On the corner lot, of an adjacent side street, resides a rickety, run down theatre. Three stories high, with faded paint, and aging, weathered brick, this dilapidated structure plays home, to generations of aspiring actors, and their dreams. Inside, the ancient walls are caked, with brittle, yellow flyers, and decades of peeling paint. The auditorium stairs, are sagging and worn, from countless years, of continuous trampling. Parched and cracked, the floorboards reverberate, from the frigid, howling wind coarsing throughout the building's hallowed halls.
In these early morning hours, it lays abandon. Quiet as a tomb. Save, for one, lost soul, who has chosen to remain. Possibly, for all eternity.
A solitary candle, placed on a desk in front of a dressing room mirror, is all that is used to beat back, the bleak, winter darkness. Within the confines, of this cramped, musty alcove, the illumination it gives off, is more than sufficient for its user. Casting shadows, across the dust-riddled period costumes, and accenting the rich, texture, of the red velvet curtain hanging behind.
Reaching into a tin of white grease, she scoops from it a handful of paint. Applying it, in the same manner she has repeated, a thousand times before. With fingers she cannot feel, to a face she cannot touch. Her pallor now as bleached, as the falling snow outside, she partakes of the black tin. Methodically tracing tears, from the corners of her eyes, and a frown that drapes from the corners of her mouth. The mask of tragedy. As fimiliar to her in death, as it was in life. A part she continues to unknowingly play out. Over, and over again.
Because, in the afterlife, there is no final curtain.
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