Chapter 9: What is The Last Showing?

Leo barely made it to the staff lounge before his legs gave out. He collapsed into one of the dusty chairs, Sarah's diary clutched against his chest, his entire body shaking with adrenaline and terror. The image of Sarah's destruction played on an endless loop in his mind—the way she'd been unmade, not just killed but erased from existence itself, her defiance transformed into cosmic entertainment.

The projector in Theater 1 had finally gone silent, but Leo could still feel its presence like a weight pressing down on his consciousness. "Coming Soon: Leo's Last Showing." The words burned in his vision every time he closed his eyes.

He opened Sarah's diary with trembling hands, desperate to find some detail he'd missed, some weapon she'd discovered that might give him a fighting chance. But as he flipped through the familiar pages, he noticed something that made his blood run cold—new writing had appeared in the margins, words that definitely hadn't been there before.

You shouldn't have watched, written in Sarah's neat handwriting, the ink still wet. But now that you have, you need to understand what's coming.

Leo's hands shook as more words materialized on the page, as if Sarah were writing them in real time from whatever dimension of existence she now occupied.

The Last Showing isn't random. It's earned. Each usher builds toward it through their accumulated fear, their growing understanding of the truth. The entities feed on terror, yes, but what they truly crave is the moment when hope turns to despair. When someone who thinks they can fight back realizes they never had a chance.

"Sarah?" Leo whispered to the empty room. "Are you here?"

The response came not in words but in a sudden drop in temperature. The fluorescent lights overhead flickered, and in their intermittent illumination, Leo caught glimpses of a figure standing by the lockers—translucent, wavering, but unmistakably the woman he'd watched die on screen.

I'm always here, appeared in the diary. Trapped in the performance, playing my role for eternity. But I can still help, in small ways. The rules that bind me also protect me.

"What is the Last Showing?" Leo asked aloud, his voice barely audible.

The diary's pages rustled as if touched by an invisible wind, settling on Sarah's final entry. New words began to appear beneath her last desperate message:

The Last Showing is SilverGate's true purpose. Everything else—the nightly terrors, the rules, the gradual escalation—is just preparation. The entities exist outside our reality, in dimensions where our concepts of time and space have no meaning. They're watchers, cosmic voyeurs who feed on suffering across infinite realities.

But even gods need entertainment. Even cosmic forces crave novelty. And there's nothing more entertaining to them than watching mortals who think they can win.

Leo turned the page, and more text materialized:

The theater is a feeding ground, but it's also a broadcast station. Every night, our performances are transmitted across the void to entities that exist in the spaces between stars. They watch us the way we might watch a nature documentary—fascinated by our struggles, amused by our failures, delighted by our pain.

The Last Showing is the season finale. The grand performance where everything comes together. Every fear you've faced, every rule you've followed, every moment of terror you've endured—it all builds to that final night when you become the star of your own cosmic snuff film.

"How do I stop it?" Leo asked desperately.

You can't stop it. It's already begun. From the moment you signed the contract, your Last Showing was scheduled. The entities exist outside linear time—to them, it's already happened. They've already watched you die. They're just waiting for our reality to catch up with theirs.

Leo felt the walls of the staff room closing in around him. The cosmic joke was even crueler than he'd imagined. Not only was he trapped in a cycle of supernatural servitude, but his eventual destruction had already been witnessed and catalogued by things that viewed human suffering as prime-time entertainment.

"Then why are you helping me?" he asked.

The diary's pages fluttered again, settling on a blank section where new words slowly materialized:

Because even if we can't change the ending, we might be able to change how we get there. The entities crave specific types of performances—fear turning to hope turning to despair. It's a formula they've perfected over eons. But what if someone refused to follow the script?

What if an usher faced their Last Showing not with terror or false hope, but with something the entities have never encountered before?

"What do you mean?"

I spent weeks studying them, mapping their weaknesses, preparing for a fight I thought I could win. But I was still playing their game, still following their rules even as I broke them. I gave them exactly the performance they wanted—rebellion crushed by inevitability.

