A heavy red curtain rose.
Spotlights fizzled on, reflecting glaring light on a polished black-and-white-checkered stage. From above, three indeterminate white props dropped from the square of light in a void.
From behind a yellowed cloth in the background, more lights shone, revealing transparent green props of peculiar shapes set up on the sides.
He watched as it happened, with the audience of darkness. Alone, he witnessed this… thing… going on.
Some strange feeling lurked behind the motion and brightness. Some unclear notion of what seemed to be nothing, soaked in the cloth and glass and metal.
He knew, with dread deeper than the death he'd fallen through countless times.
It wasn't nothing.