The Dead Pixel Society

© 2026 Zoë Taylor

Heather actually beamed in the light of the lantern. “God damn. Maybe you really are one of us. Okay, let’s try a new one. Aria is what I call you, a nickname. Lewis Chambers is your scholar standard. Oh don’t look so surprised,” she laughed. “You think I’d let someone up here without finding out who they are?” She winked. “Anyway, you've got the trouser role, but up here in the shade you don't have to wear a mask. What's your true name?"

Lewis stared at himself in the mirror. This was the best he could do for clothing he didn’t mind getting dirty, or possibly ruined, an old hand-me-down Metallica concert tee that, ironically, was a gift from his older sister, and a pair of old denim jeans, relaxed fit that had a slight tear in the back pocket area with ragged edges at the cuffs. He didn’t look like a scholar standard. He looked like a stage hand in way over his head, which was perfect.

“Big date tonight?” Tony spoke up. Lewis looked at Tony through the reflection in the mirror. He was sitting on his bed, grinning at Lewis. “You’ve been standing there five minutes. Just curious.”

“Oh, no,” Lewis shook his head quickly. “Not with this crazy girl. I let myself get talked into helping with the theater stuff. I thought it’d be all bonding over retro music and stuff, but she’s got this chaotic neutral streak a mile wide.”

“Ohh,” Tony grinned, “In other words, you fell afoul of Heather ‘Fix it with duct tape and rip out the arm hair later’ Michaels. RIP your sleep schedule man.”

“That’s what Lyra said, too,” Lewis laughed nervously. “What the hell did I just sign up for?”

Tony just grinned. ‘Good luck, bruh.”

“Not helping,” Lewis groaned, walking to the door. By 9, things had started to wind down around the dorm. Most guys were on their way to bed or already asleep, and Lewis was just getting started on what was sure to be a long, exhausting night. Why did it have to be 9pm anyway? He’d been right there. That would’ve been the perfect time.

At least now that the sun had gone down, it wasn’t as oppressively hot, even if the humidity had somehow managed to push into the above 100% range, a low mist hanging over the campus, bathed in that annoying amber security street light glow that was perfectly calibrated not to disrupt anyone’s circadian rhythm, and downward firing so they wouldn’t shine in anyone’s windows.

Lewis was surprised to see the girl who had been reading Poe in the library out for a jog tonight. Instead of her scholar standard, she was wearing a black sports bra and white shorts, and it suddenly occurred to him that that couldn’t possibly have been her jacket he’d seen earlier.

Thick leather and wool, in this heat? She’d collapse the second she left the building. That was another mystery to solve later.

“Hey,” she said casually as she joggged past.

“Heya,” he said, turning to watch her, the dark red ponytail bouncing along behind her. She stopped and turned around to look back at him, too. She didn’t say anything, but she almost seemed like she had a knowing smile on her face for just a moment. She turned and continued her jog a moment later.

“Oookay,” Lewis said quietly and started moving back towards the theater again. The NFC reader again deceptively decided to work as soon as his hand got within six inches of the panel, shifting from the warm amber to a minty welcoming green. He opened the door, a blast of cold air threatening to bowl him over as he pushed his way inside.

The stage was dead silent. The seats were empty, and only the ghost light above the stage illuminated anything. Lewis couldn’t get into the Jessica door yet, not until Heather got here, so he just walked up onto the stage. A piece of gaffer’s tape had been placed directly under the ghost light. He stood on it, looked back at the sound booth again just to double check that he was alone, that Heather hadn’t gotten here yet.

He tilted his head back and started to sing, testing his vocal range. D5, D#5, E5... E#5? He coughed and cleared his throat. The E#5 was an E too far, but it wasn’t a D#5 at least. Small victories!

He tried to let go of his unnerved feelings at the silent auditorium. No one was here to judge him on his nonstandard silhouette, although he knew the slouch wasn’t helping, either. He straightened his posture and sang out a supported D5, focusing on maintaining the note and the vibrato comfortably - supporting, not forcing it.

A tone like someone striking a tuning fork rang out somewhere in the catwalks above and Heather spoke, “You’re about three cents sharp Celes. If you’re going to sing for the ghosts, at least give ‘em a show,” she said playfully.

“God!” Lewis yelped. Heather laughed.
“Nope, guess again. Hang on, I’ll be right down.”

A moment later the ‘jessica’ door opened, expelling acrid, dry air and the strong, musty smell of an HVAC unit that stopped caring about 30 years ago. Heather stepped out, a Coleman LED lantern in one hand, and a heavy duty mag light in the other. She offered Lewis the lantern. “I can find my way in total darkness, but if you slip and fall your first day it’ll be my ass in a sling - and yours too I guess.” She grinned.

“Gee, thanks,” Lewis said, accepting the lantern and taking a moment to figure out how to turn it on. He managed to actually not blind himself with it, which Heather seemed to find both amusing and mildly impressive, before turning to head back through the door. She left it propped open just slightly.

Beyond the door was a set of steel stairs, about eight inches high per stair, and coated in textured rubber. The stairway rail felt surprisingly cold under his hand, the smart ring making a quiet, continuous groan against the matte metal as he gripped it, following Heather.

