the curtains part to reveal a boy worn by the travels of an unforgiving voyage. his course has been set by a pattern of time as senseless as the skipping of stones across unending oceans, passed on by the hands of a thousand silent soldiers. he is an actor at the expense of a theatre of apologetic eyes, forced into a role of relentless repression, a soul that merely seeks solitude, wishing to roam as a ghost between the words on a page. he is the hero of a tragedy carved into the walls of a subway station bathroom. the actress, assembled into the role of the heroine, has abandoned the actor and left the stage to settle as a spectator in the ocean of the audience, which waits with contrived prediction the ending of the final act. it cannot be determined as to when the story had begun, due to the frail memory of the first steps of infancy, but it can only be told of how it will end, undoubtedly through an apologetic action of martyrment, in which the protagonist will suffer his fatality at the hands of a hooded executioner. but perhaps hope still lingers in the held breath of the heroine, counting down to exhalation. as for the boy, he waits for the delivery of a delayed deus ex machina, and can only hope that after the curtains fall, his story will remain as more than merely a picture of a picture of a picture of a picture of a picture...