Perhaps by fate, perhaps by coincidence, when I got in touch with the building's owner and discussed what I wanted to do he offered me the exact part of the building we had run the BTC from. When I mentioned that I only needed the room for a couple of evenings a week he told me not to worry, the whole building was used for artist studios of one kind or another so it was understood they wouldn't be in permanent use. I could either share the space with other clients and pay hourly or sign up for a quite reasonable fixed rate to come and go as I pleased. Taking the hint the universe was obviously sending me I chose the latter. Not only could I run classes from there, it would be somewhere to write and work from without having to join Susan's department at Morior. I'd come away from our last meeting sensing that she didn't really want me around.

Then there was the warm feeling of re-establishing our old rehearsal space for when Ellen eventually came to join me on this plane. I didn't expect the Blemished Theatre Company to ride again - I certainly wasn't about to set it up without her - but when we were reunited I would be waiting with our home, our place of business and a community of like minded souls at the Mortal Masquerade all ready to welcome her. I decided to name the business Ellen's Acting Academy and spent the rest of the week setting out the studio and getting flyers made up.

They read:

Become the person you imagine!

Ellen's Acting Academy offers evening classes and bespoke tuition in acting, writing, performance and the dramatic arts. All aspects covered including improv, audition preparation and classical repertoire, delivered by a qualified head instructor with over twenty-five years professional experience.

Contact Rafe on...

In the meantime the weekend was approaching, bringing with it my second visit to the Mortal Masquerade. Debs wanted to create an avatar she could move forward as a character, preferably a villainous one, while I wanted something I could use to observe proceedings without too much fuss. If I could help Debs as her sidekick so much the better.

Our adventure together beneath the guillotine set us off talking about the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror, specifically the gaggle of bloodthirsty women who were said to have sat gleefully at the bottom of the scaffold, doing their knitting as the heads rolled in front of them. We imagined their modern day equivalent to be the Mary Whitehouse brigade of village church ladies who loved to seek out tabloid scandal and media outrage they could tut-tut over. The Blemished Theatre Company frequently crossed swords with these battleaxes, the country houses we used as venues put us directly in their territory. The over the top gore we presented was exactly the kind of thing they loved to be outraged by, even as they advocated corporal and capital punishment and would have been front row centre for real public executions (go ahead and guess where I put them on the RUSS matrix). We had a section of our website set aside to display the shocked letters of complaint they wrote to newspapers, we couldn't have paid for that kind of promo copy.

Debs created the persona of Aunt Betsy, a bossy and sadistic village society woman who'd commit murder over the church flower rota and get away with it too. To prepare for the role she recalled some of the privileged, catty girls she went to school with, the ones who always expected to get picked for top roles. Also their mothers.

My avatar's name was Hyacinth, a stern schoolmistress who dressed conservatively in greens and greys. I hadn't acted in drag since my early student days, since the Mortal Masquerade was decidedly genderfluid I decided that now was the time, and Debs was happy to supply clothes for me to wear. Hyacinth was inspired by an actual person, a local council candidate who picked the BTC as a crusade to help her campaign for election one year. She'd written a long, vitriolic letter to the Ketherton Gazette raging about the evil we promoted, the harm we caused to the youth of the area, the women we exploited, then began organising sandwich board protests outside our building, addressing the motley crew of prim protesters with fist waving rhetoric that had some of our fans asking if we'd sent her out ourselves as a publicity stunt. Ellen sent a public response to the paper, concluding with, "if you wish to experience being harmed and corrupted, we will welcome you as our guest to our next show, where you can witness us being thoroughly eviscerated for your satisfaction. Yours, Exploited of Ketherton."

Debs kitted me out in a sensible grey skirt and tights with clumpy shoes, tucked in blouse and bottle green cardigan. We found an old brown wig which we greyed slightly with talcum powder and tied up in a bun, then selected a charcoal eye mask to complete the look. As Aunt Betsy, Debs wore light grey trousers with a lavender twin set, a matching mask and an expression of pure mischief.

----

Betsy and Hyacinth strode into the main hall of the Mortal Masquerade like conquering crusaders. Before them spanned a disgusting display of decadence, grown adults who ought to have known better, dressed up in ridiculous costumes and masks to dance to ungodly music, imbibe alcohol and, if the rumours were to be believed, indulge in macabre displays of human sacrifice. These two righteous ladies had come to infiltrate the organisation and properly assess what was going on, represent good Christian values and teach the sinful the error of their ways. It would mean putting themselves in danger, but this was good and proper, for they had the armour of virtue to protect them.

