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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/nomass39 on 2024-10-21 12:38:46+00:00.
If you met me on the street and asked me what my job was, I would tell you that I work from home consulting for an industrial laundry company. That is, after all, the cover story I have been provided with.
The reality? My job is even simpler. Every Friday night, I dress up nice, report to a certain theater downtown, have a seat, and watch a performance.
That’s it. All it takes is a couple hours out of my week, and I end up making six figures a year with every benefit you could possibly ask for. I know, I know. It sounds too good to be true. Pretty much anybody on the planet would kill to have a job like mine.
At least, perhaps, until they find out just what kind of performances I’m made to attend.
Before I start, though, I need you to keep in mind that I’m a good person. I donate thousands to the Rainforest Fund out of every paycheck, and me and my kids volunteer at the food bank weekly. I’m a devout believer, and I’m going to Heaven when I die. After all, I, myself, have never hurt anybody. Never raised a hand to injure any living soul.
How could you possibly call me a sinner, when all I ever do is watch?
It started about three years ago, when their job offer found me when I was at my most desperate. All I was told was, every Friday night, I would attend a performance at my city’s fanciest theater. That was it. I was baffled at first. What the hell do I know about theater, or ballet, or orchestras? Had they gotten me mixed up with some bigshot critic? During our talk on the phone, however, they politely reassured me that no critical ability would be required. “All we ask,” they said, “is for you to be there to bear witness.”
Everything about it screamed scam, but I figured, what the hell? Worst case scenario, I listen to a pitch for some MLM or timeshare, politely decline, and then walk out with some pocket money.
I was baffled when I pulled up to the theater. Dozens, maybe even hundreds of people were streaming in, all in nice suits and gorgeous gowns. I’d thrown on the fanciest clothes I could afford, yet I still felt severely underdressed. The theater was totally rented out by my ‘employer’, and only my fellow ‘coworkers’ were allowed in. How much could it have cost to hire such a massive crowd just to attend this one performance? Who could possibly bankroll something like this? I tried to empty my mind, and simply merge into that human tidal wave flowing through the doors.
Every staff member was dressed in a refined all-black suit, with black tie and undershirt, to the point they seemed to darken the air around them. Each wore a white comedy mask, the neoprene stretched into a grin of perpetual laughter, which struck me as almost mocking. They demanded that we hand over all electronic devices, even patting us down and running a metal detector over us. Then they reminded all attending not to leave their seats under any circumstances during the performance (recommending we take bathroom breaks before the show started) and to remain quiet and to keep our eyes open.
They kept repeating the same mantra. “No distractions. No diversions. No lapses in concentration. Remember: you are here to bear witness.
If I’d been alone, I would have left right then and there. There was a tickling in the back of my brain, some primate part of me screaming that there was something terribly wrong here. But mob mentality is a hell of a thing. Everybody else seemed calm, nonplussed, handed their phones over without a fuss. There were a few holdouts — probably other newbies like me — but eventually, they, too, relented. If everyone else is going along with it, I figured, why shouldn’t I? Who wants to be the one, single paranoid bastard who missed out on an easy paycheck?
Stepping into a gorgeous theater like something out of three centuries ago, I was most struck by the make of the stage. It looked like the back action of a piano, strange levers and mahogany hammers looking like fingers manipulating countless lines of piano wire, some over a dozen feet long. All the taut wires stretched in bizarre formations across the stage reminded me, somehow, of a spider’s web. I could not fathom a machine so complex, yet with such little apparent purpose.
The nature of the performance always varies. Sometimes its a work of Shakespeare, a ballet, an opera, hell, even a puppet show. That day, it was a concert featuring a small chamber orchestra of around 35. Students, it looked like, young and inexperienced, with a nervous air about them as if this was their first time performing before such a crowd. Mostly a string section, plus one of each woodwind, and just a couple each on horns and percussion. The conductor was one of the staff members in the comedy masks. I was baffled. Who would put forward this much cash just for a small, green orchestra to play in such a massive, prestigious venue? One of them must be a billionaire’s kid, I figured. It was the only explanation.
