#my wrodtober

[momo-de-avis]

Wordtober Day 18: Misfit

Presented without comment. 

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It’s not like I’ve always wanted to be an actress, it was just something I discovered at one point, and I was already good at public speaking so—not that far a distance to travel, right?

Well, almost. Because you see, as soon as I left school and decided on following that path, I realized I was actually not that good at it. Until then, I thought a few school plays and some praise from the drama teachers was enough, but then I was thrust into the real world and found myself facing the most dreadful monster anyone in the arts will face: criticism.

And criticism said that I sucked at it.

I never really went to college, I just took it to be a stupid idea—spending thousands for three years of studying acting. It’s not like it was a medical degree, or law school—I mean, it’s not on the same level of demand, right? I just thought, a few workshops, some professional one-year courses, a few masterclasses with well-known names, and it would suffice. I read a bit on my spare time too, mostly plays, and though I tried picking up books on acting, I generally just quit after a while, bored out of my mind.

I always loved the idea of pretending to be someone else on a stage or in front of a camera, this thing about letting go of who you are entirely as you prepare for a role, and embody someone else so deeply you almost forget about yourself. I always was fascinated by method actors losing their marbles over those wacky roles they poured themselves into, body and mind. A bit morbid, yeah, but interesting. I thought I was learning more from them than I possibly could in a three-year-long university course.

So I did what I could, here and there, and after four years my resume amounted to a few masterclasses and courses that cast me aside before a fellow competitor who showed up with big university names listed alongside pompous grades. This might have been about when I realize I’d made some serious misjudgement, and a petty one at that.

Six years down the line, and I was making a living out of being an extra on random shit on the telly. A few soap operas, some historical TV shows, even talk-shows. They paid little, but at least production provided a snack, and the good thing was that I got to stand in the back, watching the crew go mad about a slight fault in equipment or what-have-you, which gave me the chance to strike up a nice chat with some pop star from the telly out there. It was fun, even educational, considering TV stars love giving you unsolicited advice when you share your wish of becoming an actor with them. But it was actually quite crushing too.

I mean, I had to listen to these people going on about never quitting, never giving up on my dreams, that it’s a cutthroat world out there, competition this and that, and everyone wants a piece of what they have—go on, fly, you little bird! Sure. But not really. I might have misjudged things and should have gone to university, definitely, but it’s not like I didn’t try. I did try. I went to casting calls nearly every week, attended lectures, all that. I just hated wasting my time with networking, the one thing everyone insisted on was absolutely a necessity, like whatever talent you might have, it won’t matter until you talk like a pompous ass.

Ten years, and the best gig I had landed was a poorly made theatre production about a little kid on the moon that was, if I am being honest, a straight-up rip-off from The Little Prince, and intended at a younger audience too, though I suspect the theatre director’s decision on casting grown adults to play little children in an almost demeaning way was the major ingredient to attracting a series of college students who had a laugh with it. The critics weren’t nice about it either, but I did my job.

There were other jobs, but they were equally bad, if not worse. This one just paid best.

Twelve years on, and I escalated to a commercial on toothpaste, where I played the fake doctor saying nine out of ten dentists went absolutely nuts over this one brand, while holding a tube of—I kid you not—bland white paste that smelled of plaster. Later on, I’d even do a fast food commercial where I had to bite into a burger riddled with needles to keep the lettuce, cheese, tomato and beef straight, and though my stardom amounted to a close-up of my nostrils and biting teeth, it took me five tries because I was terrified of being impaled in the gums.

I was frustrated, I won’t deny it. I was even ashamed of showing my resume to whoever, and for every casting call I attended, I could see the disdain on those faces sitting behind that desk—that dismissive look of a casting director as she pushed her glasses down the bridge of her nose, read my miserable career’s story and asked me questions I dreaded answering. I even auditioned for bold parts I knew I’d never get, things like proper characters on TV, the lead detective on some cop show, or the love interest in a soap opera, even standing girl showing off the prices in some quiz crap.

Nothing.

You speculate when you fail, you know. Think often that it’s you: maybe you’re ugly, you’re cursed, you don’t dress properly, you don’t talk right, you lack whatever bedazzle these people, sitting at the top, have—you just lack something. Though I had the talent, I think—I might have sucked when I first started, but I got better, and there are enough mediocre actors out there making six figures to prove talent doesn’t mean shit in this world—right? So I really could not tell why I was failing, when I tried—I tried, time and again—and I just failed and failed and failed. Fail again, fail better—Beckett was a lying twat, that’s what.

