Can't Wake Up

The Starlight Theatre was the only thing on East Market Street that hadn't given up. Everything else on the block was boarded up or For Lease. The pharmacy had gone to a chain. The diner became a pawn shop that closed after six months. But the Starlight was still there, showing old movies to nobody in particular, its marquee flickering with letters that were out one at a time.

I first went in by accident. Drunk, trying to get out of the rain, I pushed the wrong door and ended up in a lobby that smelled like burnt popcorn and old carpet. The theater had maybe sixty seats. It was full.

Not full in the way a Tuesday afternoon in Youngstown is never full. Full in the way a church is full on Christmas morning.

I sat in the back row. The movie was black and white, silent except for a piano player in the corner who looked like he'd been there since 1932. I don't remember what the movie was about. Something about a man walking down a long corridor. He kept walking and walking and walking, and every door he opened led to another corridor, and I felt something in my chest unclench just watching him walk.

When I came to, I was standing in the parking lot. My phone showed 27 missed calls and 14 text messages. Three hours had passed. I had been in that seat for three hours, and I had no memory of leaving my truck, walking to the theater, sitting down, or getting back to my truck.

I told myself it was the whiskey. It was always the whiskey.

The second time, I was sober. I went in at 2 PM on a Wednesday. The movie was the same—same corridor, same walking man. The piano player was different. Older, maybe. He looked at me when I sat down, and I thought he said something like: you're back.

I came out four hours later. My throat was raw from thirst that I didn't remember feeling. My legs were stiff. I went home and drank two glasses of water and fell asleep at 4 PM and didn't wake until 8 PM.

On the fourth day, I went back. I wanted to understand what was happening to me. Mr. Chen was in the lobby when I arrived. He was maybe sixty, wearing a dark suit that had been expensive twenty years ago. He nodded at me like we were old friends.

"Regular customer," he said. Not a question.

"I've never been here before."

"That's what they all say."

He went back to folding newspapers. I went into the theater.

The fifth time, I didn't drink the night before. I sat through the entire movie—ninety-seven minutes, I checked later—and I didn't zone out. I stayed aware. I watched the walking man in the corridor, and I noticed something I'd missed before: every door he opened had a number, and the numbers were going backward. 47, 46, 45, 44—

At number 30, the door didn't open. The man stood in front of it for a long time, his hand on the knob, and then he turned and started walking in the opposite direction.

That's when I noticed the other people in the theater. Really noticed them. There were maybe a dozen of us. All of us had the same expression on our faces—the slack-jawed, glassy-eyed look of people who aren't watching a movie but living inside one. A man in a steelworker's jacket, his face covered in the old burn scars from the mill. A woman in her forties with a Walmart badge still clipped to her purse. An old veteran with a DVA cap and trembling hands.

After the movie, I stayed in my seat and watched them leave. One by one, they filed out like sleepwalkers. None of them looked at me. None of them looked at anything.

I asked the old veteran his name. "Henry," he said. His voice was thin, like wind through cracks.

"How long have you been coming here, Henry?"

"Since January." He paused. "I thought I was going to the movies. Now I'm not sure."

"Are you sure about anything?"

He didn't answer. He just walked out into the Youngstown evening, and I watched him go.

I started asking around. Mr. Chen's son. He used to come here. Then one day he didn't come home. His father said he ran off. I didn't believe him.

Ava Martinez. Single mother. Worked at the diner. Came here every night for two months. They found her dead in her apartment—malnourished, dehydrated. The coroner said she'd been slowly starving for weeks. Her ten-year-old son said she'd been "happier than ever" before she died.

James O'Connell. Steelworker. Lost his job when the mill closed. Last seen entering the Starlight on a Friday morning. His family said he walked in and "smiled for the first time in months." He was never seen leaving.

Little Maria. Twelve years old. Father brought her to Youngstown to escape her mother's boyfriend. She came to the Starlight alone one afternoon and was never found. The father said she "wanted to go on an adventure."

I couldn't verify any of this with police reports. The cases were too small, too scattered, too Youngstown. Nobody investigates people who walk into a building and don't walk out.

Big Dave told me the truth on the sixth night. He was sitting in the back row, next to me, and I didn't notice him come in.

"That place," he said, nodding toward the theater, "it doesn't trap you, Tommy. You trap yourself. You want to be somewhere else. The theater gives you somewhere else. And then you forget where else is."

"Forget what?"

"Being hungry. Being tired. Being forty-two and divorced and your daughter won't return your calls. In there, you're somebody. Or you're nobody, and that's fine too, because nobody has to disappoint you in a movie."

"Mr. Chen—does he force people to stay?"

