Los Angeles mornings felt like a dip in an ice bath. As Leon stood outside the glass door of Starlight Video Rentals, tiny frost crystals clung to his eyelashes.
He exhaled, his breath fogging the glass, and traced a finger through it, leaving a winding trail like a frozen snake.
The screech of the metal shutter rising cut through the morning mist. Carlos, the shop owner, was on his toes, taping up a poster. A massive Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace ad covered the window, Natalie Portman's face glowing softly in the dawn light, though the poster's edges curled from the wind.
"Morning, Leon!" Carlos called, twisting transparent tape into a knot between his fingers. "Last night's trailer compilation came in. That scene you designed? It's the finale. The morning joggers who saw it were floored."
Leon ducked into the shop, the plastic door curtain brushing his shoulder, stirring a mix of old dust, polyethylene film, and buttery popcorn. The video racks were stacked like perfect bricks. The Matrix's black cover gleamed from constant handling, Neo's sunglasses frayed at the edges. The Sixth Sense's case had a half-chewed piece of gum stuck to it—probably dropped by someone stunned at the ending.
Behind the counter, an old Toshiba TV hummed, its Fox Searchlight intro music needling the ears until it was drowned out by two high schoolers bursting in, shrieking.
"Holy crap!" The boy in a plaid shirt dropped his Nightmare on Elm Street tape, the plastic case cracking on the floor. His finger jabbed at the screen. "Look at that shot!"
Leon turned to follow their gaze.
In the 30-second trailer, a chainsaw split a wooden door, splattering dark red syrup. The heroine's sprinting figure blurred at the corridor's end. A bloodied hand clawed up from the floorboards, fake brown hair caught in its nailbeds—hair Leon had donated to the prop team.
Then, in the final three seconds, the scene cut to a kitchen, harsh white light casting a bluish tint on the tiles. A gloved hand slowly opened a fridge door, cold air billowing out like a living thing, fogging the lens. The camera panned up: first to the heroine's bloodless lips, then to her terror-widened eyes, before locking on the freezer shelf. There, in the dark, a silicone-and-glass-eyeball head lay still, its lips pulled into an eerie smile by fishing line, a speck of unmelted frost on its nose.
As the camera zoomed into the head's hollow eye sockets, Leon's designed line floated out, soft enough to stir the dust on the screen: "Who made you look so pretty?"
A "click," and the Fox logo flashed. The girl in a tank top still pressed her knuckles to her mouth, her fingertips red from biting. "That look…" Her voice trembled, cracking with a sob. "I'm gonna stare at my fridge all night. I might even dream it's blinking at me."
"Some folks already are," Carlos said, wiping the counter, smearing water stains into distorted faces. "Since we opened, eighteen out of twenty customers asked when the tape's coming out. An old lady with a cane was here earlier, saying she's swapping her double-door fridge for one with a combo lock. Her grandson keeps hiding in it to scare her." He winked at Leon, slinging the rag over his shoulder.
Leon stayed quiet. To make the head's eye sockets look emptier, he'd had the prop team line them with black velvet from his old jacket's lining. The line's voice was his, recorded seventeen times in the studio—half a bottle of ice water, nose pinched, a breathy whisper like a killer murmuring in the heroine's ear. He'd kept the throat-tightening rasp in the final cut, insisting it was the sound of fear.
His pager buzzed, showing Alice's name: Checked IMDb forums. Fridge scene posts hit 500+. Some are analyzing the killer's star sign—say he's Taurus 'cause he arranges stuff too neatly.
As he pushed through the glass door, the morning mist had burned off into pale gold. A few kids with backpacks crouched by the bus stop, clutching a Los Angeles Times. In the entertainment section, a screenshot of Midnight Scream's trailer showed the head circled in red, with a bolded headline: "The Year's Most Chilling 3 Seconds—Open Your Fridge, It Might Not Just Be Milk."
"Look at this killer. Total perfectionist," said a bespectacled boy, circling the head's hair with a pencil. "Combed it so neat, even the sideburns are perfect. Bet he was a barber."
"Maybe the heroine's ex," said a girl with a ponytail, snatching the paper. Her nail scratched over "pretty." "You heard him say 'pretty,' right? I bet the sequel reveals their romance. She dumped him, so he got revenge."
Leon leaned against the bus stop sign, watching them argue, cheeks flushed.
His pager buzzed again—Larry Stern: Leon! Get to the set! Post office delivered a sack of letters, all about the fridge killer! Some even drew fridges—better than our prop team's!
