Her breathing shallowed and quickened.

She could feel her eyes dilating and her ears warming. Her heart was steadily growing louder with each moment it barked in her chest. She loosened and clenched her hands over her legs, for sure feeling that sweat soaking her pants. She wasn’t sure if it was from her palms or the way her pants rubbed uncomfortably against her thighs. Any more perspiration and she would drown, if the drops weren’t already in her lungs.

Most of these attacks were bad, but they were manageable; all she needed to do was change the track in her phone to something that was, well, the only word she would use to describe it was “self-loathing”. There was a certain calm to hating oneself, or at least she perceived it that way. She loved the sound of raw hatred emanating from a song, as the artist tries to express their self in a way that wasn’t filtered from their hearts. Sure, they might fashion those thoughts into something more refined and poetic, where they would try to abstract them into a familiar form (as her teachers would have said), but the image behind them still remained raw and fresh.

It’s that sight of suicide.

There was something about the idea of taking one’s own life, and placing it in a sort of suspended animation within a space of a memory or a song, that appealed to her.

A tap shook her body awake from the troubled reverie, forcing her arm to snap the buds out of her ear. She looked up to the stoic face beside her as he stood and swept his short and slicked hair back. He pointed to the open bus doors with an expectant gaze. She inhaled as deep as possible before filing in line to exit the suffocating can. It was helpful, but it did nothing to keep calm as she was transported to her destination. It only made the nervousness worse, which is far from what she needed for what is to come. For some people, the thrill of the jitters is what pushed them through, but she wasn’t extroverted like they were. Whatever shakes her will crumble her pillars from within, especially if she’s shaken roughly within what could be called a land-marine. Like a submarine, but on land? Puns were ranked second to suicidal music on the things that calmed her down.

The relief was finalised with the hop down to the platform. The sigh is always the sweetest part of the bus ride, where she didn’t have to stay in that death trap for any longer. The young man that accompanied her was already walking ahead, ignoring the fact that he was supposed to be by her side. She shook her head at his impatience before running up to him. She could feel the anger in her legs, lifting her up and sticking one of them out just at the right angle so that she could land on him while dealing large amounts of pain to his lower spine.

She blinked before she realised was beside him, his ever-stone face betraying nothing to the tiny girl.

“Empty-headed again, I see.” His soft voice, as monotone as it is, had a melodious nature to it. “I think today’s your record, Solar.”

“Eric,” The tiny girl whined. “You know how important this is to me!”

“Just remember to have fun with it,” He said as he slowly veered towards her. “We’ve been through this over and over, right?”

“Y-Yes…”

The lights, the faces, and the way their eyes followed her. Solar could never look directly into their pupils, nor could she look directly to their mouths. She never knows if they’re smiling, crying, or frowning and always assumed that the first reaction would be a collective booing at her relatively mediocre performance, and so she could never look at people’s eyes for fear of seeing the hatred being the first thing in their eyes. Except there was that red flash again from the stranger down the road.

Her legs froze. Solar couldn’t move. Her sleeves were wet now, white fingers hooking at the thick, black fabric. Despite the frigid winds of twilight, her legs were abnormally warm. And so were her cheeks, and her ears; and her eyes, her nose, and her insides. Her raven hair burned her skull, her brain melting from the heat that was collecting in her head. It was becoming hell in her body, the temperature rising quickly to reach choking levels.

Just like her first performance.

She couldn’t breathe.

She couldn’t live.

She shouldn’t live.

She wanted to express herself as raw as possible, even if it meant jumping in front of the next bus that comes her way instead of taking it out like any sane person by writing it down on paper, refining it, editing it, cracking away the imperfections until it was a shiny diamond that she could sell to the masses. Her heart felt like it was going to erupt in volcanic pain if she didn’t do something, but her instincts tell her to stay still and let it all smooth over. She froze just like before, during that first time-

Eric crushed her wrists.

“It was a year ago and the crowd loved it,” his lute-like voice rang in her mind. “Your fall didn’t deter from it. In fact, it made it better.”

Eric began dragging her to their destination, seeing as her eyes were unfocused and they needed to get there early. The guitarist shifted the black, nylon bag on his shoulder as he kept a steady eye on the little girl. He pulled on her wrists with both hands, inching her forward to their destination with each step back he took. It was a good thing that they left two hours before they needed to, or else she would start worrying about their tardiness. Then she would start panicking, and he would have to be Orpheus and venture into her inner Hades.

“You said you wanted to experience the thrill again,” he said. “I saw how alive you were on that stage, to the point where your body couldn’t take the intensity of your emotions.”

They had crossed the street and were heading to the school theatre. They still had an hour left before the mic check even started, which was funnily enough the exact same time when she started having the same attacks in the first show. It wasn’t as bad as now, but then again she never had a whole crowd during their rehearsals. It was just the other performers as they watched with awe, and Eric made sure to ask them about what they saw, and he made sure they were honest. They all more or less replied with one word that was synonymous with, “phenomenal”. Solar was ecstatic when she heard their praise, but she couldn’t see the same awe in the crowd.

She could be described as paranoid, but that was understating it.

For now, Eric was able to snap her back into reality with a sharp crack of his fingers once they reached backstage. Solar shook her head, only to realise that Eric’s snap teleported her from the platform and into the empty stage. Her eyes were locked onto his as she fell into his dead-fish eyes. He then inhaled deeply and she followed suit, remembering their routine from the numerous rehearsals before.

The performers sighed in relief as they closed their eyes.

“I think I’m good for now,” Solar said softly, trying to ignore the slight dip in Eric’s eyebrows. “Thanks.”

“We already have this show booked,” the guitarist waved away as he sets down his guitar case. “It would be a mess if we pulled out now.”

“Right.”

“Breathe like we practiced.”

“Alright.

Solar scanned the empty seats of the large performance hall from behind the heavy, velvet curtains, invoking Schrodinger’s Cat and trying to visualise the people both there and not there. Though if it was the actual, “cat in a box” situation, the theatre would’ve been the box, and there’s probably some sort poison in the somewhere in this insanely large room. She saw the mass murder of the audience, the janitors, and the performers, including herself and Eric as they slowly died backstage.

The sight of her dying with a choke was actually funny.

She giggled and looked back to Eric as he sat on a chair and turned his guitar, expecting a distant, blank stare. This time, he actually had an expression, and it was one of pure shock. He didn’t hear an innocent laugh from the girl, but rather a cackle from a sadistic crone. Solar laughed more at the priceless sight that was painted on her friend’s face.

She’ll be okay, for now.