Leon woke to a bone-deep warmth enveloping him, chasing away the last of Los Angeles's morning chill, like sinking into a perfectly heated spring. His mind hadn't fully surfaced, but his instincts registered a rhythmic, tantalizing movement beneath the covers.
A muffled groan escaped his throat. His eyes snapped open, hand instinctively reaching down, only to find a cascade of silky blonde hair.
Scarlett.
Sunlight slipped through the blinds, painting golden stripes across her smooth back. The once-angry scars there were now just faint pink traces of new skin. Leon sucked in a breath—not from the unexpected "morning greeting," but from a startling realization: her wounds had healed too fast. Unnaturally fast.
He thought of the near-disfiguring scratch on his own face, now barely a faint line. What the hell is up with my body? The thought flashed through his mind. Could this freakish healing ability have somehow affected her through… whatever this was? What kind of monster setup is this?
Before he could puzzle it out, Scarlett sensed he was awake. She looked up, her blue eyes misty with a hint of smugness.
---
By ten a.m., the air in Fox Searchlight's small meeting room felt as cold as a morgue. Leon had barely sat down when Aaron Levin tossed a file in front of him. "Bad news. New Line's poaching," the old man said, pointing his cigar at a name on the document. "James Wong's agent says New Line's offering seven million for Friday the 13th and full creative control."
Leon didn't touch the file. Instead, he opened his thick stack of Final Destination storyboards, flipping to page 12, where three frames were circled in red:
- A kettle vibrating on a stovetop, boiling steam hissing out, snuffing the gas burner's blue flame.
- Teenager Alex leaning in to check, his hair nearly brushing the still-scorching burner.
- A mother knocking at the door, the old metal knocker sparking against a rusty nail.
The sequence was a perfect equation written by Death itself, each variable leading inexorably to an explosive end. Leon tapped the frame with the knocker's sparks. "Tell James," he said, his voice calm but firm, "he's not just missing a horror movie. He's missing the chance to play Death's programmer."
"Look at this. Every death isn't random—it's coded, deliberate." He gestured to the storyboard. "This is leagues above some hockey-masked lunatic swinging an axe."
He paused, recalling James Wong's early Nightmare on Elm Street short. "Remind him how he turned a toaster and a vacuum into murder weapons in that student film. This"—he tapped the storyboard—"is his kind of thing. It's a match made in hell. Rebooting a tired slasher? That's scraping leftovers."
Laura Thompson spun her coffee cup, the silver spoon clinking sharply against the porcelain. "Wes Craven's sniffing around too," she said, her fake eyelashes casting fan-shaped shadows. "Scream's box office speaks for itself. He knows how to make audiences scream."
"Wes Craven?" Leon shook his head. "His horror's built on jump scares and witty one-liners. We're going for fear that seeps in, like a gas leak—you don't smell it until it's too late."
Aaron stubbed his cigar into a crystal ashtray, the ember dying with a faint hiss. He grinned. "Alright, we'll do it your way. Tell legal to send James's agent the contract. Let him know if he passes on this, he's stuck directing hack-and-slash garbage forever."
Outside, Hollywood Boulevard's asphalt shimmered with oily heat, car exhaust hitting Leon like a wave as he stepped out of Fox. He ducked into a phone booth, a Midnight Scream poster plastered on the glass—an open fridge door, a head's silhouette barely visible in the dark. Fans called it "the fridge you'd never want to open."
When the call connected, James Wong's agent came on. "James wants an Asian coroner character with a love story. Minimum six-million budget, and ILM for effects."
"Asian coroner, sure, but no romance," Leon said, eyeing the fridge poster. "He's the first to spot the death pattern but ends up dead on his own autopsy table—scalpel slices an artery, blood splashes the X-ray, obscuring the killer's face." He paused, setting his terms. "Five-point-five million, max. Use Rhythm & Hues for effects—they did Midnight Scream's fridge shot for a third of ILM's cost. And I want final cut. Nobody touches my death chain."
Pages rustled on the other end. After a long pause, the agent said, "James wants to know if 'Death's design' points to some unstoppable fate."
Leon thought of the page 47 voiceover he'd written at midnight: "We think we control everything, but we can't even handle a button we made ourselves—press it, and you wind up fate's gears."
"Tell him," Leon said through the phone line, "Death doesn't need a mask or a knife. Just a coincidence. A string of them. They lead to the oldest fear—not being hunted, not being set up, but being executed by the world you live in, by the objects you know best."
