Celebrity Skin
By Mandika Turudic

Part I - Tornado Land

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    Prudence Hamilton zipped up her rucksack with a kind of finality that left her palms clammy. She lingered in the doorway of her childhood bedroom, now stripped bare, save for the faded imprint of where her bookcase used to stand. The house, tucked away in the flat sprawl of Kansas, had always felt safe, if a bit stifling.

    She’d grown up in Tornado Land, where people kept calm through sirens and windstorms like it was all just a bit of bad weather. But this: this knot tightening in her chest, this was no passing squall. For the first time, the real storm wasn’t out there spinning across fields; it was sitting in her gut, waiting.

    She let out one of those proper dramatic sighs, the kind that makes it feel like your whole childhood is packing up with you. Then she slung the last bag over her shoulder and trudged downstairs, where her parents Lorraine and Virgil were waiting. All brave smiles and stiff-upper-lip hugs. She wasn’t off to college like everyone else with a sensible bone in their body. No. She had her sights set on acting, in the mad land of kale smoothies, goat yoga, and whatever else passed for normal in Los Angeles these days.

    Her parents said they supported her completely. And maybe they did. But there was something in the way her mom’s hug lingered, in the way her dad’s hand clutched her shoulder just a beat too long, that made her feel like someone had already started missing her…or in a morbid yet natural way, mourning a version of their little girl.

    Virgil belonged to the land, third generation, boots worn thin from years of tending soil that never quite gave back what it took. Lorraine had built her world indoors, tending to meals and memories, keeping love stitched into curtains and casseroles. Her greatest joy was crafting homemade jams, and Prue realized those would be hardest to part with.  They’d hoped for something steadier for Prue, yes but they would never clip her wings, not even now, when she was flying straight into a world they didn’t recognize..

    That evening, Lorraine set the table as if it might stop time. Roast chicken, cornbread, fried green tomatoes, some pies, fresh peaches, iced tea sweet enough to make your teeth ache. It was the sort of meal that said what words couldn’t: ‘We love you. We’re scared. Please don’t forget where you come from’.

    They ate as if under a spell, their voices caught somewhere between their throats and their thoughts. No one dared speak. Not out of anger, but out of fear that once the words came, they wouldn’t know how to put them back again. There was plenty to be said, whole lifetimes of it, but no one could quite work out how to begin. So, they left well-enough alone. The only real sound came from the soft clink of cutlery against ceramic and the occasional squawk from some unseen bird just beyond the window. The countryside, for all its openness, had a way of making things feel terribly small.

    Toto, her scruffy little companion, trailed faithfully behind. He wasn’t just a pet, he was family. More sibling than dog most days. After dinner, she scooped him up and headed for the guest room, the one with the flowery bedding and faint smell of lavender sachets. It was the first time she'd ever slept there, and she had the strange, sinking feeling it wouldn’t be the last.

    That night, she tossed and turned, the sheets too crisp, the silence too loud. Sleep kept its distance, like a friend who'd suddenly gone cold. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw it: an old-fashioned marquee flickering behind her lids, her name glowing in lights too bright to ignore: Prudence Hamilton. It should’ve felt thrilling. It didn’t.

    Her dreams turned sour: cinematic, yes, but laced with a kind of dread that grasped her even in sleep. A warped version of Tinseltown played behind her eyes: glittering boulevards smeared in shadow, broken lights blinking out names she couldn’t quite read, neon signs buzzed like hornets, film reels unspooled into ash, and shiny pavements that cracked under high heels with mirrors that didn’t always reflect the truth. It didn’t take a psychologist to work out what was eating her. The anxiety was plain enough. Tomorrow, everything changed.

    Her alarm was set for 5 a.m. A cruel hour, but it had to be done. She and Toto would be off before sunrise, saying their goodbyes in the half-dark, then pointing the car west toward the land of beautiful people and shinier lies. She meant lights, of course. Lights.

​

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Part II - On The Road

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    ‘Over the Rainbow’ seeped through the tinny car speakers. Prudence’s old banger and her old-fashioned ways made an oddly fitting pair. She was, as far as she knew, the last soul still burning mix CDs, descendants of cassettes, though scarcely more modern. She might have gone the way of her friends, fiddling about with playlists on a phone, but she clung to discs, as though they anchored her. When the track faded, another relic followed, and another after that: songs so misplaced in time that even her peers would struggle to recognize them. It felt less like a playlist and more like a séance.

