The first time the beam kills me, I break.
Not physically; that part is tomorrow, when they bring in the rig and the harnesses and the extra insurance riders. Today is rehearsal, blocking, a “low-risk” run-through where the falling debris is a sandbag on a rope, nowhere near my head. Still, when the assistant director calls action, I flinch right on cue, duck behind the fake support column, and let out the little involuntary yelp the writers loved in the table read.
“Cut,” Griff, our director, calls. His voice booms across Stage 14, bouncing off the rafters. “Nora, you are not supposed to actually die in this one. Save that for, like, episode eight.”
Laughter ripples from the crew clustered behind the monitors. I straighten, dust off my jeans, and throw my arms wide in a mock bow. The air tastes like sawdust and the faint chemical bite of fake smoke machines cooling from the last set-up.
“Tell that to my chiropractor,” I call back. “My spine heard ‘prestige limited series’ and committed.”
A grip walks past dragging a cable, the rubber snaking over the concrete with a dry hiss. Above my head, the catwalk hums with quiet activity—feet crossing metal, soft clanks of rigging. The overhead lights bleach the fake brick walls into something weirdly flatter than real life, and the studio air conditioning whirs, too cold for the desert outside.
I rub my arms through my flannel costume shirt and step back to my mark, the T of dull tape on the floor. A background extra doesn’t quite make it to her spot before I do, and we do that little corridor dance before she shifts out of my way.
“Sorry,” she says. She looks about twenty, maybe, in an off-the-rack blazer the color of old coffee. “First day on a real stage. I’m trying not to knock anything expensive over.”
“Trust me, the beam has that covered,” I say. “You’re good. Just exist and look better at your job than my character does.”
She laughs, shoulders loosening. “Copy that.”
Her laugh tugs at something in the back of my head—another girl, another set of stairs, a hand on a railing over a river that never warmed up—but the memory doesn’t quite surface. I tuck the thought away and face the camera.
Griff walks onto the set, script folded in his hand. “Okay,” he says, looking at me and then up to the catwalk. “We’re rehearsing the near-miss only. The bag drops behind you, hits the floor, you react, we sell the danger in your eyes. No heroics yet. Everyone clear?”
“Clear down here,” I say.
“Clear on the rail,” someone calls from above. The metal grates overhead ring with his movement.
I glance toward the cluster of monitors, where video village huddles behind a waist-high barrier like tourists behind glass. Marcus leans on the rail with one hand, the other wrapped around a green juice bottle he keeps pretending tastes good. His eyes find mine, and he raises his drink in a miniature toast.
I air-clink back with my prop coffee cup. The sticky sweet smell from craft services—donuts, always donuts—drifts across the stage from the table just off the mark. My stomach growls quietly in protest at the breakfast I skipped to fit into wardrobe’s favorite jeans.
“Hey, Nora,” Griff says, dropping his voice as he gets close enough. “You okay?”
“Full of an appropriate amount of fear,” I say. “Very on-brand.”
“Good girl.” He pats my shoulder and turns away, already calling instructions to the AD. “All right, reset. Background, you cross behind Nora on ‘stay away from the mill,’ not on ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about.’”
The word mill hits an internal bruise. My tongue goes dry. I swallow, smoothing the front of my shirt, and make my mouth curve into the smile that matches the rehearsal version of the scene.
“You hear that?” I tell the extra in the blazer. “They want you exactly one line less nosy.”
She grins. “Story of my life.”
“Roll sound,” the AD says.
A boom operator lifts his pole, the mic’s fuzzy cover grazing the border of my vision. The red tally light blinks on the camera. The background players take their starting places, their footsteps whisper-soft on the painted concrete.
“And—action!”
I open my mouth, the words I’ve drilled into my bones coming out the way they’re supposed to. “You can’t keep pretending nothing happened, Ray. People talk.”
