The stretch limo felt like a cocoon. A claustrophobic pocket that shunned the exterior world. The driver, wanting nothing to do with Willem, had raised the barrier between the front and back seats. The city lights passed by the tinted windows, slipping dimmed neon across the leather interior. 

At the very back, Willem gripped the brick satellite phone. The coiled cord bounced between him and the center console.

His agent’s nasally voice came through a thick layer of static. “I just don’t understand why you’re upset.” 

For a luxury feature, the carphone sure sounded like shit. 

“I’m not upset,” said Willem, trying his best to hide how upset he really was—and he was very, very upset. “I just don’t get the fucking joke, Todd.”

“Joke? The limo was on time, right?”

“The fact that there is a limo is what I’m confused about.” Willem pinched the bridge of his nose. The slimed grit of stale cocaine was still lodged in his sinuses and he couldn’t work it out. It dripped a steady metallic wash into the back of his throat. He snorted in a futile attempt to clear it.

He could practically hear Todd cringe on the line. 

“We talked about this on the phone,” Todd sighed. “I explained it all so simply that a child star would get it. You. Movie premiere. Attending. Paycheck.”

Willem scratched his stubbled face as he tried to remember the call, but he’d been pretty drunk at the time. Okay, very drunk. Some would say obliterated. All he remembered was the promise of some cash, something he desperately needed. He rolled the window down and let in the cool night, inhaling the West Virginian air. Even in the heart of the city, it was crisp and clear.

 “When you said a car was on its way to take me to a screening, I thought you were messing with me,” Willem deflected. “I haven’t heard from you in, what? Six years?”

Something like that, for sure. Willem had been out of acting for ages. Before he knew it, the 80s had melted away and the 90s had shown up like an uninvited houseguest. He’d fucked off so hard even the tabloids got bored of him. No movies. No commercials. No damn con panels. His career was a festering thing left to rot in an alley. Not even the crows wanted to pick at it.

But still, despite it all, sometimes he found himself missing it: the fans, the media, the glitz. 

And if he was being really honest with himself, he missed the adoration.

Willem shook his head. “How long has it been?”

Todd didn’t seem to know how to answer that, but finally, “Nearly a decade. And by the way, it would’ve been nice to know you had a short film in the works. I’ve been with you since the start and I had to hear about this through the director, of all people. Guy gives me the chills. Where did you even find him?”

The fact that he had a film on the docket was news to Willem. “I've got a film? When does it start? I'm not ready.” The thought of trailer lots and flights and line readings and room-temperature buffets made him feel sick. His chest tightened with anxiety. He reached for the stocked sidebar and grabbed a bottle of something clear. “Tell them I’m out.”

“Christ, how many holes have you melted in your brain, Will? The film is a wrap. Got my advanced copy last week. As much as I hate to admit it, the performance is brilliant—even if it’s very...” The line went silent.

“Todd?” Popping the cap, Willem took a swig from the bottle and hissed. Tequila it is then.  “It’s very what?”

“Unsettling,” concluded Todd. “Really fucking unsettling. Didn’t think you had this kind of role in you, but maybe I underestimated your creative drive.”

Willem leaned back and the plush leather squeaked. “Not sure if that’s a compliment, but I hate to break it to you: whoever’s in this film? It ain’t me.”

“God, I did not miss working with you,” groaned Todd. “Just smile pretty for the cameras and don't say anything incendiary. I know that’s a tall order, but we don’t need you lighting your career on fire a second time. Oh, and in the future, don’t leave me out of something like this. Even if it’s been ten fucking years, I’m still your agent, and you’re not equipped to survive this industry on your own.”

It sounded like a threat, but if the past years had shown Willem anything, it was that Todd was right. So many horrible, spiraling events, one after another. And to think he could one day return to the screen? No. Sometimes, you don’t deserve to come back. 

You don’t get to move on.

#

The camera lights popped and Willem's head swam. Vision blotched, he staggered down the red carpet towards the Luna Theater. It was a good turnout for the small Charleston theater known for arthouse films and independent documentaries. The building straddled the street corner with all the finery one could expect from a vintage showroom. The curved marquee shone above, and a grid of yellowed bulbs protruded from the under hang like glowing polyps. He squinted up, trying to get the name of the film as it passed above his head.

Willem Hillcrest Returns in The Last Gasp!

Yup, someone had made a mistake. That was his name alright, but he’d never even heard an utterance of a film called The Last Gasp. He should go home, retreat from this assault on the senses, but the tequila was leveling out his high and he felt the lull of a good headcloud floating him forward. If the people wanted him back, they could have him, in all his coked-up glory. And when the audience realized what a failure he was, it would be a moment. One last good bit for the tabloids and talk show hosts. The vultures could feast again.

