One Word Narratives

Feature - self-submitted

I had always wanted to be in movies. I loved to sing, I loved to dance, and every boy back in my hometown tried to get on my dance card. More importantly, I have always found emotions fascinating and I spent a lot of my youth learning to emulate them to see if I could force a feeling onto myself.

I remember, when I was very young, there was a little stuffed rabbit on sale down at the five and dime. I thought it was just the cutest thing and I knew, from some curious poking and petting, that it was very soft.

Even though I had the money for it in my little coin purse and it wouldn't have even put a dent in the five dollar fortune building in my piggy bank at home, I decided not to buy it. I wanted to make myself feel like I wanted it but couldn't have it. I wanted to be jealous, envious, even avaricious about this little stuffed bunny.

Of course, I was too young to know what those feelings really meant, but I knew I wanted to feel these things even though I had no reason to. I didn't just want to imitate them, I wanted to truly experience them. Faking emotions is easy and I got very good at that over the course of my youth, but truly experiencing an emotion you had no reason to? That's so much more difficult.

Anyways, I came to the coast right out of high school. I had plans to wait a couple years, but I thought it was good to get as many years of the beauty of youth as possible. After all, in those days I thought it would take me as many as two or three years to get my Big Break.

Here I am, seven years later, not so much the worse for wear, I guess. Well, not here literally, I guess. Where I am is a whole different story.

Anyways, I've done movies, sure, but my real Big Break was getting married to a producer at a second-rate production studio. He's handsome, rich, and loves to see me in his pictures, but he's also a fairy. There's a word for a wife like me, but I think I'd rather be called a harlot, to be honest.

I've done some television, some radio, and quite a few movies on a small budget. Sure, they're not glamorous, Oscar-worthy affairs, but I have a huge number of fans who send me letters and gifts. I've even met a few of them and they are, for the most part, delightful.

And the best part about those movies is they've let me play much more interesting roles than you find almost anywhere there's a camera rolling. Strong women, sexual women, dangerous women, smart women...the science guys love that stuff, although I don't really know why. Maybe it's because letting women be something more than a housewife is subversive? Or maybe they're all just hoping women will become more free to pick and choose so they won't feel like they have to pursue their romantic interests. A lot of these guys seem really shy and awkward until you get them out of their shells. In any case, even for someone as used to being and object of desire as I am, these guys made me feel like some kind of red hot sex goddess just by virtue of being pretty and in their beloved little movies.

One thing about them that tends to be true, and I think has a direct bearing on how I wound up here, is that they tend to care very deeply about things. They are passionate, almost obsessive, and they manage to find and fixate on the tiniest of little foibles and details in the material they care about. I've never met a Shakespearan academic who cared as much about the set pieces and dressing of their favorite play as some of these guys care about what the star fields on screens in the background mean or what the uniforms of the space fleet tell them about the history of the fictional Earth.

I get the impression there's a fair amount of these kinds of stories in print, whether in magazines or books or something less formal I'm not sure, but the fellas always wanna know which are my favorites, which ones I hate, and which ones I'm looking forward to. And that's not enough for a lot of them...I used to say I loved H.G. Wells as my stock answer, thinking I'd just sign a picture and make a brief connection and we'd both go on with our lives. But these guys love this stuff, they want to talk about it and they want you to be as involved in the world as they are.

And if you aren't...well, that's how I wound up in this situation, I guess.

Not long after I was married to my fancy producer man, I learned the truth about his preferences. He didn't mind if I catted around so much, as long as I didn't get found out. He was worried this would cast a bad light on him and raise too many questions about how attentive he was to his wife and he knew I had a reputation to maintain, as well, if only to keep my career alive and well. Adultery, as common as it is, is a death sentence to a career on the screen.

I enjoyed my share of trysts with leading men, movers and shakers, and others, but I got sloppy. Rumors began to circulate among my fans and one of those oh-so-obsessive fellas took it into his mind that he had to "prove" my purity and chasteness.

In his mind, I've come to understand, he and I had a special relationship and I had been communicating with him in secret signals and such. Apparently, being confronted with proof positive that I was unfaithful to my extremely queer, but still loving, husband was tantamount to infidelity in the relationship he and I had in his imagination.

While I've seen some of these fans get pretty worked up, I never would have guessed they could go this far. I was out for a hair appointment, a little treat to myself after the hurtful reviews of my latest turn as an intelligent-but-somehow-still-helpless heroin in space, when everything went dark and I woke up in his clutches.

How nefarious that sounds! But, I have to admit, my predicament is terrifying. As you can see, I've taken to talking to myself as if I were an admirer or reporter. It helps pass the time between his visits and, I've been growing to suspect, one of these next visits may be his last.

What that will mean for Yours Truly, I cannot say, but I doubt it can be anything good. I've been working at the thin ropes he used to bind me and I've made progress, but I worry that I will be too weak when the time comes from the meager food he's been leaving me these past few days.

Still, soon I will make every effort to set myself apart from the daring-but-inept space damsels I've portrayed on screen. I will try to lure him in with sensuality and promies of rewards, then I'll jam the nail file I've kept hidden under my firm but curvy ass right into his fucking head as many times as I can.

No man is coming to save me and I prefer it that way. I haven't caused a single living creature pain or hurt since I was very, very young and, if I'm honest with myself, I think I am quite looking forward to it.