Behind me, the extra crosses, clipboard pressed to her chest. The bag is supposed to drop on Griff’s cue, a heartbeat after my line. My shoulders tense in anticipation, ready to flinch.
No one calls it.
The impact hits anyway.
There’s a hiss of rope through a pulley above my head, then a fast, ugly whump. The sandbag clips my shoulder, not hard enough to shatter but hard enough to fling me sideways into the column. Pain blooms under my skin, hot and electric. Dust explodes across my face, gritty in my mouth, sharp in my nose.
A heavier sound follows—a meaty crack against the floor and a small, strangled cry cut short. I blink through the dust and see the extra in the blazer, flat on her back with the bag lying across her legs, eyes wide and blowing.
“Cut, cut, CUT!” Griff’s voice rises to a pitch I haven’t heard from him yet. “Kill the rig! Somebody kill the rig right now!”
I push off the column, ears ringing. The fake bricks scrape my palms; the paint flakes under my nails. My vision narrows for a second, the edges going fuzzy, then snaps back in. The soundstage has turned into a hive. People rush from every direction—wardrobe in a swirl of hangers, grips sprinting, the medic already pulling gloves on with sharp snaps of latex.
“Don’t move,” I hear myself say to the extra. My voice sounds wrong, thinner. “Hey, just—don’t move, okay?”
She makes a thin noise, not quite a word, jaw clenched so tight a vein pops in her neck. Tears gather in the corners of her eyes but don’t fall. One of her shoes lies a few feet away, the heel snapped clean off.
“Nora, are you hit?” The medic’s face appears in front of mine, too close, too earnest.
“I’m fine,” I say automatically. My shoulder throbs in time with my heartbeat. I roll it once, ignoring the way the movement sends fresh heat down my arm. “She’s not.”
“We got her,” the medic says. His breath smells like coffee gone bitter. “You step back for me.”
I obey, stumbling a few steps until my back meets the cool edge of a C-stand. Its metal digs into the place below my ribs that always knots when I fly back to Pennsylvania. I steady myself on it, palm against the cold, and force my breathing to slow.
The extra’s blazer is ripped at the seam now, exposing pale skin already mottling along the thigh. The sandbag lies where it fell, heavy canvas scuffed and leaking a thin line of pale grit. Dust hangs in the air, catching the light in a way that makes my throat sting when I inhale.
“Get me a board,” the medic calls. “We’re stabilizing her here and then getting her out. Nobody crowd, please.”
“Is she okay?” someone asks behind me.
“Everybody back,” the AD shouts. “Ten feet, at least. I want a clear lane. Shut down the catwalk. Where’s rigging? Who was on that line?”
The crew peels away in reluctant circles—hair and makeup, background, camera team, all suddenly aware of where their bodies are in relation to liability. A few of them glance at me as they move, then away, like my face is a bright light.
Marcus’s cologne reaches me before he does, citrus and expensive woods cutting through the dust. Then his hand lands on my good shoulder, warm and firm.
“You okay?” he asks, voice low.
“I’m fine,” I say again, because that’s what I’m good at. My fingers tremble, betraying me; I tuck them under my arms. “She took the hit.”
Marcus looks at the medic and the flurry of movement around the extra, registers the board, the neck brace, the oxygen mask. His jaw tightens for a split second, then smooths out.
“They’re on it,” he says. “You breathe. This is why we have protocols.”
“The bag wasn’t supposed to fall then,” I say. “No one called it.”
“Stunts will figure it out.” He shifts, angling his body so his back shields me from the cluster of producers now hovering near Griff. “You do not need to be answering questions right now. You need ice and to sit down for five minutes.”
My shoulder throbs harder at the word ice, suddenly aware of the bruise forming. I glance up at the catwalk. The line that held the sandbag hangs loose now, rope swaying slightly in the stirred air.
“I want to see it,” I say.
“See what?” Marcus asks.
“The rope.” I step away from him before he can block me.
