Happy Halloween!
I decided to skip the spooky and go for some kind of creepy reality! I hope this makes you as freaked out as it did me!
It had started as your average Friday date night. Then, over dinner, Liam announced that they had two tickets to see the latest Broadway Touring Show. Michelle was dying to see it and Liam, her amazing husband, surprised her on their monthly date night. They had gone to a fancy dinner and halfway through, Liam had sprung the tickets on her as an early birthday gift. They went straight from dinner to the show. Michelle was barely able to contain her excitement as she entered the balcony of the auditorium.
“Which seats are we in?” she squealed in a whisper.
A woman in a vest with a flashlight approached them. She handed Michelle and Liam each a playbill.
“Y-12 and 13,” he said. “I think we’re a row from the back.”
They made their way up the stairs. It felt like they walked a mile before they found their seats. There was a single row behind them and it was quickly filling with people. At one end, a family sat chatting. The man looked to be in excellent shape while the woman seemed thin as a rail under her flowy sage-colored dress. Between them sat a little girl. The girl bounced in her seat. She seemed to be just as excited as Michelle. At the other end, a man in his seventies held his petite wife with her blueing hair and blue dress close to him. These seats were barely big enough for Michelle’s large butt, but they seemed to swallow the elderly woman like a monster devouring its prey.
“Wow! We’re in the nosebleeds. Literally.” Michelle chuckled and Liam shrugged. “I would have worn better shoes and some undershorts if I had known we’d be walking a mile after dinner.”
Liam waited for Michelle to squeeze into the seat before he joined her. He kissed the top of her head.
“This is all that was left when I bought the tickets. I’ll try to get them earlier next time.”
“I’m just thrilled we’re here! I was starting to think you forgot after we missed the show for our anniversary this year. Can you believe we’ve been married for two years?”
“Of course, I can.”
Michelle turned to face him, tucking her legs as far back as she could while someone tried to get past them, casting sour looks down at Michelle. She ignored it, figuring it was because she took up too much space.
“Because it’s torture to be married to me, so it seems like forever?” Michelle teased, trying to get her brain back on her excitement for the show.
“No…”
Michelle didn’t hear the rest of what he said because as she turned back toward the stage, she noticed how far away it was. It looked like it was miles from their seats. The actors would be ants marching around the stage. Her breath caught in her throat. She began to picture the balcony collapsing beneath them. She imagined them all falling to an agonizing death. In her mind’s eye, she saw the floor falling out from under her fancy-sandaled feet.
She stopped the thoughts by tearing her eyes from the stage and looking at Liam again. She stared wide-eyed, almost through him, as she tried to take her mind off the new idea that had snaked its way into her head. As a writer, she was prone to some pretty imaginative thoughts, but the most common thought she had was, This must be foreshadowing.
It never was. That was just her overactive mind. So she tried to shake the thought. She tried to think of something else. She was in this process when she realized Liam was talking to her.
“Michelle, are you okay?”
His voice ripped through the fog of imagination. Her lungs filled with air as she finally remembered to breathe. It felt like it had been hours since her last breath, but she knew that was impossible.
“Michelle.” Panic made Liam’s voice pitchy as Michelle continued not to respond.
She took a grounding breath.
“I just realized how far down it is, then my mind went crazy picturing us fa–”
“I don’t want to hear about it. You’re gonna freak me out.” Liam knew Michelle’s overactive imagination well. “Plus, I’m sure they had amazing engineers design all of this. We won’t fall.”
“You’re right.”
Chatter filled the theater as people filed in and took their seats. Quiet voices quickly became a roar of people talking over one another. Michelle and Liam flipped through the playbill. Their voices joined the roar as they discussed and followed some of the performers on Social Media. Before they could finish reading biographies, the lights dimmed.
A cheery voice insisted people take their seats and turn their phones off. Michelle followed instructions and tucked her phone into her purse. She put the cross-body strap over her shoulder. She kept everything in her purse and had forgotten it before, so she liked to leave it on when she could. Then the idea that this was foreshadowing filled her mind again.
She shook her head to get the thoughts out. As a reasonable human being, she knew that life didn’t have foreshadowing. She resolved to spend a bit less time on her computer writing and a bit more time engaging in reality.
The show began and Michelle grabbed her husband’s hand. She gave it an excited squeeze. The little girl behind them squeaked out excitement when the Overture ended and the actors filled the stage. Eventually, she rested her head on Liam’s shoulder and he wrapped his arm around her like the old man had done to his wife earlier. He held her tight. Occasionally one of them would give the other a squeeze as if to say, ‘I love you.’
