His Dark Secret - Part 1 (Erotic Romance Serial Novel) (6 page)

“The citrus will perk you up, or
at least it helps me. You want something nice and light or something that will
fill you up and stick to your guts.”

“Neither sounds good to me, I’m
not hungry. You can choose.”

She went to work in the kitchen,
which soon emitted the sizzling and sweet smell of bacon. A gut buster of a
meal, I thought. My stomach rumbled loudly, betraying my protests from before.
In a few minutes Jenny was laying down a plate of eggs, bacon, and toast on the
coffee table and she refilled my cup of juice. With little encouragement, I dug
in. The meal was coarse and greasy, exactly what I needed. I was on my second
piece of toast when Jenny finally spoke up.

“You never told me what happened
between you and Scott Rushmand.”

I choked on the toast coughing. “I
thought it was pretty clear from the news what happened between us. Told you
more than I ever thought would be decent.”

She shook her head. “That’s not
what I mean. He called you right after the story broke, and you’ve been moping
around ever since. So what happened?”

I set down the food and took a
long draw of juice.

“I told him to fuck off.”

“That’s it?”

“He said he wanted to talk, I told
him to fuck off, then hung up. Simple as that.”

“I understand you’re being upset
with him, but you two hadn’t talked for a week. Now you had the chance to, he
was reaching out, and you kind of blew him off. You like him right?”

“Yes, I do, but that’s just it. It
was at his convenience. He never called me at all until he saw the sex tape. It
felt like business. He was only reaching out to me when it inconvenienced him.
Before that there was no consideration for how I felt.”

I stopped at this point, realizing
exactly how it was that I felt. I could feel my chest tightening and my eyes
begin well with tears. I took a shaky breath, wiping the still forming tears.

“I just thought that there was
something more, that I was special to him. I didn’t tell you this, but that
night, when I went to the party, he was so kind. There was this girl, some
model, who was treating me like absolute scum, like I was totally beneath her
because I wasn’t well to do or an artist like the rest of them there. And he
really stood up for me, knocked her down a peg. Everything that night, it felt
like he had specifically chosen me, that I was something, then there was
nothing. No calls, nothing. And when he finally did call I felt like I wasn’t a
person, that I was just an issue he had to deal with. He didn’t deserve the
chance to explain himself, for all I know, he was the one who leaked the tape.”

Jenny nodded her head.

“That’s really reasonable. It’s
demeaning for him to treat you that way and you wouldn’t take it. It’s, well,
it’s good to see you standing up for yourself. From everything you’ve told me,
it doesn’t sound like you’ve had the chance to do that for a long time.”

I smiled. Jenny went to clean up
the kitchen and I finished my breakfast.

The landline rang and Jenny
answered. After a short exchange she walked into the living room, handing me
the phone.

“It’s for you.”

It was the young production
assistant I’d met my first day at Mythic Studios.

“I was just calling to remind you
we’ll be doing a shoot today in Studio B at noon.”

“Sounds pretty inconvenient
calling up all the extras. Couldn’t you have just sent out an email?”

There was an uncomfortable,
disgruntled pause on the other end of the line.

“We did. But Mr. Rushmand
specifically asked that you be there today, Ms. Jane.”

“Oh, okay. Studio B you said?”

“At noon.”

“Thank you. Goodbye.”

I handed the phone to Jenny,
slumping back into the couch.

“Who was that?”

“The studio. Reminder of the shoot
today. And Scott, sorry, ‘Mr. Rushmand’ has specifically asked that I show up.”

Jenny looked concern. “So, are you
going?”

I rubbed my temples, trying to
clear my thoughts. I shook my head, not liking my conclusion.

“I’ve got to go. I need the money
more than ever right now.”

“What about the yogurt job? Seems
like more steady work to me. And you don’t have to face that guy.”

I snorted. “They fired me. I
walked out in the middle of a shift and had at least two no call no shows.
Nope, I’ve got to go to the studio.”

“Well just be careful, alright.
Don’t let them screw around with you.”

“Exactly. Its just work. Just show
up, get it done, and go home. No fuss.”

Unfortunately, I felt my bravery
give out as soon as I walked out the door. My whole commute, I felt like I was
heading straight to the chopping block. I was afraid of how the other actors
and crewmembers would treat me, look at me. I had this image in my head of myself
standing under the lights, half-naked in the slave girl outfit again. I’m
trying to do the scene, running through poses, serving guests, but off camera I
can see all these people staring at me, whispering to each other behind their
hands. But what scared me the most was how Scott might treat me. I was filled
with such dread I couldn’t even imagine the how the scene would play out.

At the studio, I felt a small
surge of relief getting into costume. Today we’d be shooting the scenes where
Captain Malcolm meets with the Yusian resistance, which meant no slave girl
costume for myself. All of us were given alien fatigues, dappled brown and
green.  My costumer from before helped me, the middle-aged woman, either
out of ignorance or lack of care, making no mention of my recent scandal. We
chatted and joked as she fitted me into my get up: a black turtleneck covered
by a hooded poncho that belted at the waist, loose breeches that matched the
poncho, brown leather gloves and buckled up calf-high boots.

After they applied makeup,
splotches of brown for dirt and streaks of black for war paint, I got a good
look of myself. Between the coarse cloth that kept the hair out of my eyes, the
makeup, the get-up; I looked the part of a true guerilla freedom fighter. I looked
hard, and it strengthened my outlook.