Faces seemed to melt together under the lurid lights and constant pop of camera flashes. The onlookers spoke in snake whispers. He heard his name called out, but couldn't find the source in the crowd. Just a blend of media and fans creating an air of confusion at each side of the carpet. His head swam as a sharp pressure built behind his eyes. It was all too much. He never should have got in that limo. 

This was a mistake.

An arm fell across Willem’s shoulder and steadied him. “The gentleman of the hour!”

Willem found himself in lockstep with a stick-bug of a man. Bagged eyes shone down over a hooked nose; there was a dim sparkle in those pools of darkness, like a coin flashing up from a well. The man's hair was an ashen-white, unkempt around the edges, and he wore a classic suit that fit much too long. Despite the bad fit of the man's suit, it still made Willem feel majorly underdressed; an army of tailors couldn’t iron out the wrinkles in his own white button up.

And for some strange, misplaced reason, Willem swore he’d met this man somewhere before.

“It’s finally the big night,” sang the man. “You worked so hard for this and now it’s finally here. So much energy. So many lights!”

The man steadied Willem as he guided him through the theater’s foyer. His voice cut through the steady murmur of the crowd like a siren calling through the fog. The world deafened in his presence like someone had turned a dial. As if Willem had entered a stifling bubble. 

Another cocoon.

God, maybe he had overdone it with the lines and shots.

“Do I know you?” Willem asked.

The man’s face cracked open into a jagged smile. “Ah, yes, I sometimes forget how you are, Willem. But don’t worry, a director always stands by his star, regardless of his colorful peculiarities and darkened sensibilities.” 

Willem had never met a man who talked like this. Surely he’d remember someone so strange, especially if he’d directed on one of his projects. Willem tried to shrug off the man’s grip on his shoulder, but there was a surprising weight to it that was unshakable. “I think there’s been some sort of wild misunderstanding. This isn’t my movie. I haven’t been in front of a camera in ages. I don’t make films anymore.”

The director ushered him into the theater and down the sticky aisles. The dark screen loomed, monolithic and dead. Willem felt as if he was caught in a current; the very thought of swimming against it was exhausting. Instead, he gave in to the flow.

“Isn’t simply living an act of creation?” asked the director. “We are always recording. The craft never stops, and you, sir, are a master of your craft.”

Front and center, Willem fell into his seat. The director sat next to him. The theater was filling up and a hushed thrill rose from it. Willem glanced behind him. He knew the type of crowd: enthusiasts, journalists, hanger-ons of the film scene. Their faces were a mix of anticipation and jubilance. 

Willem sagged back into his seat, suddenly drained. 

The director took it all in, beaming. There was a dustiness to his skin that Willem hadn’t noticed until now—a sort of fine silt that collected in his crow’s feet and laugh lines. 

“When we struck our deal, I knew you were the real thing, even if you turned out to be quite the stubborn little artist.”

“Deal?” asked Willem. There was a stab of pain at the front of his skull. A lance of a migraine. He needed a bump. “I think I—”

The director brought his finger to his cracked lips. “Shush, now. It’s starting.”

The speakers snickered and popped as the screen fizzed to life. 

A montage of clips played out: the neighborhood Willem grew up in, soaked in West Virginian sunshine. His first acting lessons as a teen. His mother and father raising hell in the living room as he crept through the hallway upstairs. His first stage play, a smile on his face as the crowd cheered.

Willem’s eyes were wide. A lump swelled in his throat. He could only stare. “Where did you get all this?”

“We are always recording,” rasped the director. 

The scene faded into another. The camera wobbled around a bar, but the dolly track made no sense. Impossible angles that should have shown production equipment and lights were bare of them. The camera was in the ceiling, in the walls, inside the bar-back’s mirror. It made Willem’s stomach twist. When it settled, he recognized himself on a stool, much younger, swaying precariously forward and back; he’d always been the kind of drunk that would go from zero to fucked-up in the span of a few drinks. The director was with him, suddenly at the bar, whispering something in his ear.

“I remember our meeting fondly, even if you don’t,” said the director beside him. “Our moment of binding, if you will. Just a youth. So full of, how do you say it? Piss and/or vinegar?”

The scene was itching at Willem’s throbbing brain. “I don’t understand. I don’t remember.” But then, he didn’t recall a lot of nights. The substance abuse had gnawed tunnels in his memory like woodworms through a stump.

“I promised you everything. And in return, you just had to make films. To be a star. To create light.” The director craned his long neck and scanned the theater. His eyes darted from audience member to audience member. “So much wonderful light.” 

Willem swore the director grew in that moment, maybe just an inch or two, but his mass, his presence, it swelled as if waterlogged. His suit didn’t seem as baggy as it once had.

The scenes continued to rush forward. Interviews and red carpets flashing by. A cacophony of success. Then a deluge of excess. Women. Men. Alcohol. Drugs. Fights. A scattering of poor reviews sullying his name. The critics who had once adored him now eagerly tore down his reputation. All of it strobed across Willem’s face in an assault of light. He wanted to look away, to tear his eyes off that horrid screen, but he couldn’t. It snared him. 

