Fast-Tracked And Other Stories

Don't Let it Fade to Black

He shook wildly, in furious spasms, and made short sounds too angry to be whimpers of exhaustion. He could have been crying, he didn't know. If he was, they didn't mind; they probably just thought it was all part of the grand finale.

He maintained the pose, arms extended, chin up, left leg elevated and foot pointing.

Out there, behind the tears and the sweat and the light, it was mostly strangers, laced with a smattering of people with whom he had been acquainted at one time or another—how they trickled out of the broken tap that was his life to sponge tickets!—topped off with some people he loved. Those strangers may be guilty of thinking they'd like to have him as a friend, but they'd be mistaken. Gravely mistaken. If only they knew that the subtle layers of complexity they flocked from all over the county to see, were just... him.

Yeah, "subtle layers of complexity" is how the critic Fiset had put it. The producer of Fade to Black had said the only bad review from Fiset is a lukewarm one, so he was over the moon with the write-up the show got in the Ballykittery Guardian.

The curtain came down and everything faded to black as if the stagehands had tipped buckets of Vantablack paint from the fly system.

It had been a good show, the third and final performance of Fade to Black that day. His sides hurt badly, as if he were just a boy again, living in the there and then of side-splitting fart-joke laughter. Did he even enjoy performing any more? How did enjoyment keep seeping out of the world? Was the world getting worse or was he? Did he like himself? Silly question. Could he like himself again?

The so-called subtle layers of complexity that carried Fade to Black from one sell-out show to the next were an expression of the rot that had set in, deep within him, in places that had long since faded to black. The audience felt something, but they didn't feel what he felt.

He dropped to his hunkers, one palm pressed into his closed eyes, the other on the stage floor, fingers splayed, and let the sludge flow through him, uncorked. He roared until his voice got snared by a sob. He'd made a deal with himself that this was the only time he would let it out, depressurise, just once a day, when the last performance of Fade to Black faded to black.

It was probably futile but at least he had it this much under control. One of these days he would disappear into the trap and curl up in a dark room in an unlikely country.

He wasn't blind to what he was becoming, but for now, he bound himself to the performance.

He tried not to worry. He tried to want the light.

They chanted for an encore. The curtain called.