Chapter 7

When Reality Sets Back In

I wish I knew what started that old curse. Seems to me it lies in the blood monologue: "Thy deed, inhuman and unnatural, provokes this deluge most unnatural." I wonder sometimes, whose unnatural deed caused someone so much grief that they set a curse on this old theater? And why did they have to punish me? Was it someone whose loved one had been killed and was so grieved that they sought to punish whoever entered this old building? And if that was the case, I don't really blame them.

It drives you mad, thinking about it day after day, how you're never gonna see them again, and wondering how you'll ever survive it. They had to take me out of school real fast after it happened, because I'd just sit and stare into space, trying to imagine what it's going to be like, living the rest of my life without him. All I've got left is memories.

I've changed a lot since he left. Here: That's a picture of me from before. You notice I used to have long hair? Just as the monologue said, I ripped a lot of it out. When I got out of the hospital, I got it cut so that it was even again. I used to never want to cut my long hair. He used to love running his hands through it.

Yes, I was in a hospital for a while. They thought I was a danger to myself, and I was. I kept threatening to take my life and join him. And then I'd go on about how I knew it was going to happen all along, how I saw it coming. People say I talked about hearing voices as well.

When I got out, I started wandering around. I started looking up theaters, trying to find this one again. And now I have.

I'm waiting for him, you see. That's the only thing that's kept me going, kept me from curling up somewhere on the streets and letting myself starve to death, the hope that I'd see him again someday. He told me that he'd come back. And I thought that if there were any place he'd visit first, it'd be here. I'm going to wait here for him until I see his face again.

I don't remember what kind of voices I heard when I was in the hospital. But—and I never told the doctors this because they would've kept me in longer—there is one voice that I still hear before I go to sleep at night and I say, goodnight Fiyero.

Do you remember the good years in Canaan…

The summers were endlessly gold….