The catwalks were absolutely not what he expected, although in truth he didn’t know what to expect. The odd discarded soda can, messages written on the walls like ‘R.S. + R.W. 4 ever 2008’ or ‘Jackie was here 1993’ plus occasional graffiti on the level of the Jessica Rabbit painting on the downstairs door.

“So, Aria,” Heather said, “Was it everything you pictured?”

Aria? Aria, née Lewis looked around, holding up the lantern. A thick layer of dust lay on everything - even the empty Jolt cola can resting on its side in the corner next to a cheese crackers wrapper that looked slightly less aged than the can, judging by its lack of dust. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “But I’ll admire the scenery later. You didn’t bring me up here for a social visit.”

Heather actually beamed in the light of the lantern. “God damn. Maybe you really are one of us. Okay, let’s try a new one. Aria is what I call you, a nickname. Lewis Chambers is your scholar standard. Oh don’t look so surprised,” she laughed. “You think I’d let someone up here without finding out who they are?” She winked. “Anyway, you've got the trouser role, but up here in the shade you don't have to wear a mask. What's your true name?"

“Can I think about it first?” she asked. “I would’ve had an answer for you earlier, but...”

“But?” Heather asked.

“But there’s already five Jessicas,” she answered hesitantly, testing the waters to see how Heather reacted. She didn’t laugh or roll her eyes. She just gave Aria a quiet smile.

“That’s valid. You can have Aria for both while you think about it, if you want - no pressure up here.”

“Thank you,” Aria answered softly. “Really... Thank you.”

Heather patted her shoulder. “We all need a place where we can go, where nobody will hear us scream. Just, some of us more than others. For me, that’s this place. C’mon, I’ll give you the grand tour, THEN I’ll bust your ass with the hard labor,” she teased.

One thing Aria noticed immediately was that the rafters up here weren’t just bare concrete. They were buttressed in a strange, almost vaulted way. Sure there were exposed steel beams, but there were also archways of concrete that might have looked beautiful in an exposed, gothic cathedral ceiling.

“Seriously, what the actual fuck was the architect who built this place smoking?”

Heather laughed. “You don’t know the history do you? This wasn’t always a private school. It was built in 1971, back in the cold war duck and cover days. Those archways?” she said, pointing her maglite at the ceiling, “Those are meant to increase the amount of stress the building could withstand. Hell there’s rumors to this day that a missile silo is under the gym,” she said conversationally. “The lighting grid’s this way. I just need to double check the wiring hasn’t been chewed on while I’m up here, then I’ll get you to help me with that damn rusty pulley. Sound good?”

“Sure thing,” Aria answered. While waiting on Heather inside the server room, little more than a cubby hole with an ancient server rack whirring happily away, and a stack of old, spinning hard drives in boxes resting next to it, she spotted another scrawl of text. It wasn’t just a tag. It was a musical note, with an arrow buried in the note head. It wasn’t drawn onto the note, but rather, where an absence of marker had been left, like someone had placed an arrow stencil and then drawn the note graffiti over it. It was pointing back out of the alcove.

Aria stepped out into the corridor. Another note with a similar arrow pointed further up. She cautiously followed.

She quickly found herself in another alcove with a stainless steel chair, rusted with age, sat right at the center. Someone had left a CD player next to the chair, and an old Nightwish CD from 2002, or at least the jewel case, lay in a pool of dust, a thin layer spread out across the case, and the CD player. She brushed away the dust from both, picking up the jewel case. She turned it over, and her eyes lit up. Someone had circled Track 9 - The Phantom of the Opera.

She looked around. Heather hadn’t come to yell at her for wandering off yet. She lifted her head and sang a note in her lower register, an easy C4. It didn’t simply echo back to her, but bounced off the ceilings and floor, creating a resonant frequency that chilled her bones.

“Oh, you found the observation room,” Heather said. “You can see the entire stage from here through that little slit, and if you REALLY want to troll the actors, you don’t even need the PA system to do the Voice of God if you do it from here.”

“Can... Can I try singing here? Before you put me to work I mean. I... I think this is what the W.W. note was telling me to find.”

“Everyone finds their own truth in those old notes,” Heather said. “If this is what you were looking for, by all means. I’d love to hear you sing something other than a sharp E5,” she teased.

Aria didn’t hesitate. She threw her head back, inhaled two lungs full of 50 year old air, and sang what was in her heart. It wasn’t perfect, light and airy like Christine in the original Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, bright, and airy. It was honest, raw, and dark, the girl Aria knew she was tangled up in the biological realities of who she was becoming, and it somehow just worked.

When she opened her eyes, she realized someone had actually scrawled the words ‘Sing, my angel of music! - W.W.’ across the ceiling, exactly where someone would only be able to see it if they were standing with their head tilted back and ready to do exactly that.

“Wow!” Aria squeaked. “I... Was that me?”

“It sure as heck wasn’t me,” Heather laughed, offering her not a hug, but a high five. “That was incredible!”

“Thanks,” Aria said. “Okay, now that I’ve found my new hidey hole, I’m ready to actually help you. Was this why you wanted me to come back so late? So I could find this room?”

“I’m not that smart,” Heather smirked. “The truth is, I made you come back because I had to know how far you were willing to go. I had to know I could trust you - and, for what it’s worth? I do trust you, at least to hold a rusty pulley while I WD-40 the snot out of it.” She pressed a pair of thick work gloves into Aria’s hands. “You better put these on though. You don’t want tetanus.”