AXIS MUNDI

A hole in the wall. I mean literally. Above the Rose Hill High auditorium there is a catwalk. Climb the rickety ladder backstage. Traverse the wobbly intersecting walkways to the end, which is situated where the auditorium begins, if one counts the entrance as the starting point. Endings, beginnings, all a matter of perspective. Decades old wood groans and sags with each step. Asbestos dust rains from the creaky fresnels as the whole structure shakes at the slightest disturbance. Only technicians are allowed up there, but everyone knows anyone can gain access without the least bit of trouble. Mr. Kaufman, the pervert drama instructor, is too busy bringing girls into his office where he films them with a hidden camera during intimate conversations, having long positioned himself as a confidante, one of the cool teachers, someone you can bare your soul to, and maybe more when his sweet talk worms its way into the minds of his more vulnerable and/or promiscuous students. It’s well-known that he fucked Charlotte Stone in the orchestra pit after a rehearsal for the spring production of Phantom. Not to mention the pitifully concealed peephole carved into the dressing room. How he’s maintained his post in light of these scandals is incomprehensible, though we’ve long suspected it has something to do with mysterious phrases such as burden of proof or statute of limitations. Because Mr. Kaufman is frequently AWOL, the drama students more or less have free reign of the auditorium and stage. That is, those who actually bother to stay in the building when class is in session instead of simply ditching out the back door for a rendezvous beyond campus grounds, be it cigarettes at the dead end or junk food at the Freez-King or more often than not God only knows what mischief in some older kid with neglectful parents’ basement. Why stay when you can skip? Some of the drama students like to perform before a crowd. They dream of Broadway or even Hollywood and so spend their time directing and coaching themselves, playing improv games, reciting monologues, memorizing Shakespeare, the usual. Others find it easier to play hooky without even leaving Rose Hill, having fashioned the old tech booth into a lounge of sorts, replete with television, video games, mini fridge, secondhand couch. Sixty minutes of MarioKart and Mountain Dew are always preferable to algebra or physics. The tech booth is a wonderful place to waste the periods away until the bell tolls freedom. Truth be told, many of us don’t want to go home after dismissal, whether on account of abusive stepdads or alcoholic mothers or sadistic siblings eager for someone to pummel. So we rehearse for the fall play or the spring musical or the student-directed one-acts and stay in our domain for as long as possible until the custodians shut off the lights and lock the doors. Even then, we know of a select few who have ventured to stay overnight, sleeping on an old army cot in the costume shop. Being its own wing and as such insulated from the school’s main building, the auditorium is a sanctuary for misfits like us, a ragtag band of stoners, queers, goths, ex-band geeks, all of the above. We play no sports. Academics are of little interest. We act out stories and pretend to be other people for a while. This is our escape. When we discovered the hole, new possibilities emerged, new means of fleeing reality, of entering other realms. Phillip Zelky found it first. He’d stolen the key from a hirsute janitor, a key that unlocked a hatch leading out to the roof. There wasn’t much to do up there besides kick gravel and hock loogies over the ledge, but the view was lovely, our town’s steeple-speckled skyline unblemished from such a great height. Exploring the catwalk, Phillip came across the hole by happy accident. He fetched a gang of us and together we inspected Phillip’s find. A bridge of pipes jutted from the catwalk’s rear into the crude hole, just big enough for a teenager to squeeze through. It was too dark for us to see where the hole led, how deep the tunnel went. Phillip, ever the adventurer, volunteered to go first. A small flashlight clenched between his teeth, he climbed over the railing and shimmied across the pipes. We all knew how close he was to death. One misstep would send him into a four-story freefall, the end of which spelled splat. Careful, careful! we whispered, as if afraid too much volume would offset his balance. Phillip, to his credit, was unflappable. The stretch of pipes wasn’t long, no more than five feet. Soon enough Phillip disappeared through the hole. He clicked on the flashlight and proceeded with his expedition. What do you see? we cried out after him, as the beam of light faded from view. We waited and strained our eyes and called Phillip’s name but only silence replied. A few of us assuaged their discomfort with forced chuckles and mutterings of bad practical jokes. Still, our contingent grew more worried with each passing minute. We elected to send Katie Quill, who could do backflips and handstands, and so in our estimation was the most nimble of our bunch