Chapter 5: You're Having Pain for Lunch

The script sat on Leo's desk like a malignant tumor, its pages yellowed as if aged by decades rather than hours. He'd been staring at it since arriving at the warehouse that morning, unable to bring himself to read past the title page: "The Glass Sandwich."

Three words that shouldn't have meant anything to anyone but him and Jeremy.

Leo's hands shook as he turned to the first page, his eyes scanning the scene description with growing horror:

EXT. WOODS BEHIND SUBURBAN HOME - DAY

Two boys, LEO (10) and JEREMY (8), play in a makeshift fort constructed from fallen branches and old boards. Sunlight filters through the canopy, creating patterns of light and shadow that dance across their faces.

JEREMY What should we play now?

LEO grins with the cruel imagination of childhood.

LEO I know a new game. It's called "trust."

Leo's vision blurred. The paper fell from his numb fingers, floating to the floor like autumn leaves. This was impossible. The game—if it could even be called that—had lasted less than ten minutes on a summer afternoon twenty years ago. He'd never spoken of it to anyone, not his parents, not his therapists after Jeremy's death, not even Sarah during their engagement when she'd pressed him about his childhood.

It was the one secret he and Jeremy had truly shared, buried so deep that Leo had almost convinced himself it had never happened.

The door to his editing bay opened without a knock. Mr. Carruthers entered, his pale face wearing an expression of false concern that made Leo's skin crawl.

"Difficulty with the material?" he asked, settling into the chair across from Leo's desk with fluid movements that seemed to bypass normal joint mechanics.

"This is impossible." Leo's voice cracked. "I never told anyone about this. Jeremy never told anyone. We were alone in those woods."

"Pain leaves impressions," Mr. Carruthers said, his words carrying the same dubbed quality Leo had noticed in the Board members' voices. "Trauma creates ripples that sensitive individuals can... detect. The Board has many talents."

Leo retrieved the script with trembling hands, forcing himself to read further. The scene description was meticulous in its accuracy—every detail of the fort's construction, the exact pattern of light through the leaves, even the way Jeremy had chewed on his lower lip when he was nervous.

But it was the dialogue that made Leo's stomach turn. Word for word, it matched his memory of that afternoon, as if someone had been recording from inside his own skull.

LEO The game is simple. You have to do whatever I say, and you have to trust that I won't really hurt you.

JEREMY (uncertain) What if you do hurt me?

LEO Then you'll know not to trust people so much.

"I was ten years old," Leo whispered, more to himself than to Mr. Carruthers. "I didn't understand what I was doing."

"Children are capable of remarkable cruelty," Mr. Carruthers observed. "Their innocence is often overstated. The scene continues for several more pages. Would you like me to summarize?"

"No." Leo slammed the script closed, but the words continued to burn in his memory. He knew what came next—the progression from harmless pranks to something darker, the moment when trust became exploitation, when a game became something that would haunt both brothers for the rest of their lives.

"The young actors are already in makeup," Mr. Carruthers continued. "Brothers, actually. Eight and ten years old, from a family that understands the importance of authentic performance. Their parents are quite progressive about artistic expression."

Leo's chair scraped against the floor as he stood abruptly. "I won't do this. Not to children. Not to anyone."

"But you've already done it," Mr. Carruthers smiled, and Leo saw that his teeth had grown sharper since yesterday, more numerous. "Twenty years ago, in those same woods. All we're asking is that you recreate your own memories."

"That was different. I was a child myself."

"Were you?" Mr. Carruthers tilted his head at an angle that reminded Leo uncomfortably of the Board members. "Or were you simply discovering your true nature? The same nature that drove you to direct your brother's death with such beautiful precision. The same nature that allowed you to extract authentic pain from young Elara."

The mention of Elara sent a spike of guilt through Leo's chest. He'd tried not to think about her hollow eyes, the way she'd touched her bruises like religious artifacts. "Where is she? I haven't seen her since yesterday."

