This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »
SkeetSkeet · 100+, F
The mechanical whirring grew louder, vibrating through Hailey’s sweat-slicked body as she stirred awake. Her eyelids fluttered open to blinding spotlights burning her retinas. For one disorienting moment, she thought she’d died and been resurrected as some twisted disco ball —every inch of her glittering with drying fluids under the harsh theater lights.
“What the—”
Her voice died as the platform locked into place with a metallic clank. The scent of mildew and stale grease paint assaulted her nostrils, but it was the sudden, deafening silence that made her blood freeze.
Five hundred pairs of eyes stared back from the velvet-shadowed auditorium.
Hailey’s brain short-circuited. She lay sprawled across the raised platform like on a half-formed yoga pose. Her fit, toned body head to toe naked. The cold metal beneath her back held a viscous puddle of Mark’s earlier ‘contribution,’ its edges dripping lazily over the platform lip onto the stage below. Plink. Plink. Plink. A grotesque chandelier.
“Is this… part of the set?” came a tremulous voice from the wings.
Lars Vanderhof’s wild curls practically crackled with electricity as he stormed out from behind the red velvet curtain, his theater script crumpling in his fist. “Who authorized this avant-garde bullshit?” he thundered, before freezing mid-stride.
The playwright’s intense gaze raked over Hailey’s glistening form—the smear of iridescent fluids across her thighs, the handprints blooming purple on her hips, the way her chest heaved with panicked breaths. His nostrils flared.
Click.
The sound of a professional camera shutter cut through the tension. Through the glare of spotlights, Hailey glimpsed Eva Marquez crouched in the front row, sea-green eyes blazing as she adjusted her lens. “Natural vulnerability,” the photography student murmured, more to herself than anyone. “The raw collapse of social artifice…”
Chaos erupted backstage.
“Cut the lights!”
“Is that real bodily fluid?!”
“What the—”
Her voice died as the platform locked into place with a metallic clank. The scent of mildew and stale grease paint assaulted her nostrils, but it was the sudden, deafening silence that made her blood freeze.
Five hundred pairs of eyes stared back from the velvet-shadowed auditorium.
Hailey’s brain short-circuited. She lay sprawled across the raised platform like on a half-formed yoga pose. Her fit, toned body head to toe naked. The cold metal beneath her back held a viscous puddle of Mark’s earlier ‘contribution,’ its edges dripping lazily over the platform lip onto the stage below. Plink. Plink. Plink. A grotesque chandelier.
“Is this… part of the set?” came a tremulous voice from the wings.
Lars Vanderhof’s wild curls practically crackled with electricity as he stormed out from behind the red velvet curtain, his theater script crumpling in his fist. “Who authorized this avant-garde bullshit?” he thundered, before freezing mid-stride.
The playwright’s intense gaze raked over Hailey’s glistening form—the smear of iridescent fluids across her thighs, the handprints blooming purple on her hips, the way her chest heaved with panicked breaths. His nostrils flared.
Click.
The sound of a professional camera shutter cut through the tension. Through the glare of spotlights, Hailey glimpsed Eva Marquez crouched in the front row, sea-green eyes blazing as she adjusted her lens. “Natural vulnerability,” the photography student murmured, more to herself than anyone. “The raw collapse of social artifice…”
Chaos erupted backstage.
“Cut the lights!”
“Is that real bodily fluid?!”