    The drive carried her through a patchwork of fields and hedges, the radio crackling on as if reluctant to keep her company. Eventually she came upon an old town, its high street sagging under the weight of years. She pulled in, bought a doughnut and an iced coffee, comfort in sugared form, and let Toto out to pee against a lamppost. The dog pawed the ground cheerfully, but Prudence noticed how still the street was: no chatter, no bustle, just a hush that made her pastry taste faintly of unease.

    The silence pressed too heavily against her ears, not the gentle hush of a small-town evening but something stranger, more watchful. Prudence’s stomach tightened. She scooped up Toto, slid behind the wheel, and shut the door with a thud that seemed far too loud. It came to her then, the thought she tried to laugh off: this was how horror films began. The car would stall, shadows would stir with cruel noises, and Toto, oh sweet Toto, would vanish into the dark. She’d be left stumbling through terror as the ‘final girl.’ But the old car started without complaint, and the only thing that followed her was her own imagination as she drove away, cheeks flushed with relief. 

    The night wore thin, and each stretch of road grew more oppressive. Her eyelids, traitorous things, sagged against her will. Toto, faithful though he was, made for a lamentable travelling companion. He offered no help with the fuel, couldn’t so much as touch the wheel, and demanded frequent stops, only to curl up and snore with a rhythm so droning it was near hypnotic. She nearly nodded off herself, thinking back to Stefanya’s offer to accompany her on the trek to Los Angeles. For the life of her, Prue couldn’t recall why she’d turned her down. Perhaps she’d simply been too giddy at the thought of keeping the journey all to herself.

​

    After the third close call, Prudence saw fit to behave responsibly. She stopped and slept when her body gave the order, reasoning that L. A. wasn’t about to vanish into thin air. Whatever waited for her there could jolly well wait a little longer.

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Part III - Not Kansas

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    When the last of the little towns had faded and the quaint villages were left to memory, she caught sight of a skyline that looked suspiciously like it had wandered out of the NeverEnding Story. It shimmered with impossible grandeur, dazzling enough to make her doubt she’d reached the right planet. Los Angeles rose like a crystal citadel from some forgotten tale, breathtaking in its brilliance, yet uncanny in a way that made her grip the wheel just a touch tighter.

​

    Cruising through the legendary boulevards of the city of angels, the ones that had seemed a world away on romcom nights with her girlfriends. Prudence felt she’d stepped onto the screen itself. A red light halted her at a busy intersection where a woman, looking as though she’d walked straight off the set of Pretty Woman, lingered by the kerb. Yet the glamour was swiftly undercut by the sight of the homeless and the strung-out staggering by like extras in a zombie flick. She reached across to scratch Toto behind the ears and, in a voice that barely felt her own, whispered, "Oh, Toto…we’re not in Kansas anymore." The light flicked green, and she steered off into L.A.’s less polished backstreets en route to her Air BnB.

​

    The moment Prue and Toto emerged from the car; they walked into a tableau fit for the late-night news. Drug deals played out in the open, men and women propositioned strangers as though it were an open market, and the whole thing was utterly alien to a small-town-girl from Kansas. A man in black clocked her watching and barked, "The hell you lookin’ at! You five-O, bitch?!" Almost at once, a ragged figure spotted her and came charging, raving about the end of days and demons already walking the earth. Clutching her little dog, Prudence bolted, dodging lunatics until she reached her Air BnB door, where she threw the locks, every one, wishing there were more. For the first time in years, she felt properly terrified, a fish well and truly out of water. Later, wrapped in pyjamas and damp from her shower, she thought she heard gunfire in the distance. She drew Toto close and prayed for the mercy of sleep.

 

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Part IV - Tinseltown in Full Swing

 

    For Prudence Hamilton, Hollywood had become less a dream and more a drawn-out bad joke. Months had passed, and her career was moving at the pace of a garden snail with a limp. Her days were eaten up by auditions that ended in polite shrugs, her evenings spent serving cheap coffee that tasted faintly of despair to customers she’d rather not meet in the real world. Desperation wasn’t simply something she felt; it had moved in, redecorated, and taken up permanent residence. She’d known rejection was par for the course, but she hadn’t counted on this endless uphill slog, this uncanny knack for failure. She couldn’t land so much as a background role, as if someone had jinxed her from the start. And in her quieter moments, she swore she could taste regret, bitter and lingering, every time her lips pressed together.