The first half of the show went by quickly. When intermission rolled around, Liam and Michelle joked about the show. They discussed what they enjoyed and what they hoped to see in the next act. They also discussed the overly loud mics and how they hoped that would be better during the next act.
Michelle kissed Liam’s cheek.
“These tickets were totally worth it though. I love you.” She kissed him again.
“Happy early birthday, my love.”
The lights went low again. Music filled the theater. People scurried to their seats like mice as the show threatened to begin without them.
Then a quiet misplaced cracking noise caused everyone to look for the origin. The show resumed, but a portion of the balcony near the front to Liam and Michelle’s left was not paying attention. Another cracking noise caused a middle-aged blonde woman to start screaming at the lady with the vest and flashlight. Other people began to move toward the exit. The show continued on as the balcony began to descend into chaos.
More people began to jump up and move toward the exit.
Then the groaning of metal sent Michelle’s heart racing and most of the people on the balcony running toward the exit below them. People were being trampled as most of the seats around them cleared out. Michelle and Liam looked for the best path to escape. Risk falling from here or being trampled to death.
The show continued as the people on the floor began to look up at the chaos above them. Several people began hopping the seats instead of using the stairs. The balcony shifted again. This is when Michelle and Liam noticed the emergency exit behind them at the same time. They jumped toward the last row.
The balcony shifted again as the front portion broke off and fell. Blood-curdling screams filled the auditorium. Individual instruments began to drop out of the orchestra and voices fell from the chorus as the people on the ground level raced to their exits. More of the balcony broke off and fell.
People flooded out the rear emergency exit as the lower one had fallen to the ground. House lights stayed down and light flooding in from the lower-leve exits began to disappear. Michelle saw the rear seats were bolted to the wall. She decided to take her chances as the floor literally fell out from under them. Michelle hugged the seat back, unsure if the seat itself would stay.
“Grab on!” she shouted to Liam.
He followed suit. They held tight as the floor fell out from beneath them. The balcony dropped from under their feet. Michelle clutched her sandals with her toes as her legs fell. The bottom of the seat went along with the floor.
“I love you!” Liam and Michelle screamed at each other over the panicked shouts of other people and the crashing of metal and concrete to the floor.
Michelle dangled from the seat, not caring that her underwear flashed everyone below.
“I love you,” Liam breathed.
“I love you too.”
The woman from behind them fell with a scream as her sage-green dress billowed around her, making her look like an angel. Her howling stopped when her body landed in the rubble.
“Mommy!” the little girl from earlier screeched. “Mommy!”
The man tried to comfort her. Michelle’s arms already began to ache as the weight of her body pulled them down.
The girl had gone from screeching to crying as the man with her tried to get her to the walkway still attached to the fire exit. The show had finally come to a full stop and the house lights were coming up so that they could see better. It took a minute for Michelle’s eyes to adjust.
“Emily!” came a man’s voice. Michelle turned her head to see the old man who had been hugging his wife crying as the old woman fell to the floor. “Emily! Please…”
The old man sobbed. Michelle wanted to comfort him, but she couldn’t speak. The old man looked like he had a hard life. His skin was tan and leathery, he wore jeans and a large cowboy hat with expensive boots. He held the arm of the chair and looked like he was thinking about following the woman to the floor.
The man with the girl had stopped moving for some reason which caused the girl to get more worked up. The girl let go of him.
She screamed as she fell, but the man caught her with one hand. Michelle tried to work out how to get over there to help, but her mind would not let her arms let go of the seat back. The man clung to the arm of the chair while the little girl dangled from his free arm.
“Hi, there!” Liam’s voice was cheerier than Michelle would have expected. “I’m Liam! What’s your name?”
Michelle tried to chime in something too, but fear held the words in her throat. The girl sniffled, letting go of the man’s hand with one hand to wipe her eyes. The man clung to the girl more tightly.
“Emily.”
Liam used the arms of the chairs like monkey bars and began moving toward the two. The old man stopped crying, seeming to realize they needed to rescue the girl.
“My wife’s name is Emily and I’m Frank.” The old man’s voice cracked as he said her name. “Emily is a good name.”
“Can you say, ‘Hi’, to Liam and Frank?” the other man grunted as he tried to hold the girl.
“Hi, Liam. Hi, Frank.” She added a wave with the hand that had been wiping her tears.
