When the man was walking down a flight of stairs and peered around the corner out of instinctual curiosity, he found a double door that he thought would lead to nowhere, or maybe a closet. The man approached the door and opened it, to find a large auditorium with maybe twenty rows of seats, the next higher up than the one before, and a wide stage at the front of the room.

Lying peacefully in the spotlight at the front of the stage was a silver flute in perfect condition. The man ignored the rows of seats and decided to first explore the obvious flute, as if it was being presented to him. When he picked up the flute, he admired the polish of the metal, the simple intricacies of the buttons and mouthpiece, feeling out the shape of the object.

He gently raised the flute to his lips, positioned the hands on the buttons, and began to play it. He did not know how to play the flute, but the sounds just flowed out of him and through the instrument, producing a tranquil melody that broke the dreadful silence the man had experienced for several years. The music was a welcome surprise and he continued to play the flute with reverence, dancing across the stage as if he was a true performer.

The man imagined himself as if he was playing in front of an audience that filled the rows of empty seats and he was in a green costume. He finished his song and the crowd cheered for him, pleased at his skill. After him came several people dressed in costume performing a handful of classic plays and musicals. There were characters like Romeo, Juliet, Titania, Lysander, Helena, Dr. Frank-N-Furter, Brad, and Juliet. The people in these costumes had a passion behind their speech, a genuine pleasure that they were performing these acts, their smiles and laughs appearing real.

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However, once all the acts and plays were finished, and the audience had done enough cheering, the man found himself backstage, where all of the actors were bantering and changing. The smiles and laughs faded for many of them and were replaced with cries or screams.

There was a group of girls that were getting very passionate in their argument. Most of the girls were telling the others of how bad their performance was, they couldn’t get the crowd’s attention even if they killed themselves. They were shaming them about how they didn’t deserve to be in the play with how ugly and flat their bodies were and how unappealing their voices sounded. The smaller half of the girls were crying and arguing with the others, refusing to let those spoiled witches speak freely of them. Eventually, one of the crying girls slapped another girl, and the two groups started clawing at each other.

In another corner, there was a group of guys shoving around a smaller student and throwing his clothes on the ground, all the while laughing. One of the guys sauntered over to the man and grabbed his flute. He was belittling him of how pathetic his performance was, prancing around the stage like a fish and tainting the air with his horrific notes. He was poking the man with his own flute until the man suddenly woke up on the empty stage in the spotlight. As he got up, he noticed all the bruises covering his body and small cuts, which let a pool of blood form on the stage.

The man abandoned the flute and the auditorium altogether, walking out through the double doors.