The Theatre of Ramona

 

     I’ve been inside your mind at least four times.

Long enough to know the layout. Long enough to recognize the creak in the floorboards before you hear it yourself.

Who is that by the door?

That’s Ramona.

It’s her party—though no one remembers when it started. The music loops without rhythm, laughter echoes from rooms that are now empty, and the air smells faintly of something sweet that’s turned. She puts on a very strange show, Ramona. Always has.

Her makeup is perfect at first—painted confidence, sharp edges, a face that dares you to look closer. But time is cruel in this theatre. It fades. It always fades. And when it does, she slips away to the mirror, pressing trembling fingers to her cheeks as if she can hold herself together by force.

She notices it before anyone else does.

Her friends are long gone.

That’s when she turns to you.

She won’t say it directly—not at first. She’ll laugh, pour another glass, adjust the lighting, restart the music. But her eyes will follow you. Always. Measuring the distance between you and the door like it’s a wound opening.

She will want to keep you from leaving.

And when she can’t pretend anymore, she will cry. Not loudly—no, Ramona doesn’t break like that. Her voice cracks in quiet places. She will ask what went wrong, over and over, as if the answer might change if she phrases it differently.

I know her.

I was her perfect he-whore—her reflection, her distraction, her proof that someone would stay, even if it was only for a while. Long enough to make the illusion believable.

And then there’s Loretta.

Sweet Loretta.

She exists in a different wing of the same theatre. Softer lighting. Cleaner air. She kept herself untouched by the chaos, or at least she tells herself she did. No drugs, no reckless nights—just the sparkle of Moët and the careful preservation of innocence like it’s something you can bottle and save for later.

She watches the show, but she doesn’t join it.

Not really.

But there is something else in this theatre.

Something that doesn’t belong to either of them.

In the dark wings, beyond the reach of stage light, there is a figure who never applauds, never speaks—only watches.

Doctor Jimmy.

Not a man in the way the others are. More like a presence. A phantom stitched into the velvet curtains and the shadows behind them. He waits there, patient, as if time has no meaning to him at all.

His eyes don’t wander.

They lock.

Always on the same thing—the quiet glow of people who still believe they are safe. The innocent aura of happiness shared between two bodies standing too close together, laughing too easily, unaware of the cracks beneath their feet.

A false sense of security.

That’s what draws him.

Not noise. Not chaos.

Calm.

He studies it like a weakness.

Slowly, almost ceremonially, he opens a bottle of gin. The sound is small—barely a click—but it echoes in the dark like a signal. His hands are steady, practiced. But tonight, something is different.

He feels it again.

That strange pull beneath the skin. That crawling awareness that something inside him is waking up.

He looks down.

And for a moment—just a flicker—there it is.

Blood.

Not fresh. Not flowing. Just the suggestion of it, blooming across his hands like memory refusing to fade. He turns them slightly in the dim light, as if expecting it to drip, to speak, to accuse.

A private haunting.

A whisper of Lady Macbeth—that same futile attempt to cleanse what cannot be undone.

But Doctor Jimmy doesn’t scrub.

He doesn’t panic.

He simply watches… and waits.

Because in this theatre, everyone is performing something.

Ramona performs desperation.

Loretta performs purity.

You perform detachment.

And Doctor Jimmy?

He performs nothing at all.

That’s what makes him dangerous.

Don’t ever lose control in this place. That’s the rule no one tells you until it’s too late. The acts are forbidden for a reason. The show is black—dark in a way that seeps into you, stains you, makes it hard to tell where you end and it begins.

Ramona will hold you when you try to leave. Desperate. Fingers digging into your sleeves, your wrists, your resolve. She’ll beg without words, her whole body leaning into yours like gravity has shifted.

And then—

when you finally reach the door,

when your hand is on the handle,

when the outside air almost touches your face—

she’ll say it.

“Thank God. I thought you were never going to go.”

That’s Ramona.

Needing you and resenting you for staying.

And Loretta?

With her, you were always one step ahead. You never belonged to her world, not fully. You played the part—lightly, carelessly. For fun. You counted your lovers like numbers on a scoreboard, each one meaning less than the last.

Hundreds.

Then fewer.

Then none.

Because that’s how it ends in this theatre.

Not with a grand finale, not with applause—just an empty room, the echo of who you thought you were, and the slow realization that somewhere along the way, something in the dark had been watching you too.

Learning you.

Waiting.

I’ve been inside your mind at least four times.

And every time, the show is the same.

Only now…

you’re not sure who’s in the audience anymore.