Date Published: December 15,2020
Publisher: BHC Press
Pierce Danser is on the hunt for his soon-to-be ex-wife, the actress Pauline Place, who’s disappeared from the Black Island film set in the heat swarmed waters off the Mexican coast. A wealthy “collector” with a black heart and dangerous, evil mind has kidnapped her, planning a forced marriage to complete his manage of twisted museum pieces.
As Pierce starts down the winding, dark, and deadly path in pursuit, his journey is a roller coaster through a horror show. No matter the grisly and dangerous obstacles, he is determined to rescue Pauline, even if it means the loss of his own life. The clock is ticking, his resources are slim and he’s up against a man of great means as well as a twisted, cruel vision.
Chapter One
TIN CAN
“Welcome to the film set, Mr. Kiharazaka.
Please mind your step, we’re having a problem with vermin.”
The tall,
thin man, fresh from Kyoto, adjusted his stride, placing each step of his
spacesuit boots gingerly.
“I’m Rolf. Can I call you Zaka?” the
assistant director went on.
“Please, no,” Mr. Kiharazaka replied
demurely.
“Got it.”
“Will we be going weightless? It was in the
original scene.”
“We’re woking on that, yes.”
“Woking?”
“A joke. Sort of.”
A few yards away, green gaffing tape marked
the edge of the darkened film set. Rolf spoke into her headset and the lights
came up, revealing the interior of the spacecraft: the complex helm and seating
for the crew. The second set—the crew table and galley kitchen—was half-lit in the distance.
Mr.
Kiharazaka stared with unreserved delight. The crew
had accurately replicated the 1990s television series Tin Can’s two most
famous locations.
Members of the film crew were already on the
set, at their places among the equipment; lights, extended boom mics, and various cameras, some dollied and some
shoulder-held. Mr.
Kiharazaka had to rotate stiffly in his spacesuit,
turning his helmet, visor up, to watch the young,
professional film crew. He nodded to some and spoke to none. For the most part,
these serious professionals looked right through him,
focused on their craft.
“Please step in, Zaka. We’d like you to feel
comfortable in both locations.”
“Where is the cast? The Robbins family?”
“Soon enough. Please.” Rolf extended her hand
and Zaka crossed the green tape and stepped into the helm, noting that the
flooring was white painted plywood. With the flight helmet on, the voices about
the set were muted. Zaka stared at the helm, admiring, but not touching, the multiple displays. He stood back
of Captain Robbins’s helm chair, taking in all the exacting details of the
complex spacecraft controls. Easing between the captain and copilot chair, he
turned to Rolf with his white gloved hand out to the second chair, asked, “May
I?”
Rolf gave him her buttery professional smile.
“Captain, permission to man the helm?” Zaka
asked.
Rolf rolled her eyes, up into the complex
scaffolding above. The client was already in role, using the famous and
familiar dialogue from the Tin Can
series. Since none of the cast was yet on set, Rolf answered for Matt Stuck,
the sod of an actor who played Captain Robbins.
“Aye, mate.
Take thar helm,” she spoke the next
well-known line with a grimace.
Zaka bowed to her voice and twisted around
into the copilot’s chair.
She looked on as Zaka began the familiar
series of taps and changes on the right side of the helm. She could hear him
identifying each click and adjustment he made. He was doing a good job
mimicking the terse, focused voice of copilot Sean Robbins, but his inflections
were clearly Japanese.
The director, Rose Daiss, entered the
soundstage, crossed to the set, and for once didn’t trip on the
snakes of cables. She wobbled her large rear into the La-Z Boy with “Director”
stenciled on the back. Her nickname was “Bottles” and never used in her
presence—it was a reference to the many times
she had washed up. Her pudgy face was nip-and-tuck stretched, her skin was rough,
but rouged well. She did have good hair.
The director’s personal assistants entered
the soundstage and roamed to their places just back of the cameras. They donned
headsets and leisurely took up their positions, standing deferentially to
Bottles’s side, their faces lit by the glow of their tablets.
Rolf shouted
for status among the film’s
crews, and they called back equally loud.
Lighting, boom mics, and cameras leaned in on the set.
Mr. Zaka climbed from the helm and walked back into the spacecraft along the
equipment bays on the left wall—the right wall of equipment didn’t exist,
providing the view for one of the many cameras. He tapped a brief series on the
wall panel and the air lock door opened with a gasp. He stepped through, the
door closing at his heels, and crossed the short area of soundstage to the side
entrance of the crew and kitchen set. Zaka took in every detail of the
reproduced Tin Can galley as he moved
carefully through the room. He eased himself into
his role and the chair assigned to Ruth Robbins, the flight crew’s matriarch.
