The hallway of the theatre felt preserved in amber, untouched except for the slow accumulation of dust, fading velvet. As the two of them walked down the corridor, trying to work out what had happened. The warm amber light spilled from an ornate brass wall sconce, casting long shadows across deep red walls whose paint had darkened with age and cigarette smoke. Black marble trim ran along the lower walls, polished in places by decades of passing hands and coats.
“This place is strange,” Said Jon.
“I know what you mean its as if someone has pressed pause on everything and everyone here,” Karyn replied.
“Yeah, weird that,” Jon replied as they passed what they thought was a dressing room, where they saw some performers getting ready for some kind of performance.
Then, without warning, music burst into existence from somewhere inside the theatre.
Not gradually. One second, there was silence, and the next the smooth pulse of upright bass was already mid-rhythm, as if the song had been playing all along.
Brushed drums whispered beneath the melody in soft sweeping rhythms while a saxophone drifted lazily over the top, warm and breathy and impossibly alive in the empty theatre. Muted brass swelled between phrases, and somewhere beneath it all, piano chords rolled forward with polished nightclub elegance.
It sounded old-fashioned theatrical to Jon and Karyn. The kind of music meant for velvet curtains, cigarette smoke, and performers turning slowly beneath spotlights while audiences watched in silence.
And suddenly, everyone who had been standing unmoving in front of them began moving, picking up conversations as if they hadn’t stopped.
Jon turned towards where Karyn had been standing to see her trying to move out of the way of one of the formerly frozen performers, who was now moving towards her. Karyn took a step inside the dressing room that she had been standing in the doorway of, but the performer tried to move out of the way of Karyn, but somehow ended up moving ever closer to her.
Karyn moved the other way, but so did the performer. The two women were both trying to move out of the other's way, but no matter which way they moved, it seemed that fate had decided that the inevitable would happen. After the collision, both of them fell backwards to the ground: Karyn inside the dressing room and the performer out into the corridor near Jon.
Jon started towards his friend to help her to her feet. As he got closer, he noticed that Karyn’s outfit was different from what she had been wearing a second or two before. The only thought other than helping her to her feet that was in his head at that moment was now what?