"Chen? Chen's a passenger. He keeps the projector running. Plays the same movies every day. If people want to sit in his theater and waste away, that's their business." He looked at me with eyes that had seen everything and cared about all of it. "The question is why you keep coming back."

I didn't have an answer.

On the eighth day, I drove to Sarah's apartment. She lived twenty minutes away, in a complex with broken sidewalk and a laundry mat that always seemed to be closed. I knocked on her door.

She opened it with a look that was equal parts surprise and annoyance. "Dad. What do you want?"

"Can I come in?"

She looked at me for a long moment, then stepped aside. The apartment was small and clean and smelled like microwaved food. She sat on the couch and crossed her arms.

"I'm not giving you any money."

"I don't want money." I stood in the middle of her living room, feeling awkward and old and out of place. "I want to know if you've been to the Starlight Theatre."

Her expression changed. Just slightly. A flicker in her eyes. Guilt? Recognition?

"Why?"

"Because I've been going there. And people don't come out the same."

She looked at the floor. "I went once. A few weeks ago. I was—Dad, I don't even know why I went. I was walking, and it was raining, and the marquee was on, and—"

"And what?"

"It was like something was pulling me. Not like a string. Like—gravity. Like there was a place I was supposed to be, and the Starlight was it." She looked up at me, and her eyes were wet. "Inside, I didn't feel like I was failing college. I didn't feel like I was working twelve hours at Walmart and still couldn't pay rent. I felt like I mattered."

"Sarah."

"I know what it sounds like." She stood up, walked to the kitchen, poured a glass of water, came back and sat down. "But Dad, have you ever felt like the world is just—too heavy? Like everything is pulling you down and you just want to lie down and let it?"

"Yes."

The word came out smaller than I wanted. But it was true.

"I go because it's easier," she said. "I go because for two hours, I don't have to be afraid. And then I come out, and the rain is still cold, and my bank account is still empty, and you're still—Dad, I'm sorry. I shouldn't say that. You're my dad. But you're also— you're not here. And the movies are."

I drove home in silence. I sat in my truck in the driveway for an hour. Then I went to the Starlight one more time.

Mr. Chen was in the lobby. "You know," he said, "my son used to run this place. Before I took over. He was twenty-three. He showed the movies. He was happy here. Then one day he decided he wanted to see the world. He left. I think he's still walking."

"Still walking?"

"In the movie. The one he made. He's still walking down that corridor, opening doors, looking for whatever he's looking for." Mr. Chen looked at me with tired eyes. "People ask me why I don't close down. I tell them: the world needs places where people can disappear without disappearing."

I went into the theater. The movie was playing. The walking man was at door number 20. I sat down. I didn't fight it. I didn't close my eyes. I just watched him walk, and I thought about Sarah, and I thought about how easy it would be to stay, to let the darkness take me, to stop being forty-two and alone and irrelevant in a town that forgot I existed.

The walking man reached door number 15. He put his hand on the knob. He didn't open it. He turned away and started walking back, toward the exit.

I stood up. I walked out of the theater. I drove home. I called Sarah.

"I'm coming to get you," I said. "We're going to get coffee. And then we're going to talk about what you want to do with your life."

There was a long silence on the other end. Then: "Okay."

I haven't been back to the Starlight since. Sometimes I drive past it, and the marquee is still flickering, and I wonder how many people are sitting in those sixty seats right now, walking through corridors that have no end, looking for doors that lead somewhere better.

I don't know if Mr. Chen is a villain or a victim or something in between. I don't know what happens to people who sit in his theater for too long. I only know that yesterday, I drove past the Starlight and saw a car I didn't recognize in the parking lot, and for a moment, I wanted to pull over and go inside.

That's the thing about corridors. They keep going. And the doors keep opening. And sometimes, in the quietest moments, you hear your own footstep echoing down the hall behind you, walking toward a door you haven't opened yet.

© 2026 - Authored by Z R ZHANG ( EL9507135 -- パスポート番号[ちゅうごく] 중국 여권 번호 Номер паспорта หมายเลขหนังสือเดินทาง Passnummerرقم جواز السفر CHN Passport)
The aforementioned Author hereby grants to OXFORD INDUSTRIAL HOLDING GROUP (ASIA PACIFIC) CO., LIMITED (BRN74685111) all economic property rights, including but not limited to the rights of: reproduction, distribution, rental, exhibition, performance, communication to the public via information network, adaptation, compilation, commercial operation, authorization for third-party use, and rights enforcement.
Such grant is exclusive and irrevocable. The term of such rights shall be 49 years from the date of publication.
To contact author, please email to datatorent@yeah.net