Lights, Murder, Action (In the Spotlight #9)

Prologue

Sterling

One year earlier

“Cut,” the director yells, jaw twisting. “One more take, and then we’re going to have to move on and try this scene again tomorrow.”

My chest tightens. Being an actor has been a dream of mine since I was a kid. I‘m finally getting the recognition I’ve been working hard for, and there’s no way I’m fucking it all up now. “I think I can get it right this time,” I say, not sure who I’m trying to convince more, him or myself.

Waving his hand to everyone around him, he gives a curt nod. “Alright, here we go again.”

I can do this. I’ve got this. It’s different from what I’m used to.

This role isn’t something that should come naturally, but whenever I’m supposed to pretend to be someone else, I have the tendency of trying to make it as authentic as possible, always feeling like I’m taking a little bit of that person with me after the movie is done filming.

Action is called with all cameras on me, and I think about the deep rumbling laugh I once heard from a deranged psychopath in one of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies, letting myself feel what he did in the moment he was crushing the lenses of a pair of glasses into another man’s eyes.

I pick up the fake drill, walking over to the frightened man tied to a radiator.

There’s no remorse in me, no morals or conscience.

I push them all away, replacing those natural human emotions with a sick, twisted excitement as I pretend to put a hole in the center of his forehead.

In the next scene I use a hammer to shatter another man’s jaw, accidentally causing a bruise to his ear when I actually hit it.

He curses and I apologize, while reminding myself that the person I’m supposed to be right now would never be sorry.

Phill would just laugh and do it again. I almost do too, but I’m distracted by people walking onto the set and changing the scenery.

This isn’t real, though for a minute I was starting to believe it was.

I need to save it for the camera. For the audience.

Even then it can’t be real. It just needs to feel real. Phillip has to feel real.

There’s another slip up an hour later with a hacksaw, and when blood squirts from the woman’s wrist something lights up inside me.

Something awakens and I know right then and there that whatever I end up taking from this role won’t be anything good.

There also may not be any coming back from tormentor Phillip or serial killer Lou, or any of the other unhinged characters my manager talks me into auditioning for after telling me over and over how I’ve “found my calling.”

In what way, though? As a horror and thriller actor, or as something else?