This, I’ve since realized, is always the best part. The beginning of the performance, when you can, if you try, lose yourself in the display and pretend everything is okay, that it’s all normal. It was best on those lucky days when the performers onstage were completely unaware of just what sort of danger they were in. That always makes it easier for everybody.
On that first day, I was as oblivious as they were, and simply enjoyed the music. Maybe some snob of the orchestral arts would hear their amateurish mistakes, but to my untrained ear, they sounded just fine. Pleasant, even.
But one question began to worm its way into my head, a small nagging at first which crescendoed into a hammering on the inside of my skull. How much time has passed? At a certain point, I suspected the intermission was long overdue. But there were no windows, and I had to part with my electronic wristwatch at the door, so really, getting any sense of time was impossible. I dismissed it as my lousy attention span at first.
But eventually, others began taking notice. No one dared speak, but among the fellow newbies, I noticed furrowed brows and sideways glances, confused and concerned. The performers seemed to be getting restless as well, whispering and gesturing to eachother and the conductor, who never ceased those robotic, sweeping motions of his gloved hands. It must have been two hours by then, if I had to guess, and they were starting to look exhausted, dehydrated. Some even looked as if they were about to quit playing.
“CONTINUE PERFORMING.”
In a moment, all of the piano wire loudly reverberated and stretched taut with the movements of those mechanical contraptions onstage, as the whole thing bristled and tensed as though it were a living thing. And that voice, cracking like thunder, seemed to emerge from the stage itself with a mechanical roar like the grinding of metal on metal. That seemed to frighten them into submission for a while.
It wasn’t until a half hour later that my life changed irreparably. They’d been playing a quiet sonata, so everybody could hear the sudden frrr-ting, accompanied by a pained yelp. My eyes leapt to one of the violinists. One of her strings had broken, and happened to snap her right in the eye. It could see the streak of scarlet bifurcate her pupil, before the emerging blood replaced the entire eye with a thick redness. She stood, clutching a hand over her eye and blindly grasping with the other, gesturing tor medical help.
And as she did so, that strange lattice of levers and hammers and pullies all roared and clacked to life, like a bear trap being sprung.
The machine’s efficacy was just as sudden, just as brutal. Those clockwork edifices moved like a pair of robotic arms, aiming a wire for her neck as if trying to garotte her. But they moved at such a speed that the wire seemed to pass through her, like she wasn’t even there. For a moment, she seemed fine, unaffected, as if nothing had happened at all.
And then, things began to fall off of her. Her head, severed at the neck, alongside the hand she’d been holding over her eye, and the very fingertips of her other hand with which she’d been grasping a little too high. All had been cut cleanly, with surgical precision. Time seemed to slow as they all went clattering wetly to the floor, and the girl’s body soon followed, as if it took a few moments for gravity to set in. Or, perhaps, for her body to realize she was dead.
It happened so fast, it was hard to be properly horrified. It was more like… awe maybe. Everybody stared at the chunks of meat that had once been a promising young woman with hopes and dreams. That spider web of wires was still rumbling and shaking all around them, and the mechanical voice roared once more.
“CONTINUE PERFORMING.”
They were given no further warnings. A few of them jumped from their seats out of sheer instinct, not even thinking. None of them made it more than a step before the wires divided them in twain. The rest just kept playing exactly as they had been, as if their brain froze up at what they’d witnessed and simply ran on autopilot, until their faculties slowly returned to them and they realized that this instinct had saved their lives.
Where once beauty filled the room, now the orchestra had been reduced to a discordant sound like a long, shuddering whine, like a mocking parody of music. They gripped their instruments with trembling, sweaty hands, playing just well enough to avoid stoking the ire of those quivering wires stretched taut all around them. …
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