He leaned against the hot glass. "The answer's on page 47 of the storyboards. If he can't see it, he shouldn't be making horror."
As he hung up, his pager buzzed—Alice: [Scarlett and Eli got into it at the set. She says his chase scene looks like a Disney princess fleeing.]
Leon started his Ford, Fox's building shrinking in the rearview mirror. He pulled out his cigarette pack, finding one last Marlboro—Scarlett had slipped it to him last night, the pack stamped with a retro Venice Beach skull-and-rose design.
North Hollywood Studios' set was a steaming cauldron, asphalt rippling with heat waves, the distant soundstage wavering like a mirage. Leon found Scarlett by a pile of props, clutching a splintered piece of wood, her knuckles white with tension.
"Fucking finally, Leon!" Eli said, cigar in mouth, spit flecking Scarlett's script. "She says my bear-trap scene looks like a game of pretend!"
"It does," Scarlett snapped. As she turned, her ankle twisted on the ground. Leon reached to steady her, but she caught herself, her eyes defiant. "Leon's line was, 'Pain makes you laugh—laughing keeps you from looking weak.' But you've got me crying like a kid who lost her candy."
Leon took her script, noting the red pen slashing out "cry" and replacing it with "smirk." He remembered being 46 on the Wandering Earth 3 set, where the director told actors, "Real strength isn't holding back tears—it's walking forward with them in your eyes."
"Eli, one more take," Leon said, handing back the script. "Have her stare at the trap's teeth. When she smiles, no big grin—just a twitch, like she's remembering something happy but gets stabbed by a needle."
As Scarlett stepped onto the set, sunlight streamed through a hole in the soundstage roof, casting a golden glow behind her. When the script supervisor yelled "Action," she glanced back at Leon. The curve of her lips held something unspoken, like she was saying, "See? I get you."
During a break, Leon leaned against a prop crate, smoking. Scarlett tiptoed over, her ankle wrapped in a cotton bandage. She snatched his cigarette, took a drag, and coughed, tears welling up.
Before he could speak, his pager buzzed—a new number: "James agreed to meet. Tomorrow, 9 a.m., Kodak lab. Bring storyboards."
Scarlett leaned in to read it, her eyelashes nearly brushing his wrist. "Kodak lab?" She whispered in his ear, her breath teasing, "Their darkroom's soundproof."
Leon's throat tightened. The setting sun bathed her collarbone in honeyed light, the bruise by her bandage faint as gauze. "Your place tonight," he said, snuffing out the cigarette and pinching her ankle lightly. "Have the bourbon ready."
---
Scarlett's apartment glowed warm yellow in the twilight. As Leon pushed open the door, the aroma of a simmering stew wafted from the kitchen. Scarlett, in a strawberry-patterned apron, bent to pull a pizza from the oven, her skirt hugging her slim waist. "Been waiting forever," she said, nearly dropping the pizza spatula.
Leon set the bourbon on the table, his eyes catching a Midnight Scream merchandise booklet on the coffee table. The "Killer's Diary" Easter egg page was dog-eared, a red note beside it: "The killer's fridge should have a childhood photo of the heroine."
"Your new idea?" he asked, tracing the handwriting.
Scarlett set the pizza and coffee down. "It makes his tenderness less creepy, more obsessive. Like you said, the scariest thing isn't cruelty—it's the sweetness buried in it."
Leon thought she had a knack for hitting the audience's nerves.
---
Under the midnight desk lamp, Leon hunched over Scarlett's table, tweaking storyboards. Next to the "microwave death" frame, he noted: "Use fridge scene's low-light approach—hide the ice pick's glint in shadows, show the hand first, then the blood."
Scarlett, bored with the technical sketches, started messing with him—curling his hair around her finger, blowing in his ear, even nudging her coffee cup dangerously close to his pages. His frustration and desire finally hit a boiling point. "Goddamn it…" he muttered, tossing the pen and scooping her up.
---
Clouds drifted lazily across the sky, swallowing the half-hidden moon. Moments ago, it had peeked through, like a shy girl caught spying, now dimming its glow. Only a faint outline lingered in the cloud's folds, half-resentful, half-tender, lending the night an unspoken intimacy.
---
When silence returned, Leon, shirtless, wandered back to the living room and lit a cigarette. He sat under the lamp, picked up the now-crumpled pen, and, on the Final Destination script's cover, next to "Director: TBD," he wrote in bold strokes: "James Wong."
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