And the more wretched miscreants they could bring down along the way the better.

--

We made our way through the hall to the sign-up board, looking down our noses at the other attendees, committing entirely to our characters. As Betsy, Debs had taken on an air of malevolence which was nothing like the caring woman I knew beneath the mask. For my part, I decided that Hyacinth would be a woman of few words, all of them judgemental, and walked with the forced upright posture of a stern matriarch. But Betsy was the dominant member of our partnership and would lead the way throughout, starting with the games we would be playing. She put her name down for something called Piano Smasher, then entered me into a two-player game called Human Candle. My prospective opponent had already entered their name as the Blue Bandit.

"What's that?" I asked out of character.

"Don't worry, the Blue Bandit is what we call a volunteer, someone who plays to lose. Len, the guy beneath the avatar, is known as Limbo Len because he's always up in Limbo by eleven o'clock. All you have to do is play the game and let him take the forfeit."

"Which is?"

"They pour a bucket of fake candle wax over you which sets into a candle, then they light up the whole thing in fire effects."

"Sounds spectacular."
"It is. Maybe it'll happen to you some other time."

"What about your game, is that rigged?"

"Only in that I'm good at playing the games and very competitive, so I don't expect to meet anyone I can't defeat. They'll probably fill out the slots with angels - they're just there to make up numbers, so they don't try to win unless you ask them to."

The apparatus for Piano Smasher was a large cabinet holding four giant piano hammers, each set to strike down on a pad at the head end of mats laid out along the front of the stage. The game began with four players, who would listen to a short piece of piano music ending just before the final note. Each would then have to lay down on one of the mats, placing their heads directly beneath the hammer. The music would play once more, this time with the final note corresponding with one of the hammers, which would smash down on to the face of the spirit beneath. The game would then be repeated with the survivors listening to a new piece of music, over and over until one winner remained. The hammers were arranged in pitch order from left to right, but the precise pitches they were set to weren't known in advance, adding risk and guesswork to the opening round.

Aunt Betsy's opponents were a woman in a scarlet dress and ruby mask, a man in a smart suit and apple face mask like Magritte's The Son of Man, and one of the Masquerade's angels making up the quartet. The music played, setting up an unheard final note in the mid-range, so Betsy selected the left-most hammer. When the music was repeated, the final note turned out to be the third hammer along, which slammed down onto the face of the angel lying there. Of course the bottom of the hammer had to be soft sponge, but as it hit it released a splurge of red gore on the victim's face, which in the lighting looked convincingly like they had been pulverised. Stagehands pulled away the still body of the loser and carried them away to Limbo as the hammers were reset.

Next to be eliminated was Apple Head, who lay impassively as his fate was delivered. Then in the final rounds, both Betsy and the lady in red successfully evaded the fatal hammer until, on the third head to head round between them, red mask chose poorly and became red mash, leaving Betsy the victor just as she had predicted.

My own game was a one on one duel between Hyacinth and the Blue Bandit, who was dressed in blue pyjamas with a scarlet sash, knee length boots and a Zorro-like bandana mask with eyeholes. The setup for the game was a single chair placed beneath a large copper melting pot suspended from a frame, lit by flickering red orange light as if in the centre of a furnace. The pot was tilted slightly so you could just make out the molten wax inside bubbling away. We took it in turns to sit in the chair, where we played an "I Went Shopping"-type memory game, each player adding a new word to the growing list. Any error would result in the copper pot tilting forward an unpredictable amount, until the wax breached the side and poured down over the head of the loser, who would be covered over and "set alight". The Bandit played the first few rounds straight and waited for me to make the first mistake - no-one expected the pot to pour until at least the second time of asking - but then immediately answered with a mistake of his own. From there he watched me carefully, feeding me easy words to remember while waiting for the most dramatic moments to make mistakes of his own. He carried me through the game, letting me build confidence in my character, until the inevitable occurred and one error too many brought the creamy white goop of the wax down over his head, covering him from head to toe. Immediately upon settling it dried into a crust, then a burst of theatrical flame exploded around him, hiding him from view. When the fire burned down both chair and victim were gone, leaving only a puddle of melted wax and charred remains on the floor.

Hyacinth nodded her approval and went to rejoin Aunt Betsy on the floor of the hall.