Ah! My first ever serious phanfic (there's something irritating about that word) It's a first attempt, so… (By the way, I don't own PotO or the movie Swing Time, or Singing in the Rain.---------
"It's swing time, oh…,"
The ghostly voices of the old movie filled the dark room and bounced repeatedly off the dusty walls. The man sitting alert in the chair at the center of the room shut his eyes as another blinding wave of light from the projector screen washed over his face and burned his eyes, so unaccustomed to light. His acute hearing detected the sounds of the theatre below; giggling chorus girls; bawdy stage hands; and all manners of people wandering about on a Sunday night. He cracked his knuckles anxiously and flicked off the projector. The man dressed completely in black leisurely exited the lonely room.
Soon…
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"I'm singing in the rain, dad a da, I don't know the wo-rds!," clamored a loud young man, his long hair bobbing. He smiled appreciatively and bowed to the delight of his somewhat captive audience, consisting of all the young people whose parents couldn't find the time to pick them up.
"Gosh, Raoul, it's like you're Gene Kelly himself," giggled a blonde who was sitting on an overturned box, entwined in the arms of another boy.
"Stop flirting with her, Goldilocks," he snorted.
"Pff, shut up Harry," complained several of the girls who found Raoul to be a handsome subject.
"Will you all shut up?" shouted a group of boys gathered near the wall.
Most of the crowd joined the group and pressed their ears against the wall.
"I don't care what he says, that's ridiculous! I won't stand for it, damnit!" bellowed a man's voice.
"Derrick, quiet! If he hears you…,"
"Oh, he'll hear me alright! They all will! Come, now!" raged the other voice, drowning out the other, timid man.
The crowd of people listening in immediately separated themselves from the wall and raced to occupy themselves as they heard booming footsteps traveling towards their room. The door swung open with a loud bang.
"Listen up, now!" fumed the taller manager, his moustache turned up in a slightly comical way. "Which one of you scoundrels wrote this? I swear, fess up NOW!" he thundered as he brandished a letter, sending his smaller companion cringing into the room with the accused as he stood in the doorway.
"Well, we can't very well confess if we don't even know the letter," quipped a girl in the back. No one dared laugh at the large man blocking their only exit.
"I-,"
A thunderous crash covered his words; there were screams and shouts, and the sound of breaking glass coming from the direction of the main auditorium.
The two managers blanched white, and darted out to the source of the new panic, the group close on their heels.
The shorter one moaned and put a hand over his agape mouth at the devastating sight.
There, laying smashed, cracked, and utterly destroyed beyond repair, was the inordinately expensive crystal chandelier, the first-and likely to be only- gift of the theatre's gracious patron. Exactly thirty three hundred perfectly oval crystals lay smashed and broken, strewn in shards about the floor. The glass cruelly reflected the twisted images of the theatre.
Sadiron, the intimidating manager, was utterly and eerily silent. But soon, his silence became more frightening as he turned many shades of red, looking more and more like an enraged bull by the second. Madoin, the other, crouched closer to the ground so that he might somehow melt into it and away from his partner (not that this had ever happened before, though he had tried). -----
The man in the rafters clapped his gloved hands quietly and watched the entertaining attempt of Sadiron to maim Madoin, as if this had been the puny little manager's fault. He laughed to himself as the lights gradually shut off and the crowd of people gently died away, the horrid mess of wreckage to be cleaned the next morning. His stone cold eyes swept over the empty and drafty auditorium with cool calculation of the disaster.
But something stopped his thoughts dead in their tracks; there was still someone below, drifting about the darkened stage with only a solitary candle to guide them. A girl, dressed in a long, white nightgown wandered around the lonely first floor, looking about her as if she had never seen the place previous.
To the statue still man watching her from the balcony level now, she seemed almost like a ghost, her pale brown hair floating about her shoulders in waves. He sighed painfully, for he thought her beautiful; he did not recall ever considering something beautiful, at least not in a very long time…
The man remained, still stunned and standing in the same place, long after the girl had left. Something touched him that night; something that he was quite unfamiliar with. And it was that something, the new found compassion, that convinced him that night that one day, he would make her his own.
Please review and don't hesitate to remark that the manager's name means pointed (and dangerous) iron. Adieu-Volitaire