The Hollywood Incubus

by Rowan Casey

  "I bet you say that to all the boys."

  He laughed, but it was a strained laugh. It was the sound of a man too desperate to please.

  "So, you could make use of my money?" I asked. I am a bad, bad man.

  "Well, the new script is special. I’ll be honest with you, there are several people interested in a piece of it. It’s going to be next year’s LaLaLand."

  "Ah, I’m not a big fan of dancing movies, you know?"

  "Oh, there’s no dance. Think of it more like next year’s Deathwish," he said, plucking the name of a much more masculine movie out of thin air, and then as though anticipating my next complaint added, "fused with the Godfather," another man-classic, he was going all in on the clichés guys were supposed to love. "Fused with a Meryl sensibility."

  "A what?"

  "It’s industry code, basically means awards, and moolah, lots of stinking moolah, and who doesn’t like money, my friend? Not us, that’s who."

  "Tell me more, tell me more," I said, betting he’d miss the fact I was quoting a classic dance movie just for shits and giggles.

  "As I said, there are several industry heavyweights wanting a piece of the action," Merchant lied smoothly, putting a little spin on the fact no one had been willing to touch his script in eight years. "But I don’t want their money," he looked at me now, properly looked. "This is weird, I don’t know you, but I know you if that makes sense?" Not a lick of it. "This industry is a mess. For all it looks like there’s been a shift in the power dynamic, you’ve just got to take a walk around out there to know it’s still business as usual. Fat, ugly, rich men with power abusing their power. Well, here’s the thing, Sam. I don’t want to be a part of that. If I can get this made without touching their money, and validating their scummy behavior, I’m all for it. I want to make a clean film. And by clean, I mean free of abuse, free of that sexual undercurrent of the old Hollywood and the casting couch. I want to make something worthy."

  "And that’s where I come in," I said, playing the part. "You should know, we’re talking about a lot of money. And I’m not interested in getting it back. I came into an inheritance recently, from a family I didn’t know I had, and really I want no part of. Think of it like the Holy Grail," I said, unable to resist another little joke for my own amusement. "I can give fifty million," I plucked the number out of thin air, multiplying Merchant’s greed by two.

  "When you say inheritance, how dirty is this money? I mean, are we talking family?" he said it in the only way mafia could ever be implied. "Is it going to get the IRS breathing down my neck, or Russian mob turning up on my door looking to put one here?" he put his finger to his temple and pulled the trigger on a make-believe gun.

  "Nothing so glamorous," I assured him, wondering where I should pretend the money came from. What industry offers you fifty mil in disposable income that is legit, and you still wouldn’t touch? We were in Hollywood. I went for the only one I knew. "Porn." I said.

  And it was like I’d shot him in the balls.

  "I’m not in the business of making skin flicks, kid."

  "And I wouldn’t want you to. I told you, I want nothing to do with this money. I’d give it all to woman’s shelters if I could," which of course I couldn’t because it didn’t exist, but hey, I sold it. "But this feels better. Put it back into the industry, but make it do something worthy."

  He nodded. "I get you, kid. So, look, I’d want to do a lot of location shoots, Croatia is cheap, Romania offers great crew discounts. I’m going to need to assemble a team, get some good guys in I trust, then put the call out for principle casting. We can make this happen. Do you want to make this happen?"

  "I want to make this happen," I said, writing checks Wells Fargo sure as hell couldn’t cash. "Let’s make a movie."

  We shook on it. Benedict Merchant’s palm was every bit as slippery as his personality, and just as greasy.

  "You want me to give you the grand tour, show you around the place?"

  "Sure, you can tell me all about your story as we walk."

  Too easy. A couple of minutes later, paper coffee cups in hand thanks to Velma, we were walking towards one of the giant hangers where some blockbuster was shooting.

  I was within spitting distance of Jonas Holm, I just needed lining up in the right direction so my saliva hit the mark. "So," I asked innocently, "Who’s shooting around here at the moment?" I saw the name Cruise on one of the Star Wagonz and knew at least one guy who was. Merchant made a face.

  "You know that dick Jonas Holm? Does the torture porn stuff from the Sufferer’s franchise? He’s in there," he pointed towards the largest of five hangers in a row. I saw the sign making the door Studio 5, No Unauthorized Entry. And another below saying Do Not Enter, Shooting in Progress.

  "Didn’t he just win some award for some arty piece?"

  "Anyone can win awards," Merchant told me. I guess he was right. He had the trinket on the shelf to prove it. "He does the horror stuff to pay the bills."

  "Which is something we all have to do," I said.

  "I’d rather cut my ball sack off than sell out like that."

  I nodded, an empathic "me too."

  Merchant nodded to a couple of suits, no doubt important people around here. They completely blanked him.

  "Don’t worry," I said. "Once our film starts shooting they’ll all want a piece of you."

  "I need to split," he meant powder his nose. It was obvious he was coming down off the buzz. "Get your girl to fax details over to Velma, I’ll sort out a deal sheet, and we can put that porn money to good use." I stuck out my hand, to seal the deal old school. He took it, and in that moment of sweaty hand grasping, he suddenly said, "Hey, there’s a party going down tonight over at The Garden Encantada, you know it? You should come, now you are one of us. I’ll show you around. We can talk to some of the talent there, let them know we’re in the market."