Then, finally, the camera came to rest in his apartment. Him, alone in a shadowed room. A great retreat to a den of cowardice.

Back home, in Charleston.

The seat creaked as the director leaned towards Willem, who felt the heat of the man's rank words in his ear. “And you thought you could just stop.”

A new scene colored the theater with its putrid light. A motel room came into focus, stained yellow by daylight filtered through tattered curtains. This was a place Willem remembered. A place he wanted so desperately to forget.

“No,” said Willem. “Not this.”

“But this is your return,” said the director. “This is your craft at its peak. Raw emotion such as this, it is rare.”

“Turn it off.” Willem struggled to rise from his seat. To run. But he couldn’t move. The screen’s light pressed him to his seat like a million tiny hands needling into his chest. 

“Please,” he whispered. “Stop.”

A much younger Willem stumbled into the scene, colossal and tilted on the big screen. His shirt was gone and his ribs were etched with shadow. He was thin and frail, but smiling a shit-eating grin. What had he been on then? Molly? Ketamine? Both mixed with liquor? He didn’t remember now, but he knew what came next.

Lily. 

At least that’s what she’d called herself, but chances were she’d lost her true name some time before this in the entertainment meat grinder. The camera found her stretched across the bed, draped like laundry awaiting folding, expectant. She smiled back at the onscreen Willem, her heart-shaped face hidden under rivulets of dirty-blonde, as he tied the medical hose around her arm. 

As he slipped the needle into her stressed veins. 

As the plunger sank and the heroin pushed inside her. 

And then she was gone to the world, but not lost, not yet.

Willem gripped the director's arm, clinging to his suit fabric. He clawed desperately, one-handed. “They can’t see this.”

I can’t see this.

“You promised her everything,” said the director. “To make her a star and show the world her light. Let us make sure you are not a liar, Willem. This is her moment as much as it is yours.”

Something snapped inside Willem like a wishbone, and he was on his feet. He stumbled up the aisle. The audience’s enraptured faces rushed past, their eyes glossy and hypnotized by the events transpiring on screen. He broke through to the auditorium exit and found his route. He took the stairs two at a time to the projector room, pulling at the handrail like a lifeline. He fumbled open the door and spilled in to find no one at the controls. The film reels spun, sending a cone of light stuttering through dust motes. A retinue of moths flitted across the lens, casting a fluttering of shadows across the images below.

Willem found the projector’s power switch and flipped it off. But the reels kept spinning, undeterred. The film continued below.

The scene spiraled slowly towards Lily as she began to gag. Her mouth opened and closed over froth like some beached sea-thing. 

Willem followed the projector’s power cord to the wall, and wrenched the plug from the socket, but the film continued its relentless spinning, something worse than electricity driving it forward.

Onscreen, Willem was with Lily now, shaking her, turning her over, trying to clear the airway. Clawing in her throat with saliva-slick hands before rearing back in vicious sobs. Giving up.

In the projector room, Willem grabbed at the film reels, but they were unstoppable. Their metal casing dug into his skin, cutting a gash across his sweating palms as he tried to pull a reel free. 

On the screen, the camera spun to catch his panic in full, a string of broken curses falling from his mouth.

Hands bloody, Willem could only watch in horror through the projection booth's window as the film continued on screen below. He watched his past self go through the motions he tried so desperately to forget. The one memory he couldn’t eradicate with drugs and booze, now presented for all to see, larger than life.

He watched as his younger self picked up the hotel phone.

He held it, hand trembling over the number pad.

He put it back down.

And he left.

The screen went black. The flapping end of the film reel brought Willem back to the present as the projector’s motor wound down. He tore the reel from the projector, all of its horrible resistance now gone, and held it in his hands. He felt its weight. That final scene wasn’t the moment that started his downfall, but the one that had anchored him at rock bottom. Now it felt physical in his grip, like he had reached into chest and pulled out a tumor, dark and diseased. 

He dug into his pocket and pulled out his lighter. 

The sound of thunderous applause erupted below. Willem crept to the viewing window and looked down over the audience. They rose, one by one by one, palms driving together with a fervor he’d never seen throughout his entire career. They hollered and whistled.

They loved it.

There, at the very front, stood the director. Taller and wider than he’d been before, suit fitted to perfection, he stared up at Willem. A smile pulled at his face and a lunar spark shone in his eyes. He drew in a full, steady breath and swept his hand over their heads and upwards towards the projector room.

The crowd turned and found Willem. Cheers carried upwards as their applause grew louder. An old, dusty feeling unfurled in his chest. Something he thought long lost: Adoration. 

With trembling hands, Willem returned the film to the projector.

And he bowed.