AN: Hello, everyone! I have watched Twilight Zone for a long time. I really wanted to write a fanfic for it, and this is the result. This was spanned from boredom in the hours of the night. I wrote it in my head, and then put it down on paper later, so it's not as good as it could have been. Still, I like it all the same. Does anyone think I should continue this?? An answer would be helpful. But I am procrastinating as of current, so I'm not sure how long it will take to post the next chapter. I'm not very good with quotations, don't kill me over that. I don't mean to offend Rod Serling in any way with my deeply dreary descriptions. But he did smoke like a chimney.

Dedicated to my dad, who was awesome enough to turn on the TV some melancholy Saturday and propose that we watch "Five Characters in Search of an Exit." Thanks, dad. I've never been the same since.

Also dedicated to Emily-chan, Shadowrosedragon to you, for her supreme awesomeness, cool advice, and love of Yusei Fudo.

And lastly, this is dedicated to anyone who severely annoyed with my really long answering machine message whose final statement is "the Twilight Phone." And no, mom, I'm not going to change it just yet.

~The author, Poncey. Enjoy!

Once upon a time is quite a cliché to begin a story with, but then again that is where all stories begin. Somewhere, on a certain year within one of twelve months, there is the day. And it is on that day, upon the hour, the minute, the very second- that is when the story begins. Two-thousand-plus documented years and the millions before it contain one moment plucked like a feather from all the others, one single span of infinitesimal seconds that will, undoubtedly, change the course of history as we know it.

There is only one chance. It could happen now, it could happen later. But somewhere within the space of time, a door will appear. This door is not opened by normal means. It is unlocked by the key of imagination, a portal to another world where physics and laws don't apply and the impossible is lived every day as a reality. It is a world which we call…

The room coated itself in gray. Paint companies would try and tell you it was some sort of fancy color with some fancy name like arsenic or slate, but to anyone who looked at the walls, the color was a simple and melancholy gray. Bits and pieces in the corners started to peel and twist down the sides in ribbons. The scent of decaying newspapers, dissipating ink, and wood smoke clutched the air. The room was cloaked in shadow that hid the furniture from sight, the outlines of a wooden chair and a simple table barely visible in the blackness. All was as it should be, as it always had been.

That was when a voice, arid and dry, gave a droll monotone of, "And now, Mr. Serling."

Silence lasted for perhaps a second, and then a sharp fizzing crackle let the spotlight illuminate the room's occupant.

A man was standing in front of the table. His ebony hair plastered itself to his head with gel, not a single strand out of place. Hair like that was a rarity now, a thing only seen in the babbles of old television. His dark eyes shattered the gloom and stared into the distance, twinkling slightly. A cigarette dangled from the corner of the man's mouth. When he talked, it managed to keep itself there, twitching every now and then from the edges of his lips. Smoke gathered in a cloud about his head, and the shine from the cigarette's lit tip cast an eerie light about his face. When he breathed out to speak, a ring of smoky cloud encircled him and then floated to the ceiling where it dissolved into the stale air.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he annunciated in a manner that was both happy and business-like. He clapped his hands together across his chest. His head seemed to nod constantly as he spoke. "for our next broadcast…"

Mr. Rod Serling was just as gray as the room in which he resided. The color seemed to wash over him and meld with his every pore. It didn't help that he smoked more than a chimney, what with the vapors of nicotine and tobacco constantly in a buzz around his head. Even his suit was a dark shade of gray, a drab and commonplace suit that held no color whatsoever. The only things alluring about him were his eyes that caught glimpses of everything and his voice that rang with life gained only from many terrible experiences.

"…may we present to you Miss Claudia Vaudeville."

Another crack, hiss, and whir, and a bright beam threw its ghostly murk upon the room's other inhabitant. A young girl sat in the only chair, slumped shadow twisted and mangled behind her. Her gaze was glazed over from behind thick-framed spectacles, her mind wandering somewhere far away.

"Miss Vaudeville, an almost-mute, holds a deep and separate secret, a secret that she cannot admit to herself."

The gray had not yet touched the girl. She stood out from the room and the man, highlighted by the halo of a spotlight that ensnared her. She glowed with her own sort of shine, something that the gray avoided and left well enough alone. She held an ominous color about her person, a color saturated with a glow that young children would call magical.

The girl did not speak. She pretended to ignore the man, or it could be noticed that she may have had no idea that there was even a man there to begin with. She stared down at her worn, dirty sneakers, chapped lips in a thin line.

There was something odd about her hands. Her fingers rested on her knees, constantly tapping the same rhythmic pattern. Sometimes, they would float out to tap the air, curling and twisting. They never stopped. They flew like the wings of a butterfly: to her knees, to the air, to her knees, to the air. She was so absorbed in what she was tapping she looked as if breathing was her second priority.

"That secret being, not only can she play the piano better than the composers who wrote them after only three tries…"

Claudia continued to strike the notes of an invisible piano across her legs. A leather cord tied loosely around her wrist jangled as she played soundlessly, threatening to fall off. Spikes of crimson hair curled down her back to her shoulder blades, loose strands cascading about her body. Long bangs hid her dark pencil eyebrows and almost obscured her shady green eyes. The fabric of her voluminously baggy red t-shirt threatened to swallow her whole, sickly thin arms even more prominent in the garb. Her fingertips skirted across the knees of her blue jeans, the edges of which had slowly begun to fray.

"…but this talent will also give her a secret love with a fellow piano player, who's sudden disappearance will lead her on a desperate journey that will ultimately end in the dark and desolate reaches of…"

The girl didn't even notice that her glasses were falling down her face. She didn't even try to push them up. Eventually, the slid to the bridge of her freckled nose, and then plummeted into her lap with a thump, reflections off the lenses sending crystalline glimmers around the walls. Only then did she stop her incessant playing to put them back upon her nose. And as soon as that was done, she began to play the music again faster than ever.

Claudia seemed to sense the beginning of something large. As Serling started to finish his sentence, her fingers hesitated in their notes. For the first time since she took her seat, she glanced up from the tangle of her hands to stare at the narrator. She didn't know what was coming, but she reasoned that what was about to begin was far greater than she could ever imagine.

"…the Twilight Zone."

Serling walked over, flung open the door and left, the clack of his dress shoes echoing across the corridor.

Then everything faded back to its state of frozen nighttime, plunging Claudia into the darkest pits of nightmares, flinging her upon her journey.