Hallo-Zine Fall 2021
The Theater Coalition
Written and Illustrated by Yeebing Tse The bright green grass greets me as I open the door to inside the theater, breathing in the fresh air and smelling baked bread from somewhere nearby. The sun also shone into my face, shining upon the grass and clearing up the bright blue sky. This is where my case has taken me. The disappearance of Victoria Chen, one of the first friends I made here in this school. She disappeared about a week ago, the last time she was seen entering the Hammer Theatre Center, which was close to the eight foot tall library that was always full of students walking in and out to study or go to online class. You’d think with the theater being right next to the always busy library, someone would’ve witnessed her entering and saw something that could’ve helped us figure out what happened to her. But, for some reason, there wasn’t a single witness in the entire city. The campus police and the city police were alerted six days ago, but for some reason, the ones who were sent to work on her case also disappeared into this theater. And so do the ones that get sent to look for them. And the ones who get sent to look for the ones that were sent to look for them. Since the police clearly aren’t helping, I decided to go and try find her myself. I went through the door of the school’s theater expecting to find something horrid, but am instead greeted with…whatever this is. I opened up her diary, which she gave to me
34
to hold before she disappeared, scanning the pages for anything specific. “Dear Diary,
August 16th, 2021
Today is my first day on campus! I got to go inside the buildings for the first time and both of my classes were a lot of fun. I feel like things will be good here, unlike with high school. I also saw this really cute cat! It’s brown and striped and it wears a little flower necklace. I think it’s a tabby! It reminds me of the stray cats near my house except it didn’t run away from me when I went towards it. I’m not sure who the owner of it is, as I didn’t see anywhere near it. There was someone was looking at me weird while I was petting it. I know this probably sounds weird, but I don’t think they had eyes. Their eyes were pitch black. It was a little scary, but luckily they just walked off. Hopefully that was just a hallucination or something. Maybe it’s contacts! I’m sure nothing ominous is going to come out of this. Signed, Victoria.” A student with pitch black eyes, huh? Maybe this is actually her creative writing portfolio. She said she wanted to get her work published one day… I flipped the page to the end, and scanned the last passage of her diary. “Dear Diary,
November 26th, 2021
I went to check out the theater today! Or at least, I tried. When I entered, I ended Poets and Writers Coalition Hallo-Zine Fall 2021