  "Sounds great," I said, thinking so much for the whole Mr. Clean, don’t want anything to do with the way the old shit went down in this industry. He was just another pervert dancing to Evienne Nemi’s tune.

  10

  I figure you should know me well enough by now. Tell me I can’t touch something, I’m going to want to touch it. Tell me I can’t have something, I’m going to try and steal it. Tell me I can’t go in somewhere, well you just know I’m going to open that door.

  I walked into another world.

  Or seven of them, to be precise. There were seven incredibly different sets built around the sound stage. Six of the seven were bathed in near-absolute dark, the seventh lit up like it contained the contents of Indy’s ark, the klieg lights so bright they burned to look at. I couldn’t hear what was going on, so I moved closer. A ripple of applause suggested a scene had just wrapped.

  I took my chance, crossing one of the dark worlds to get closer to the action.

  I didn’t know what I was going to say to Holm if I found him. I wasn’t sure that opening with "Hey, I just peed on your bed," was the way to go, but it was pretty much to the point. My second choice was, "I found your gimp," which I kinda liked.

  In the end the whole thing went down slightly differently. A miced up production assistant hustled over, and hand over mic told me, "You can’t be here."

  I patted my chest and then my legs, furrowed my brow in deep concentration and told her, "And yet here I am."

  "Do I need to call security?"

  "Probably, as I intend to do very nasty things to your boss," I told her, then just because I have zero boundaries and a real problem with being told I’m not wanted, I did that thing with my tongue in my cheek to make sloppy gobbling noises and mimed a blowjob. I guessed right. Another Hollywood dick that gets sucked. She rolled her eyes and said, "You’re not supposed to come onto the set. You’re meant to wait in Mr. Holm’s trailer."

  I shrugged. "My bad. What can I say, it’s not every day you get to peep in on the stars."

  "Well, you still can’t be here. It’s a closed set today."


  I knew what that meant. They were filming some nude stuff. Ah, Hollywood you hypocritical bastard, give a woman the illusion of privacy right before you put her nipples up on a giant screen–the size of my head no less–and invite eighty million people to come and get an eyeful. Yeah that’s the weirdest sort of voyeuristic privacy shit there is.

  "Who is it?" I asked. "Doing the skin shot?"

  "Madison Chambers."

  "Seriously?"

  "Yep. First time. I don’t know how Holm convinced her, but it’s going to be serious box office. The Queen of Hollywood."

  And that was not much of an overstatement, either. Madison was certainly royalty, maybe a Duchess if not an actual Queen, but somewhere in hell Hugh Hefner was wishing he’d held out just a few more months before his withered little heart gave out.

  "So, come on, how do I get a sneak peek? What if I cross your hand with silver, one prostitute of dreams to another?"

  "Not happening. You need to go wait in the trailer and try not to get into any sort of trouble."

  "Anyone ever tell you, you take all the fun out of life?"

  "Not all of it," she said. "I didn’t call security. Yet." I liked the way she made that last word its own sentence.

  "Reading you loud and clear, sister. Okay, where do I find the mythical director’s trailer?"

  "Back the way you came. There are six of them lined up like trailer park trash. His is the last one in the line. It’s across from craft services."

  "Gotcha," I said, like I had any idea where they kept their high sugar snacks.

  "Do you have a name?"

  "I do," I said. "But rather than spoil the surprise, just tell lover boy that the star of Peepeegate is here."

  "Peepeegate?"

  "Private joke, he’ll get it."

  "If you’re sure?"

  "Trust me, it’ll be hilarious. I’d love to see the look on his face."

  "You’re a very strange man," the PA said. I wasn’t about to argue. "I can see why he likes you."

  Rather than outstay my welcome, I went in search of Holm’s trailer, happy enough to let the ritualistic killer come to me, rather than me waste time hunting for him. In retrospect, maybe not the greatest idea.

  For one, he made me wait, and I’m not good at waiting, either. Plenty of people make out patience is a virtue, but let’s be honest, it’s like the least of the virtues when you put it up against the proper ones, like the instinct to climb up four floors of an apartment block one balcony at a time to save a baby dangling by an arm from the certain death. That instinct is a proper virtue. So, I made myself at home. I’ve always wondered what these trailers were like. The reality is a slightly disappointing mobile home for people with no taste. I made myself comfortable on the couch. I couldn’t help but wonder the kind of action it had seen. I mean, we were in the home of the casting couch, on a literal couch, in the trailer of a guy who obviously paid pretty boys for a good time. If pleather could speak…

  After an hour of twiddling my thumbs I started going through his drawers, looking for anything remotely useful. I don’t know what I was looking for, ideally a list of victims, spells, and waiting deities, I guess. Or a handy guide to how I would wind up tonight.

