The pinned girl's grip tightened, fingers clamping hard over Signy’s forearm amidst the haze of plaster and crushed iron. The crimson countdown, now [00:56], pulsed a venomous red above them.
“Signy,” Breda wheezed, her voice a ragged rasp, blood bubbling at the corner of her lips. “The clock… don’t let it hit zero.”
The house, meanwhile, stood rapt. The initial crush toward the exits had stalled into a collective gasp of delight. What appeared to be a rigger’s catastrophic error, crushing a lead player beneath iron, was being interpreted as deliberate genius. Cheers echoed against the proscenium arch. Patrons rose to their feet, clapping wildly, blind to the clock and seeing only calculated carnage.
Signy blinked against the reek of copper and lamp oil. This was no avant-garde staging choice by Director Vance; the iron had split bone, and the violet phantom hovering overhead showed an invalid writhing under translucent worms. It violated her desire for a calm evening, grating against every nerve.
Signy dropped whatever scrap of role she held, kneeling until her hem brushed splintered pine. Her palms hovered above the wreckage of ribs and shattered glass. The numerals dropped: [00:53] [00:52].
A low scuffle came from the wings. Tymon dashed into the light, chin tucked tight, eyes locked onto the red numerals. In his small fist, he gripped the brass cog he’d found in the gutters, its notched teeth dull under the soot.
Without pausing, the boy lunged upward, thrusting the brass cog straight into the floating numerals. The teeth snagged on empty air, biting into light with a violent recoil. The red digits warped and shivered like cooling slag. A high-pitched shriek tore through the proscenium, grinding like stone teeth against iron, and the floating image of the sickbed flickered into static.
[USER INITIATED COLLISION DETECTED. FOREIGN BODY INTRODUCED. INTERNAL CLOCKWORK JAAAAAAAAA]
The metallic shriek cut off, replaced by a shuddering, grinding *clunk*. The countdown froze at [00:49]. The violet apparition of the sickbed shuddered, its parasitic motes hanging suspended in mid-strike.
Signy watched the suspended cog bite into the red light. The theatre’s air tasted of tin and dry ash, heavy with the crowd's breathless hunger. The spectacles, the falling rigs, the endless misery—the whole apparatus seemed to run on manufactured hysterics, starving the second the hysteria ran dry.
Fear, melodrama, and agony were its coin. To feed it was to panic; to kill it was to deny it a single drop of spectacle.
Her eyes scanned the stage, settling on a discarded velvet curtain from a previous set piece. It was thick, a dark, heavy thing, stained with stage blood and dust.
“Leave the wheel in, Tymon,” Signy muttered, rubbing at her temples. “Just keep it still.”
She ignored the distant hall clapping and the calls echoing across the balconies. Tugging at the heavy drapery, she ripped a broad swath of velvet free from its brass grommets, shaking out decades of stage dust.
Before the boxes of studio executives and the clapping gallery, Signy sat down upon the splintered boards beside her rival. Gathering the velvet over both their shoulders, she tucked the hem around them like an unwashed quilt, blocking out the glare of the footlights.
She nodded toward Tymon, who guarded the jammed clockwork. “Stay put,” she murmured. Then, pulling the cloth over her ears, she leaned back against the dying girl's ribs and let her chin drop to her chest. Beneath the dust and spotlights, Signy went directly to sleep.
Her breathing slowed into the deep, rhythmic drone of genuine slumber. The crimson display above groaned, emitting a thin, frantic squeal like a rust-eaten music box running out of spring tension.
[DRAMATIC TENSION: ZERO. LIFE FORCE: DRAINING. KARMA SHARDS: DEPLETING. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. TERMINATING PROCESSES. FEEDING SOURCE: ABSENT. INSUFFICIENT ENERGY. SYSTEM FAILURE. SHUTTING DOWN. SHUTTING DOWN. SHUTTING DOWN.]
The floating display sputtered into gray lines, the numbers disintegrating into smoke. The phantom sickbed faded into nothingness as the brass cog rattled loose. With a dry, brittle snap, the luminous clockwork shattered, shedding a fine drizzle of gold grit across the velvet blanket.
The grit dusted Signy’s cheek without waking her. Out in the dark, the gallery erupted, stamping feet against floorboards, convinced the silent nap was a triumph of existential dread. “Sublime!” a critic barked from the front tier. “A total refusal of narrative!”
Backstage, in the quiet infirmary, the solitary beeping of a medical monitor flatlined into a continuous, deafening tone.