Betty Anne announces an untoward spectacle: from behind her steps Kiki, to general amazement, in a flowery dress, with ribbons in her hair. Everyone, she says, has more than one side, so looking at them only one way can be restrictive - especially if something beneath the surface might mean the difference between life and death. Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, she calls this story "The Tale of the Closet Keepers."
Off to play a game of basketball with some friends, Stacey, despite overall welcome of her skills, senses reluctance to include a deaf player. Humiliated, she flees down an empty street, and hides inside a faded door.
In a dilapidated hallway, she sees movement atop a flight of stairs. As she takes cover, two men in black suits march down the stairs. They each don a pair of shades and head out.
On the upstairs landing, Stacey finds a door, from beneath which flashes a green glow. Inside, she finds herself in total darkness. The door closes behind her. The green light returns to reveal her surroundings: a small, cylindrical chamber, which starts to rotate. Stacey stumbles into a sterile grey hallway.
Meanwhile, on the basketball court, Billy shoots hoops alone. Suddenly troubled by a harsh, electronic whistle, he grips his ear. The two The Men in Black loom in the door of the fence. One, behind his back, swiftly hides a smooth grey gizmo. At a harsh whistle, Billy sinks to his knees and holds his ears.
Meanwhile, Stacey hides beneath a brief railing. Two more The Men in Black arrive. On a wall-mounted map, one of them touches southern England. By the open hatch, they monotonously exchange old-fashioned English idioms.
As Stacey straightens for a closer look, she accidentally knocks to the floor a cylindrical device. As The Men in Black turn on her, she runs. One activates another of the grey whistling gizmos - but it doesn't work.
Through a mechanical door, Stacey finds herself in a metallic corridor. As a blue light flashes across the door, a synthesised ringing fills the air. Numerous voices plea for its cessation. Behind cell doors, Stacey sees children, each of varied national attire, cry out for relief. She returns to the door, presses a nearby button, and the sound stops.
She looks across the corridor, finding herself facing a grey-haired man in a cravat and overcoat. From behind, the two The Men in Black seize her and march her to another sterile room: this one painted blue, decorated with life-size images of bedroom trappings, and furnished with a rectangular block painted to evoke a bed.
Behind a window, three figures in grey tunics and silver gas masks roll by on a conveyor belt. An overhead voice erroneously announces Stacey as a twenty-first century earthling. A hand falls on Stacey’s shoulder. With a malicious grin, the cravat-wearing man, the Keeper, tells her to smile for her audience. With a final sneer, the Keeper leaves.
Some time later, the door opens, and Billy is forced at gizmo-point into the room. To Billy, unfamiliar with sign language, Stacey indicates through mime their incarceration in some kind of cosmic zoo, where escape attempt is punished by torture.
The door slides up. Bemused, the two wander into the corridor. Through a meshed window, a girl in school uniform, Emma, urges them to hurry, lest they don't get fed. Through a hatch are passed bowls of some sort of green jelly. Having been here a few days, Emma understands their captors to be from the distant future. Billy makes for the door - and is overwhelmed by a torturous siren.
Just then, the Keeper marches in, forbids meal time chit-chat, and orders everyone back to their displays. Stacey sees the Keeper confer with a subordinate, and lip-reads a plan for her elimination.
Back in their cell, Stacey, to a moved Billy, admits her reluctance to leave him and the others behind. From his pocket, she takes a tin foil wrapper, and holds it to the siren hole - and the alarm doesn't go off - it mustn’t work on reflective surfaces.
From the wall, they pull off the room's affectation of a bedroom mirror - revealing a mounted camera in a hole beyond.
Mirror in hand, Stacey sneaks through the siren-barred door and into the corridor. On the wall by each cell door is a button. Stacey pushes each, and the multinational children joyously leave their cells.
By the transportation pod, each of the imprisoned kids, on the world map, touch their country of origin. On doing so, they run into the pod, which rotates and teleports them home.
Just then, the Keeper bursts in, seizes Billy by the throat, and aims an electronic whistler at Stacey. Unaffected, she backs away, and reaches for a wall button. However, the Keeper indicates that if she pushes the button, she'll hurt Billy. Stacy hesitates, only for Billy to block his ears and tell her to hit the button.
As she does, the Keeper cries out in agony. As he yells threats, they teleport home.
Back outside, Billy wonders how to thank Stacey. With a small smile, she indicates the phrase in sign language, to which he responds in kind.
While no one believed them about the cosmic zoo, closes Kiki, the two friends knew they could always talk about it between themselves.
This episode provides examples of:
- Alien Abduction: The keepers, who infiltrate society for abduction of human specimens, are implied to be extraterrestrial.
- Disability Immunity: Being deaf, Stacey is unaffected by the debilitating sirens.
- The Faceless: The otherworldly spectators are concealed in tunics and gas masks.
- Fire-Forged Friends: United against lifelong imprisonment in a cosmic zoo, Stacey and Billy become firm friends.
- Hell Is That Noise: The piercing sirens and whistles deployed by the keepers stagger their victims with pain.
- The Men in Black: On infiltration of society, the keepers don black suits, and, in apparent allusion to this element of ufology, use strange speech patterns.
- People Zoo: Adolescents from various backgrounds, via concealed teleportation pods, are taken to a sterile, high-tech complex for enclosure in crude approximation of contemporary dwellings.
- Reading Lips: Stacey can read lips, a useful skill for deaf people.
- Took a Level in Kindness: While Billy isn't overtly nasty, he learns to appreciate the impact of his condescension towards Stacey's deafness.
- Would Hurt a Child: The head keeper figures out rather quickly that the zoo's sound based technology doesn't work on Stacy, and for this reason advocates getting rid of her.
