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I was in shock for several moments after Tatiana left.
She was the saboteur all along! She was intentionally sabotaging herself to get out of performing in the show. The emotion and pain in her words was more powerful than any performance I’d seen from her on stage. I could even sympathize with her to some degree; the stress and pressure I’d been feeling this past week while preparing for the show was overwhelming. I couldn’t imagine dealing with that while also knowing I wasn’t good enough to have the show on my own merit alone.
Tatiana was the bad guy here, but in her own warped way she was a victim, too.
It was almost too crazy to believe. Surely this was all a nightmare I would wake up from at any moment.
As I stared at the flickering trashcan, a more urgent thought pierced my attention: she’s trying to kill me.
I could see flames out the top of the trashcan now, sending shadows sliding up and down the walls of the small room. The soundproofing foam next to the trashcan turned ash-grey, then quickly caught fire.
Everything will burn away, she’d said. I squinted at the stack of boxes that I’d previously ignored. Printed on the side, barely legible, were words that sent ice through my body:
PYROTECHNICS - HIGHLY FLAMMABLE
Tatiana wasn’t burning evidence. She was starting a fire to burn the entire theater down!
With me trapped inside here.
I started screaming even though it was useless; the cloth tied in my mouth muffled everything. Even if I could have screamed I’m not sure anyone would have heard me thanks to the sound-absorbing foam. But screaming felt better than doing nothing.
The fire spread up the wall like orange ink on a cloth.
The smoke given off by the foam was acrid and stung my eyes, and soon I was coughing. My mind raced. Someone would come for me, right? But I’d only been gone a few minutes. Intermission was half an hour, so there was maybe 15-20 minutes more before I would be called to the stage. And I’d deadbolted the door to my dressing room.
I’m going to burn to death in here.
The flames raced higher until reaching the place where the wall met the ceiling. Smoke accumulated above me and thickened in the air; breathing was becoming a problem. Most people died from smoke inhalation in a fire, I’d read somewhere.
I swung my body back and forth until the chair toppled over. Now I was on my side on the ground, where the air was cooler but still tainted with sour smoke. The cloth wedged in my mouth helped filter it out, but I couldn’t take a full breath that way. I started alternating two breaths through my cloth-blocked mouth, and then one breath through my nose. Even then, the air stung my nostrils and left a smoky taste in my throat.
The fire was moving across the ceiling now, faster than I ever could have imagined. It was like a sped-up time-lapse video of a fire. I wondered what chemicals were in the sound-proofing foam to accelerate it so quickly.
I’ll never live to find out.
I searched around the small room for something to cut me from my restraints. There was nothing except the edge of the pyrotechnics box, which would take hours to rub through. I pushed with my feet, sliding myself across the floor toward the trapdoor where Tatiana had exited. There was a thin metal handle recessed into the floor. I twisted myself around, fingers desperately searching for it. It was awkward while still being tied to the chair. One breath through my nose, two through my mouth…
There. My fingers wrapped around the handle and I jerked my body to yank it open.
It didn’t budge.
I tried again, then a third time. There was something locking it from underneath.
The dread that filled me was deep. I wasn’t going to escape. I was helpless.
I was going to die here.
The first—and silliest—thought that leaped into my head was how unfair it was that I didn’t get to finish the show. To an actor who had dreamed of starring in a show like this, being stopped halfway was worse than death. At least the reviews will be beautiful and tragic. They would tell stories of the greatest performance that was cut short. Few actors got to go out with a bang.
Then I thought about the four guys. I wished I had more time with them. Sweet Andy, with his elaborate dates and thoughtful expressions. Carefree Dorian who chose to pretend that the entire world was a stage. Rough and blunt Ryan, helping me be sexually adventurous and always being there for a good fuck.
Even Braden. Or, maybe Braden most of all. The man who started it all with his Tinder profile and amazing upper east side townhouse. He’d given me his own proposition like the one from the show, in a weird way. I wished I had another chance to make things right with him. I wished I could do it all over again and not fuck it up. The loss of that opportunity stung most of all, even more than my impending death.
And then his face appeared from the back of the wardrobe, kicking through the false door and stepping into the smoke. He covered his mouth and coughed, and began to retreat from the terrible flames now covering the room.
Then he saw me.
All danger now ignored, he rushed to my side and cupped my cheek. “Are you okay?”
