ghost

She is meant to kill the ghost.

Her hair is already curled and her lipstick already crisp, because cinema is art and god forbid her paintbrush strays. The click of heels on the set floor matches the cadence of her even heartbeat, and her faint smile is clandestine in the shadows.

Across the floor she senses the ghost move into his own position. The carefully ambient lighting colours him in warm, ephemeral shades, and his soft smile makes her fingers twitch.

“I’ve never understood it,” the ghost once told her when they were sitting alone at the fringes of a film festival lavish enough to quell poverty. She remembered his ringed fingers around the whiskey glass, how her head felt addictively light, the way they were both toeing the line into tipsy; the elite had far more to worry about than which hands the fine alcohol fell into. “Why they love us so much, I mean.”

She’d only hummed non-commitally in response, though of course she understood—what does it mean, to live life on the edge of the pedestal, waiting with bated breath for the inevitable moment of imbalance? What does it mean to be so idolised that when the fleeting adoration fades, one is scathingly reduced to scarce remembrance?

The difference between her and the ghost, of course, is that she knows why. It is the fickleness of it, the volatility, because there is nothing to which humans are more averse than permanence. The hollow love they afford them holds no substance beyond convenient envy.

But she would never tell this to the ghost. Even as his humility forbids his saying so, whether he likes it or not—whether he is conscious of it or not—he feeds on the devotion, rides the waves and accepts everything they proffer.

He lives in the limelight. She fights to stay in it.

She looks up to study the ghost now, the trademark curls brushing his brow, the aquiline nose and lush lips. A strong face to carry even the weakest plots, the critics like to claim, while she herself is left with the reviews gifted to every pretty girl to break into the film scene: Gorgeous enough to distract from the pitfalls, cheekbones enough to mark a screen presence.

Perhaps she should thank them. Spite is all the reason she stands here now, halfway down the path to an Academy, uncalloused fingertips stained with nothing but money.

“Last scene,” the ghost opposite her says, eyes bright. He is so young—they are both so young, aren’t they? The movie markets them a doomed romance from the start, and she wonders if she should feel remorse. All the jobs, her signature protagonism, the reputation of the sweetheart starlet, just for this one moment. To reach the top and score the lead role beside him—onscreen Hollywood’s perfect villain, offscreen the golden playboy. And golden he is, pure from the inside out, stardom yet to spoil.

“It’s been fun,” she replies, cheeky grin halfway to flirtatious. Overselling is underselling in this trade, and she is a master of her craft. “Stay sober till after the premiere, yeah?”

He only huffs a laugh in response before the scene is called, and then she blinks and she is the hero and he is the villain and she lunges for him, fingers slipping through his sleeve. He stumbles backward, expression so expertly painstaken she feels something in her chest twist. Acting. Is it a curse or a privilege to be able to live so many lives, feel so many emotions that aren’t truly real until, suddenly, they are?

Her adrenaline thrums just beneath her skin as they tumble into the pulsing heart of the fight. The beauty of the choreography highlights their own, because god forbid their paintbrushes stray—god forbid they forget they are the paintings themselves, to be marvelled and worshipped as untouchable. As legend.

Theirs is only the tail end of the battle, the scene too rich for the stunt doubles, and in its tragical afterlude the ghost ends up against the wall with her retractable knife angled to shove into his rapidly rising and falling chest—and that is when the hush slowly stills, time turned to treacle.

Permanence. The one true fear, and what is more permanent than decease? She marvels at the paragon, parsing its perfection, longing to brush her fingers against its touch. Death is not something she wants, nor is it something she dreads; it is delectable in its natural threat, and she wonders why it is so often drawn in such cruel lines.

She looks up at the ghost, exquisite tears forged to trickle down her face as the camera glares just beside them. The story lives in symbolism, the love the ghost has for the hero turning him inexplicably real—inexplicably solid—in the film’s fatal last moments.

“I’m sorry,” she says on-script in a strangled voice, watching the ghost’s expression crumble so elegantly, and then, in a whisper: “I would’ve liked to see you drunk at the premiere.”

The crumbled expression freezes, unfathomable loveliness caught in amber.

And the very un-retractable knife slides in.

Red blooms beneath the hilt, and her breath catches. She revels in the way his lips part, pupils blown wide as his cry is thieved from his throat and his golden, golden light falls deliciously dim. He is the hero playing the villain, and she is the villain playing the hero; that is always how it was going to end.

In the absurd tranquillity her eyes flutter shut, and she savours not what she’s done but the flawless feeling of it, the feeling of permanence and limelight and remembrance. The ghost’s lifeless form bows almost reverently against her blade, the closing scene illustrated in the lush strokes that will pull the ratings over the edge.

He was not a ghost. He was a boy.

She is not a girl. She is a ghost.

And by the time Hollywood realises the death of their darling is more than just good cinema, the ghost is already gone.