What happened after was like countless fragments of a dream, overlapping and swaying, hazy and unreal.
By then, I had already prepared myself for death. I squeezed my eyes shut and clamped my hands over my ears. That way, the last sound I would hear before I died wouldn't be the gunman's footsteps approaching, but my own soft humming.
The show's finale would serve just as well as the closing number for my life.
I am the evening sky, slowly bruising to purple
I am a conversation with nothing left to say
Gazing at you in the silence
My hands pressed down harder and harder. A bubble of air felt trapped in my ears, the pressure becoming excruciatingly painful.
Even with only my own singing in my ears, I could still feel the weight of another person on the stage—footsteps fell one after another on the floorboards, their heavy impact vibrating through my body, through my voice.
