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:
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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.
Is the lightman mad? he thought, shielding his eyes and looking up to where the white lights poured down on him from above. He heard coughs in the audience and the sounds of people thumbing through their programs.
“I say, technician,” said the Maestro. “I can’t do my job if my orchestra is hidden from me.” He waited for a chuckle from the crowd, but none came.
Behind him, he heard but could not see the musicians adjusting their chairs and turning the pages in their songbooks.
In front of him, the couple in the fourth row stared at him blankly, as if waiting for a plane to board.
“These fine musicians would love to play for you tonight,” said the Maestro, “but we seem to be having some trouble with our lighting.” The spot seemed to shine brighter now, but only on him and the couple in the fourth row. The rest of the hall was swallowed by darkness until even the silhouettes of the audience and chairs and chandeliers had been consumed. He thought about walking off stage, refusing to come out until they’d replaced this incompetent technician. Instead, he smiled and motioned to the lighting booth. “I’m terribly sorry, ladies and gentlemen. I’m sure we’ll have this all sorted out soon enough.” The couple in the forth row didn’t smile, or frown, they just continued to stare at at him.
The heat from the lights made the Maestro feel dizzy. He felt his pulse; there was a timpani in his head, steadily pounding, each thud reverberating off of the walls of his skull. He bit his lip until he tasted rust, waiting for a crashing symbol to send him over the edge.
“You know…while we wait, I’d like to thank you all for coming.” He didn’t feel thankful for them coming. He wanted them to leave. Now. “We have some of the finest musicians on stage here tonight, and I’m certain you’ll be as moved as I am when they play for you this evening.”
The man in the forth row picked a piece of lint from his sleeve. The woman scratched the bridge of her nose.
“I wish I could see your faces. Well, I can see two of you! I can see…” The Maestro laughed, and it startled him that there was no echo. “Should I speak directly to you?” he said in a subdued voice to the man and woman.
The couple’s faces didn’t change.
“Blink twice if you can hear me,” Walter said with a little more vinegar than he’d meant to.
The man leaned over and whispered something to his wife, who pulled out a stick of gum, unwrapped it, and handed to her husband.
The man folded the stick of gum into his mouth, and began to chew.
There was no sound from the orchestra behind the Maestro. No sound from the shadows in the audience. There was only silence and the faint bouncing sounds of the man’s jaw working the gum; each chew became louder, and louder, until it equalled the timpani in his head.
Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.
“I’m afraid…I’m afraid we’re having issues with…” The Maestro tried to look anywhere other than at the man’s jaw, but all around him there was nothingness. “Why don’t I tell you a little about our program this evening?” Walter wiped his brow with the back of his sleeve. “Yes…yes, that should do nicely. W-w-would you like that?”
The woman yawned and her husband continued to chew his gum.
Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.
The Maestro continued, “Or perhaps not…I-I-I know, I’ll tell you…um…how it is I came to be here in front of you tonight.” Walter stepped out from behind the podium and walked to the edge of the stage. He was going to tell them all about the critics he’d won over, and the men and women brought to tears by his music, but when he opened his mouth to speak, the words seemed hollow. Sure, those were lovely moments, but were they the real reason he was here this evening? The Maestro closed his eyes.
“I remember the first time I saw my name on a marquee,” he said, opening his eyes. “There is nothing quite like a bit of validation, you know? The critics said it was ‘a once in a lifetime experience.’” He thought back to that night, and how the Champagne flowed and everyone showered him with accolades and kisses, but when he’d returned to his apartment late that night, his face sore from the hours of smiling, the silence made him feel out of tune. “Is it strange,” he said looking directly into the woman’s eyes, “that I don’t feel happy when I think back on that day? Moments of it, sure. Moments of happiness…”
The man in the fourth row adjusted his bow tie. The woman straightened her posture.
“Moments of happiness,” Walter repeated a little louder. “Yes, moments of contentedness. And now, here I am in this grand hall, and on the verge of being considered the best…the best? The best at what? You know, I walked back to the theater early the next morning. It was cold enough that I could see my breath. I’m unsure why I returned….I suppose I wanted to get that feeling back. That feeling of being something bigger than I am. But when I looked up at the marquee, they’d already removed my name.”
The lights shining down on the couple in the fourth row faded until the man and the women disappeared into the darkness. Everywhere the Maestro looked was black. The light above him intensified, as if the dimming of the one light gave power to the other.
Walter pulled off his bow tie and sat down on the edge of the stage. He felt like he might die from heat exhaustion, but at that moment, he didn’t care. If that’s the worst of it, he thought, let it be.
“You do not satisfy me,” Walter said into the black. “I wish with all my heart that you did. Believe me. I do. But you do not. I know I’m supposed to feel appreciation for your kind words and applause. Your praise. And I’m supposed to feel upset by your distaste…your indifference. And maybe I do for a moment, but then, presto: it means nothing.
“You know, when I was a young man I was terribly happy. I’d sit for hours in a small room I’d rented and do my work. I wrote the symphony we are to perform tonight while in total obscurity. Nobody had even heard the name Walter Gillian. And I thought nothing of you. Not really. Oh, I had moments where I would raise my baton in front of the mirror and conduct for you, my hair flopping about in my face—I was younger and had more hair! I imagined you, and it was fun. Yes, I was terribly happy composing. My first attempts were dreadful, utter trash! But that trash…it still brings me satisfaction to this day. For while creating, I learned how to lose myself, and I learned how to lose you.”
Walter stood, walked back to the podium, and faced the orchestra, or where he assumed they still sat.
Clack.
The lights over Maestro Walter Gillian’s head shut off.
The only sound was the meter of his own breath. The timpani in his head had ceased. He was alone, but unafraid.
Then, he was nothing. He lifted the baton in his right hand.
Clack.
The lights over the orchestra came on.
He brought his baton down, and with a series of small graceful movement of his left hand, the honeyed swell of wood instruments suffused the grand hall.
He swiped through the air and the brass cut the warmth in half.
The rhythm of the music, his breath, the chewing gum, all were dictated by the bounce of the Maestro’s baton in his right hand. And with his left hand, he spoke with the angels until the world folded in on itself, and there was nothing left but divinity.
The symphony you’ve just witnessed is inconsequential; it’s a private conversation overheard between here and there. No approval is required, and no understanding is needed. It exists without audience, and it will continue to exist for as long as the communion between heaven and earth remains. And should you forget the secret language of the angels, perhaps you’ll learn it again in the Twilight Zone.
Thank you for reading my story! The above homage is my love letter to the great Rod Serling. My hero.
I view The Twilight Zone as a generally optimistic series. I’m not implying that they were all upbeat tales, but they were deeply empathetic. Rod wanted a better world. I know this because he said so, but also because he showed us this through his work.
“It has forever been thus: So long as men write what they think, then all of the other freedoms—all of them—may remain intact. And it is then that writing becomes a weapon of truth, an article of faith, an act of courage…”
Rod Serling
For me, The Twilight Zone was and is my guidebook for how we should live and treat each other.
Forever grateful, Seany.
Edit - Blown away to have our event featured at rodserling.com 👁️🚪
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This felt soooo Twilight Zone in all the good ways. Literally could see this in the good old 4:3 black and white and hear Rods voice. Read this as inspo for the new Midnight Vault Submission window. Good work as always dude!
Also going on a binge marathon of The Twilight Zone for the next few weeks.
Not just the most visual piece I've read from you (and that's saying something), but also the most emotionally powerful. Tempted to quote every other line. Tour de force, period.