The director shouted at her assistants,
barking orders and questions, sounding semi-lucid. Rose’s drug-addled, fast-clipped
voice received intimidated replies. She was enjoying their pale, cowering expressions while chasing
two lines of thought, a mixture of movie-making
aesthetics and redundant direction. Her face was beading with drug sweat on her
upper lip and brow.
“Where’s
my cast?” Rose bellowed, finishing the
tirade. That done, she promptly nodded off, delighting Rolf, who then inherited
the director’s role.
Zaka was exploring the many displays embedded
in the galley table, trying to ignore the shouting.
“Heat it up,”
Rolf instructed her underling
The assistant typed a series of brief
commands on his tablet and the script dialogue for Ruth Robbins—whom Zaka had
paid dearly to portray—appeared. The script was scroll ready and at an angle on
the galley table that couldn’t be seen by the cameras.
Rolf heard the cast crossing to the set, a
scuffing of moon boots and voices approaching from the soundstage. A sweeping
flashlight beam guided their way. The cast moved into the back glow from the
lights on the set. Rolf pressed the inside of her cheek between her teeth and
bit down. Most of the original cast had been hired or persuaded to appear in the remake of the famous season seven-ending cat fight scene. The brawl
between the Robbins’ daughters was nominally, impotently,
refereed by the only member of the flight crew who was not a member of the
family: the handsome, irreverent, and
sociopathic engineer, Greer Nails.
Twenty-two
years had been most unkind to the once-famous
family members. Greer Nails appeared overinflated; the
penchant for food and wine,
and dessert, over the past years of dimming
celebrity had taken their toll. His formerly idolized face was jowled, reddened, and fat. His spacesuit looked like a
white dirigible.
The other cast members were naked save their
space helmets. Time and gravity and overindulgence had also taken a toll on
their bodies. Greer Nails was the lone holdout from nudity, and with obese good
reason.
The scene that Zaka had chosen from the menu
provided by the studio had cost him a breathless $3.7 million. An additional
$1.3 million was invoiced when he selected the option off the Premiere menu for
the cast to be nude except for space helmets. He had expressed his desire to be
part of the famous scene’s reenactment, in the role of Ruth Robbins, the space
family matriarch. Most of his role was to be aghast at the start of a violent
family shouting match and brawl. Later, he would be able to view the vignette
time and again, for all eternity, receiving sole ownership of the footage of
this and the other short scene as part of the package he had paid for.
Zaka watched his castmates approach, trying
to keep his eyes on their helmets, not their nakedness. He was delighted and
light headed with his proximity to the famous—the
real flesh instead of celluloid, but their memorized faces were distorted by
their helmets.
Nods were used in lieu of greetings. They had
met during rehearsal earlier in the day. Places were taken,
and Rolf reviewed the lighting and camera placements.
The first scene was succinctly re-rehearsed.
This was of little use to Zaka, who had the script committed to memory. But the rehearsal helped him dissolve some of
his lighter-than-air headiness. The rest of the cast drolly joined the read and
walk through, their acting marked by a blend of boredom, professionalism, and chemicals.
Zaka was delighted. Here he was, a real actor
with an important part in the infamous scene’s reenactment. It was all he could
to not giggle. He somehow found the ability to maintain Ruth Robbins’s
dithering mothering role.
Julianne, the slutty smart sister, stepped
past Greer and pantomimed the jerk-off
gesture that would set off her sibling, “Cy,”
as in Cyborg. In the television series, Cy had been Greer Nail’s budding
romantic interest.
Zaka was enthralled, but also concerned. He
had paid for Captain Robbins to sit at the head of the galley table, and he was nowhere to be seen. A booming,
authoritative voice carried from the back of the soundstage.
“Welcome to Tin Can Two, Mr. Kiharazaka. You are certainly star material, mm-hmm!” Fatima Mosley called out.
Fatima was the studio head, noticeably short
and burdened by a massive chest that gave her stride a wobble. She was dressed
in an elegant and trendy style, including a beret. She had a titanium leg, the
original lost to disease. The metal ratcheted when her knee articulated.
“Zaka’s doing a great job.” Rolf called over,
not turning from the rehearsal.
“It’s Kiharazaka, please,” Zaka politely
corrected Rolf again.
“Actually, it’s Ruth Robbins,” Fatima smiled,
causing her cheeks to fill and her eyes to disappear.
Zaka flushed with pride at being addressed as
Ruth.
“All is well, mm-hmm?”
Fatima asked Zaka.
