He stands by the entrance, dreaming. Smouldering.
He started coming here twenty years ago, when the film studio was up and coming. Like him.
He took a job at the diner nearby. Just till he was spotted.
His break over, he goes back to work. Undiscovered, for one more day.
Brian Maycock’s stories have recently appeared in Trembling with Fear, Paragraph Planet and 101 Words. He lives in Glasgow.
He stands petrified and nauseous in an arc of blistering light.
The cold clutch of fear steals his breath as beyond, in darkness, the watchers wait expectantly for him to deliver all he knows.
Jolted, he surrenders. Words pour forth, unstoppable.
Then silence, tension, and the crack of thunderous applause.
Viv is still in Somerset and in state of shock that her story got chosen last month. Flushed with success and a bottle of plonk, she has had another go.
He always played tough guy roles, flawed but sympathetic, and he was my idol when I was a teenager. So I’m out one day, wearing a dark turtleneck and tweed sports jacket just like Garfield’s.
This kid approaches, looks me up and down, and snarls, “Murderer!”
He made my day.
Alex Markovich has a good memory. He’s 80.
“I’m a world-class artiste!” the actress pronounced. “I require the perfect environment to nurture my delicate muse.”
“So it’s your muse who eats six pounds of blue Smarties every day, then?” muttered her browbeaten young assistant.
“Silly boy; we don’t eat them! We throw them out the window at people.”
Creative people are weird. Cough.
This story was based on a title suggested by @Vigafray.