Then, one afternoon, I went into a casting call for something grand, a secondary role for a recurrent character on a major TV production, some sci-fi stuff. It seemed easy enough when I read the script and the guidelines of what they were looking for, and I didn’t really do much practising—I’m good at improvisation, I reckon, even tried it for a while, though it mostly deals with comedy and I am not funny. But outside of that, I swear I am good at improvising—so I went with it, given what I had.

And I blew it. I mean monumentally blew it. I stuttered every single line that came out of my mouth, I asked to stop and try again five times, I paced back and forth with heavy breaths, trying to put my mind in order, but everything was just scrambled inside my head like when you drop a bunch of papers on the ground and try to put them back together, and I was sweating profusely—I mean, I looked like a morning jogger on his way back home. I don’t know what happened to me, I just froze in an instant of panic like I never had before—it’s my greatest quality, I can just stand before an audience and act, audiences just do not bother me at all, I’m good like that. But that day I just… felt wrecked. I couldn’t even admit to myself I should have prepared, but I had set this goal, that if I’d manage to just improvise the right way with no proper warm-up, then that meant I was good.

But I wasn’t. I blew it bad. And I walked out of there absolutely certain I had missed on yet another major opportunity.

As I opened the door to leave, someone else was coming inside, though at first I missed it and nearly let the door smash against their face. I turned back abruptly, held the door for them, apologized and… froze.

She looked exactly like me. I mean exactly the same. Same sandy-brown skin, same heart-shaped, chubby face, same light brown hairs, slightly discoloured at the tips, same tawny lips and brown eyes, even the same freckles on the nose—just everything exactly like me.

Our eyes locked on one another and she smiled, but I was certain I was just so shaken I was beginning to imagine things, so I just went home and never thought about it again.

Eight months later, the show debuted. I didn’t have any intention of watching it, considering it reminded me of my worst failure yet, but I was just skimming through the channels that night and happened to stop there for a second to reach in and grab my water bottle, and I saw it. I saw her.

She had gotten the part, and she was on TV, playing the side-character that was to be recurrent as well, but with my face. Exactly like me in every aspect—even as she spoke, it was my voice, same precise tone and accent, same quirks to the Rs and fluctuations of the Ls—just everything. A carbon copy of myself.

I searched her online—the name, at least, was different—and was slapped with a never-ending list of websites showering her with praise. The secondary character who was stealing the show, a new star was born; the flesh, the depth, the vigour she gave this mundane woman on the screen, the unmatched talent—truly, a rising star.

I can’t express just how angry it made me feel. She looked just like me—it was impossible that nobody could see it—and it turns out, I hadn’t dreamed it, that day. The more I searched her online, the more her face showed up—everywhere, just everywhere, endless pictures of this woman who had stolen my face and my talent and now every pair of eyes in the country—the world!—was on her.

I called my mum, asked her to have a look, insisted on the similarity without ever really saying just how starkly equal we were—and she dismissed it. Laughed. What do you mean!, she screamed, amused. Tou two look nothing alike! I called a friend, asked the same—even before I could spell out my troubles, she was already showering her with praise—oh, have you seen the show?, it’s marvellous, I love her role, she just puts so much heart into it, you have to watch it! But when I pressed her, she pushed it aside—looks didn’t matter, she told me—though that wasn’t even the subject at hand—and surely, you two look nothing alike.

Yet everywhere, it was me that I saw. That woman had my face, my body, my voice—and had stolen my talent.

I tried to forget about it, kept going to casting calls—and somehow, from that moment on, it seemed my luck turned for the worst. I got struck by an unexpected sense of panic, sweating profusely and shuddering at every step, hyperventilating as if I was about to pass out, and forgot my lines. I trusted my instinct on improvisation still, but that one tool that had helped me so much in the past was suddenly useless. I became afraid of hearing the sound of rejection—no, nada, zilch, bye, you suck, choose another career—it haunted me at night and I’d wake up with tears as I thought about this woman with my face stealing my confidence.

Nobody could see it. Everyone I asked, everyone I knew, I insisted she looked exactly like me, but they couldn’t see it. They laughed it off, said I was imagining things; when I pressed, they began to walk away and frown at me with suspicion as if I was nuts; when my reason began to cloud my judgement, they showed worry, suggested I should seek help. At last one day, I screamed at mum for not daring to see it and she started crying, saying I was just jealous of her fame as I had been all my life, with my dismissive attitude towards all and any who got the things I had wanted for so long without even trying hard.

She was lying, of course. I wasn’t jealous, though I couldn’t stand their pep-talks during filming breaks, between a coffee and a cigarette, and their follow-your-dreams bullshit. But this was different. I wasn’t jealous, it was just outright unfair! She looked exactly like me, how could nobody see it? And ever since she appeared in this world, she had stolen my everything—my attention, my chances, my glow, my focus. I was a shit actress again because a random stranger with my liking simply pulled the rug from beneath my feet and reaped the profits of what I had sowed!

