Tom Bentley-Fisher

       Standing on the trampoline was a goddamn fairy. It was Mustardseed from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Richard didn’t know how he knew it was Mustardseed. He didn’t even have a concept for Mustardseed. He just knew it was Mustardseed.
       The bubble of light continued to fall in slow motion from the scaffolding above the dark stage until it plopped onto the fairy’s head, creaming over its face and sliming toward the hideous naked body like an incandescent egg yoke. The twisted creature on the trampoline was undisturbed by the pools of brilliant mucous catching in the hairy knolls of his sunken chest. He just stood there, tiny rivulets of thick luminescence oozing over his swollen belly into the putrid forests of his groin, escaping in a slow migration down the stick bones of his feeble legs.
       When the fairy looked up, Richard could see the disapproval in his hot beady eyes. It was a scrutiny, a judgment that pierced him with ridicule. The pinched lips of a midget librarian warning him not to think so loudly, the sinister impatience of a puny fascist willing the last streams of radiance to leak over his bulbous kneecaps. The anticipation of destruction - a building about to be detonated - an earthquake - pools of light weeping down the slick slide of his smooth shins to his tiny perfect feet - ballet feet - glass-slipper feet - tufts of grass growing wild between his pretty little toes - the molten glaze sliding to the home stretch. 
The horrible disfigured fairy glowed in the brilliance of the light. Waiting. Waiting to rip him out of the universe.
       The moment the first drop of light spilled onto the set the fairy whipped his body into a stance of heroic defiance – like a miniature Greek God if he wasn’t so revolting, thought Richard – and cocked his head in the angle of the all-knowing. His eyes narrowed onto their target. Then he grinned a wicked little grin, winked, got an enormous erection, and jumped on the trampoline.
The scenic light continued to come over the stage in a ten count. Richard stood up to see if anyone was on set. There was no one. He sat down and checked if he was wearing his correct glasses, his headset beeping on the chair beside.
       What is this, he said to himself. Here I am sitting alone in my own theatre, perfectly content in my own misery, and a character from my play decides to drop by? Mustardseed, the most insignificant character in the whole goddamn play figures it’s time to pop out of my subconscious or some such psychological bullshit. For what? To mock me? To send me some kind of signal? To make me feel more worthless than I really am? And why Mustardseed for Christ sake? Why not Oberon? Or Puck? Or even the First Fucking Fairy? Am I that bad a director?
       He heard a banging on the glass from the control booth behind. Rob, the technical director, was pointing for him to pick up his headset.
       “What?” he blurted into the mouthpiece.
       “Larry wants to know what you think? Did that work for you?”
       “Yes. Fine. Terrific. Take a break.”
       He waited for the houselights so he could find his way down the aisle and out the theatre. When he reached the door into the lobby, he turned quickly to glance back at the set. For a split second he thought he saw a halo surrounding the shape of Mustardseed and at exactly the same time his tongue darted briefly out of his mouth. Like a lizard, he thought, a lizard thinking about lapping up a fly but changing its mind half way through the lap. I’m fucked. Totally fucked. I’m so indecisive I can’t even swallow a fly, nobody should have entrusted me with Shakespeare.
       He headed through the lobby into the men’s room to center himself. All that stuff he learned in theatre school. Breathe from deep inside. Assume your breath. Assume yourself. When he figured he had things under control he unzipped his pants and walked over to a urinal as if he knew exactly what he was doing. He had to take a pee. That was simple. Breathe and pee. Breathe and pee. The door swung open and his technical director marched up to the urinal beside him. 
       “How do you think its going?” Rob asked.
       “What?” Richard replied.
       “The level set?”
       “Who gives a fuck,” Richard barked back. “All we have to do is put up some fancy lighting so we can intimidate the audience into staying in their seats because they think they’re watching art or some such shit.”
       “Hey man, too bad you didn’t mention that years ago,” Rob replied. “Would have saved you a hell of a lot in overtime.” They both stood silently and finished the business at hand.
Richard felt embarrassed by what he’d said. Why was he being so rude? He was supposed to like his audience. That’s why he put on plays. What happened? When did he lose his excitement? And yet he knew there was truth to it. Why didn’t the audience get up and leave more often? Why were they so intimidated? You’d think stage lights would make it easier for them to sneak away, but somehow the preciousness of it all keeps them fixed in their seats and when the houselights come on, there they still are, even when the production sucks. 
       He waited for Rob to leave and walked back into the lobby, running straight into his lighting designer. Larry was furious. 