 

    At four in the morning the Boulevard Diner was usually a tomb. The clubbers had long since staggered home, and the working men had yet to stir. On that Monday, Prue had just finished scrubbing the toilets, her hands raw from bleach, and collapsed into a seat for a few blessed minutes when the door banged open.

 

    A mob spilled in, noisy and dazzling, like a flesh hurricane tearing through the quiet. At its centre was Colin Maxwell, and the air seemed to warp around him, he was the eye of the storm. The Boulevard Diner, half-forgotten, wallpaper curling, fryers groaning, hadn’t hosted this much life in years.

 

    Colin’s manager, a hulking, sandpaper-faced fellow, plodded up and handed Prue a credit card. His voice, softer than his exterior allowed, rumbled, "Put it all on this, would you, miss?"

 

    Prudence took it automatically, but her attention was elsewhere. Colin Maxwell in the flesh. He looked impossibly perfect, better than on any screen; and that was saying something. She felt her pulse quicken, though not entirely with delight. There was something unnerving about such beauty appearing in her shabby little world at four in the morning, as though Hollywood had come slumming for the night and dragged its shadows along with it.

 

    Colin was the sort of man who made people stop mid-sentence when he entered a room. It wasn’t only the chiselled jawline or the eyes that looked as though they’d been hand-coloured in Technicolor. It was his name. Maxwell. His father, Jeffrey Maxwell, was a Hollywood colossus, a producer whose credits rolled longer than some people’s lives. Nepotism, being the industry’s unofficial currency, had laid the red carpet at Colin’s feet long before he could even walk it.

 

    From birth, his life had been strung with lights and cameras. First-class flights, glossy magazine spreads, private schools where tuition cost more than most mortgages. Everyone worshipped him, adored him, elevated him; until it became suffocating. The irony was delicious: the more the world adored him, the more detached he became, as though his own golden reflection had grown so blinding he couldn’t bear to look at it.

 

    Here, in the stale, linoleum-lit hush of the Boulevard Diner, Colin Maxwell seemed out of place. The glamour clung to him, but so did something else, something brittle, a shadow at the edges. Prudence, eyes fixed on him, felt her pulse falter. For a heartbeat she wondered whether she was glimpsing not an idol, but a man hollowed by the very dream she herself was still chasing.

 

    She thought she was stepping out for a breath of air, nothing more. The alley smelled of grease and bleach, bins overflowing, neon buzzing like a wasp nest. Then there he was: Colin Maxwell, cinema’s darling, leaning against the wall like the city itself had birthed him there.

 

    He lit a joint with a match that flared too bright. A mist cut across his face. "C’mon sweetheart, have a drag. It’ll settle your nerves."

 

    Prue shook her head, voice small. "I don’t…I don’t do drugs."

 

    Colin chuckled low, smoke spilling from his lips. "Drugs? No, darling. This is Los Angeles’ handshake. Welcome to the city of second chances."

 

    She inhaled, coughed, then unravelled. Everything she’d held tight: Kansas, the diner, the dream of making it here; it poured out of her like she’d been waiting for someone, anyone, to listen.

 

    But his smile never changed. Too fixed. Too hungry. He scribbled his number, tucked it in her hand like a loaded gun. "Call me tomorrow. I’ll show you what it takes to survive here."

 

    The back door slammed shut behind her, but she still felt him watching, smoke curling round her memory.

 

    Back inside, Prudence couldn’t shake the stench of the alley, or the feeling she’d just shaken hands with one of the devil’s lost angels.

 

    She couldn’t have guessed how sharp her instincts really were: about Colin, about Hollywood, about the whole rotten circus. But that night, curled up in bed with Toto pressed against her chest, sleep pulled her under. And there it was: the dream. A life lit up like marquees on Sunset, all her wildest wishes shimmering within reach. Visions of fame: her name in lights, her face on the silver screen, the crowd chanting like gospel. The dream was dazzling and at the edges was the question every soul here had to answer: what’s the devil’s cut?

 

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Part V - Call to Fame

 

    A week after her run-in with Colin Maxwell, Prudence sat perched on the edge of her narrow bed, phone in one hand, a crumpled note in the other. The glow of her laptop washed her face in ghostly blue as she scrolled through picture after picture of him. Colin never took a bad shot: every angle was a good angle. Movie-star jawline, eyes that smouldered even when he wasn’t trying. He carried that James Dean, old-Hollywood kind of face: troubled, timeless, and sharp enough to cut glass. It struck her deep, in a way she couldn’t pin down, in the way footprints ground into wet pavement.

