It was the hundredth anniversary of the theatre's final show and the lights were switching themselves on for one last performance. The actors and actresses hadn't left, too involved in either their roles or their deaths to bother with eternal rest and forever taunted with the promise of The Show That Would Make Them Stars.
The pre-performance rituals began as they always had, with blood being spilled on the first, third and final steps from the dressing rooms to the main stage. Traditionally it would have been donated from all performers but in this instance the performers didn't have any blood, so to speak. Birds sufficed.
Next was for the orchestra to scream until their throats bled in the belief that only the main cast should be able to speak on the opening night. In their state of death this translated to their ectoplasmic forms turning faint and hazy where their throats would have been, in some cases their heads dissolved entirely. The conductor would still claim they didn't play any worse.
While the orchestra cried and howled their voices away, the performers went through their own sacraments in the hopes that they would finally be remembered as much as the Great Bard Himself. They tore scraps from their favourite costumes and sewed them to the newer ones to bring that essence of success with them. They entered every room backwards with their eyes shut in case they saw a misfortune. They chanted "The Scottish Play" until t stopped sounding like words altogether.
Still they didn't feel ready enough.
Meanwhile outside the theatre flowers were being left by the few living who had visited the theatre in its heyday. Though they would soon die, they still performed a ritual as old as the plays that had awed them as children. They took flowers from the local graveyards and left them at the theatre's entrance, unknowingly bringing an audience with them.
Behind the thick boards that covered the once-ornate doors, the crowd began to file in and fill up a space that was technically nothing more than rusted seat holders and pigeon muck. In their eyes the ceilings were golden once again, the filigree features of the concrete muses blinked and smiled at the spectral specters beneath them and the moth-eaten curtains began to rise at long last.
The pre-performance rituals began as they always had, with blood being spilled on the first, third and final steps from the dressing rooms to the main stage. Traditionally it would have been donated from all performers but in this instance the performers didn't have any blood, so to speak. Birds sufficed.
Next was for the orchestra to scream until their throats bled in the belief that only the main cast should be able to speak on the opening night. In their state of death this translated to their ectoplasmic forms turning faint and hazy where their throats would have been, in some cases their heads dissolved entirely. The conductor would still claim they didn't play any worse.
While the orchestra cried and howled their voices away, the performers went through their own sacraments in the hopes that they would finally be remembered as much as the Great Bard Himself. They tore scraps from their favourite costumes and sewed them to the newer ones to bring that essence of success with them. They entered every room backwards with their eyes shut in case they saw a misfortune. They chanted "The Scottish Play" until t stopped sounding like words altogether.
Still they didn't feel ready enough.
Meanwhile outside the theatre flowers were being left by the few living who had visited the theatre in its heyday. Though they would soon die, they still performed a ritual as old as the plays that had awed them as children. They took flowers from the local graveyards and left them at the theatre's entrance, unknowingly bringing an audience with them.
Behind the thick boards that covered the once-ornate doors, the crowd began to file in and fill up a space that was technically nothing more than rusted seat holders and pigeon muck. In their eyes the ceilings were golden once again, the filigree features of the concrete muses blinked and smiled at the spectral specters beneath them and the moth-eaten curtains began to rise at long last.
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