       “What are you doing, Richard? Why are you changing everything? We went through the design. You agreed. Why are you being so indecisive?”
       “Because I don’t know what I’m doing Larry. Because I don’t care.”
       “What?”
       “Look … I’m sorry. I don’t mean that. I mean I do … I do mean that. But I am sorry … that I mean. Larry – something’s wrong.”
       “Well start getting it right. Because if not I’m walking.”
       “Yeah. Good. Hold on – just give me five minutes. I’m going upstairs to my office. Everything will be alright maybe.” 
       Richard sat at his desk stifling an impulse to mix all his actors’ headshots in with his board meeting reports. He knew he had to get it together. What was the thing with the fairy? And why was he saying such weird things to the guys? He loved working with the guys. Why was he behaving like such a bastard?
Okay, he thought. Pull yourself together. You’ve got five minutes. What just happened?
He’d been sitting alone in the dark theatre listening to the low hum of the stage lights, dreading the moment the next cue came up. He figured the boys in the booth were either bad-mouthing him or trying to second-guess what he wanted so they could get the evening over with. Problem was he didn’t know what he wanted. It all looked wrong, like everything else in the production. 
       Usually he looked forward to setting levels. It was a time-out. No temperamental actors or over-sensitive playwrights, just the solid straight-ahead tech crew who didn’t know how to disguise their true feelings like most second-rate performers. He loved sitting alone in the dark theatre, the voyeurism of it all. It was kind of sexy. Dangerous. Nothing existed but the stage below, only a headset between himself and the outside world. There were moments when he got lost in a glorious surrender. He had the power to shape time and space, to guide the audience to the underlying secret of the play. Not to give it away – just to hint at something more.
       This time he didn’t know what to hint at because he didn’t have a bloody clue. He’d talked his board of directors into letting him produce A Midsummer Night’s Dream because he needed a break from the kitchen-sink depressing new work that was the cornerstone of the theatre’s mandate. It should have been such fun. Finally he was working with a proven script. It was Shakespeare. How hard was it to fuck up Shakespeare? 
       Rob had sent the stage-walker home because they were already into overtime so the only thing he’d be able to look at when the lights came on was the idiotic set. He knew it was nobody’s fault but his own. He’d managed to persuade the set designer into using three trampolines, two covering the stage floor and the other angled down from a scaffold bridge attached to the upstage wall eighteen feet in the air. But he couldn’t remember what the concept was. All he knew was that he wasn’t allowing any jumping, that would be too obvious. 
       He felt sorry for his actors. They even had to sign an extraordinary danger clause in their contracts. And for what - so he could get away from the kitchen sink while the production costs skyrocketed and he reached new limits in his indecisiveness? The only danger the performers faced was the dried-up imagination of the director. 
       He remembered taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes. He’d had laser surgery during the winter. Now instead of a single pair of glasses he needed two, one for reading and another for driving. The driving pair also made anything over ten feet that little bit sharper. So the operation was a success. Everything over three feet and under ten came to him in brilliant clarity. 
       He blinked, trying to get moisture under his eyelids, certain he could still smell the burning flesh that surprised him so much when the laser man zapped his cornea. He thought about his daughter staying over at a friend’s for a third night in a row. The final week in the production schedule was always the hardest for Erica and he knew he’d have a major repair job once the play was up. Then he thought about his girlfriend and knew it would be too late to go over when the level set was finished. Besides, he knew she was going to leave him. He’d leave himself if he could. He was getting fat.

       When he started debating whether his life outside the theatre was as bad as life on the inside, he figured he’d reached rock bottom and decided that even looking at the monstrosity below in all its unimaginative glory would be better than listening to the inside of his head. He took a deep breath and listened to the hum of the lights. 
       That’s when he heard an instrument begin to warm up behind him and a single ray of illumination glided over his head. It approached the set with the penetrating exactness of a laser and focused on a pinpoint of scaffolding above the trampolines. He remembered being surprised at the accuracy of its aim and how slowly it crept across the roof of the theatre. Barely visible, it remained fixed on one spot, forcing him to travel the shaft of light as if it were a narrow tunnel pulling him into its power. 
       Gradually the intensity began to increase, but instead of spilling into the darkness, the point on the scaffolding started to smolder like a hot ember, steam rising from the glow of its perfect red circle. Then it began to pulsate and before he knew it the bead of light had expanded into a radiant bubble and was dripping off the bar of steel to the trampoline below.
       Then he saw it. It was the fairy.
       One week to go. Shit.