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He is lying on his back when he opens his eyes. He sits up. He barely feels the floor under him. Or anything else, for that matter. There’s something dripping down his face. He holds up a hand to clean it off and his hand comes out stained blue. He stares at it with detached confusion.
There is a song playing. Soft electric guitar. Where from?
It sounds nice.
He feels limp, like a puppet without strings, his mind knocked loose and displaced from his body, displaced from everything. Where was he? How did he get here? What happened?
Do those questions matter?
Where is the music coming from?
“At last.”
A spotlight comes on, shining on a man clad in blue, wearing a cracked porcelain mask. Oh, he realises, remembers, understands: he’s on a stage. He’s on stage.
Well, he was on stage. Now he’s sitting just before the wrecked front seats.
Watching the man perform.
“At last, you are with us.”
He can’t find it in himself to make his eyes look away. The man… well, his costume is beautiful. It commands attention. Undiluted, unquestioned attention.
The man leans on a black cane, posing dramatically, one hand on his mask, and begins to monologue. “You know, unlike our brothers, we do not like violence just for the sake of it. We don’t just want to create chaos, or strife, or suffering. We’re not cruel, Paul.”
Paul.
He blinks. Something shifts, clicks. Paul. The name sounds right. Fitting.
Paul blinks. He looks down at himself. His dress shirt is ripped, revealing luminescent blue fractures zigzagging over his chest.
That’s not right.
“Paul,” calls the man on stage, and Paul’s head jerks up. On instinct, he tries to call back. His mouth does not move.
Somehow, Paul can tell the man’s gaze has softened behind the mask. The man audibly sighs. “All we want is unity. Harmony. And through that, bliss. Happiness.”
Paul’s not sure if he’s happy, really. Something aches distantly, under that web of blue lining his torso. Something pulses with deep wrongness in his body that he feels so far away from. His gaze drifts around the stage that the man stands on, to its splintered floorboards and collapsed beams. The man in blue is performing atop a wreck.
Paul remembers heat. He remembers a great force, flinging him back. Pain, and then abruptly, nothing. An explosion. Grenades—grenades he was wearing.
Paul remembers.
“Oh?” The man cocks his head, looking bored, if not mildly annoyed by his monologue being interrupted. (Paul didn’t even say anything.) “Welcome back. Either way, our point is: we’re glad you’re finally here with us.”
Paul gets the feeling the man is smiling under the mask. “Aren’t you, Paul?”
Is he?
The guitar keeps playing, slow bittersweet arpeggios filling the theatre, filling Paul’s ears. His head droops a little, swaying to the beat.
“Good.”
No. This isn’t right, is it? Is— is this a musical? Is he supposed to sing? Is the man in blue going to sing?
“And what’s so wrong with singing? Is it not beautiful? Is it not the purest form of harmony? Through music, chaos is silenced.”
Paul tries to reply. No sound comes out. No sound is permitted to come out.
The discomfort deep within him pulses. He brings a hand to his head, fingers entangling into wet, messy hair.
A voice that may or may not be a memory asks, “What do you want, Paul?”
He doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want to sing.
He wants to move, wants to run away, wants to run back to normality and dull comfort. He wants to lean over into Bill’s cubicle and ask for a document that went to the wrong printer. He wants to listen to Charlotte chatter away, worrying about her marriage. And God, he can’t believe he’s even missing Ted.
He wants to go to Beanies’ and order shitty coffee. He wants to go there and see…
Something cold and wet rolls down his cheek.
Paul’s body doesn’t move.
The stage lights go out.
A second later, they come back on, and the man in blue is sat on a stool, further downstage. He plays gentle arpeggios on an electric guitar.
The man stops strumming, ending the progression unresolved, letting the last note echo and fade into the silence of the ruined Starlight.
“You miss your friends, don’t you?” The man stands up, putting the guitar away and placing a hand to his mask. He removes it.
Bill’s face smiles at Paul. “You miss us.”
The guitar picks back up, despite the fact that it’s lying on the stage floor. The emotional arpeggios start off soft.
Bill kneels down, his blue outfit glistening in the spotlight, looking right at Paul. “It’s over now, Paul. Come home.” He smiles, soft, bashful, just the way it used to make Paul’s heart melt, forever ago.
Yes. Paul wants to go home. Paul wants to move on.
His body starts to feel more mobile. Strength gradually starts to return to his limbs.
But— he’d promised. He made a promise. To shitty coffee and flipping off customers and never backing down. To Emma.
Bill puts the mask back on, his smile never fading. “And you want Emma, don’t you?” the man asks.
The man takes his mask off again, and Paul is staring at himself. “You want our happy ending.”
An image floats to the top of Paul’s mind. Him and Emma, twirling in a waltz. They move in step, as one. They hold each other close, forever and always. Eternal love.
“You’re ready now, Paul,” the performer says in Paul’s own voice, the sound vibrating in his skull and latching onto his throat, as if Paul was the one who had said it.
“Take her home,” Paul hears, says, echoes.
“What do you want, Paul?”
The guitar picks up in volume, gaining a backing of bass and percussion. It builds in intensity.
He wants to be happy.
The reflection of him smiles back.
Smiling wide, the man puts his mask back on and beckons for Paul to come onstage. Paul follows, his body moving freely, easily, his discomfort evaporating. He doesn’t even squint when the spotlight shines onto him.
He can feel the pleasure of the performer—the Lord in Black; his Lord—standing behind him. He can feel the others’ pride. The music crescendos, gentle guitar breaking into determined chords, leading a swell of accompaniment.
Standing onstage, Paul feels proud too.
The Singular Voice speaks, “You’re the leading man, Paul. My star of the show.”
The score gives way for vocals.
“So, sing for me,” commands Pokotho.
And Paul obeys.