Michelle urged her mothering instinct to kick in and let her speak. But it didn’t. All she could think was, Don’t look down and See, this is why you guys don’t have kids. Michelle and Liam had wanted children, but that had not been possible for them. Michelle wondered if that had been foreshadowing for this moment, even if she hadn’t felt it then. Maybe they couldn’t have kids because the universe knew this event would leave enough orphans.
Michelle tried to open her mouth to speak and focus on helping Emily, but no noise came out. She couldn’t get past her fear of falling or that Liam could fall.
Liam reached the girl and helped the man get her up to where she could sit across two arms of the chair.
“Thank you, Liam,” the man said. “I’m Joel.”
Liam hoisted himself up to get the arms of the chair into his armpits to hold him up.
“Happy to help. Is she your daughter?”
Joel shook his head. “Her mom is my girlfriend. Tonight is our first meeting. Emily loves musicals, so I thought this would be a good idea.”
Michelle was trying not to think about how badly her arms ached. Or how far away the ground was. Or how painful landing on the pile of cement riddled with rebar and bodies down below.
“Hey!” an ant down below shouted. “There’s people up there!”
“We have a chi–” One of the arms Joel was clinging to cut him off when it dropped to the ground below. It was one of the arms Emily was sitting on and she scrambled to hold on to the other. Liam grabbed her foot as she slipped and used it to pull her upright on the arm she was now sitting on. Joel swung himself to another chair arm.
A cracking sound from the other side of Michelle. Frank’s chair was hurtling toward the floor, but he swung agilely to a new chair.
Liam’s chair arms went next. Michelle thought she might throw up from the feeling that she might lose Liam.
But he had been ready for it and was already clinging to the back of the chair like Michelle. Then Emily’s fell too, but Liam had already gotten her to hold on to the back of the seat as he supported her.
Joel and Frank were still holding on to the arms of their chairs.
“Hold the seat backs, not the arms!” Michelle’s voice was quieter than she had meant for it to be.
“What?” Joel called back.
“Hold on to the back of the seat!”
It was too late though. Another crack sent Frank and his chair falling to the floor to rejoin his Emily. Michelle felt tears in her eyes.
“We need to get to the exit. Can you move?” Joel asked.
“Me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Michelle willed her arms to let go and let her move, but they wouldn’t do anything.
“I can!” Emily shouted. She was standing on the arm of a chair and bounding across to the exit. She tried to jump to the exit, but she missed. Joel caught her, just barely.
Emily screamed in agony as her arm stretched disgustingly. Joel used her injured arm to swing her onto the walkway leading to the fire exit. Emily sat in the fetal position, sobbing. Fire, police, and EMS sirens roared in the background, letting them know that help was on the way. Michelle took a deep breath as Liam and Joel looked at each other, seeming to be lost for words.
“Hey, Emily,” Michelle choked past her fear. “Do you hear the sirens?”
Emily looked up at Michelle.
“They’re here to help us.”
Emily nodded.
“If you go out that door, you can find someone to make your arm stop hurting.”
“And you’ll be safer out there,” Joel added.
“Will Mommy be there?”
Michelle realized that Emily didn’t totally understand the situation. Michelle weighed the results of lying to the girl with the risk to her immediate safety in a split second. Liam and Joel seemed afraid to lie to the girl.
But Michelle had already weighed the risk and said, “Yeah. If you go out there, she’ll be there. Just go all the way down the stairs.”
Emily jumped to her feet as her arm dangled limply at her side. She shoved the door open and set the fire alarm off. The adults still dangling from chairs jumped, but managed not to let go.
Michelle’s arms were the only thing on fire in the building, but the alarm continued to honk out a warning at them. The sprinklers began going off. The cool water did not soothe her arms by any means.
Joel began moving toward the exit, but another broken chair put an end to it. Then glass shattered from overhead. A firefighter peaked his head out from above them, closer to Liam than to Michelle.
“Jones?” the firefighter said to Joel.
“Barnes, these chairs are breaking and I don’t know ho–” The seat back Joel had been holding broke free from the wall. White hot fear rushed up through Michelle’s body. Fearful dread filled Liam’s face. Joel managed to grab the rebar jutting out from the floor of the walkway. Joel cried out in pain for the first time.
Adrenaline had worn off and all Michelle could think about was the pain in her arms and she couldn’t help the tears trickling down her face.
“Keep holding on. We’re working to get you out!” Barnes said, disappearing.
“So,” Joel huffed. “Since we’re just hangin’ out–sorry, couldn’t resist–What do you do?”
“I’m a tow-truck dispatcher,” Liam said.
“What about you?”