​

    She stopped on one in particular: Colin leaning against a streetlamp under the glowing Melrose sign. He looked like the kind of man you could walk up to and bum a cigarette from, but the truth was in the sparkling darkness around him. There was distance in that grin, a warning in the way he held himself, like he knew the city belonged to him.

​

    Prue twirled the note between her fingers; the number scrawled in his messy hand burning hotter than the neon outside her window. She told herself she was only curious, that she could throw it away any second, but she didn’t.

​

    Finally, after a long, lonely debate with herself, she punched in the numbers. The phone rang, each chime a little louder than the last, as if daring her to hang up. Prudence almost did. What business had she calling him? Colin Maxwell must’ve had a dozen numbers scribbled on napkins and cocktail coasters, girls lined up like extras waiting for their cue. Why would hers mean anything?

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Then the line clicked.

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"Hello?"

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    The sound of his voice caught her breath. It wasn’t rehearsed or polished. It was real, touched with surprise, she had slipped into his evening uninvited.

 

    "Hi…is this, Colin?" she asked, her tone light but her heart a thudding snare drum.

 

    A pause. Then that warm, familiar timbre she knew from the silver screen, edged now with curiosity.

 

"Colin…and who’s asking?"

   

    She smiled despite herself, nerves spilling into laughter. "It’s Prudence. Prudence Hamilton. From the diner."

 

    Silence again, but softer this time, like he was piecing her together. Then came a chuckle, low and charming.

 

    "Kansas" he said, a smile audible in the syllables, "this is a pleasant surprise."

 

    Her fingers tightened around the receiver, but it wasn’t fear this time, it was the heady thrill of being noticed, of stepping from the shadows of Hollywood’s crowd into a light all her own. She wondered if this was the moment; the one you couldn’t come back from.

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**********

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    After hanging up with Colin, Prudence dialled home. It wasn’t unusual; she phoned her parents often enough but tonight it felt less like routine and more like an anchor.

 

    Virgil answered on the second ring, his slow, steady voice carried across the miles, and Lorraine came bustling in from the kitchen, rolling pin in hand, apron dusted in flour. For them, each word from their daughter was a kind of miracle, proof that their small-town girl was truly out there in the land of stars.

 

    Prue, ever the performer, usually dressed her stories in sequins and a little extra sparkle, sprinkling glamour over the everyday grind of auditions and waiting tables. But tonight, with Colin’s voice still in her mind like a line of dialogue that wouldn’t let go, she didn’t have to dress the truth up too much. Hollywood, for once, had provided its own embellishment.

 

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Part VI – Praise Be Goddess Raya

 

    A few days later, lunch at Colin Maxwell’s place. Prudence showed up clutching her nerves and the moment the elevator doors slid open, she stepped into a world she’d only seen in glossy spreads. A penthouse apartment, with a balcony wider than her entire flat. The city glittered beneath it, a thousand promises she still wasn’t sure she could trust.

​

    Inside, the place looked like it had been lifted straight out of a catalogue for the rich and restless. Photographs in black-and-white hung along the walls, artsy shots of strangers caught mid-laugh or mid-smoke, the kind of images that were supposed to whisper sophistication but mostly screamed how much they’d cost. Everything about the place was curated and staged: a museum to the tacky and predictable, dressed up as taste. Under normal circumstances Prue would probably suggest that Colin sue his interior designer but nothing about any of this was "normal".

​

    Her eyes were fixed on Colin. The cut of his suit, the way he leaned just so against the frame of the balcony door, the effortless charm that slid off him. His home might have been hollow, superficial, overpriced but to her, he filled the room. And that was enough.

​

    They had salmon tartare, prettily arranged on plates that probably cost more than her week’s wages, with some other delicate something perched alongside that Prudence couldn’t even name. She only picked at hers. Food wasn’t the reason she’d climbed into this penthouse. She hadn’t come for lunch; no, she’d come for a door to swing open, for a chance at a different life.

​

    On the phone, Colin had promised her the kind of thing girls flew halfway across the country just to hear. If she wanted to shine among the stars, she’d have to become one herself. Lunch, he said, was just the start: the place where he’d lay it all out, the ins and outs of the industry, the real map to making it in Hollywood.

