© 2026 Zoë Taylor
“Quoth the Raven,” Lewis said to himself, as he leaned on the walnut panel to which the painting was attached. To his complete shock, the panel groaned softly, like a rusty hinge that hadn’t been moved in 20 years had just been awakened.
“What the hell was that?” Kris asked, her head jerking up suddenly. Lewis didn’t answer right away. He felt along the paneling for something, and found it - a crack, almost invisible. He managed to dig his greasy theater-hardened nails into the crack and pried it back. Another low, echoing groan as the hinges protested, but gave way to a massive steel door, covered in acoustic foam on the other side.
In the library, that old, dusty jacket remained untouched, a mystery boiling and bubbling in the back of her mind like the Weird Sisters’ hell-broth in the Scottish play whose name Aria wouldn’t even utter within her internal monologue because she didn’t need THAT kind of bad luck right now.
Aria even got her very own Clear Com headset, old school local transmission, not Wi-Fi or smart anything, so it worked even when she was up in the literal and proverbial rafters, her new favorite haunt when she wasn’t in the library
She stopped singing, though. That was the cruelest irony of Madison’s warning. She observed. She sat in the observation room, and she watched Heather from there, the way she spoke to other freshmen, the way she spoke to other cast members who couldn’t hit their marks. Lyra seemed the only one immune from her wrath, and only because she always hit her marks, or acknowledged when she was missing them.
Heather, though, she had to admit, seemed a little bit manipulative too. She had stopped singing because it no longer felt safe. The poison had violated her safe space, her space between spaces, despite how she ached to let her voice be free again.
She fell into the overstuffed chair of the library that had become her usual spot. The red haired girl, Kris was there, again, except instead of reading, she was drawing on a physical sketch pad with an HB pencil. She looked up at Lewis.
“Jeez, what happened to you?”
“It’s killing me not being able to sing,” Lewis said bluntly. Kris blinked.
“Okay?” she answered. “So um, not to be a bullheaded, clueless manic pixie dream girl or anything, but... What’s honestly stopping you?”
Lewis shifted uncomfortably, glancing at her. “I... I dunno. There’s this place in the theater, where the acoustics are just... It’s pure magic, and I’m afraid to let my voice be heard because I don’t want to be someone’s pet project. But I don’t want to be someone’s social pawn either.”
“Ah,” Kris said, giving Lewis an understanding nod. “You’re caught between two political factions who want you to pick a side, and you just want to be left the fuck alone to sing. Kind of like how I just want to be left the fuck alone to read, or draw, or just... fuckin’ exist.”
“Exactly,” Lewis sighed. “Sorry for info dumping on you. I’m just... I don’t know if I’m cut out for this place anymore. I’m thinking of dropping out.” He shrugged.
“Honestly? Valid,” Kris answered with a shrug as she returned to her sketch. “They sell this place as being like a high class college. Nobody tells you until you’re already signed up that it’s more like being a boiled frog.”
“Even worse,” Lewis sighed. “The damn pot’s locked from the outside. If I quit, no more scholarship, and my folks are on the hook for a massive tuition bill for early termination or whatever. Fuck,” he sighed.
“Hey,” Kris said, “I can’t get the lighting right in here. You want to come with me to the art room? I don’t want to abandon you or anything. I just need better work light.”
“Thanks,” Lewis said. “For not abandoning me.”
Kris shrugged. “You’re alright, Chambers. Thanks for not expecting anything outta me.” She gave him a small, fractured smile before picking up the sketch pad and moving to leave.
“Can I ask you another stupid question?” Lewis asked. “Since you know I’m not going to flirt with you or anything now.”
Kris snorted. “Sure.”
“Was... Was that your jacket back there?”
“What jacket?” Kris blinked. “Oh! You mean that varsity thing in the back of the library?” Lewis nodded. “Hell no. I ain’t no pom-pom waving cheerleader,” Kris laughed. “And I hate basketball. That thing’s probably been there longer than anybody can remember. No idea why they don’t just throw it away.”
“I guess it’s just another relic,” Lewis said dryly.
“Like the broke ass HVAC and the NFC sensors you have to do a rain dance to operate,” Kris laughed.
“Exactly,” Lewis said, following Kris across the vaulted ceilinged lobby of the main building to where an NFC-locked door awaited them. “Speaking of the Clarity Shuffle,” he said dryly.
