The Twilight Zone redefined storytelling, drawing audiences into the unimaginable. Now, 66 years later, top writers, artists, and musicians are stepping into its eerie glow with a fresh twist. Ready to see where they’ll take you? Meet your guides:
Liz Zimmers | Edith Bow | Sean Archer | Bryan Pirolli | Andy Futuro | CB Mason | John Ward | NJ | Hanna Delaney | William Pauley III | Jason Thompson | Nolan Green | Shaina Read | J. Curtis | Honeygloom | Stephen Duffy | K.C. Knouse | Michele Bardsely | Bob Graham | Annie Hendrix | Clancy Steadwell | Jon T | Miguel S. | A.P Murphy | Lisa Kuznak | Bridget Riley | EJ Trask | Shane Bzdok | Adam Rockwell | Will Boucher
BLINK TWICE IF YOU CAN HEAR ME, by Sean Thomas McDonnell.
Maestro Walter Gillian waited for the applause to die down. The audience’s optimistic faces beamed in anticipation, making him feel unsteady. At that moment, he hated them fiercely. He wanted to step down from the podium and slap each of them—to yell into their giddy faces—but he smiled back and bowed his head in thanks. It wasn’t the people themselves but rather their enthusiasm that caused his distress; they didn’t understand the pressure it placed on him to justify their excitement. Sure, he wanted this opportunity. He’d fought for it. Still, he couldn’t help but feel exposed and, in some undefined way, cheated.
The orchestra was patiently waiting for the Maestro to face them and raise his baton to begin the concert, but he hesitated, his gaze lingering on a couple in the fourth row. There was nothing obviously interesting about the man or woman, but for some reason, which he could not place, they disrupted his mind. She, a slight woman with small dark eyes, and he, not a big man, but larger than his wife, and with a orange rose in his lapel. They stared back at him with a detachment that made him feel like a workhorse in a parade.
The lights dimmed until the entire audience was hidden in shadow, all but the couple in the fourth row, who continued to stare at the Maestro with indifference. He turned to face the orchestra, but they too were unlit, lost in the shadows.
Walter turned back to face the couple in the fourth row, and said, “It seems our lighting is not quite right.” He felt a bead of sweat run down the side of his face, and raised his shoulder to dab it. “Lightman?” But the lighting technician did not respond.
Maestro Walter Gillian is on the verge of becoming the next Stravinsky, the next Mahler, or Bernstein. He has the skill and the talent, and now he’s been granted access to an elite group of musicians, all ready and willing to bring his music to life. This is the moment Walter has been waiting for; he needs but to raise his baton and start the performance to seal his fate as the greatest living composer-conductor in the world. But the Maestro didn’t anticipate indifference. And he certainly didn’t anticipate an incompetent lighting technician. But most of all, he didn’t anticipate his role in the greatest symphony of them all, a magnum opus known as the Twilight Zone.
