"Welcome back to Whose Line Is It Anyway, tonight's winner is Colin Mochrie," the voice says.
I'm sitting in a chair.
White stage lights beam down on me. The intense heat of the lights makes me sweat.
Before me sits a large audience in rows of bleachers barricading all perceivable directions. I'm not sure that there's anything behind me. The audience cheers loudly.
I am surrounded by sensations yet I feel completely dull. I'm sitting in a chair. My body is limp, hanging from the back of my neck.
"Welcome back to Whose Line is it Anyway," the voice says as the crowd cheers. "Tonight's winner is Ryan Stiles."
I hear another voice beside me. "I'm Ryan Stiles," it says soullessly. The voice is to the left of me. To the left of me I distinctly hear a voice say that he is Ryan Stiles.
"Welcome back to Whose Line"
I'm sitting.
"Tonight we have a winner."
The cheering is ceaseless. In a chair
I try to find the source of the applause but the stage lights are too bright; my vision is as blurred as my hearing is muffled and my body is numb. I can make out the movement of their arms as they frantically clap. I squint, trying to focus on their obscured faces. They elude me, contradicting the focus of the sharp objects around them. As I continue watching, the movement seems to ease down. The muffled sound of applause remains unchanged, yet the limbs of the phantom audience are gradually slowing. Their arms undulate fluidly, like sea grass in the dark of the ocean. They
"Tonight's winner"
Suddenly I feel a strong presence to both the left and right of me. A shockwave shoots down my spine, but quickly evaporates into nothing by the time it reaches my lumbar. I feel the movement of two people brush against my shirt, which brushes against my skin in a ripple of air resistance. I rise from my seat I'm sitting in a chair. and join the two entities flanking me as we carefully walk forward onto the stage, closer to the "read the credits as drunk college students" audience.
My body moves inexplicably. I speak in a bizarre, ancient dialect; I regurgitate words and sounds I have never once heard in my life. The two other entities near me rhythmically speak and move in the same way. I try to face them but I can't turn "Danny Breen," my head. It's locked into place until it snaps into any other position it seems to desire facing. I summon all my strength to glance my eyes as far left as possible, desperately trying just to see what sort of being it is who shares my fate.
He's a balding, tired-looking man. He wears a blue knit shirt and some khaki pants. He's stumbling around, sputtering the same "Kieran Healy," alien sounds that I am. He's smiling but I know it's just part of whatever it is we're doing.
He looks f"I'm Ryan Stiles"amiliar. I'm positive I know him. My heartbeat accelerates; for a brief moment my senses sharpen. The muffled applause of the audience focuses as my vision saturates. I think he's my friend. He's my close friend. He's my best friend. The sight of this man awakens part of me, brings order to the madness that my mind and body is
I'm sitting in a chair.
"Welcome to Whose Line Is It Anyway," the voice says, "Where the points don't matter"