It didn’t usually rain in the summer, and when it did, the day did not remain so humid, nor the clouds so thick, gray, and low in the sky. When it did rain, it left the nights warm and uncomfortable: the moisture retaining the heat and sweat remaining unevaporated on people's faces. Still, none of this was a sign of something strange – all it meant was dreams in hindsight of having reapplied deodorant or not brought a jacket now needed to be lugged around over the shoulder. 

One or two stores down, on the corner opposite to the church (where we had found ourselves bored late one night), the lights were on; and like the unstimulated moths we were, we fluttered towards it. The building was the shape of an old movie theater, with a physical box office, and the big light-up vertical sign outside that would have advertised the movies, which now read in big letters: The Show.  

We got our tickets – a result of peer pressure without a better alternative. Behind the box office, in a wide overhang before the actual entrance, there were glass cases with mannequins inside, each of which held their hands wide, high, or in an otherwise odd manner and sporting some strange accessorizing garment. My favorite was the big winter hat made to look like a bumblebee, with wings that reached down to strap around the chin; although, it did seem a little impractical. 

Inside there were poster advertisements for the shows. None of them had names, just The Show at the top, a picture of the performer doing some sort of classic magic trick, and a time at the bottom. Behind where there would have been a concession stand, there was a wrack selling the bee-hats, other mannequin ware, and prints of the advertised posters. All were in near full stock.

While there was no one around as we inspected the building and entered, we stood together in the middle of the lobby gazing, watching as various people trickled in: an old man with a permanently snarled and half-open mouth, a tall woman with black frizzy hair dressed in flowing linen, a couple with a small child dressed for a summer wedding with the dad sporting circular sunglasses, and various lone uninteresting individuals leaning along the walls of the interior. After a few nervous yelps, the woman in linen began to speak, straining her voice, trying not to scream. 

“Hello everybody, and t-thank you for coming.” She tended to speak stuttering at the beginning of each clause. “If you would all follow me into the showrooms and take your seats.” She said and turned, rushing behind two doors. We followed right after her, and she was already on stage, hidden poorly behind a curtain, mumbling her introduction to herself. We took seats at the front and watched as everybody waded in – I stared at the splintering wood of the added stage, the nailed-in metal handles next to each seat, the sign in the back reading The Audience with an arrow pointed down toward the chairs, and the foam structures coming off the walls adding odd angles and forming acoustics so the old man’s breath from across the room was heard faintly right behind my left ear. 

Once it was perfectly quiet, she began again, in the same scared and strained voice struggling to fill the room she would use through most of the show. “Hello everybody, and welcome to my show! Tonight will be an exhibition of truth through experience! and I am going to need just one willing member of the audience to participate; however, I’m sure you’ll all find you will equally share in tonight’s showcase.” Although her voice shook and echoed unsettled off the odd walls of the room, she placed weight on each syllable as she held her arms up and apart to the grandeur of her statement. I nudged my friend and raised up his hand for him as he pretended to resist. “Thank you, young man, come up on stage for me,” She reached out her arm towards him. “What is your name?” 

“Justin.”

“Welcome, Justin. Could you grab that chair for me, please?” She pointed, “Right behind that curtain.” He turned to get it. She spoke more hurriedly. “Yes, thank you – very good, now take a seat facing my side.” She looked up from the audience and didn’t look down, didn’t relax her directing arms until after he had sat and was fully still. “Are you ready?” 

“Mhm.” 

“Wonderful!” She nodded down to the audience, smiling. “Let us begin!” She turned to Justin and spoke to him softly and, now with confidence, instructed him to relax and follow her voice and command. She assured him he would be fine and not to worry. His face had gotten progressively more pale since he had gone on stage. She turned back to her audience and continued in her typical worriedness. “W-we will be conducting hypnotherapy on our friend Justin here. I have instructed him simply to relax and follow my commands–” She faded off not quite knowing what to say next and paused. “Onward!” 

She started by gently letting a stopwatch sway in Justin’s face, telling him to “fall into her trance” and to “sleep at peace” and other phrases you may expect from a psychic. Before making him stand with arms limp, spin around in a few circles, raise one leg, and answer questions: his name, his mom's name, and the name of his dog even — all answers I knew to be true and that he answered monotone, in mumbled syllables, he had to spit out of his limp lips. 

At one point, she asked: “Are you a chicken?”

“No.” 

“Can you be a chicken?” 

“Yes.”

“Be a chicken for us.” And so he did: his eyes still closed, his thumbs tucked under his armpits, strutting around, pushing his head back and forth. “Isn’t this wonderful?” She declared to the audience who remained silent before she blinked and scampered backstage, coming out with a single handful of wet canned corn. “Do you want some corn?” He said nothing but trotted towards her, shoving his face in her palm, spilling much onto the floor. “Ok, Justin, you may stop being a chicken,” He stopped, “and sit down for us, please.” He did. “You may wake!” She announced to a few soft murmurs. She turned to him again, “How was that?”

“I don’t know” He looked towards me with a raised eyebrow, speaking normally again.

“Does your mouth taste like corn?” He paused and moved his lips around for a moment. 

“Yeah…” 

“Good, good,” she said, getting high-pitched. “Do you know why?” she said, still excited. 

“No.” 

