Boarding Party • 18. "The Show Must Go Wrong" Part III (Patreon)

“Lady Helena, I implore you to tell me what... uh, what hath got thou so preoccupied that thou.. hath cast me no attention…?”

“Oh, Sir Ubaldo, I wish for nothing more than to unburden myself from these shackles of secrecy which hath been so cruelly latched betweenst my — ‘betweenst’? Wait, D’anna, what does your script say?”

“Mine says ‘Betweenst’ too,” the elf replied. “Do you think they meant 'betwixt' instead?”

“Oh, who bloody knows?!” Majel huffed, throwing the script onto their dressing room table. “At least shit vocabulary pairs with this shit script quite nicely…”

D’anna sighed, heaving herself onto a nearby trunk to take some weight off her legs. “I wish we could've chosen something else to audition with instead — like a song from Felines or something!”

The cat scowled at the elf. “You mean the show where humans don pointy ears and painted whiskers to prowl around the stage, hunched over on all fours while meowing gibberish?”

“I—I…” the elf stammered, trying to come up with a response before lowering her now-flushed face back down at the script. “This shan't not continue a moment longer, madam! I command you, not as your fiancee, but as your superior — this burden you carry, what is it?" 

“I confess, I confess. Saint Solestone; my womb rounds with his chi—oh, what?”

D’anna looked up. "Hm?"

"What's that face you're wearing?" Majel snarled, resting a hand on her hip.

"What face? I don’t know what you mean…” 

"Don't try to bullshit me, D'anna. Your eyebrows scrunch whenever I say a line. Do you have anything to say about my performance at all?"

The elf flashed a wobbly smile. “Nope…!”

Majel’s face scrunched up to a stern, near-hissing state. “D’anna…”“Well…” she began. A silence fell between them as D’anna tried to find a scrap of courage to articulate her criticisms. After a few moments, the cat leaned back on the bench with a creeeak, breaking the hush and pressuring D’anna to hurry up.

“It’s just that they’re going to be looking for emotion, and whenever I hear your performance… well, you sound like you’re reading from a page instead of actually talking.”

Majel just stared at her with narrowed eyes. 

“Anything else…? Is my face not showing the right emotions, too? Do I not look enough like my character?” The cat stood up, huffing. “In fact—" 

“...you don't have to be mean…” D’anna whispered underneath her breath. 

Majel’s ears flattened. She exhaled through her nostrils, dropped the script on the table again, and collapsed down onto the bench. “I'm not mad at you, D'anna…” 

The elf looked to the side, avoiding any eye-contact. “It sounds like you are…”

“It’s all this damn stress,” the cat blamed as she grabbed a nearby bottle of champagne (one meant for Opening Night) and popped it open. “I’m not exactly thrilled about dressing up like ghostly poodles and acting out this piece of shit just to steal a bunch of purses…”

"Should you be drinking that before the audition…?"

The cat waved a paw. "It's the arts, D'anna, drinking is encouraged. All of The Greats did their best work pissed off their asses." 

"Is that true?" 

"Eh, sure," the cat said before chugging the rest of the bottle and belching. 

Reginald Stewart took his seat in the middle of the mostly-empty auditorium. Before putting on a curly, white wig, his bald head shined against the lantern-spotlight that pointed to the stage. He held a pad of paper with one hand and a quill in the other, ready to scribble down any catty comments that came to his mind during the audition.

A piano player beside the stage began to play an intro sting as a red curtain raised to reveal Amelia Marchmain and Lenore DeLancie, both of whom were already sweaty from their costumes and now blinded from the intense spotlight. Amelia swayed ever so gently; not in a flowy, carefree way, but rather, like there was a mild earthquake that only she was experiencing.

“Lady Helena…” D’anna began. There were a few beats of silence before she fumbled for the script beneath her arm. “Uh… oh, here we go, Lady Helena! I implore you… to tell me what hath got though… so preoccupied that thou… hath cast me any attention!”

Stewart’s brow furrowed upon hearing “cast me any attention” instead of the original “cast me no attention” he had written. How dare she! Who does this wench think she is, strutting onto MY (well, actually Her Majesty’s) STAGE and twisting MY WORDS!?

He was so focused on the bastardization of his script that he failed to realize he was actually writing down his thoughts until his hand swept across a large, wet ink splotch that blotted his notes. He grunted and wiped it on the closest servant.