"Elara is resting. The depth of her performance required... recovery time. But she's grateful for the experience. They all are, once they understand what we've given them."

Leo moved toward the door, but Mr. Carruthers' voice stopped him cold.

"The contract you signed included a completion clause, Mr. Vance. Failure to fulfill your directorial obligations will result in immediate legal action. We will seize your assets, garnish your wages for the next thirty years, and ensure that you never work in any creative field again."

"Sue me then. I don't care."

"We will also pursue legal action against the young actors' families for breach of their contracts. Parents who depend on their children's earnings to pay for medical treatments. Families who will lose their homes if the production is cancelled."

Leo's hand froze on the doorknob. "You're lying."

"Studio C is prepared and waiting. The fort has been constructed to exact specifications. The lighting matches your memories perfectly." Mr. Carruthers stood, his movements too fluid, too silent. "The boys are excited to work with you. They've been told it's an important film about childhood trauma, something that will help other children understand difficult experiences."

"This is insane."

"This is art." Mr. Carruthers' smile widened impossibly. "This is what you've always wanted to create—something honest, something that transforms personal pain into universal truth. Isn't that what your brother would have wanted?"

The walk to Studio C felt like a descent into hell. The corridors seemed longer today, stretching impossibly far, lined with doors that whispered when Leo passed. Through one gap, he glimpsed Marcus from his first day, sitting motionless in a chair while technicians adjusted something that looked like electrodes attached to his temples. Through another, he saw what might have been Elara, though her face was so heavily bandaged he couldn't be sure.

Studio C had been transformed into a perfect recreation of the woods behind his childhood home. Real trees had been brought in, their branches carefully arranged to match his memory. Sunlight—or something that looked like sunlight—filtered through the artificial canopy, creating the exact patterns of light and shadow that had danced across Jeremy's face twenty years ago.

Two boys sat in the reconstructed fort, and Leo's knees nearly buckled. They were perfect casting—the older one lean and dark-haired like Leo had been, the younger cherubic and trusting like Jeremy. They wore identical clothes to what he and his brother had worn that day, down to the grass stains on Jeremy's surrogate's knee.

"Mr. Vance!" The older boy jumped up, his face bright with professional enthusiasm. "I'm Tommy, and this is my little brother Jake. We're so excited to work with you!"

Jake looked up from where he'd been arranging toy soldiers in the dirt, his eyes wide and innocent. "Are we really going to be in a movie?"

Leo opened his mouth to speak, but no words came. The resemblance to Jeremy was uncanny—not just physical, but something in the boy's manner, the way he held his shoulders, the way he chewed his lower lip when nervous.

"The scene is quite simple," Sarah announced, appearing with her ever-present clipboard. "A game between brothers that escalates. The camera will capture the natural progression of childhood play into something... more complex."

"I can't do this." Leo's voice came out as a whisper.

"Of course you can." Mr. Carruthers materialized beside him. "You've done it before. You survived it then, and you'll survive directing it now. The only difference is that this time, you'll transform the experience into something meaningful."

The script pages rustled in Leo's hands as he raised them, the words blurring together. He found his mark on the page, the exact moment when innocent play had become something else.

LEO This is a sandwich. See? Bread and glass.

He holds up two pieces of bread with what appears to be broken glass between them.

LEO (CONT'D) The game is to see how much you trust me. If you eat it, that means you really trust me.

JEREMY (frightened but trying to be brave) But it will hurt me.

LEO Only if you don't trust me enough.

Leo's hands shook as he read the scene direction that followed. The script was meticulous in its recreation of that awful afternoon—the way he'd ground up a Mason jar, the way he'd convinced Jeremy it was just sugar that looked like glass, the way his little brother had taken that first, trusting bite.

The way the real glass had cut Jeremy's mouth, and the way Leo had convinced him to keep playing, to keep eating, because stopping would mean he didn't trust his big brother.

"Places, everyone!" Sarah called out.

Tommy took his position, holding up two pieces of bread with what looked like crushed crystal between them. The prop department had done excellent work—it looked exactly like the makeshift sandwich Leo remembered creating.

