I was a security guard at Outer Lights Productions for 15 years. I’m ready to confess about what happened there.

I don’t know what compelled me to confess here of all places. Maybe all the years in the pews caught up to me, took in the good word. Or maybe it is the lingering prognosis that has me crawling my way back to Jesus. I don’t know. Either way, I am ready to talk. From what I read, this is the type of group to listen. Father Lincoln says that sins are like roots. You don’t fully get them up unless you dig out the hole, right down to where it all started. He wears clothes to forgive. The internet throws words to condemn. To be frank, I could use a little of both.

So, let’s dig it all. Back to the first day of many mistakes.

“Oh, and lock the freezer after showtime.”

“Come again?” I said, finishing the last swirl of my signature.

“That’s the last part of the gig,” Rustburrow coughed out as he inhaled the last bite of his cro-nut, showering the table and both of us in buttery flakes. “Studio closes just before sunset. You get here 15 minutes earlier, do your tasks, and lock the freezer no later than 7 p.m.”

“Why does the studio own a freezer?”

He leaned back and swallowed. A deep breath wheezed in and out of him, indecisive on whether it was for annoyance or contemplation. He had heard that question before. Many times. His dense monobrow suggested he was considering whether he would have to hear it again.

“Do you want this job?”

The chill from the previous night’s air was fresh lingered in my bones. I was out of gas, and had only two blankets two my name. That rat cloth I had gotten from St. Mary’s weren’t holding up as we ran into October, and I didn’t know how many more nights in the Acura I could handle.

“Yes, sir. I do.”

“It won’t work out if you are curious. Believe me. Some doors? Better left shut.”

I sat with that. Nothing about it sounded good. I’d heard the stories about these Hollywood types. Was it a vat of baby oil? A baby plantation to harvest fresh stem cells? The more my mind wandered, the more I wondered if I could handle whatever it was. If it were horror beyond my stomach, what would I do? Then my eyes landed on the contract again, and the length of the zeros made me unsure.

“Lock it after seven. Got it.”

“No later than seven, kid. That’s important.”

“Alright, alright. Got it.”

Rustburrow didn’t seem pleased with that, but he reached into his bottom desk drawer and pulled out my gear: an Outer Lights Security hat, a metal clipboard case with a laminated paper taped to the front that had the word “CHECKLIST” bolded at the top in faded red letters, and a Glock 19.

“Whoa. I get issued a gun for this job?”

“You got a problem with that?”

“No, I just… didn’t expect it. Do studios typically have armed security?”

His eyes sat half-open, unamused. He reached over to the black security hat, analyzed it, then matted it down on my head.

“Do now.” He smiled. His extra cheek fat curled around the corners of his lips, creating an echo of a double smile like he was silently laughing at me. “Listen, the talent we have here requires a bit of extra protection. I ain’t no yuppie. If someone tries to get to where they ain’t supposed to be, you use that. You hear?”

I nodded.

“Anyway,” He brushed away some arm hair infringing on his Rolex. “Shift starts in about an hour. Why don’t you watch from the screening room?”

“Is that okay?”

“Course. Welcome to the Outer Lights family.”

I left Rustburrow’s office and made my way to the screening area. The Glock heavy at my side. Always such a light thing in the hand, but heavy on my hip and in my guts. I’d never gotten used to it. I fired plenty in my life. A lot less since leaving Beaumont PD that Spring, but still. Authority. The power to do what needed to be done. Such big things. You think you know what you’d do, how you’d act in a situation where you needed to pull that trigger, to be someone’s hero. Then you get to the moment and just about shit yourself.

The screening room was dead save for three individuals. The first was a man in his late forties. The studio lights blinded me from the reflection off his head. Wafts of cigarette smoke enraptured him as he sat, watching the talent perform from his director’s chair. To his immediate left at the foot of the stage was someone in an all-black suit, sunglasses indoors, total G-Man. He was the only one who turned to me the moment I opened the door. He saw my hat and gave me a faint nod of acknowledgement. I didn’t return it. But it was the man on stage who stole my attention.

Atop the stage, centered by six lights of soft white, blood red, and sapphire blue, was the star. He was young, no more than twenty-three. Dusty blond hair, striking green eyes, and a grin that said he knew more than you did. Draped over his shoulders was a scarred blue suit coat, painted with grime and old blood. He was shirtless underneath and had a gun in his hand. He looked down at it in his lap, switching his expression in an instant. I was never a movie type, but I could see his thoughts. He went from a generalized sorrow to now thoughts of impending oblivion.

“If she were actually fucking here, we would have Margorey enter stage left,” The director said. I could now see the name Stillwell on the back of the chair. “Fuck’s sake, can we get an intern or something to read her lines to Thomas?”

