The Dead Pixel Society

© 2026 Zoe Taylor

She wanted to be like Elaine, or Lyra. She wanted that effortless poise, that command of the stage while strutting around in a flawless, Clarity Beige pleated skirt and tailored blazer. These were taboo thoughts, thoughts she had buried before, and yet... And yet now she couldn’t stop the flood of emotions anymore. The dam had burst, and she started to cry softly.

She wasn’t a project, and she wasn’t a train wreck. She just was. She leapt up and rushed out of the room, not wanting her sobs to carry all the way across the theater, especially when she heard the thud of the heavy Chemistry book slam shut below. Did Heather hear already? She ran back, turning off the CD player, and then disappeared into the shadows of the utility corridor, trying not to breathe as she listened.

---

“Yo, Aria,” Heather said warmly as Lewis or Aria, entered the theater. She stepped out of the booth. “I was beginning to worry that I’d scared you off.”

“I just needed some time to recover after gym class today,” Aria said, “Today was ‘new experience’ day - fencing. My quads feel like I’ve been riding one of those mechanical bulls you only ever see in TV shows about old bars.”

Heather giggled. “I actually know where there’s a real one of those, if you ever want to try it. I wouldn’t recommend it, but,” she shrugged. “I heard about Randy though.”

“You did?” Aria asked as they walked down to the stage together.

“Yeah. I mean, Elaine’s right across from me on my dorm floor. It’s easy for the walls to have ears when your floormates are swearing like a sailor,” she giggled. “I guess you had a front row seat,” she said. She no longer had to unlock the ‘Jessica’ door, and hadn’t for some time now. She was just walking with Aria to be social. “I don’t actually have anything for you today, I’m just here hiding out from an AP Chemistry exam that I didn’t study for, but if you want to go up to the observation room and just, decompress or whatever, I promise I’ll stay out of your hair.”

Aria walked up onto the stage and stepped through, but she looked out through the open ‘Jessica’ door, hand on the railing to ascend the stairs. “Hey, Heather?”

“Yo?” Heather said, not looking up. She had actually found an old Chemistry textbook somewhere, rather than using the digital tablet e-book most students used, and was staring intensely at a page, like she could will it into making sense by sheer force of personality, and failing.

“Thanks for letting me decomp here.”

Heather looked up at her. She gave her a small, sad smile. “Thanks for putting up with me. I know I’m a lot to deal with. I really do like you, Aria - warts and all,” she teased.

“Ribbit,” Aria answered, causing Heather to laugh, before ascending the stairs into the catwalks. Maybe Madison was wrong about her? No sixteen year old could be THAT good of an actress; if she was, she wouldn’t be at Clarity Prep. She’d be on the sound stage of a Disney production like all the other child stars.

Aria climbed up to the observation room and sank into the chair. She leaned down, switching the power switch on the CD player. She didn’t actually expect it to turn on, and yet, the disk drive gave a little whirr of complaint, like it had just been asleep and was yawning back at her. She pressed the ‘Next’ button until the LCD displayed a ‘09’ and pressed ‘Play’’, but turned the volume down low enough that it wouldn’t disturb Heather down below.

Amidst the symphonic rock of the intro organ and Tarja’s stunning, dark vocals, Aria leaned her head back, looking at the graffiti, the ‘Sing, my angel of music’ that W.W. had written there.

“God, Wish you were here right now, whoever you were,” Aria sighed. “I bet you wouldn’t be afraid of just... being yourself.”

No one answered. No magical mentor named W.W. or R.W. or even Raven emerged from the shadows to hold her hand, like this was some kind of mystical adventure, nor did she expect it.

She just sat in silent thought, letting the metal and the wails of Tarja wash over her, cleansing away the emotional grime of the past month as she shut her eyes, daydreaming of what it would be like to be Christine for just one, fleeting, beautiful night.

