Cloaks of Darkness
The opera can wait. The cloakroom cannot.
A wet Tuesday, an opera house past its best, and a foyer full of brass and dust.
The Setup
You are early. Everyone is early. The velvet cloak on your shoulders drinks every scrap of light in the building and gives none of it back, which is a lovely thing to wear to the opera and a catastrophe to wear into an unlit bar.
South of the foyer is that bar. There is something written on its floor, in the sawdust, and it is meant for you.
What You’ll Do
- Get out of your cloak.
- Get it across the cloakroom counter, because only the attendant may touch the rack.
- Read what the sawdust says, while there is still enough of it left to say anything.
Every blundering step taken in the dark scuffs the message a little further. You will not know how much until the lights come up.
Tone
Ten minutes, three rooms, one shared ending. Warm, dry, faintly theatrical, and on a clock: two bells and then the curtain, whether or not you are ready for it.
Dramatis Personae
The Cast
The Attendant
The one fixed post in the building. Nobody else may hang a cloak, and the attendant has never once been tempted to explain why.
Guest
One to three of them, arriving whenever they arrive, each in a black velvet cloak that takes the light out of a room and keeps it.