“Yes, good, good,” she repeated. “Now, I need everyone’s attention.” She quickly lowered her tone, returning to nervous authority. “You all need to close your eyes and focus on any discoverable essence of,” Her voice broke, and she spoke high-pitched and happy “Justin here,” She returned. “And connect yourself to his experience and each others’.” She turned to him. “And Justin, I want you to–don’t you worry–allow these people to all share in your experience and connect yourself with theirs. So everyone breathe deeply as I count. 5. 4. 3 –Remember to relax everyone!– 2. 1.” She snapped. 

It's a strange feeling, losing personhood. It’s a strange thing being The Audience. We had all phased into each other, and so we felt our hands simultaneously on our lap, behind our head, holding onto those metal bars, our legs crossed, spread, and tucked up to our chin. We watched the woman as she stared at us and we stared at her from all angles from which there were eyes to look. One might expect that we would find it strange to experience bodies foreign to us; however, the single body we may have previously inhabited was equally strange to us as a whole; one may think that we may find comfort in having parts of our former selves possibly a part of us now, but that is a fallacy, there was no former self to transition from, there just wasn't us, experiencing, here, before, and there is us, experiencing, here, now. In fact, the notion of ‘us’ as a ‘we’ is itself flawed. I am only I and have only ever been I and me; I just exist in a form more comfortably known in the plural. Justin, his friend, the old man, the couple, and their kid are not concrete discoverable beings present within us, they are not here, and only we are. We are The Audience; we are a singular self. 

The woman smiled and spoke softly in an exhale. 

“I think this has worked out well, hasn’t it?” She had begun to speak, giddy, yet still strained, and turned to us, looking at what was Justin’s body. “I would like to show you s-some more basic procedures before we really get going.” Still staring at that body she continued. “Put your finger to your nose, please.” And so we did. “Stand up, please.” And so we did; and so we did various motions common to a game of Simon Says before sitting again. 

She stared off for a moment, seeming more or less pleased with herself, but she kept most of her weight on one leg and let her free foot fidget away her nerves as she went on.

“F-focus your attention on your bottom, and its p-pressing against your chair. Allow in your sensation that pressure to be lifted, and allow the force keeping you there to be removed from you body.” The bodies began to rise. “Oh, and grab onto me and those metal bars by your seat – just in case.” We floated weightlessly, and some of our old bones soothed, being relieved of their stress, we were comforted holding our mother's arms, and relieved to hold onto our child; our stomachs tingled with excitement laid thickly over fear. We enjoyed the sensation before being gently lowered along with her command. “Hehehehe!” she clapped, laughed, and stomped as we lowered down. “Wooo,” she hollered before finally settling her glee “We may proceed.”

We followed her more; she told us to no longer hear, and so we didn't. We received back our hearing and were told not to feel, and so had no sensation of touch, no discomfort in our seat, no acknowledgment of our head resting on our shoulders before she directed it back to us. 

“Focus on your being, your self, your physical manifestation. Remove for me, that self from the universe.” And we did, and we saw no one behind us or in front of us, nor any of our bodies in chairs, yet still stared at the woman directing us. She gave us a moment to experience it. We no longer felt our bodies — they were not there. We did not see out of our eyes, they were missing too, but we simply knew she was up there and could make an image out of her light, seeing both her eyes and the back of her head. There was no weight of our head on our shoulders, but there was the empiric (a posteriori) knowledge of the room, its texture, and temperature, as well as all vibrations known to be sound flowing through the air, walls, and floors.  “And if you may,” she winced as she spoke, averting her eyes to her empty room. “Return yourself in front of me.” and we reappeared. 

“Now,” she waited and spoke seriously, filling the room in full, “remove all sensation, all interaction, and all being from the husk you know as yourself–” She may have continued speaking, but we did not hear. We saw nothing, no darkness, and no light. The only thing to remember is the nothing, no moment of it, no particular aspects, no ability to consider time. The room with which we had become so familiar was gone, no possible way to discover it, no possible way for us to remember its existence, nor was there any remaining notion or experience of us — no entity known as The Audience to know itself — at all.  

We returned in that same moment and saw her standing in a party hat and something in her hand. “Become, if you could,” she broke “those individual selves now.” I did and remained still, in my one seat, with only my two legs, looking from one point of view. Justin tried to get up, and the woman walked him to the seat beside me before rushing back on stage. “This is the conclusion of the show,” She pulled a string, and a small pop of confetti came out of a small plastic nob she had been holding. “Thank you!” The curtain fell to the floor, weighted, with no elegance, in front of her — her shoes stubbily sticking out underneath. 

The theater lights slowly rose, we rose, the rest of her audience rose and began to walk out. The man in round sunglasses stood at the exit of the theater handing out slices of cheesecake and forks along with a slip of paper. He gave us a slice and two plastic forks; the slip of paper was a Polaroid selfie of the woman with a party hat on in front of all our limp bodies.

We walked slowly through the main room with the posters and bee hats, and as we approached the doors, the woman took out an index card. It shook in her hand as she read with the same shaking voice that had started the show.

“If a tree falls– If no tree falls in the woods, yet it is still heard, it may lay there rotting, feeding the worms and centipedes – all one yet in a million parts; If a tree does fall, and there is no soul to hear, there was never a forest at all… T-thank you!” 

Justin and I left and sat on the stairs of the church beside an untouched cheesecake. I didn’t eat but chewed on my fork, and neither did he at first, but eventually, he started to nibble at it, bit by bit, until (eventually) it was gone. We barely talked. We went home.