The man in the suit nodded at him and looked behind the curtain on the stage. At his glance, a frail nineteen of something jogged out, her brow drenched in sweat, a script in hand. Everyone stopped, waiting for each other to continue, until the director scoffed.

“It’s your line, sweetie.”

“Oh, sorry,” She mumbled, flipping to the page in a frantic rush. She cleared her mousey throat and continued the scene in a jilted performance.

“Isaac? Just put the gun down. Whatever’s wrong, we can fix it.”

“They’re gone, Alyssa.”

“What do you mean, ‘they’re gone’, Isaac? What happened? Where is everyone?”

Thomas, now fully his character Isaac, looked to her, his brow pinched into a grimace, lip quivering, eyes misty. “Alyssa…”

“Isaac, where are the others?”

“What about me? I’m right here! Right here, having to live with it.” His eyes fell back on the gun.

“Isaac, where are they?”

“How can you ask me that?” He said, looking to her now. “Don’t you dare look at me like that. You don’t get to judge me. You didn’t make those choices. You didn’t feel the hunger we felt.”

Stillwell spoke, reading the stage direction, and the actors followed suit. “As Isaac starts to cry, Alyssa hugs him, embracing the truth of what he did in those mountains—what they chose to do to do—to survive. She buries herself in his shoulder, apologizing for everything. But Isaac looks on to the mountain, looking on to what was left behind. Was it his friends or all of himself?”

Thomas then looked to the stage, right at me. His eyes gripped me like a thousand pleading hands begging me to stare. Gooseflesh broke out all over my body as he spoke.

“The jungle stole their lives. But I stole their souls. With every bite.”

“Cut.”

Thomas snapped up, ignoring the intern. “You don’t think that line at the end is too much?”

Stillwell raised an eyebrow. “It wraps the story up well.”

“Yeah, but what about just, ‘I stole their souls…’ I mean, the audience already knows I nibbled on my friends up there.”

Stillwell looked at his watch. It was 6 p.m. He looked back at Thomas, and they had a silent conversation about that. “It’s a good point, Tom. I’ll consider it on the rewrite. We’ll pick up tomorrow when Margory is here and not coked out in a Denny’s shitter or wherever the fuck she is. Let’s clear out so Security can close up shop.”

They did. Not a single word or glance at me. I watched the room clear and, in a few minutes, it was just me. The majority of the checklist I had to do were basic items: cut the power to the stage, conduct walkthroughs at three-hour intervals, ensure building access points are secure by 6:30. All standard stuff I’d done before in some fashion. I knocked them out swiftly and was left with the last three items. The first of which gave me pause.

“Let in the groupie?” I read.

I followed the instructions, making my way to a service entrance deep in the heart of the studio. I opened the door, mostly to get a view of what to expect, when I heard a short scream as someone scattered to the ground. I looked down to see a young girl on her knees, looking up at me with a wounded expression. She was a frail thing. Pencil skirt, low-cut top, curly brown hair, a dense amount of foundation, and clashing red lipstick.

“Sorry,” I said, helping her up. “I didn’t see you there.”

“It’s okay.” She said, though I could tell it wasn’t. Still, she made an effort to put me at ease, and I appreciated that. I gave her a once-over and saw she now sported a small splotch of crimson on her left knee.

“Let’s get you a bandage for that. It looks like a good scrape.”

“No, that’s okay. I’ll clean it up in the bathroom.”

I insisted. While cleaning her up, I found out her name was Regina. She was twenty, or so she told me, and that she was so, so, so thankful to be here. However, when the hydrogen peroxide hit her skin, her positive energy crumbled, and she stomped her good leg as if I was amputating the other.

“So, you know the actor? Thomas?” I asked, hoping to distract her. It worked. She lit up like Figueroa Corridor.

“No, but I really want to. We met at a coffee shop while I was practicing my lines—I’m an actress.”

“Uh-huh,” I said as I finished wrapping her bandage.

“He was so sweet, said he really liked my stuff, and asked if I could swing by after he finished rehearsal.”

I was sure Thomas did like some of her “stuff”, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her. The girl was too young for me to be crushing her dreams. I looked over at the checklist as she prattled on for another minute or two. Next item was up: Take Groupie to Talent Manager.

“Well, let’s get you backstage.” As we turned around into the hallway, I all but crashed into Suit. All my years there and I never learned his name. He stood there like a brick wall in both size and demeanor.

“6:43,” He grunted.

“Sorry?”

He tapped his watch. “You’re late. She was supposed to be with me at 6:35.”

