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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Standing-ovations on 2024-09-19 13:43:04+00:00.

It feels like a lifetime, but I have never been so affected by a performance before.

I had waited a long time for this evening. Plácido Domingo—the legend, the voice that had captured the hearts of millions around the world—was going to perform Verdi’s Otello. As a child, my mom and I listened to his records, watching VHS tapes of his performances, even though the video quality was quite poor. Now I stood here, finally, in the grand opera house of the Wiener Staatsoper in Vienna, anticipation building inside me as the lights dimmed, and Plácido’s almost unreal presence filled the stage.

His performance was flawless. More than flawless. His voice was strong, commanding, and powerful, carrying us into the tragedy of Otello. Every note, every movement was perfect and refined. The audience sat spellbound, mesmerized by the pure magic of his art. When the final note faded and the curtain closed, there was a brief moment when the audience, struck by awe, sat in complete silence. The silence was charged with tension, the air electric. And then—applause.

We all rose to our feet, clapping in praise and admiration for the performance we had just witnessed. The applause was well-deserved—after all, Plácido was a genius. I clapped along, cheering with intensity, my heart pounding with excitement. I had never before felt so overwhelmed with emotion during a performance. The crowd was full of energy, and the sound of thousands of clapping hands at once was like an unbridled force of nature.

Plácido came back on stage, bowing deeply, his face glowing with humility and pride. The applause intensified, the sound echoing off the ornate walls of the opera house. Naturally; he was, after all, a living legend. He bowed again, waved, and left the stage for the second time. But the applause continued.

The clapping had now gone on for quite a while. Three to five minutes? Anyway, it felt like it would never end. At first, I reveled in it. We were all celebrating a transcendent moment, a kind of collective worship. But soon, a strange sensation crept in. The clapping felt different now. More forced. More relentless. As if we had all agreed to keep going without knowing why.

Seven minutes. A faint pressure started building at my temples. I shifted on my feet, glanced at the faces around me. Everyone was still clapping. Smiling. Enthralled. Should I stop? No one else was stopping. I scanned the room, hoping to catch someone’s eye, someone who might share my hesitation. But they were all enraptured, clapping like their lives depended on it.

I checked my watch. Seventeen minutes. You don’t understand how long seventeen minutes are until you’ve clapped through every second of them. My palms had started to ache, the skin warm with friction. Each minute felt like an entire year passing, each second a weight dragging me deeper into this overwhelming experience.

The noise. It was unbearable.

It had started as a simple, rhythmic applause, a natural reaction to the performance. But now? Now it had become something else. The clapping had intensified, deafening, like a tidal wave crashing over me again and again. The sound filled every corner of the hall, overwhelming my senses. 

Twenty-five minutes. My ears were buzzing from the constant assault, so loud it seemed to drill into my skull. The pressure. The pain blossomed deep inside my head, spreading to my temples, distorting my brain. The lights above us burned too bright, the air grew too thick, and I swear, for just a moment, the walls began to close in.

And then I felt it, with a sickening warmth. The wet trickle running down my neck.

I raised my hands, trembling, and touched my ear. Blood.

I froze, my heart pounding in my chest. The sound, the immense pounding of a thousand hands, thundered in my head. Each clap like the precise strike of a hammer, ringing and pounding with intense force. I wanted to scream, but my voice was lost in the noise.

I looked around, desperate, but no one seemed to notice. Their faces were blank, their eyes glazed, their hands moving in that endless, mechanical rhythm. The room began to blur, the faces around me turning into indistinct shapes, their hands nothing more than ghostly blurs in the low light.

Thirty-three minutes. The clapping reached new heights. I winced as another wave of applause crashed against my head, and the ringing in my ears grew into a scream. My palms ached, my arms trembling, but I couldn’t stop. There was a weight in the air, as if being the first to stop clapping would betray the moment, a sin against the magic we had all witnessed.

My palms began to burn. At first, it was a faint warmth, like friction against the skin, but now the heat grew sharper, stinging. I looked down and saw small red lines blooming in the center of my palms, the skin raw and tender. I kept clapping. I couldn’t stop. My heart beat in time with it, each pulse reverberating in my temples, in my ears.

Fifty-one minutes. Plácido appeared again. A sound wave so loud I felt my bones tremble. Little pricks of pain in my skin. I looked down. The skin had split in places, my hands slick with blood. My elbows ached, they shook with each clap, the joints grinding together like rusty metal. I felt the tendons in my arms tighten like an overstretched harp string, about to snap.

Plácido stood on the stage, his face shadowed by the stage lights. He bowed deeply once more, but there was something wrong with his smile. It stretched too far. It was as if he was no longer real—just another part of this nightmare we had created.

The clapping echoed even louder, a thunderous sound that felt like it would never end. The unbearable pain. The assault. But I couldn’t stop. I won’t be the first to stop and, in doing so, dishonor the great Plácido Domingo.

A full hour passed. The woman next to me groaned, her eyes wide and glittering with fear. Her hands were red, slick with blood like mine. She looked at me, her lips trembling, as if she wanted to say something, anything. But she didn’t. She just kept clapping.

The ringing in my ears had become deafening. Each clap felt like an explosion inside my head. I could feel the blood running faster, soaking the collar of my shirt, the pain blinding, suffocating. It drowned all thoughts, reason, and logic.

Sixty-four minutes. Would this ever end? Could it end?

Plácido bowed again.

And I kept clapping.