Sha Vira

Saints in Strobe Chapter 1 Session 1

Saints in Strobe

A woman who calls herself Nobody pays her way into a rave inside a chained-up church and meets a bruised girl who wants the music loud enough to drown her name.

Read panel by panel

  1. Night. A tall Gothic church squeezed between brick buildings, its front doors chained, hard white strobe leaking through boarded windows. Elevated train tracks cross the sky and a thin line of people waits at a side door on the wet street.
    01Night one

    Night one.

  2. At the church side door, Grace, in a black hood with white hair spilling out, hands a crumpled ten-dollar bill to a kid sitting by a metal cash box. Strobe light cuts across half her face.
    02The side door
    Kid
    Name?
    Grace
    Nobody.
    Kid
    Ten dollars, Nobody.
  3. Inside the church, a packed rave: fog between the pews, the strobe freezing raised hands under the vaulted ceiling, speaker stacks on the altar. Grace stands still in the center aisle, the only one not dancing. One high stained-glass window glows dim crimson.
    03Cold Open
  4. Three stacked moments: a close-up of Grace’s pale eye with glitter in her lashes; her clenched jaw with a rosary swinging in front of her face; a speaker cone on the altar mid-pulse above the crowd’s raised hands.
    04Verse 1
  5. A tall speaker stack on the altar fills the frame, fog drifting across its grille. The crowd at its base is frozen and turned away. Everything is utterly still, as if sound has stopped.
    05Static Transmission

    The music cuts for one beat. Grace grabs the DJ’s sleeve.

    Grace
    You hear that?
    DJ
    Hear what?
  6. Looking down onto the packed nave from above. Bodies crowd every row except the third pew from the front, an empty gap lit brighter than anything around it. Grace, small at the edge of the frame, stares at it.
    06The third pew

    The crowd is packed everywhere except one pew. Nobody stands in it. Nobody notices that nobody stands in it. Grace notices.

  7. Grace in a cramped stone vestry facing a tall cracked mirror. On one side of the crack her reflection is lit hard white; on the other it stands in darkness.
    07Pre-Hook and Hook
  8. Mercy pressed against a speaker stack, eyes shut, shoulders drawn up, flannel sleeves pulled over her knuckles and a sequined dress underneath. In the foreground, Grace’s shoulder and gold chain as she watches.
    08Verse 2
  9. Two panels side by side. Left: Mercy leans close to Grace’s ear, speaking. Right: Grace’s hand pushes a master fader all the way up on a DJ mixer as the strobe flares behind.
    09Verse 2

    Mercy’s eyes close. For the first time all night her shoulders drop.

  10. The chained front doors of the church in the rain. A sealed gray envelope is tucked neatly into the chain, perfectly dry. The street is empty.
    10Static Transmission, Colder

    Nobody inside sees this.

  11. The strobe is off. In near-total black, Grace’s face is half lit by a phone screen, her head turned away from the empty pew glimpsed pale in the fog behind her.
    11Bridge

    Call it mine

  12. A narrow stone bell-tower stairwell. A thick old bell rope hangs perfectly still down the center. Through the doorway below, strobe light and blurred dancing bodies. Nobody is near the rope.
    12Double-Time
  13. The church after the party, lights off, fog thinning, puddles on the stone. Grace sits on the floor of the aisle with her knees up. Far in the back by the door, an old man with a push broom stands in shadow, watching her.
    13Outro

    Grace don’t fade.
    We do.