Proscenium — Part III

Week 18: Written May 5, 2016

Read Part 1 here. Read Part 2 here.

Strange how quickly we all forgot about Helen.

That’s not to say that she was particularly memorable. She was, if anything, the opposite. We all have those acquaintances — typically at work or school — who are altogether bland. They wear bland clothes, they speak in monotone, they smile and laugh, but not enough to draw your attention or make you care. And then they leave at the end of the day to go home to their bland spouse with their bland kids and you don’t give them a second thought until you see them again the next morning.

That, in a nutshell, was Helen.

But considering she was the only person who actually escaped from our…situation…without death or dismemberment, you’d think she’d be pretty damn hard to forget. We should’ve built a monument in her honor.

Even that horrible night, as I watched and translated Gertrude’s subconscious leg shaking, it didn’t occur to me that she might be spelling out Helen’s name. I was afraid it was “Help” or “Hell” or something equally terrible like that. In a way, though, the name “Helen” was far worse.

I only bring this up now because, when I woke up the morning after our dramatic protest, there was a note on the floor. Someone had slid it underneath the door while I was sleeping. It had my name on it in big block letters, and underneath that, it said, “Tell no one about this.”

It was a letter from Helen.

You might be wondering how we knew that Helen escaped. Well, she was a background character in the show, an extra really, which fit her just fine. But one day, Henry noticed she wasn’t present for rehearsal.

“Where’s…um…Helen? Hello? Has anyone seen Helen?”

After much back and forth, we all realized that, yes, Helen was in fact missing. And on top of that, she’d been missing for days. It’s possible she was gone for as many as five days before any of us noticed she was gone.

Henry went crazy. He demanded we all go back to the dorms immediately and search for her. I found his outburst a little insensitive; it was obvious that he cared more about the show than Helen’s safety. But search we did, both the dorms and the theater. It wasn’t until someone thought to look under her pillow that we found the evidence we were looking for.

A note.

“I’ve found a way out,” it read. “Good bye.”

A perfectly bland note written by a perfectly bland person — who knew the one and only piece of information we were all desperate to find out.

Henry didn’t buy it at first. And to be honest, neither did I. But then the powers that be made a change to the program, listing Helen as a former performer and “recently retired.”

Later on, after Terry died, he wasn’t called “retired.” He was wiped away clean from the cast list, like he no longer existed at all, which was fairly accurate.

Our unseen overlords seemed to respect Helen for her “retirement from the stage,” as they called it. To us, that meant she had somehow, some way, freed herself from this theatrical prison and run off to live her golden years in peace. Good for her, right?

Not really.

There was unrest, anger, and jealous spreading through the group, all because Helen had jumped ship and left us all here to rot.

“Why didn’t she tell us? Why didn’t she let the rest of us in on her little plan?”

Maybe we have Henry to thank for our short memories. He guided us past the Helen incident by completely ignoring it. Once her retirement became official, he moved on and instructed us to do the same, to stick with our roles, rehearsals, and performances as scheduled.

I think, early on, there were some copycats hoping to mimic Helen’s silent escape. Nobody succeeded, though, and no more cast members vanished thereafter.

Until Terry.

I opened Helen’s note with trepidation, and I saw her name at the bottom of the letter before I even read anything else. It was a short note, straightforward and to the point:

“Don’t let anyone else try to escape. It’s a trap. –Helen”

That’s when I heard a commotion from down the hall. I ran out the door and saw a crowd gathering outside Ted’s room. Shit.

When I got there, though, his room was clean. No bloody explosion today, folks. False alarm.

It took me a moment to see what was wrong, though: Ted was missing.

“Where’s Ted?”

Clara, who was standing in the hallway looking tired and disappointed, shrugged. “See for yourself.”

I walked inside and saw a slip of paper resting on Ted’s pillow. It read, “I’ve found a way out. Good bye.”

Shit.