“Your spirit and my voice, in one combined...” the words drifted up from the speakers and Lewis, Aria, reached a hand up to touch her throat. Even in the starched, sawtooth chain of a Lewis mask, she realized here, and now, she didn’t simply want to keep her soprano, although now it was down to a mezzo soprano. She didn’t want to be the boy who can sing like a girl.

She wanted to be like Elaine, or Lyra. She wanted that effortless poise, that command of the stage while strutting around in a flawless, Clarity Beige pleated skirt and tailored blazer. These were taboo thoughts, thoughts she had buried before, and yet... And yet now she couldn’t stop the flood of emotions anymore. The dam had burst, and she started to cry softly.

She wasn’t a project, and she wasn’t a train wreck. She just was. She leapt up and rushed out of the room, not wanting her sobs to carry all the way across the theater, especially when she heard the thud of the heavy Chemistry book slam shut below. Did Heather hear already? She ran back, turning off the CD player, and then disappeared into the shadows of the utility corridor, trying not to breathe as she listened.

When she didn’t hear the telltale steps of sneakers on metal floor grating, she knew she was safe. She pressed her back to the wall and threw her head back. Instead of a scream like in the music room, she inhaled deeply, straightened her posture, and let a clear, deep, resonant note ring out. Tarja had a beautiful, dark, brooding voice full of body. Aria wanted a voice like that.

“The Phantom of the opera is me, inside my mind,” she sang, voice echoing, carrying and filling the corridors with the somber song. She knew she had to get to class - one last class to end the day, but now? Now she could face it, Lewis mask be damned.

For just the briefest moment, she thought she could smell a hint of mint in the air. It was as alien as, well, as an octopus on Mars, come to think of it. The dry, acrid, dusty air being disrupted by the sharp, fresh scent of mint just made as much sense as a screen door on a submarine, but there it was. Aria wrinkled her nose. It was gone now. Probably just a phantom smell. She turned to make her way back downstairs. English Lit 1 waited for no man - or woman.

Outside, a rainstorm had finally begun and it wasn’t just the heat shower microburst of the other day. This was a full gale, heavy rain and thunder, and by the time Aria got to class, small bits of hail had begun to pelt her. To her relief, the NFC readers were all glowing a solid green. Apparently someone had initiated an emergency weather override, at least on the external doors. She ducked inside, panting heavily.

Aria entered the classroom and immediately removed her wool blazer, hanging it across the back of the chair so it would dry faster. Lewis would have just suffered with it. Aria was more pragmatic, and frankly, cared less about the Clarity Silhouette inside a classroom anyway. The teacher, Mr. Pearce, was standing next to the digital smart board, preparing the day’s lecture and glanced over his shoulder.

“Wet enough for you?” he said jokingly.

“It’s the second coming of Noah out there,” Aria laughed. “You don’t think there’s going to be a tornado do you?”

“Nah, I think we’re only at a 1% risk, Torcon 1,” he answered jovially. “Although with how blasted hot it’s been for September, nothing would surprise me. If there is an emergency,” he said, pointing up at the old intercom system, its boxy brown speaker perched like a wart on a very large, beige frog as he continued, for the benefit of the other students coming in,”They won’t announce it over the Clarity network. They’ll use the old intercoms. That way everyone knows what’s going on.”

The smell of mint caught Aria for a second time in the past ten minutes, and she glanced up. This time, it wasn’t Madison either, just a freshman girl taking an Icebreaker mint from a packet in her purse. She smiled and offered the packet to Aria.

“Oh,” Aria said, graciously accepting it. “Thank you.”

“I forgot to brush my teeth this morning,” the girl admitted with a sheepish smile as she put the packet away again. ‘Dont’ judge.”

“Now, I believe we left off previously discussing the standard interpretations of novels such as The Great Gatsby and The Strange Tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” He tapped the smart board, and a rendering of Victorian London appeared. “So, as you may recall, we were discussing how the common interpretation is that Jekyll’s failure was his inability to compartmentalize his so-called ‘non-standard’ urges. In essence, he lost control of the transition. Anyone have any thoughts?”

