Lights!

The entire room was bathed in bright light. ¬†Not so bright as to be blind­ing, but bright enough that it was wor­ry­ing to try and nav­i­gate through the room after being in the dark hallway.

As his eyes adjusted he could see shad­ows mov­ing around behind the lights in all direc­tions, their pur­pose and goals unknown to him. ¬†Across the room was a beau­ti­ful girl stand­ing just inside the door­way. ¬†He knew her, or felt he should. ¬†At the very least he wanted to.¬†Occasionally sounds came drift­ing in, soft enough and low enough that he couldn't quite under­stand the words.

His first instinct was to won­der if they were talk­ing about him, look­ing across the now lit room he could see the girl stand­ing by the door, maybe the voices were talk­ing about her

He chose his spot beside the couch and looked care­fully around the room. ¬†It was an aver­age sized room with aver­age fur­ni­ture. ¬†It was mostly in line with his tastes, enough so he wasn't repulsed by it, but he knew it was all fake. ¬†Noth­ing he could see was real, noth­ing belonged to him. ¬†Look­ing around again he couldn't remem­ber what his own fur­ni­ture, or even his room actu­ally looked like.

He licked his lips as his gaze passed over the shad­ows mov­ing around behind the lights. ¬†The whis­pers again pass­ing by him, not quite understandable.

How long would they stay away, how long would the light keep them out.

He glanced over to the girl again and noticed that she seemed more con­fi­dent, more sure of her­self than he felt. ¬†He won­dered if she was even real and fought the urge to walk over to her to touch her, know­ing it would pro­voke the Direc­tor in the shad­ows and cause him­self anguish.

Instead he sat on the arm of the couch, sens­ing his time was com­ing.¬† Instinc­tively know that soon the lights would begin and every­thing would change.

He was sup­posed to do some­thing, or say some­thing… if only he could remember.

He started¬†fidgeting, shak­ing his hands and feet. He closed his eyes try­ing des­per­ately to remem­ber what it was he was sup­posed to do. ¬†It was some­thing impor­tant, that much he remem­bered. ¬†Some­thing about…

Sud­denly his head rose up, every­thing came flood­ing back to him in a fran­tic rush.

He sorted it out in his head, took ¬†a deep breath and felt his con­fi­dence grow.

He was set.

He was ready.

Ready to play his part. Ready to tackle the role before him in this grand drama.

He smiled briefly at the girl across the room, and she smiled back.  His confidence rose again.

Another deep breath.

He faced the light, ready.

The shuf­fling in the back­ground qui­eted, the lights began to dim. The shad­ows stilled.

Now.

Now was the time for him to do what he had come to do, to stand on his own and face all his fears and demons. ¬†To give the per­for­mance of his life.

Sud­denly a face¬†appeared¬†across the room,¬†distorted¬†by the lights and shad­ows into a mock­ery of a man. ¬†The face seemed to take a deep breath and shouted:

"ACTION!"

© 2010, anthony. All rights reserved.

September 10, 2010

Posted in Experimental, Fiction and tagged #fridayflash.