FFM Challenge Me! #1 - Phontoom of the Apera

“So, what you’re saying is, the voices are telling you to kill,” said the ice cream salesman.

“No, I’m saying that light fitting is dangerous. It’s been creaking throughout the first act, and there’s plaster dust coming down! I’m an architect, I know-”

“I couldn’t care less. Ma’am, the show will recommence in five minutes. If you’re not buying an icecream, I recommend you return to your seat,” he told the wild-eyed woman, and put his earphones back in, buzzy thrice-compressed screamo drawling out into the foyer of the theatre.

Catherine glared at the youth, brushed nonexistent dust off her lily-white shoulder and flounced away. What a curse it was, to be beautiful and smart! Everyone who looked at her saw an airhead, and ignored her. She twirled a golden ring round and round her fingers, darting glances between the gilded sign reading “Dress Circle” and the few faces who still lingered, not yet returning to their seats. When the two-minute buzzer sounded, she was alone. Time to go.

She made as if to go up the stairs, but bore right down a narrow corridor, stepping over several velvet ropes, and carefully opening the door to the fifth box. She sat down, ignoring the man who was very visibly scrunched up beneath the chairs, determined that he really was a master of concealment.

“Well?” came a strained voice from under the velvet seats.

“No one is interested,” Catherine muttered.

“As I said! For there is nothing to fear from a simple chandelier.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Ralph,” she began, but was interrupted by the second act beginning. She looked up at the chandelier, which hung silent and unstable as ever, and sighed.

“No! I told you it’s perfectly safe here.”

“I just wanted a sensible night out, and you have to ruin it by hiding under the chairs again. Why can’t you be a normal husband?”

“Fine,” said Ralph, and extricated himself from the chair legs. He plonked himself down on the far side of the box from his wife, and pouted.

“I wanted an icecream,” he mumbled to himself, and kept on mumbling until the second interval. As soon as the lights came up he bounded out and down the stairs, into the stalls, and accosted an icecream salesman. Catherine looked on as theatre security dragged him off.

“Well, my dear, I did tell you many times you’d have been better of with me,” said an ethereal voice from within the walls. “And much as I hate to say it-“

“Don’t you dare.”

“I told you so.”