and thus best suited for the task. Don’t look down, we cautioned, but Katie was aloof to the danger, giggling the whole way. She crouched in the opening, one foot on either side of the cinderblock wall. She held out her phone, but the glow seemed powerless against the black. Katie swung herself over and dropped out of sight. We didn’t hear a plop or a thud or a clunk. There was only the creaking wood of the catwalk as we fidgeted in place, too nervous to follow our friends, too guilty for a retreat back to ground level. What could we possibly say to Mr. Kaufman? After some deliberation and plenty of hem-hawing back and forth, we concluded there was no solution other than to leave Rose Hill without delay. If questioned about Phillip and Katie’s absence, we would feign ignorance. They hadn’t shown up for class that day. Last anyone saw them was at rehearsal earlier in the week. No, they didn’t seem strange or upset or different. No, they didn’t mention anything about leaving town. Gosh, hope they’re both okay. Hope nothing bad happened. Let us know whatever we can do to help. And they did ask. Mr. Kaufman, the principal, the parents, the police. We were all such wonderful actors. It was a fine performance. By the end, we’d almost convinced ourselves that nobody had the slightest inclination of what had happened to Phillip Zelky and Katie Quill. After the police began to direct their suspicions elsewhere, coupled with baseless rumors of Phillip and Katie having eloped somewhere out west, we returned to the catwalk on the possibility of finding new evidence as to the whereabouts and wellbeing of our old friends. Imagine our shock upon seeing the hole neatly sealed, a continuous row of gray cinder blocks, smooth enough as to render the former opening virtually undetectable, like it had never been there in the first place. The pipes were still in place, but the area where they met the wall was filled with mortar, seamless. At the very least, the presence of the pipes told us there was still a space within, a void behind the wall. Gary Normal risked a trip across the pipes for a closer inspection. He pushed and tapped the cinder blocks, felt around for depressions or soft spots. He listened with his ear flush against the wall. I can hear something, he said. A kind of hissing sound. Like steam. This we attributed to the pipes, though it was impossible to be sure. Defeated, we ambled back to the stage and ran lines for Suddenly, Last Summer. We were unfocused, preoccupied, a certain malaise having infected us all after the finality of Phillip and Katie’s disappearance had sunk in. No one felt bad enough to say anything to the authorities though, and we carried on with our lives, our fleeting, petty dramas. Months later, just before winter break, the catwalk collapsed. It happened overnight, thankfully, when the auditorium was unoccupied. Stewart Hakovitch was bunking in the costume shop and slept through the whole ordeal. The fire marshall conducted an investigation and determined the structural integrity of the catwalk had simply worn out over time. He blamed the disaster on shoddy construction, a lack of maintenance and the unrelenting force of gravity. The auditorium was closed more than a year for renovations. Drama students were relegated to the black box theater, where we found it much more of a challenge to come and go as we pleased, and Mr. Kaufman found it doubly difficult to film his pupils without their consent. And so we suffered out the rest of the semester in that stifling, dingy old room until summer came with the accompanying ennui of too much free time, the melancholy heat fatiguing both our bodies and our minds, all of us now utterly bored of getting into trouble. Who knows which one of us first had the idea, a strange reversal of our usual routine, but one night we snuck into rather than out of the Rose Hill auditorium, curious how our old haunt was holding up in the off season. The catwalk debris had been cleared, though many of the crumpled seats remained, and the pockmarked stage was decorated with yellow caution tape. Almost immediately we saw the hole had returned. There it was, exactly where it had been before, but without the catwalk we were powerless to reach so high a place. We threw whatever detritus we could find—hunks of concrete, empty cans, stray bolts—mostly missing the mark but landing a few inside the target. We all screamed when the rubble came flying back, as if someone had launched a return volley from inside the hole. We called their names. Phillip? Katie? No response. Then came the rope, unfurling from above until it reached the floor. We tested it, found the length sturdy. One by one we made our ascent. The hole was warm, inviting in its infinite blankness. Like the pendulous red velvet curtain drawing closed to signal the show’s conclusion, down we went. Endings, beginnings, all a matter of perspective.

by Matt Lee

Matt has previously published work in X-R-A-Y, Occulum, SELFFUCK, Surfaces.cx, Oomph! He is the founding editor of Ligeia Mag and his novel Crisis Actor is out now from Tragickal Books.