"Is it real glass?" Leo asked, his voice barely audible.

"Of course not," Sarah laughed. "It's sugar glass. Perfectly safe. Though it will create the proper visual effect when mixed with the blood capsules."

Jake settled into position, his young face trusting and eager. "What's my motivation?" he asked, the question sounding odd in his child's voice.

"You love your brother," Leo heard himself say. "You trust him completely. You would do anything to make him proud of you."

"Action," someone called—Leo realized it was his own voice.

The scene began with painful accuracy. Tommy's performance was unnaturally mature, capturing not just Leo's childhood cruelty but something deeper—a hunger for power, for control, for the intoxicating rush of having someone trust you completely even as you betrayed that trust.

Jake matched him with heartbreaking authenticity, his fear warring with his desire to please his older brother. When Tommy held out the fake glass sandwich, Jake's hesitation was perfect—the exact mixture of terror and love that Jeremy had shown twenty years ago.

"Take a bite," Tommy said, and his voice carried the same cajoling tone Leo remembered using. "It's just a game. I won't really hurt you."

Jake bit into the sandwich, and immediately his mouth filled with what looked like blood. The sugar glass must have been sharp enough to cut his lips, because his cry of pain sounded entirely genuine.

"Cut!" Leo stepped forward, but Sarah grabbed his arm.

"Keep rolling," she hissed. "They're giving us gold."

Tommy was still in character, still playing the cruel older brother with disturbing accuracy. "Keep eating," he told Jake, whose face was now streaked with tears and fake blood. "If you stop, it means you don't trust me."

Jake took another bite, then another, his small face contorting with pain and confusion. But he kept eating, kept trusting, kept playing the game just as Jeremy had done twenty years ago.

"Beautiful," Mr. Carruthers whispered beside Leo. "Look at the raw emotion. The authentic pain. This is what real cinema looks like."

Leo watched through his viewfinder as Jake finished the sandwich, his mouth bloody, his eyes hollow with the kind of betrayal that changes a person forever. The camera captured every moment—the trust transformed into fear, the love curdling into something darker, the exact moment when innocence died.

"Keep rolling," Leo whispered, and felt something fundamental shift inside him.

The scene continued beyond what had actually happened in the woods twenty years ago. The script called for escalation, for the game to become something even more twisted, more cruel. And Leo found himself directing it with increasing confidence, his artistic eye capturing the beauty in the boys' authentic emotional destruction.

When they finally called cut, Jake sat in the dirt crying—not the professional tears of a child actor, but the raw, broken sobs of genuine trauma. Tommy sat beside him, his own face strangely empty, as if something essential had been drained away.

"Magnificent work," Mr. Carruthers announced, but his voice seemed to come from very far away. "The footage is extraordinary. Pure, unfiltered truth."

Leo stared at the two boys, seeing Jeremy and himself twenty years ago, seeing the moment when their relationship had changed forever. But instead of horror, he felt something else—satisfaction. Pride. The intoxicating rush of having created something real, something that mattered.

"What's our next setup?" he asked Sarah, his voice steady now.

She smiled, and her expression matched the ones he'd seen on the Board members' faces. "There's a scene where the older brother convinces the younger one to play doctor. Very psychological. Very... intimate."

Leo nodded, already envisioning the shots, already planning how to capture the maximum emotional truth from the young actors' inevitable pain. The script felt alive in his hands, pulsing with the promise of even deeper revelations, even more authentic suffering.

As the crew reset for the next scene, Leo caught his reflection in a piece of broken mirror that served as a prop. His smile was different now—wider, hungrier, more knowing. He looked like someone who understood the true nature of art, the holy necessity of pain, the beautiful agony of authentic expression.

The clicking of cameras filled the studio, steady and hypnotic as a heartbeat, promising that today would bring even greater achievements in the transformation of trauma into truth.

Leo raised his viewfinder, framing the next shot, and whispered the words that sealed his transformation: "Keep rolling."