Take a deep breath. The overly loud audience begins to become oddly silent. You are one with the midnight stage. Blinding stage lights warm your angel like skin. A controlled echo-like sound rattles the floor. The whispering stage is yours. Underneath your feet holds a jet black glassy floor. Parents sitting on cheap clean chairs at the back of the audience with discoloured bags underneath there eyes, showing evidence of insomnia and dehydration. Fans on the ceiling spinning around looking like a hypnotists tool.

Your eagle-like peripheral vision sees tall judging stage curtains either side of you. The dark empty wall on your left begins to look like liquid. If you were to throw a stone it’s way it would ripple like a singing pond, sending endless waves that will harmonize with no logical end. The audience stays perfectly still, almost like an old tired painting that needs a new frame. All of their grainy eyes are locked on you. Heavy white shoes are weighted to the screaming floor. Choosing not to let you leave until you are finished with your performance.

The air is heavy, the smell coming from the cafeteria is filling the air with sharp aromas that cut the inside of your nostrils. Your panicking esophagus gets smaller and tighter with every painful short-lived breath you choose to take. You are wearing baggy second-hand blue pants that have a missing button just above the rusty zipper. The plain white t-shirt that you chose to wear has a curry stain on the lower right side of the sleeve. Freshly washed cotton on your skin gives you goosebumps. Drunken hairs on your fingers are dancing, sending schizophrenic shivers up and down your spine.

Scattered throughout the audience are flashlights from dying phones. They create a night sky in front of your very eyes.

The audience is colourful, like an aurora. Everybody is wearing different clothes with unusual hues and patterns. Your friends are jumping up and down with excitement at the edge of your white shoes. Rings on your fingers begin to get tighter with every lyric you sing. Your fingernails begin to turn plum purple. Microphone leads are spread all over the floor, looking like lankly black snakes that are ready to attack at any moment. 

There are alluring staircases on both sides of the audience. Every individual step holds a thin strip of grip tape to keep people from slipping and losing untrustworthy balance. Laughing cameras are pointed at you from all angles imaginable. You can see your corrupted reflection in the lens in front of you. The angry red flashing light coming from the camera has a distorted tempo. Almost like an irregular heartbeat.

Music leaking out of the speakers. Your breath in sink with the patterns of the notes from the piano, which is just behind you. Blood flowing through your veins becomes one with the riverlike waves of music. A sense of peace transcends the stage. Take a deep breath.