But you've seen my failure. You know where I went wrong. And knowledge, Leo, is the only weapon they truly fear.

The temperature in the room dropped even further, and Leo could see his breath misting in the suddenly frigid air. Sarah's spectral form became more solid, more defined, as if the act of communication was drawing her closer to the physical realm.

The little girl—she's not just an entity. She's the Master of Ceremonies, the one who announces when an usher is ready for their finale. When she appears and says it's time, that's when you know your Last Showing has arrived.

"She already appeared to you in the film," Leo said. "She said it was time for your close-up."

Yes. And she'll appear to you too, probably soon. The entities are excited about your performance—you've shown more curiosity than most, more willingness to dig deeper into the truth. They're anticipating a spectacular finale.

More words appeared in the diary, written in increasingly urgent script:

But here's what I learned too late: the Master of Ceremonies can only announce the Last Showing. She can't control when it happens, can't force the performance if the usher refuses to participate. The entities need willing performers, Leo. They feed on genuine fear and despair. Forced terror doesn't have the same flavor.

"So what are you saying? That I can just refuse?"

Not refuse—subvert. Give them a performance they don't expect. Break the formula that's entertained them for millennia. They're so confident in their power that they've become complacent, predictable. They expect certain responses to certain stimuli.

What if you gave them something else entirely?

The diary's pages suddenly burst into flames—not destroying the book, but revealing new text written in letters of fire that burned without consuming:

The broadcast goes both ways, Leo. When they watch us, we can watch them back. The same cosmic forces that let them peer into our reality also create windows we can look through. If someone were clever enough, desperate enough, they might be able to turn the camera around.

Show the universe what these entities really are. Expose them to their own cosmic audience. Make them the entertainment instead of the entertainers.

The flaming text faded, leaving the diary looking exactly as it had when Leo first found it. But the knowledge remained, burning in his mind like a brand. Sarah hadn't just been fighting for her own freedom—she'd been trying to expose a cosmic conspiracy that had been running for eons, using trapped mortals as unwitting performers in a show designed to entertain beings that existed beyond human comprehension.

"How?" Leo asked the empty air. "How do I turn the camera around?"

But Sarah's presence was already fading, her ability to communicate apparently exhausted by the effort of revealing so much forbidden knowledge. The last words appeared in the diary as faint whispers on the page:

Find the source. The broadcast station. It's not just a metaphor—there's actual equipment somewhere in this building, technology that bridges realities. The entities need physical anchors in our dimension to maintain their connection. Find it. Destroy it. Or better yet...

Use it.

The final word hung in the air like a challenge. Leo closed the diary and made his way back to the lobby, his mind racing with possibilities and dangers. Sarah had given him more than just information—she'd given him hope. Not the false hope that the entities fed on, but something else entirely. The hope that came from understanding your enemy, from seeing the flaws in what appeared to be a perfect system.

The rest of the night passed in a blur of routine terrors. The wet footprints, the mirror thing, the whispers from the projection booth—all of it felt different now that Leo understood what he was really part of. He wasn't just surviving random supernatural encounters; he was participating in a carefully orchestrated performance designed to build toward a specific climax.

His Last Showing.

But armed with Sarah's knowledge and his own growing understanding of SilverGate's true nature, Leo began to formulate a plan. It was desperate, probably suicidal, and based on theories that challenged everything he thought he knew about reality.

But it was also the first genuine hope he'd felt since walking through those cursed doors.

As dawn approached and the mechanical click of unlocking doors echoed through the building, Leo made a decision that would either free him from the cosmic nightmare he'd stumbled into, or ensure that his final performance would be the most spectacular failure in SilverGate's long history.

He wasn't going to wait for the Master of Ceremonies to announce his Last Showing.

He was going to find that broadcast station and give the cosmic audience a show they'd never forget.

Even if it killed him.

Especially if it killed him.