“Oh! S-hic!-Sir Ubaldo, I hic! wish for nothing more than to hic! unburden myself…” Majel recited, “…unburden m-my—uurp—self from these s-shackles hic! of secrecy which hath been so latched cruelly uh… uh…” 

D’anna leaned over to her and whisper-yelled “between!”

“...b-between my—UURP!”

“Stop this! Stop this at once!” Reginald cried out, shooting from his seat and shaking his hand in the air, sending droplets of black ink flying all over the place. “BETWEENST! BETWEENST! THE LINE SAYS BETWEENST, YOU POINTY-EARED SACK OF SLUDGE!” 

He pointed to Majel. “Lady Marchmain, you’re more of a geyser than a thespian! You came to me looking for a part of my troupe, but the only thing you should look for is A SPONGE!”Then, he twisted his arm towards D’anna. “And Lady DeLancie, you spit in my face every single time you take it upon yourself to dare correct my words, the ones I spent countless hours locked away in my study trudging together, carving out my heart and BLEEDING ONTO THE PAGE!” 

“But… uh, so… do we have a part then…?” D’anna asked. 

“Yes, you do!” Reginald beamed, feigning a smile of genuine happiness before twisting it into a twisted caricature of itself. “The understudies to the understudies! In the meantime, you two will gopher and paint scenery and develop blisters pulling ropes from the rafters until the day comes that Her Majesty’s Theatre literally runs out of any ounce of talent — and only then will you two be needed on stage!”

Reginald stood up and stormed out, leaving a trail of black droplets behind. 

A glassy-eyed Majel turned to D’anna. “Huh? Issy hic! gone?” 

“Yeah…” D’anna said, looking to the side. 

The cat leaned behind a piece of scenery and pulled out a nearly-empty champagne bottle. “Good! Those lights were hic! getting me pretty thirsty…!”

Creeeaaakkk…

A shadow opened one of the theatre’s many doorways, blending against the night sky and the black hallway. Small candles tried to combat the intense cloak of darkness, but only shined a couple feet or so — leaving blotches of the unknown in between, blotches that the shadow worked best in. Nobody could know that he was there, let alone existed. 

He tried to close the door gingerly, but the click! of the latch was louder than he had expected it to be. The sound echoed throughout the hallway, fading with distance yet sharp enough to draw anyone still awake in those dead hours between midnight and dawn—like Margaret Laemmle, a member of the corps de ballet who lived in one of the theatre’s tiny dormitories. 

Margaret stirred from her bed, slipped her feet into a pair of slippers, and grabbed her chamberstick — grumbling to herself the entire time. She suspected the cause of all that racket to be Elisa Stillings, a fellow corps de ballet member who had recently developed a habit of sneaking out in the middle of the night. Oh, the risks she would take for a boy! Margaret shook her head as she walked to the door, hoping that she could talk some sense into the red-handed girl. They needed all the energy they could muster — opening night was only in three days, after all…

Margaret opened her door slowly so as to not make any discernable sound, shielding the flame with her hand to retain her cover. There was definitely somebody at the exit, but she couldn’t tell who. 

Down the dark hallway, it was… well, a shape fiddling with the doorknob. Was it Elisa, who had slipped back after her midnight excursion and wanted to clear her tracks? The boy, having finished bidding his companion a goodnight kiss? Or… something else…?

She stepped down the hallway, her puffy slippers producing no creaking of floorboards. The figure continued with the door, having a rough go of it with a key. When it finally locked the door with a clack, it shifted around, right towards Margaret.

“Elisa?” the ballerina asked, lifting her hand away from the candle’s flame. 

The fire immediately illuminated the mysterious visitor: his face was a rotten skull, discolored with time yet still sported a few strings of long, black hair. He wore a black, wide-brimmed hat that hid most of his face, and wrapped himself in a dark cloak. 

“Ye should’ve stayed in bed, lass…” the visitor whispered as he raised a dagger, its blade gleaming from Margaret’s candlelight. 

Margaret screamed, dropping the chamberstick as she ran back to her room and slammed the door shut. She held her weight against it as she turned the lock, shielding herself from the monster outside. 

She heard the clack, clack, clack of footsteps, getting louder and louder until they came right beyond her door. A few moments passed before they carried on again, echoing past her room and beyond. The ghostly figure, that phantom, was lost to the theatre’s dark hallways once more.