ben_writer

The people standing in line numbered in the hundreds. People of all ages, shapes, and colors. Men and women and children of different races and hair styles and shoe sizes. A few of them were sitting against the wall near the entrance; they had been waiting in line for more than four days.
The high rises and condominiums kept the sun from shining on the line of people until eight. By then, businessmen and secretaries and students had passed by the line of people and searched the eyes and faces, in hopes of finding someone familiar. One man standing in line near the steps that led up to the library recognized a woman he had met at a bar a few nights before, and he called out to her. She turned to look at the man’s face behind the voice, but when she saw him, she turned and walked faster up the street.
When the sun finally illuminated the sidewalk and the facades the line of people crowded by, those who had been sitting, slowly crawled to their knees and hands and tried their wobbly legs. Children yawned and women primped. All the men looked divorced and hung-over. The excitement and anticipation had apparently drained from the souls of those in line. If asked, a man or woman or child would merely stare absently before responding, forgetting why they had made the decision to stand in this line. Then they would remember, and their eyes would widen, and they would lilt from side to side trying to refresh the stagnant blood pooling up in their limbs and head and torso. “The show,” they would say. “We’re here for the show.”
No longer was it an individual adventure; the line of people had coagulated into one body, all moving and thinking and speaking together. Once they had found a common interest, they attracted each other like magnets. Religion, politics, the beginning, the end – none of it figured into the grand scheme. Sure, it helped in conversation, to pass the time; but any argument always ended with, "Well, you’re here, so you must be cool.”
The rising sun filtered through the surrounding city. Steam rose from man holes and puddles. Leaves fell from trees with the sudden change in temperature. Within the line, sleeping bags were rolled up, blankets were folded and tucked away, tickets were retrieved from pockets and double-checked. A young man walking along the sidewalk on his way to work noticed a woman filing through her tickets in an envelope. The man’s face flushed; he repositioned his shoulder bag and reached out to the woman. With a deft hand, he snatched the tickets out of her grasp and started off like a frightened gazelle. The woman screamed, realizing her demise and misfortune so near to the entrance of the theater. If the thief had crossed the street immediately, he might have gotten away. Instead he sprinted parallel to the line of people, merely inches away from outstretched feet and legs attempting to trip the villain. One brave fool stepped out from the end of the line (he wasn’t in jeopardy of losing his place since everyone had amicably gelled into the family of ‘audience’), and he planted his fist directly on the villain’s nose, sending his feet into the air and his back to the pavement. The people in line cheered and clapped their hands; the woman’s tickets were salvaged. The morning continued, now with a story for everyone to tell absent friends and family members.
Finally, a man came to the door, the front entrance to the theater. A hush came over the line of people as the news of the doors opening reached them through word of mouth. The cries and cheers reigned out – the wait was over. The man inside the building was dressed in a suit; his hair was jet black. A patch covered his left eye. He did not smile. He did not blink. The man inside the theater didn’t seem to know why all these people had lined up outside the door. He obviously wasn’t excited about the show. The first time for the masses had turned into a hundred times over for the man in the suit.
Inside the door stood two more men in suits. These men wore sunglasses; their hair was slicked back and parted identically. Muscles rippled underneath their suits. They held their hands clasped in front of their bodies. Neither of them disclosed any emotion: faces of stone and stances wary of invalid intrusions. These men started taking tickets from the first people in line. One woman fourth from the front fainted at the feet of the suits, apparently overwhelmed with desire to see the show. A woman now in a suit came forward from the shadows of the theater’s lobby to drag the fainted woman from the procession. An extra man in a suit also stood in the shadows, waiting.
The venue was surprisingly small. When all the patrons were inside and seated and all the doors were closed behind them, the lights in the vaulted ceiling dimmed to near darkness. The man with the patch who first opened the front door followed the last person in line to the top of the middle aisle, between the swinging doors that allowed the only light from the lobby into the auditorium. The patch stood in the doorway for a few minutes. The people who had been standing in line and were now seated turned their heads to identify the shadow that lingered behind them. People who were in the back of the theater close enough to the doors who were looking at the man in the suit could see a slight smirk cross his lips. Then the suit stepped backwards and closed the doors, the low light from the lobby completely disappeared and the auditorium turned black.
A silence controlled the few hundred patrons. No one spoke or laughed or coughed. No one moved. No one breathed.