 

    She had imagined names and numbers, a talent agent scribbled on a piece of paper, a whisper about auditions and contacts. But that wasn’t what Colin Maxwell dealt in. What he was offering wasn’t paperwork or business cards. It was something deeper, stranger. Secrets, he said. Secrets that could light up her name in bulbs.

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But there was a catch. She’d have to commit. All the way. One hundred percent.

​

    And as he leaned across the table, smiling that cinematic smile, she felt the fork slip uselessly from her fingers.

​

    If this had been a rom/com, she’d have tripped into his arms, then into his bed, and by next summer they’d be cutting a cake under a chandelier the size of Kansas. But this wasn’t a rom/com. This was Hollywood where dreams don’t always wear white.

​

    Colin rose from his chair, flicking his napkin onto the table as though it were a script he’d already memorized and grown tired of. "Come with me," he said, casual as anything, and started down the hallway without looking back.

 

    Prudence’s stomach knotted tight. For a split second she thought the salmon might make a reappearance, but somehow, she steadied herself. She got up, smoothed her skirt, and followed.

 

    The corridor seemed to stretch longer than it should have. There was nothing sinister on the surface: no monsters lunging, no doors slamming but it all felt charged. The air felt ominous in an innocent way, like a school dance where you knew the wrong boy might ask you to dance.

 

    Her mind spun with questions, a storm surge of doubts and what-ifs. But she was desperate, and desperate girls will do desperate things for that one little chance at greatness.

 

    When they finally reached the end of the corridor, Prue found herself staring at a door that looked like it belonged in a studio backlot, not in a penthouse apartment. Too small, too plain, too out of place. Colin produced a key, slipped it in, and with a casual turn the thing creaked open. Inside, a staircase rose steep and narrow, more like a fire escape hidden indoors than any proper passageway.

​

    Ridiculous, she thought. The kind of detail you’d scoff at if you saw it on screen. And yet here she was, heels clicking up each step, heart climbing faster than her feet. At the very least, she told herself, this would make one hell of a story to tell the girls back home. If nothing else.

 

    When they reached the top, Prue stepped into a room that defied sense, a chamber darker than anything her small-town imagination could conjure. Colin moved with purpose, striking match after match until a handful of candles sputtered to life. That’s when she saw it: grotesque imagery painted and etched into every surface. Not the usual gallery fare; this wasn’t art for collectors or critics. It was something else, something that looked like it had been mailed in straight from hell. None of it soothing, none of it even human.

​

    He guided her to the centre where a giant mattress sat like some obscene stage prop. Prue’s first thought was ‘oh, here we go…how cliché. How Hollywood. All this build-up for a cheap roll in the sheets.’

 

    But to her surprise, Colin didn’t touch her. Instead, he lowered himself beside her, eyes grave, voice low. He swore her to secrecy with a weight that made her skin prickle. What he was about to share wasn’t for tourists, gawkers, or the faint of heart. This was the kind of knowledge reserved for the chosen few, the elite.

 

    And Prudence realized, with a nervous thrill, that this was it.

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**********

 

    Colin lit a massive candle that sat before the mattress where they now sat side by side. The flame painted their faces in a dancing light and giving the room a surreal, almost sacred quality. He turned toward her, his expression serious, the charm and easy smile gone for the first time since she’d met him.

 

    Colin’s eyes darkened, his voice sounded programmed. "There’s someone…or something…Hollywood keeps close to its chest. The insiders know. They whisper her name, but only in hushed tones."

 

Prue leaned in, drawn by the gravity in his voice.

 

    "Goddess, Raya," he said. It slithered through the haze, a poison perfume only the reckless could know. "She’s…remarkable. The Devourer of Bonds, they call her. She frees her followers from the weight of attachments: family, friends, old loyalties; so, they can belong entirely to themselves. To her, they discover a singular devotion, a focus that the ordinary world can’t offer."

 

    He paused, letting the words settle. "Then there’s the False Dawn. She offers enlightenment, visions of clarity, a way to see life in sharper, richer colours. Only the initiated can truly understand it…but it requires courage, Prue, the kind most people never summon."

   

    Prue swallowed. She felt the urge to laugh, but Colin was still holding the punchline hostage.

 

    "And the Silent Hunger," he continued softly, "is about release. She guides her followers to shed the trivial burdens of memory and expectation, to leave behind the mundane weight of mortality. To outsiders, it might seem extreme…but to those who embrace it, it is liberation, a freedom most mortals will never know."

