans in. Her lips graze his ear. And for the first time, she speaks.
"You don't want applause.
You want permission to die."
The words feel like knives in the shape of truth.
He doesn't argue. He just reaches for the axe.
She smiles — small and cruel. Not unkind.
He raises it above his head. She does not flinch.
"What if in trying to be everything, I end up being nothing?"
She answers with her silence.
And then:
The axe falls.
The theatre is empty.
The theatre is dark.
But the stage is no longer quiet.
A man in a white, cracked mask stands center.
His chest stills.
His shadow moves.
Behind him, wings begin to form.