“Yeah, sorry. She fell on the way in, and I wanted to get her patched up first.”

He looked at her, snatched off his glasses, and dropped to his knees, analyzing her wound. Regina shifted back and forth as he glared at her leg, but she did well otherwise to hide her discomfort. Then, Suit clicked his tongue in disapproval.

“Not good.”

“What? It’s just a scrape.”

“Yeah, I am fine!”

He stood up, looked at me, and shrugged. “We’ll see, I guess. You are the one who’s going to hear about it.”

I didn’t know what that meant, but he didn’t give me any more time to contemplate it.

“Follow me, ma’am,” She did like a giddy dog. I watched them walk off, some sinking feeling in my gut, but I wasn’t sure from what. Was it for her? Or was it because of Suit’s words? As I reflected on that, Regina looked back at me before she went around the corner, waved, and smiled. Then she was gone.

One item left.

No earlier than 6:55, but absolutely no later than 7:00, lock the freezer.

I open up the clipboard case, and inside was one of the most arcaric locks I had ever seen. A massive steel padlock with a thick two-inch iron key. I glanced at my watch, and the time read 6:54.

“Shit.” I gave a brisk jog further into the studio, the lights in the corridor getting further and further apart. In my panic, I hadn’t realized I was following Suit and Regina’s steps. I thought they must have taken a different route, but as I followed the studio map more, I knew that wasn’t the case. This was a one-way path. Three minutes to the deadline, I made it to a staircase that descended into the earth. A pitch-black void into nothing. Illuminated only by a single slit at the bottom, where the freezer door was barely ajar. I crept down. Sweat broke out on my neck. When I made it halfway, careful to avoid each creak and groan of the floorboards, I heard voices coming from inside.

“What the fuck is this? What happened to her knee?” This voice was new. Deep. No, thunderous. It rolled up the stairs like the boulder trap from Indiana Jones. When it reached me, my brain struggled to process it into language.

“She fell.” That one was clearly Suit.

“She fell?”

“That’s what the Security Guard said.”

“And what am I supposed to do with that? You know she won’t heal.”

“I understand, sir.”

“No, you don’t!” Chains rattled. Something large was lifted and thrown, crashing into the wall below. The metal walls belted as the hard mass bent and warped the steel. Worry plunged into my heart as they described Regina. My hand snapped to my gun as I descended, quickening my pace.

“Calm down,” Suit shouted. “It’s a scrape. She’s exactly what you wanted otherwise.”

“She was perfect.” The voice rumbled in an almost melancholy way. It swelled in my stomach like the base of some ballad.

“She still is. Do you know how hard it is to find someone with the exact aerolas you wanted? She even has an inverted navel.”

“Find another then. This one is ruined.”

“No.”

“What did you say?” The voice seethed.

“Just… please. Can you at least try it on?”

It was then that I made it to the door. My eyes instantly searched through the crack. The freezer was filled with bodies. They weren’t hung on hooks like food, but in neat, vacuum-sealed rows of industrial hangers like a macabre closet. Just beyond the door was Suit, his back to me. Beyond him, Thomas stood in front of an unconscious Regina. Then, his head snapped up, his jaw separated from his skull with a brutal crunch. A two-foot grey hand sprouted from Thomas’s throat and used his forehead as leverage to pull the rest of it out. Another hand came out. Then, another. When the body that was Thomas crumbled to the ground like a skin suit without any bones, a writhing mass of floating hands, branching out of some undulating distortion in space, floated before Regina. At 6:59, the hands pried open her mouth and crawled in, inch by inch, cracking and breaking bone as it tunneled inside of her.

My hand was glued to my gun. I knew I should run in. Save her. That was my job, right? To protect and serve? At least it was. And once again I was here. All the power, all the authority, and all I could do was fucking nothing. I knew that poor kid didn’t deserve this. And as that conflict roiled within me, Suit turned around to face me. He wore an expression of pure indifference. No hate, surprise, or worry. He shook his head. A warning. But was it for me, not against.

As the horror before me unfolded, I was right back to where I was two years ago, watching those mask men enter O’Leery’s, guns in hand what I idled outside in my cruiser. Just like then, I froze at the door handle. My body torn down the middle by the fence I planted my ass on. My body, my mind, screaming in refusal as I compelled it to go. I wanted so bad to be strong enough. To do my job. The right thing.

The seconds of the clock evaporated towards 7 p.m. I heard Rustburrow’s words from our the interview. As those people threw Mr. O’Leery onto the ground, beating him for petty cash, and as the bones of Regina crunched and crushed under the weight of “Thomas’s” handes, I made the same choice I did then.

I locked the door.