North Hollywood Studios was a kicked hornet's nest. The prop room door was buried under a dozen bulging USPS mailbags, the canvas logos warped from the weight. Crew members, gloved up, dug through letters with stamps ranging from Disney's Mickey Mouse (ears bloodied in red ink) to Titanic ticket stubs labeled "Bound for the Fridge." One envelope, stamp-less, bore a sketch of a fridge with a hand gripping a pen in the door crack.
"This one's from Texas," Alice said, waving a manila envelope. Her purple-black hair had a pencil tucked in it, its tip smudged with last night's script-printing ink. "An old lady said she watched the trailer and tossed all her pork belly. Now she only eats canned food—says the lids screw on tight."
Leon opened the letter. In cursive on yellowed paper: Dear Director, who's the gentleman in the fridge? His voice is so gentle; he must have a sad story. I bet he loved that girl so much he couldn't let her go, so he kept her in the fridge… so she'd never spoil. Crumbs dotted the edges, as if written over a snack.
"We've sorted three types," Larry said, cigar in mouth, spit flecking the letters. "One's asking about the killer's backstory—did he get his hand stuck in a fridge as a kid? Another's guessing motives—say he's a chef, knows fridges too well, or a mortician, posing the head like a pro. Then there's the nuts demanding a sequel, wanting to see how he hid the head, or even the head's POV—can you believe it? A head's POV!"
He shoved a stack at Leon. The top envelope had a rose drawn on it, its stem wrapped around a fridge handle, petals inked dark red.
Leon flipped through slowly. At least seven fans wanted the killer's inner thoughts. He glanced at Trevor, tinkering with a camera still muddy from a rain scene shoot. "What if we add an end-credits stinger?"
"A stinger?" Larry's cigar nearly fell, ash scorching a hole in a letter. "What, a fridge close-up? The head blinking?"
"A killer's diary," Leon said, pulling a leather-bound notebook from the prop box—made for Midnight Scream, its cover stained with fake blood (red ink and syrup, now sticky). "Thirty seconds, camera on the diary, voiceover reading an entry. Like, 'Today I gave her a new blue bow; it matches her eyes. She smiles so sweetly, just shy, not talking.' No face, keeps the mystery."
Alice clapped, her pencil falling from her hair, rolling toward a fake-blood bucket. "That's it! Answers fans but teases a sequel. Like handing them candy without saying the flavor."
"Cost?" Larry asked, fingers flying on a calculator, plastic keys clicking like rain. "Re-editing the end, recording, effects… five grand minimum."
"No effects," Leon said, opening the notebook to scrawled, sharp lines he'd written last night. "Handheld camera on the diary, shaky, like the killer's filming. I'll do the voiceover in our old studio to save cash."
Just then, Laura Thompson's car pulled up. In a white suit and ten-centimeter heels, she wobbled through the muddy lot, cursing "damn Hollywood dirt roads," clutching a folder tightly.
"Perfect timing," she said, slamming the folder down, its metal clasp ringing. "Fox's data's in. Trailer's hit a million views in seventy-two hours, seventy percent rewatching the last three seconds." She slapped a printout on the table—a graph showing the fridge scene's retention triple that of other horror trailers. "The board's adding half a million to marketing, pushing this scene hard."
She looked at Leon, eyes glinting with a smile. "We want you to shoot some behind-the-scenes clips, talk about your inspiration. You in?"
"No," Leon said flatly. "Shoot the clips, but keep me off-camera."
"Are you nuts?" Larry jumped up. "This exposure's a goldmine! Actors would kill for it!"
"Let the scene speak," Leon said, closing the notebook, its fake blood gleaming dark red in the sun. "Fans love the killer, not me. Mystery's better for the sequel."
Laura stared for a moment, then grinned. "Fine, your call." She extended a hand. "But you'll do a written interview for marketing, answer some design questions. Deal?"
Leon nodded.
Cheers erupted from the video store—probably the trailer looping again. He walked to the set's monitor, pulling up the fridge scene's raw footage. The silicone head smiled in the dark, and he realized the fans' imagination had breathed life into this prop of plastic and paint.
"Shoot the stinger tonight," he said, handing the notebook to Larry. "I'll tweak the lines for you."
As he left the set, his pager buzzed—Carlos: Store phone's blowing up. Everyone's asking when Midnight Scream's tape drops.
Sunlight streamed through a hole in the studio roof, casting mottled patches on the ground. Leon looked toward Hollywood, where a billboard was swapping to a Midnight Scream poster. On the massive screen, the fridge head grinned at the street—a sweet, deadly trap.