“I’m a writer.”
“Married?”
“To each other,” they said, simultaneously.
“Kids?”
Liam and Michelle were silent for a long time.
“We can’t have kids,” Michelle finally said.
“I can’t have kids either.”
“Maybe we should hang out when we get down,” Liam suggested.
“If we get down,” Michelle corrected.
The pain in her arms was making it hard to be an optimist. She found herself praying she was the main character in this story because main characters don’t die. But the agony in her arms and the thought that it would be so easy to simply let go told her Joel was the main character. Her death was going to be some kind of motivation for Joel to continue on.
Or Liam.
Actually, that made more sense. Liam was the main character. Something about the thought that Liam was going to make it out gave Michelle great peace.
“We’ll get down. I know those guys. I work with them. They’ll get us down,” Joel said.
Michelle smiled, sadly, at him.
“Barnes is a good man. He’ll–”
Like a genie in yellow, Barnes had been summoned and he returned to make Joel’s wishes come true. Barnes fed a harness out the window to Liam who was closest and talked him through how to put it on. Liam was hoisted safely inside and Michelle truly smiled, knowing she was right. That writing had predicted Liam’s safety.
They came for Michelle next, but couldn’t quite reach her. This gave her renewed hope and she held tighter, pushing past the pain, like the rats in the water experiment. Hope helped her hold on and prevent her from drowning until she was rescued. Hopefully, she wouldn’t have to wait hours upon hours like the rats did.
Another firefighter came onto the walkway from the fire exit and hoisted Joel up. Michelle started to cry again. Her heart was giving in to her fate of falling.
“See? They’ll get all of us.” Joel said when a rope ladder came out the window overhead.
“I’m still hangin’ out.” It was supposed to be a joke, but it came out harshly.
Barnes came out the window on a separate rope. The ladder was longer and Barnes was able to reach her this time with its help.
“CRACK!” went the back of Michelle’s chair as it fell. She tried to grab ahold of the ladder or anything else she could, but her arms were too stiff. She couldn’t reach out because the muscles were suffering from some form of early onset rigor mortis or something. As she fell one of her feet snagged in the ladder. Her ankle took the full force of her body’s fall. She cried out in pain.
She flexed her foot hard to hold her as she dangled precariously from the ladder. She started stretching her arms to regain their use. Barnes fed her the same harness that he had given to Liam. She followed his instructions to put it on.
“Alright, bring her up.” Barnes had waited for her thumbs up before letting them know to pull her up.
“Told you!” Joel called.
Michelle was up right now. It was hitting her how much pain she was still in. It seemed almost worse now.
“Yeah, you did,” Michelle caved.
Joel began walking toward the fire exit with a smile on his face. Her heart was feeling lighter now. But this was real life, not one of her stories, and she was reminded of that when Joel’s foot slipped. He went plummeting toward the ground. He tried to grab the rebar again, but he couldn’t.
The firefighter with Joel tried to catch him but he slipped too. He grabbed a hold of the rebar and swung back up. Joel was not so lucky. The last Michelle saw of Joel was his arm being sliced open by the rebar and mesh before he fell to the floor.
Michelle was sobbing for Joel as the other firefighters triaged her.
“Jones and Failsworth fell. Failsworth caught himself,” Barnes informed the other firefighters.
Michelle’s leg was swelling and bruising as they put her on a board and carried her down several floors of stairs. Liam was well enough to walk down with the firefighters. Michelle couldn’t stop crying.
Once down on the ground, EMS was too busy handling the more severe cases that had been pulled out of the rubble. Honestly, Michelle was feeling pretty lucky to have had the nosebleed seats at that point.
The firefighters continued to check in with Michelle and Liam as they waited for EMS. They kept hoping to see Joel coming out on a stretcher, but they knew that was unlikely, especially as they were beginning to pull more dead bodies out than live people.
Around the time the first body was brought out, the news crews showed up. One of the reporters set up near Liam and Michelle.
As he spoke, the reporter began to blame “The Obesity Epidemic” for the collapse of the balcony. Michelle resisted the urge to say anything, knowing how reports could be and that he was probably just regurgitating information that had been fed to him.
“Perhaps, the root of all evil is not the love of money, but the love of food,” he finished with.
After everything that had happened, Michelle’s worst fear was coming true. Being blamed for a horrific event that was wholly out of her control. She was too terrified to say anything, so she simply sobbed into Liam’s shoulder, fighting back the knowledge of something she knew to her core.
She was supposed to die in there. She deserved to die.
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