Aria felt her ‘Lewis’ mask tighten, but not because of the starched too tight shirt collar. This was one of those moments where Lewis would just smile, nod, and accept the established answer as being the correct one. Aria’s hand shot up before she could stop herself, and the Lewis mask became a passenger in her own mind - not a split personality or a whole new person by any means, not like Jekyll and Hyde. It was just that the mild mannered Dr. Chambers mask was finally off, and Ms. Aria was in control.

“I don’t think he lost control of the transition, Mr. Pearce..” Her voice rang out more clear and resonant than it had in the last two weeks. “I think he just realized that Hyde was the only one actually breathing, actually alive.”

The room fell as silent as a Victorian graveyard at midnight, the sounds of rain, small hailstohnes, and punctuating thunder more prominent in the background now than they had been just a moment ago. Mr Pearce paused, stylus mid-air above the digital whiteboard. He turned to look at Aria. “Care to elaborate?” he asked, intrigued. That was not the standard textbook answer, and Aria knew it, but, she was prepared to defend her stance.

“In the book, Hyde is portrayed as a deformed version of Jekyll, but what if Hyde only looks deformed because he’s being viewed through a standard, conformist lens? Jekyll didn’t drink his serum to be a villain. He drank it because in his world, being the perfect, respected board certified scholar was a slow, agonizing suicide by attrition. He failed because he tried to live in two worlds that were built to exclude each other, like an octopus on Mars, eight brains trying to pull him in eight different directions, and the air finally ran out.”

Mr. Pearce nearly dropped the stylus, his jaw briefly open. “That... definitely isn’t an interpretation I’ve heard before, but I’m going to accept it and give you a 10 point bonus for adequately explaining your point. This brings to mind the philosophy of the death of the author. Is anyone familiar with the concept?”

To Aria’s surprise, she heard Kris’ voice at the back of the room. She didn’t even know Kris was in this class.

“Death of the author isn’t a literal death, but the concept that the author’s intent dies as soon as the written word gets into the hands of a reader. It’s up to us as readers to find our own meaning in works, just as much as we should try to interpret the author’s original intent. It’s what makes art art, and not AI slop.”

That got a round of applause, including from Aria. It was the perfect punctuation, a searing exclamation mark on her own statement. Or, maybe the extremely powerful Icebreaker mint was just starting to burn her tongue enough to make her feel alive. Six of one.

Kris caught up to Aria after class, and playfully bumped her shoulder. “Octopus on Mars? Jesus christ dude, that was fucking poetry.”

Aria giggled. “It better be. It’s how I spent my first month and change here - feeling exactly like that. Now, it feels more like the octopus finally figured out how to work the rocket’s controls and it’s on its way back to Earth, at least.”

Kris laughed. “Nice. Oh hey before I forget, Elaine says she’ll have that cable ready this afternoon. You can come by the girls’ dorm and pick it up after class, or I can bring it to you.”

“Wait,” Aria said, stopping to turn and face Kris, who stopped as well. “You know Elaine?”

“Yeah,” Kris shrugged. “She’s my dorm mate. You got assigned an upperclassman too, didn’t you? The whole “Put the new blood with the old and hope they don’t bleed out into the hallway” thing. She’s actually pretty chill though, for a girl.”

They paused as a loud clap of thunder quite literally made the walls around them shake. “I’ll see what the storm does,” Aria said. “If you don’t see me standing outside the girls’ dorm drenched to the bone by, say, 4PM go ahead and bring it, but I’d love to see what it’s like in no man’s land.”

Kris rolled her eyes. “It’s just like the boys’ dorm but with a lot more perfume and body spray. Just tell the RA or floor advisor or whoever we invited you if anyone asks, but I doubt they will, honestly.”

---

Author's Note:

Just a fun, useless piece of trivia to chew on, but this chapter, and the next two chapters, are set against the aftermath of the very real September thunderstorms that rolled through Iowa in 2025. So if you live in the midwest and you remember those storms, I'm sorry for the PTSD flashbacks I may be about to cause you <3