A woman screamed at length, “I can’t see my hand!”
“I can’t feel my legs,” shouted one man.
“Turn the lights back on!” a child reported.
“Fuck you, kid!” someone wailed.
“Shut up!”
“SHH!”
Finally everyone laughed and giggled into another silence, in anticipation and realization of the beginning of the show.
“I can’t believe we’re here,” a woman whispered.
“I know,” her husband said. “This is so exciting.”
Someone made a farting noise. A keen red dot started dancing around the darkness of the stage. An orgasmic moan sounded from the back of the theater.
After twenty minutes of darkness and pre-show jibberish, a man who had been drinking from a flask needed to go the restroom. Hand over hand, he groped his way back up the aisle he originally came down. When he reached the door in the back, the audience heard a clank and a crash and the man swearing profusely.
“The doors are locked! They locked us in!” the man shouted. If the rest of the audience could see in the darkness, they would have witnessed a grown man wilting to his knees and crying into his hands before wetting himself. No one in the theater knew of this occurrence though until someone complained of the smell of urine.
Desperation set in. Claustrophobia. Agoraphobia. Full bladders. Tired children screamed until they fell asleep. And all the while, darkness. Like the underground caves of Captain Jack’s Stronghold. Someone retrieved a key-chain flashlight, but the battery failed. Men and women flickered cigarette lighters, but a strange and almost expected breeze inside the auditorium blew them out in seconds.
Finally a voice cried out,” What the hell is going on?” After this, everyone was quiet, for the voice was answered. It started as a low rumble, a bass hum that seemed to come from the walls themselves. The rumble quickly turned into a person’s voice, a man’s voice, a pained tone. The audience was turned to stone. Again no one moved, for they were confused as to where the sound was coming from, and why.
The rumbling voice stopped as quickly as it had started; the silence permeated the darkness. Still no lights illuminated the theater. From the direction of the stage, people in the crowd heard shuffling footsteps. Slow, deliberate steps – feet dragging on dusty wood panels. With the steps came a heavy, nervous breathing, loud enough for all the patrons in the theater to hear.
The steps and the breathing stopped simultaneously, and all was silent. People in the audience craned their necks and heads toward what they thought was the stage. After such a prolonged absence of light, some people tried to convince others that they saw something.
The first image that everyone truly saw was a ball of light. The light was not projected from behind them, as if they were watching a movie. The light had no source at all; it hung suspended ten feet above the slanted floor of the theater, appearing to be higher only from the presence of a stage, which still no one could see.
The light soon illuminated an object. A pistol. A silver handgun held by a single hand, pointed into itself, to the right. The pale fingers wrapped around the taped handle of the gun; no arm or body or face belonged to the hand. The light was a perfect sphere, only revealing the gun and the hand.
A minute passed. Ten minutes. Half an hour. The hand did not move the gun, which seemed to be trained on something, but no one could see what. Without warning, the index finger stretched out to the trigger of the gun, and the audience gasped. A child who had been sleeping, awoke to the darkness and silence and a ball of light revealing a gun held by a white hand, pointing off-stage. The child let out a shrill scream that was immediately muffled by his mother’s fingers, but the damage was done. The silence was broken.
The gun turned in the hand and fired a single shot at the screaming child. The auditorium fell silent. Patrons sat in the darkness, listening to a mother weep upon her child’s death and watching the trajectory of the gun’s short barrel. The mother stood in her seat, in defense of her murdered son. She cried into the darkness and shook her fist at the ball of light. The gun and hand turned silently and fired another bullet, silencing the mother.
After this, not one patron moved or spoke. All eyes were watching the smoking gun and the pale fingers that hovered above the audience, unmoving, unflinching, dangerous. Suddenly the gun turned in the sphere of light, resetting the hand to its commencement point. The index finger stretched out again to the trigger, and squeezed.
Immediately the ball of light and the gun and the hand disappeared. Somewhere in front of the audience, a body slumped to the floor.
The man wearing the suit and the eye patch and the jet-black hair opened the two main doors in the back of the theater. Lights in the vaulted ceiling slowly illuminated the theater, but no one noticed. They all sat in silence, as if they had seen the show with the lights on the entire time. No dead bodies could be seen.
After a minute, a young man stood from his seat, retrieved his backpack and blanket, and walked back up the aisle to the lobby. Following his lead, other patrons rose and filed out of the theater, past the men and women in suits and sunglasses, into the sunlight of the day.

Vixen

Detail Detail. Detail I sorta want to read more of this, but your generalization in the opening pragraph threw me of. Don't just say they are all diffrent. Describe some of them, describe them well enough anyone could picture them. Describe them as if they are known, and then you can get away with a little generalization.