Each of us was equipped with
props, an armory worth of guns, knives, swords, and sleek looking pieces of
“alien technology”. I was outfitted with a long rifle that slung across my back
and a foot long dagger that clipped to my belt. I pulled this out, surprised at
the weight of it; though dulled, it was real. Even more surprising, it was
intricately etched with swirls of silver inlay that caught the light nicely. I
had expected we’d be carrying around foam and wood mock-ups, but a lot of care
had gone into giving the props a feel of reality. Having another look at my
costume, I noticed the handiwork I had missed before, the effort that had been
put in to make it look homespun. Up to this point, when I had looked in the
mirror I had seen only me, but going back now I could see the character that
would be on the screen. I felt much more immersed as a part of the film now
than I had before.

They corralled the extras
together, reminding us as we moved to the set that anyone seen playing around
with the weapons would have them taken away and most likely kicked off the set.
“What you’re holding is meant to look real and should be treated as such.” This
brought a series of murmurs and laughter from the extras, which was extinguished
by an awed silence as we entered the set.

It was large, dark, and gorgeous.
The main set was made to look like a subterranean control room. Everything was
bathed in a blue light. Banks of softly lit panels and screens cropped out of
the craggy walls. There was a ramp that swung down from high to the right, some
thirty feet up, and curved all the way down to the floor. Though there was a
sizable space in the center, filled with more control panels, you got the sense
that there was no “center stage,” so to speak.

The other sets in the studio were
done in much the same fashion to depict hallways, a bare looking conference
room, and an armory.

Things got started, and we were
directed to walk around, look busy, and so forth, while Troy, looking much more
sober than the last time I had seen him, drove the scenes. I was having fun,
but something was picking away at the back of my mind. I hadn’t seen Scott
anywhere in the last hour or so. Gary seemed to be taking on the duties of
director for the day. While I knew I should feel relief, I was uneasy, and a
little disappointed. I had gone through all of this worry, and built myself
back up to be hard against him, and he wasn’t even there.

We were running through the main
control room scene for the fifth time. I was seated in front of one of the
panels, feigning determined concentration, but in actuality being bored out of
my wits. The novelty of the costume and the props had worn off and hearing Troy
deliver the same lines over and over again was working to put me to sleep. The
scene was nearly finished and so I made a quick glance over to the camera to
gauge Gary’s mood. Scott was standing next to him, attention on the scene. My
heart jumped a beat when he turned, making eye contact with me. I quickly darted
my eyes back and began pressing buttons, adjusting nobs. I glanced back, but
Scott had his full attention on Troy right now.

I didn’t know what I was feeling.
There was a strong sense of indignation; it was as if he didn’t even recognize
me. He puts me through all of this mess, makes a point of singling me out to be
on set that day, and he can’t even give me a smile, a wink, an apologetic look.
 All of this anger turned from Scott to myself when I realized just how
much this concerned me. The sticky oil of guilt spread in my chest when I
realized that I wanted him. His attention, his touch, his green eyes to look at
me with desire, I wanted it all.

I had to work myself down,
convince myself that he really hadn’t recognized me in the new costume. After
all, the lighting was so dark, the makeup so heavy, I doubt even my mother
could recognize me right now.

Scott directed us to the hallway
set, where he wanted to do some quick shots of the rebels going about their
lives in the base. We were broken up into groups of two to five and directed to
go from one side of the set arguing, laughing, or anything else that would help
to give life to these background characters. I was in a set of four, two pairs,
one in front of the other, who were supposed to be having a heated argument.
Scott called action. As we walked down the hallway, the camera rolling along
beside us, I could only think of two things. One, that Scott was now just a few
feet away from me, his attention on me for the first time today, and two, that the
pair in front of me was walking too slowly. Before we reached the other side,
Scott yelled, “Cut,” and I walked straight into the back of the large man in
front of me. I didn’t have time to say something because Scott had rounded the
camera and was addressing us.

“Guys I need you to work with me a
little more on this. Freedom Fighter Three, you’re just walking too damn slow.
Good energy with the argument, but use that to move you forward. You’re all
into the argument, but subconsciously you know shit still needs to get done.
Slave Girl slash Freedom Fighter and Freedom Fighter Seven, I need you to
stagger yourselves.”

It took me a second to realize he
was talking to me. He was standing right in front of me, an arms length away.
He was taking in my partner and I with his green eyes. All I could think was,
“He may not know Freedom Fighter Seven, but he knows me. Why isn’t he using my
name?”

“Sorry, stagger?” I blurted out.

“Yes, stagger. As in walk a
distance in front of or behind the person next to you. The both of you are
nearly the same height; you’re blocked from the camera. Again.”

We started over, finished the
sequence, and that was it. He didn’t say another word to us, he just directed
the next group to get started.

My stomach felt icy. There was no
denying it, no explaining it away. He had been standing three feet from me,
looked me in the eye, so he must have recognized me. And had disregarded any
connection between us apart from the scene at hand. This was work, and I was
just another extra again.

For the next hour, I did the
scenes feeling wooden and beaten. When they called for a break, I went out with
the rest of the extras, grabbed a water bottle, and leaned up against the wall
of the studio. The constant standing and walking was taking its toll so I
pulled off my boots and began massaging my feet.