 

    He leaned closer, voice dropping to a near whisper. "And then…the Beautiful Decay. She appears radiant, wrapped in white-gold light, untouched by the passage of time. Everything she touches transforms…reveals impermanence in a way that teaches those who watch. What feels like fragility is clarity, Prue. Permanence is an illusion, and she shows you the world as it truly is."

 

    It sounded unhinged to Prue, but with each revelation, she found herself thirsting for more. She could almost feel it: promise, power, and possibility. This was no mere Hollywood myth. This was real. And she had just stepped inside it.

 

 

Part VII - Born in Blood

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    Colin said he knew a place. She followed him through the backstreets that smelled of excrement and gasoline, past marquees with their bulbs burned out, until they reached it: an abandoned church, its stained-glass windows black with grime. He led her down a staircase behind the altar. She was quite a bit apprehensive at first but at this stage in her life she felt like she had little to nothing to lose.

 

    The room wasn’t a bar so much as a shrine. Stars, producers, hangers-on; they crowded this speakeasy, they drank and smoked in the sultry half-light, their faces twisted, familiar yet monstrous, as if she’d seen them before on the silver screen and here, they’d come to rot.

 

    Colin leaned close, whispered in her ear: "This is the real Hollywood, doll. Up there’s the dream. Down here’s the cost."

 

    And for the first time, Prudence felt she was trespassing not in a city, but in a mausoleum.[mt1] 

 

    The deeper she went, the more wrong it felt. The building was larger on the inside, cavernous and endless. At the far end stood an altar, not a holy one like the one she saw upstairs, but a desecration. Everything about it reeked of blasphemy. Evil rolled off it in waves, metallic and sour.

 

    Robed figures paced counterclockwise around it, whispering in tongues. While the jazz still came through invisible speakers. Symbols daubed in crimson marked the walls: pentagrams, twisted crosses, grotesque parodies of the sacred. The smell hit her next. The air was a cocktail of bourbon, perfume, and something darker: blood, faint but undeniable. It was the scent of sacrifice.

 

    This wasn’t a speakeasy. It was theatre: a theatre dedicated not to art, but to the Goddess to the stars, Raya.

 

    Prudence’s heart sank, dragging her stomach with it. Stars and ingénues brushed past her, their beauty marred by something hollow, as though every one of them had signed a pact that had emptied them out.

 

    Prudence’s heart slammed in her chest. She wasn’t at a party. She was at a ritual. She could almost feel claws reaching into her soul, tugging at the seams. If this was Hollywood, then Hollywood was hell made flesh.

 

**********

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    The ceremony began, and the lights snapped out, leaving the room drenched in darkness. Colin squeezed Prudence’s trembling hand, a quiet anchor. "It needs to happen," he murmured, his voice unnervingly calm.

 

    From the far side, a young woman was dragged forward. Naked, gagged, terrified, she was laid upon the altar where the high priest in a crimson robe waited like a predator. Chains rattled.

 

    In that moment, when Prue’s eyes fell on the girl stretched across the altar, something inside her twisted. It wasn’t just horror, it was recognition. A strange kinship pulsed between them.

 

    For a heartbeat she was still in the shadows, Colin’s warm hand laced through hers. But in the next breath, she was the one dragged forward, wrists bound, gag cutting into her lips. Her body swayed between both realities.

 

    The chanting blurred into static, the candles into blinding spotlights. One instant she was the observer, clutching Colin’s hand for dear life. The next, she was the offering, skin pressed against cold stone, the priest’s shadow falling over her like a final curtain.

Prue was both witness and sacrifice, each vision bleeding into the other until she no longer knew which belonged to her.

 

    And through it all, she felt the unmistakable pull of Hollywood itself: a city that didn’t just demand ambition, but blood.

 

    The priest’s voice rose in chant, deep and guttural, and the stars joined in, a low growl that swelled into a terrifying chorus. "Tenebrae vocant, lux fugit, dominus tremit!" (Shadows call, the light flees, the lord trembles!) Latin syllables rolled over the crowd, verses of unholy worship, praising a creator who claimed to outshine God himself.

 

     She clenched her teeth, but there was no escaping it. The agony threaded itself through her veins, whispering that this was the toll, the initiation, the unholy price of entry. Colin’s hand squeezed hers, steady, unshaken, as if to say: this is how it’s done, this is the only way to make it.

