Chapter 5: The Show Must Go On

Chapter 5: The Show Must Go On

The gunshot was a period at the end of a sentence he could never unread. Crack. A sharp, definitive sound that echoed not just in the cold night air of the Hollywood Hills, but in the hollow spaces of Jack Thorne’s skull. It was the sound of his failure.

His office was a tomb, the only light a flickering blue-gray glow from an old television he’d left on for company. Empty whiskey bottles stood sentinel on his desk, surrounding a half-full glass of amber poison. The cheap liquor did little to dull the memory, serving only to sharpen the edges of his guilt.

He’d escaped, scrambling off the roof and melting back into the canyons, the whole time expecting the shriek of police sirens that never came. He’d made it back to the city, the smell of rotting sugar still clinging to his clothes, the afterimage of the insectoid face burned onto his retinas.

He took a long, burning swallow from the glass.

You killed her, you son of a bitch. The voice in his head was his own, raw and unforgiving. He had blundered into the monster’s nest, a clumsy oaf breaking the china. He’d shattered the philter, the alchemical source of the creature's control, and in doing so, had triggered its rage. The gunshot was the result. Fredrick Marr, the Collector, had found his prized possession talking to a trespasser and had simply… disposed of the evidence. And Seraphina, with her vacant eyes and programmed panic, had been the price.

He’d seen her Glimmer, that flickering pilot light of a soul, and he had been the one to blow it out.

The whiskey wasn’t working fast enough. He grabbed the bottle, forgoing the glass, and drank until the flickering screen blurred and the ghosts in the room began to fade. The last thing he remembered was the television host’s inane laughter before the darkness finally took him, pulling him down into a fitful, dreamless sleep slumped over his desk.

He woke to the chipper, relentlessly upbeat sound of morning television theme music. A drill of pain bored through his temples, and his tongue felt like a strip of old leather. Sunlight, thick with the office’s dust, streamed through the grimy window, mocking the darkness in his soul.

“Ugh,” he groaned, pushing himself upright. His neck cracked in protest. The TV was still on, the screen a blast of cheerful, oversaturated color that made him wince.

“And we’re back on Morning L.A.!” a host with blindingly white teeth chirped. “With us in the studio today, we have Hollywood’s most talked-about couple. Please welcome the radiant Seraphina Vance and her new husband, Fredrick Marr!”

Jack froze, his hand halfway to rubbing the sleep from his eyes. The names didn’t register at first, filtered through the thick fog of his hangover. Then, his vision cleared.

It was them.

They were sitting on a plush white sofa, bathed in the warm, forgiving glow of studio lights. Fredrick was the image of the charming, handsome husband, his arm draped possessively around his wife’s shoulders, his placid blue eyes drinking in the camera's adoration.

And beside him, smiling, was Seraphina.

She was alive.

She was dressed in a tasteful, sky-blue dress, her hair and makeup flawless. She looked perfect. Too perfect. She was answering the host’s fawning questions with a gentle, serene grace, her voice a soft, melodic hum.

“It was all such a whirlwind,” she was saying, her smile as bright and empty as a doll’s. “When you meet your soulmate, why wait? Fredrick showed me what real love is, away from all the noise and pressure of my career.”

Jack stumbled closer to the screen, his breath catching in his chest. His mind reeled, trying to reconcile the image on the screen with the gunshot that still echoed in his memory. It wasn't a recording. The chyron at the bottom of the screen read: LIVE.

He stared at her, his Glimmer flaring instinctively behind his hungover haze. The sickly pinkish aura around her was back, stronger and more seamless than ever. The tiny, flickering flame of her own soul was gone. Not dimmed. Gone. There was nothing left of the fiery, passionate woman he had met just days ago. This was a shell, animated and puppeteered with terrifying precision. Her eyes, magnified by the high-definition camera, held no light, no spark of individual thought. They were beautiful, polished stones.

The host turned to Fredrick. “And Fredrick, you’ve come out of nowhere and swept our Seraphina off her feet! The whole world is dying to know, what’s your secret?”

Fredrick Marr smiled that unnervingly perfect, clean-cut smile. It was the same smile from the photograph, the glamour hiding the twitching mandibles beneath. “No secret,” he said, his voice resonating with false humility. “I just adore her. My only desire is to make her happy and keep her safe. Sometimes, even the brightest stars need a quiet harbor to call home.”

He squeezed Seraphina’s shoulder, and she leaned into him, a perfect picture of marital bliss.

The horror that washed over Jack was colder and deeper than any grief. It was a bottomless, icy dread that settled in his bones.

He had been so wrong. So profoundly, catastrophically wrong.

He hadn’t gotten her killed. The gunshot wasn’t the end of the story. It was just a messy page that had been ripped out and replaced. He had broken the monster's toy, and the monster had simply… fixed it. It had repaired her, patched the hole the bullet had made, and put her back on display without a single seam showing.

The horror wasn't that she had died.

The horror was that her death was merely a temporary inconvenience for her captor. A minor setback. To this creature, a human life—a soul—was not a sacred, finite thing. It was a renewable resource. An object to be curated, and if damaged, to be mended.

Jack backed away from the television, a low sound of pure revulsion escaping his throat. He looked at his shaking hands, at the squalor of his office, then back at the bright, happy lie on the screen. He hadn't been hired to save a woman from a stalker. He was a janitor who had stumbled upon a god in a butcher’s apron. And the world was applauding the beautiful tapestry it had woven from its victim's soul.