“Yes, yes. Might I ask? Is Captain Robbins
ready? And son Sean Robbins?”
“Why,
here’s Sean now,” Fatima answered, her crunched face dissolving downward,
revealing her wise, ferret eyes. She didn’t explain Captain Robbins’s absence, and Zaka showed good manners by not
repeating his question.
Sure enough, Sean Robbins, the Tin Can’s
copilot appeared from the shadows of the soundstage, naked save his helmet and
boots, looking slightly sedated—well, a lot sedated. His birdlike wrists hung
limp.
There was a white worm of drool creeping from
his face, now ravaged by years of amphetamine addiction. He was escorted by two
of the bigger grips, who held his scarecrow thin arms and pulled him along, his
moon boots sketching the soundstage flooring.
The sisters,
Cy and Julianne, did not look pleased to be reanimating their once famous
daughter roles, no matter the money. They were clearly drugged to an agitated
condition and firing foul slurs, even before the shoot began. Julianne had a
wrench tattoo on her naked, once-perfect boob. Cy’s sensual body was scarecrow
thin, as though drawn of all blood.
The grips assisted Sean Robbins into the hot
lights and seated him at the galley table. He opened one eye and panned it
across the cameras and lights aimed on him, then barfed into his own lap.
“Unpleasant, mm-hmm,”
Fatima observed.
Zaka did the brave thing—he
stayed in role, putting on his best Mrs. Robbins bemused and maternal
expression.
“Nice,” Rolf encouraged him.
One of the grips wiped up Sean’s vomit. The
other cleaned off his chest. Sean stood up and looked on, patting one of the
men on the top of the head.
Rolf called out, “I have the set!”
From the film crews came sharp, short calls,
and the boom mics lowered overhead.
“Quiet, quiet!” Rolf delighted in her
temporary directing role.
“Lock it up,” she hollered.
“Places,” she shouted to the cast.
“Cameras up!”
“Roll sound.”
“Roll camera.”
A young woman appeared with an electric
slate, shouted a brief stream of incomprehensible code, clacked the device, and disappeared.
Zaka did well, not looking to Captain
Robbins’s empty seat at the head of the table.
Rolf yelled,
“Action,” and the movie magic began.
For Zaka,
there was a spiritual lift, even as he stayed in his rehearsed movements. He
allowed himself to experience the elation, but stayed in the role of motherly
concern.
Julianne entered the scene from the door to
the helm. She moved behind Sean, who had a line of dialogue but missed. Staring
at Cy, she stepped to Greer’s side and hefted the weight of his groin. Cy
transitioned fast and smooth,
from agog to madness. She fired forward and attacked, going for the smirk on
her sister’s face with a clawed left hand and the space cup in the other.
As scripted, Mrs. Robbins took one step back
from her end of the table, her expression alarmed and offended.
Greer was looking down at his groped crotch
like he was just then realizing he had one. He leaned back as Cy collided with
Julianne, and the brawl exploded with screams
and nails and fists. The two careened off the galley counter and shelving,
swinging and connecting blows.
If Captain Robbins had been at the head of
the table, he would have moved fast to separate the two, looking sad and
determined and disappointed. Instead,
a bit of ad lib occurred, the two brawlers tumbling low in the shot, fists and
knees swinging and pumping. Greer performed the ad lib, turning to the mayhem
with a slack expression and barfing on himself again.
Mrs. Robbins went into action. She stomped
manfully to her scuffling daughters, arms shooing,
intending to break up the chaos on the spaceship floor. She was two strides
away when Greer stepped out and pushed her back. Mrs. Robbins resisted,
flailing her arms, eyes wide with alarm. Greer held her true. The fight
continued, the sisters grunting and gasping. Hair was grabbed, a low fist was
thrown. Julianne coughed in pain. Cy let out a cry, “You bitch!”
That was Zaka’s cue. He looked away, eyes
upward and spoke the season-ending
line, “My daughters. The sluts.”
“Cut. Cut. Cuu. Cuush . . .” Rose Daiss, the
replaced director, called out in a trailing off slur.
She was ignored.
The brawl continued. A mangy rat crossed the
plywood set boards, scurrying away from the fisticuffs. The two beefy grips
stepped to the edge of the set, poised to separate the sisters. The brawl
looked real enough to them.
Rolf took the director’s prerogative,
screaming at everyone.
“Cut!”
About the Author
Greg Jolley earned a Master of Arts in Writing from the University of San Francisco and lives in the very small town of Ormond Beach, Florida. When not writing, he researches historical crime, primarily those of the 1800s. Or goes surfing.
Contact Links
Twitter: @gfjolle
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