  There’s something very weird about knowing you don’t die for another eight hours, especially when you find yourself facing an iconic Hollywood slasher in full make-up, but I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s roll it back a few minutes. There was a knock on the door as I was wrist deep in a drawer filled with ladies' lingerie of every lacy color as long as it was black. I guess Holm had a Henry Ford fetish.

  I shoved the drawer closed and stood up, doing my best not to look guilty as the PA stuck her head around the door. "Mister Holm requested you on set."

  "I thought that was a no-no?"

  "We’ve wrapped for the day."

  "Great."

  "Look, far be it from me to question another man’s life choices, but seriously… you strike me as a smart guy, you’ve got options. You don’t need to be the fuck toy of some guy like Holm."

  "You telling me I could do better?"

  "Something like that," she said. "Look, the guy is a creep. There’s something about him…it just sets my skin crawling. Do yourself a favor, turn around, walk out of here and forget you ever heard the name Jonas Holm. He’ll be yesterday’s man soon enough."

  "Oh, how I wish I could," I said, "Believe me. I’d love nothing more than to just leave him to get on with what he’s got going on, but, between you and me, someone has to stand up for what is right in this world. I may not look like a white knight, but in this city I am positively Tide clean."

  "Then god help us all."

  "I thought that was a given?"

  She laughed and left me to make my own way back. It wasn’t difficult to get lost in the labyrinthine warrens of the stages, all of the trailers, and everything else, but all I had to do was retrace my steps and resist the temptation to sneak off and try and grab some shots of talent doing more human things.

  This time when I opened the heavy steel door there were no bright lights in the distance to beckon me on through the seven worlds the designers had carefully crafted. I could hear every footstep echo loudly as I walked along a steel gantry and made my way down to the floor.

  The place was vast.

  When I say echo, I mean proper empty aircraft hanger-style echoes. The kind of sound you only get in an empty place.

  "Come out, come out whereever you are," I called. I mean, why not? He knew I was coming.

  In the distance, a light went on in answer to my challenge. A single spotlight. I could see a man in the middle of it. He looked disappointingly normal. But isn’t that always the way? This skin we wear is a mask over the monster that lies beneath, and the greatest skill the monsters have is looking just like us so they can walk and talk and move about among us, making friends and pretending to be just like us, when they’re anything but. And yes, I’m aware of the irony. Yes, I know I make my money as a parasite feeding off the talent of others, and their misfortune is worth far more than their success. So sue me.

  He watched me walk slowly across the seven sets towards him. It was eerie, as though he could see me through the layers of dark beyond the bright light. Not once did he take his eyes off me. He was dressed in a leather great coat like Dante Grimm, had his hair slicked back like Dante Grimm, and wore the same pebble glasses as Grimm, the difference was that beneath them he wore a hessian sack with a red lipstick smile painted in place.

  "You found me," he said, his voice muffled through the cloth.

  "It wasn’t difficult, I just asked around for the freak and they pointed me this way."

  "You’re a funny man, Lancelot," he said. "You don’t mind me calling you by your real name, do you? I don’t think there should be secrets between us. After all, we go back, you and I."

  "Who are you?" I said.

  "You don’t recognize me? I’m disappointed."

  "You’re wearing a bag over your head. Unless you always walked around with a bag on your head I wouldn’t get too broken up about me not recognizing you."

  He removed the glasses. There were buttons where he should have had eyes.

  "Better," I said. "Who could forget beauty like that?"

  "Nice to see your humor hasn’t improved since you woke up."

  Okay, I admit it, face-to-face, him in the spotlight, me in the darkness, no one else around, I was curious as to how this was going to play out and emboldened by the fact I knew I didn’t die here. Or at least I didn’t last time around. That’s the problem with a do-over, you start to second guess what you did right first time, or wrong, and can’t help but feel a little bit invincible, at least until the whole time of death thing catches up with where you are.

  "I know what you are doing," I told Button Eyed Boy. "And, here’s the thing, I’m going to stop you."

  "I don’t think you are," he said.

  "I assume you’ve got that funky security thin
g hooked up to your phone, so you know I’ve been in your bed and found your gimp?"

  "I saw, yes. I will need new sheets."

  "I wouldn’t worry, you won’t need sheets where I’m sending you."

  And so we traded barbs, and I missed the most obvious lie that was right in front of my face. Holm wasn’t the man in the mask.

  I took the blow to the side of the head, hard enough to make my knees buckle. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I’m in the middle of the land of illusion, and what do I do? Fall for the obvious bait and switch. Button Eyed Boy pulled off the mask to reveal he wasn’t a boy at all. Holm’s PA looked at me, full of pity as she shook her head as though to say "I did try to warn you." Which she did, credit to her. I just don’t listen.

  Another clubbing blow took me down and left me feeling like a bomb in my temple had just exploded. I don’t know what Holm hit me with, but it sure as hell wasn’t his fist.

  I rolled over onto my stomach, trying to stand, but the world refused to obey me and rolled away traitorously as I fell onto my face.

  Holm drove a boot into my ribs that hit so hard it lifted me six inches from the floor and left me spitting blood.

  "Disappointing," he said, coming up to stand beside me.