“Nora—”
“I’m fine,” I repeat, the word turning sharp. “I’ll be right there.”
I cross the stage, skirting the medic cluster. The extra moans once while they roll her onto the board; the sound bites through my spine. I fix my eyes on the sandbag instead, on the place where the rope disappears into the pulley overhead.
Up close, the bag smells like canvas and chalk and old dust. I crouch slowly, knees protesting in my jeans, and pick up the end of the rope lying limp on the floor.
It doesn’t look torn.
The fibers are blunt, cut on a clean diagonal. No fraying, no unraveling, no long strands where it might have snapped under stress. Whoever chopped it did it with a blade meant for work, not some jagged improvisation.
My thumb slides along the edge. A faint smear of red appears on the rope where the fibers catch my skin. I stare at the bead of blood rising on my thumb, the way it wells up and stays there for a trembling second before sliding toward my palm.
For a moment, the rope in my hand isn’t hemp and chalk; it’s the wet railing at the mill, slick with river fog and something darker. Pennsylvania air fills my lungs instead of refrigerated studio oxygen—a damp, metallic cold that carries the distant grind of the old factory and the murmurs in the diner, where bottomless coffee and rumors circulate in equal measure.
My stomach twists. I drop the rope.
“Hey, don’t touch anything yet,” a voice above me says. One of the riggers stands a few feet away, tool belt heavy at his hips, expression tight. “We need to look at the failure.”
“The failure?” I echo.
He shrugs, not quite meeting my eyes. “Could be a manufacturer defect. Could be load was wrong. That’s for safety to decide.”
“This wasn’t a snap,” I say. “Look at it.”
He hesitates, then stoops and picks the rope up using the corner of his shirt. His gaze flickers to the clean edge, then to me. For a flash, something sharp crosses his face—recognition, maybe, or fear—but he shutters it before I can name it.
“Yeah, well,” he says. “Stuff breaks.”
Behind us, the medic calls out, “We’re loading now.” The extra groans again, muffled by the oxygen mask.
A murmur ripples through the watching crew. Someone near video village lets out a low whistle and says, under their breath but not low enough, “Just like before.”
The words slam into my chest. All the hair along my arms lifts.
I spin around. “What did you say?”
The cluster of faces behind the monitors shifts. A couple of PAs suddenly study their clipboards. A camera assistant fiddles with a lens cap. For half a second, I catch a grip’s eyes—wide, guilty—but he looks past me, toward the stretcher rolling out of the stage.
“Nobody meant anything,” Marcus says quietly at my shoulder, voice back in manager mode. “People talk. You know how sets are.”
My pulse thuds in my ears, drowning out the air conditioner’s steady hum. In the far corner, a panel of safety glass reflects us all: me, Marcus, the stretcher, the dangling rope, our bodies tiny and distorted in the reflection. A whole story contained behind a shiny surface.
“Before what?” I ask, to no one in particular.
No one answers.
The medic pushes the stretcher toward the open stage door, the wheels rattling over the threshold. The extra’s hand hangs off the side, fingers curled, nails chipped—little half-moons of normal life on a body that just got rewritten by somebody’s mistake, or somebody’s intention.
Marcus’s hand finds the small of my back. “You did nothing wrong,” he murmurs. “We cooperate, we let them handle it, and we don’t borrow trouble.”
I nod because that’s the expected motion, but my eyes stay fixed on the rope swinging gently from the catwalk and the clean white line where the fibers end.
Borrow trouble, I think.
The trouble already cashed out years ago on a staircase by a river, and I never paid the full bill. Now the interest is walking back onto my stage in clean cuts and quiet whispers, and I can’t tell anyone without tearing open the story that’s kept me alive.
I watch the stretcher disappear into the bright daylight beyond Stage 14’s shadowed door and press my bruised shoulder harder into Marcus’s palm, pretending his touch holds me together, while all I can hear is that unseen voice repeating in my skull:
Just like before.