 

    The blood on the stone wasn’t just the girl’s anymore, it was Prue’s dream being carved into flesh, her ambition etched with each cut.

 

    And deep down, beneath the terror, she knew: the pain wasn’t an accident. It was the bargain.

 

    Prudence’s stomach knotted. As chants of: Ave Raya, devoratrix vinculi rose all around her like a mountain.

 

    This wasn’t what she had imagined, not what she had signed up for. But the panic that flared in her chest told her: it was too late to run. Desperate to blend in, to survive, she followed the crowd’s ritual. Her hands shook as she smeared the young woman’s blood across her skin, a grotesque communion she could hardly comprehend.

 

    Then, as if bound by some unspoken contract, the participants kissed on the lips, a chilling, intimate seal of complicity.

 

    When the lights came back on, jazz floated from the speakers, drinks poured freely, and the ceremony dissolved into the ordinary chatter of the bar. No one mentioned it. Nothing was acknowledged. But Prudence knew, deep down, that the veneer of normalcy was paper-thin. The echo of horror lingered in every corner, and the glamour of Hollywood had never felt so sinister.

​

**********

​

    She lifted the whiskey sour to her lips, and it tasted like chalk, bitter and unyielding. The drink was meant to steady her, but all it did was scrape her mouth raw and remind her of what she had just witnessed. The ritual, the chanting, the blood; it lingered in her mind like smoke that refuses to leave a room.

 

    Around her, the speakeasy had returned to its casual facade. Jazz flowed from the speakers, smooth and indifferent. Laughter clinked against glasses, the sort of polished chatter that could make you forget a murder, almost. Colin sat across from her, a personification of charm and menace wrapped into one, swirling his own drink as if nothing had happened.

 

    The neon lights bounced off the walls, painting the robed figures and the altar’s remnants in shades of rouge and shadow that her mind refused to reconcile with reality. It was like stepping out of one world and into another, a Hollywood stage set where everyone pretended nothing had gone wrong.

 

    She tried to take another sip of her sour, but the chalky bitterness stayed with her, crawling down her throat like a warning. The glamor, the fame, the promise of stardom, it all felt tainted by the knowledge that beneath the glitz, something monstrous thrived. And in that moment, she realized Hollywood wasn’t a dream. It was a dark machine, grinding everything down to its own design.

 

    That night, Prudence closed her eyes, hoping that sleep would come, that reality would slip away. But the chanting, the metallic tang of blood, and Colin’s unnerving calm lingered, a quiet threat behind the jazz, behind the laughter, behind the Hollywood sign.

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**********

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    The lights of the studio were blinding, but Prudence Hamilton barely noticed. She sat tall, composed, a picture of polished confidence, while the Hollywood Reporter’s microphone hovered between them. Cameras clicked, flashes popped, and behind the lens, the city of angels held its collective breath.

 

    The reporter leaned in, voice eager, practicing the kind of charm that had broken so many careers. "How does a small-town Kansas girl become Hollywood royalty?"

 

    Prudence’s eyes flicked past him, distant, unshaken. Her tone was cool, almost rehearsed. "I owe my success to the Actor’s Guild. They supported me when I was nothing more than a diner waitress." Her lips curved in a polite, unreadable smile."And to Jeffrey Maxwell, who gave me my first starring role in Surviving Kathmandu. That film…it still resonates. It remains my most popular work."

 

    There was no glimmer of the girl who had once clutched Toto in a cheap Air BnB bed, dreaming of lights and cameras. Only a calculated calm, a veneer of perfection that masked the inhumanity that settled behind her eyes.

   

    The reporter, sensing the distance, pressed on. "And the journey…it must’ve been incredible?"

 

    Prudence tilted her head slightly, almost imperceptibly. "Incredible, yes. But it’s also…business. Hollywood doesn’t reward dreams. It rewards persistence, timing, and the right people noticing you when you’re at your lowest."

 

    Somewhere deep in her, a faint memory stirred: an alley, a hidden club beneath a church, chanting that still reverberated in her mind like a ghost. But outwardly, she was flawless, untouchable, a star polished to perfection under the relentless glare of fame.

​

    The interview continued, the questions easy, the answers rehearsed. And somewhere beneath the shimmer of Hollywood royalty, Prudence Hamilton kept a quiet vigil for the girl she once was, the one who had survived, at any cost, to sit here today.

​

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THE END