Behind the Scenes

You sink into the chair made of flimsy black fabric, and you can almost hear the seat groaning underneath your three hundred pound torso, a result of having Ronald McDonald as your only friend for years. As you shift around uncomfortably, you scan the set, making sure everything is in place. The handsome young actors that remind you of a younger self are poised for action, their cowboy hats casting shadows on their scruffy faces dotted with painting stubble. Above them on a balcony above a sign that says SALOON in faded green paint is a beautiful girl, one that you’d recognize from being on the cover of last month’s Vogue, or from being in that movie trailer advertising her next starring role. Her chestnut hair is pulled back and held tightly under her wide suede hat, her hand holding an artificially worn down revolver.  You nod your head towards the camera man, whose name couldn’t be bothered remembering, and he starts rolling the cameras.

“Action,” you say in a gruff, constantly irritated voice that no matter how many anger management classes you take, just can’t seem to go away. 

“Wha’ didja say yer name wus again?” says one of the actors in a thick, Clint Eastwood-esque, accent. He is directing this question up to the girl. She simply gives him an Oscar-worthy glance that seems to say “I have deep, dark mysterious secrets that you will probably find out later in the movie.” As you watch the scene attentively, you are apprehensive to what will come next. You can see the nervousness in the actress’s sapphire eyes as well. She holds the gun out towards the cowboy, her hand shaking.  After years of being in romantic comedies, she has little knowledge on how murder in movies works.

            “I’m sorry I have to do this Danny. You already know too much,” she says in a dramatic voice as she points her gun at the man, and fires. The sound from the gun causes the girls doing makeup off stage to scream, and the starlet jumps in fright. Smoke made by special effects clouds her, and she stumbles around from the force of the “gunshot” and her impaired vision. Before you can even yell “cut,” she falls off the balcony, misses the stage completely, and tumbles straight into your lap. The force makes the already strained chair topple, and you end up with her sprawled against you. The reactions around you go from snickers at the beautiful actress on top of the ugly, angry, depressed and fat director, to murmurs of concern as the on-set medics run towards her to make sure she’s alright. Others just wait eager to see your reaction at this “scandal,” expecting an outburst of fury.

            The actress looks at you, her apprehensive blue eyes meet yours. The same blue eyes that you see every single day when you look into a mirror at your dilapidated appearance.

            “Sorry Dad. You okay?” she says in a concerned, anxious voice.

            You want to tell her no. That you’re not okay, that every day you wake up and pray to God that this will be your last. That you need her to call you Daddy again, and that you need her to look at you the way she did before the divorce, before she got famous. You want to ask her if she’s happy, how her mother is doing, and if that excuse for a wife is really is going out with that jackass of a producer.

            But as the doctors roll her off of you, muttering about safety precautions, all you can get out is “yeah.” 

Author's Note

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[nicolo]

Second-Person Narrative... COOOL XD