“You put your left foot in, you put your left foot out,” Kris sang, putting her watch to the sensor. When that failed, she practically slapped her smart phone up against it, moving it around. “You put your cellphone in and you drag it all around.”
The light finally turned green, letting them pass.
The art room was a true cavern, 3,000 square feet of lecture hall with a 30 foot high ceiling, and recessed, golden lighting rather than the harsh fluorescent of ‘daylight’-tuned bulbs in the rest of the school. Rather than the usual eggshell painted cinder blocks Lewis had grown used to seeing, the walls were covered floor to ceiling in dark, walnut panels to which were affixed a graveyard of old students’ past, or at least, their artworks.
Oil paintings hung alongside sketches, drawings, even animation cells artfully framed, with seemingly endless acres of unfilled space yet. While Kris sat down at one of the desks to continue her sketch, Lewis walked slowly along the perimeter, admiring the art on display. He paused at an oil painting, hanging at eye level, of a girl with neon purple hair and wearing a black lace dress. She had plum lipstick and rocked an eyeliner wing that made Lewis squirm with envy.
A small, brass panel on the bottom simply read ‘Nevermore’.
“Quoth the Raven,” Lewis said to himself, as he leaned on the walnut panel to which the painting was attached. To his complete shock, the panel groaned softly, like a rusty hinge that hadn’t been moved in 20 years had just been awakened.
“What the hell was that?” Kris asked, her head jerking up suddenly. Lewis didn’t answer right away. He felt along the paneling for something, and found it - a crack, almost invisible. He managed to dig his greasy theater-hardened nails into the crack and pried it back. Another low, echoing groan as the hinges protested, but gave way to a massive steel door, covered in acoustic foam on the other side.
“Hooooly shit,” Kris said, now standing behind Lewis.
“Quoth the raven,” Lewis repeated with a hint of triumph in his tone. The room, apparently, used to be a sound isolation booth. Analog recording equipment on one side with a glass window peeked into a small room with a stool and an expensive microphone setup on the other side.
Most curious, someone had plastered a polaroid photo of the actual girl from the painting in the flesh, grinning at the camera, on the inside of the window, facing out. Lewis couldn’t resist it and pulled the door closed behind them, leaving them in total darkness apart from their flashlights on their phones. The wi-fi died instantly, but, crucially, so did all sound.
They could no longer hear the HVAC hum or the groan of a water main, the mundane white noise that became so ubiquitous as to be completely ignored, and yet in its absence, the sudden silence was deafening.
Kris flipped on a light switch, and more recessed, golden lighting clicked on rather than the expected harsh fluorescent. “This is amazing,” Kris gasped. “Check it out! You can get up into the utility corridor I bet,” she said, pointing out the utility access ladder bolted to the wall, leading up to an acoustically treated panel in the ceiling.
Lewis - Aria? Definitely Aria, walked over to the control panel where a set of studio headphones had been left sitting, their coiled XLR cabling looking as fresh and clean as if it were brand new.
“Either someone’s been here, or...” She grinned and sang out a C5. Kris jumped and spun around. Aria was beaming. She knew she could hit the D5 with effort, but the C5 just rolling right out like that felt like a massive win.
“Fuck me. Chambers you’re a god damn human pipe organ!” She looked equal parts shocked and kind of impressed, too.
Aria beamed. “I think I just found my new safe space between spaces.”
“Oh man,” Kris said, “That big beige box! I haven’t seen one of these outside the movies!”
Off in the corner, away from the sound equipment and built into a shroud lined with what looked like copper or aluminum foil was a big, beige PC tower with a 24” CRT monitor, an absolute behemoth with a beige mechanical keyboard. The front of the tower simply said ‘Gateway’ and had a cow box logo, white with black patches in the form of a cube.
“See if it powers on?” Aria asked.
Kris shook her head. “No dice. Looks like it’s missing the power cable. But maybe we can find one in one of the old storage closets somewhere. I’ll keep an eye out.”
“Oh,” Aria said, taking a look for herself. “Yeah, this is a standard IECC kettle cable. We’ve got a ton of them in the theater, but I’ll see if I can find one no one will miss.”
“Hey, Chambers?” she said.
“Yeah?” Aria asked.
“Thanks, dude. I don’t just mean for showing me this, but... for being a decent human being without wanting something.”
“Yeah, same honestly,” Aria said. “You’re like the one person I feel like I can trust with this secret who won’t try and twist it around on me later.”
Kris gave Aria that same war weary expression she knew too well. “It’s nice to take off the mask once in a while.”