It got worse, of course. I started drinking to get her face off my mind, but she was all I thought about, which is incredibly bizarre because the face that popped up in my head at night, as I rolled in bed with a headache, was mine, but now I was seeing myself from the outside, as—I suppose—the world saw me, but through this heavy filter of absolute scorching hatred. Yes, I hated her; I hated her so much it was all there was on my mind; I hated her with all my might, with all my vigour, and I wanted her to go away forever so I could retrieve what she had stolen.

I mean—it was unfair! Because my mum was wrong, I tried so hard, and this broad stole my appearance, my face, my voice, my outside, and suddenly she’s being given the chance to rise to the top! I even checked her resume: she attended university, worked with a drama company for three years, did comedy improv—are you joking me? Everything I tried and failed at, everything I shoved aside because I didn’t want to waste any time—she got it? That’s what separated us, what made me a failure, and she a star—a college degree?

And I mean—what else? Did she have anything I didn’t—despite, well, clearly my appearance? Maybe she fell for that crap everyone kept telling me, in the most condescending manner possible: you have to talk to people, networking is the way to go! Just talk, like that—just hold up a glass of wine and pretend, pretend you’re just like these uptight assholes standing at the top, share a laugh at a joke you don’t understand and be all fancy to their eyes—was that it? Because there had to be something else, something else besides my appearance and my talent. Just something.

I searched for very long, so long I lost focus and was out of work, eventually. I watched her videos, her interviews, analysed her behaviour—she even had my tics! The way she bit her lip, picking at the skin, while she listened to someone talk, or how she clicked her fingernails together when she thought about a question, turning her eyes down to her lap—those were mine! I even remember seeing pink magazines going on about how cute it was that she bit the skin of her fingers before a live interview because she was nervous—seriously? I did that!

Just… everything. Everything there was to know about me now existed in this person like an unauthorized biography. She told people my life’s story, my experiences, my past—the dogs and guinea pig I had as a child, the tiny scar on my knee from when I fell on the schoolyard at eight years old, that quip about the piece of paper I burned during class at fifteen.

Even when she talked about the things that were clearly hers, there was something of me. There was this one interview where she admitted she almost didn’t go to college, and when the interviewer asked why, she said, with a coy smile and pushing a lock of her hair back—like me: oh, because I was so afraid of trying something new and being put to the test, just being put into this position where I would be forced to be critical of my own talents, and I was scared of failing. And then, she looked straight into the camera.

I swear, watching that face, sat on my couch, I swear she was looking at me; I swear that bitch knew. She knew she was talking about me, because those were my thoughts. That nervousness, that hesitation, that was me on the day I held the form in my hands to apply for drama school, but didn’t. That fear was mine. And senseless as it was, I was in the right to claim my own fears, dammit! I had stood in the rain, shaking with anticipation, and I had thrown the papers in the bin because I didn’t want to be subjected to the endless torture of being told by college professors that I sucked!

My drinking got worse, my eating habits were shit, I moved back in with my mum, and my life just generally spiralled out of control. I attended casting calls with a hangover and ruined my chances; I started bawling my eyes out in the middle of shooting a commercial for a coffee brand; I fell asleep while filming a documentary where I played an extra, and was kicked out when I started a fight with the casting director on another shooting because she complained about my lack of makeup. Everywhere I went, I was just a shadow of this woman that twinkled before the cameras like a star in the skies; I was just the shameful part of a starlet, a skeleton in a closet I didn’t even know. The evil twin, if you will.

I thought my life was over. A year passed, and my mum thought I was developing an unhealthy obsession with this woman, saying I should just walk up to a mental hospital and check myself in—no more suggestions, just blatantly saying: you’re insane. My friends stopped talking to me because, according to them, I was acting strange, unable to let go of the inane idea that some random actress who had risen to fame so quickly looked, acted and existed exactly like my carbon copy. They refused to see that she was me. They refused to acknowledge that her stories were mine. They denied any similarity—over and over again, they just told me I was batshit crazy.

So I quit. I quit my dream, my life and my passions, and I just let this person possess my everything, while dreaming of hating her so much I’d kill her if I had the chance.

And that was it. It was either me or her, but this world was not made to have the two of us in it.

I tried messaging her. Found her online, every profile I could, and pasted the exact same message on every one of them, sent privately: you stole my life. Seconds later, every single messaging system beeped: you stole my life. The exact same words I had sent her, now sent back to me. I tried again, this time typing something different: you’re pretending to be me, you scheming little bitch—and they beeped back: same message, ipsis verbis. Eventually, I slammed the keyboard, producing a string of incomprehensible jargon of just random letters, numbers and symbols—and hit enter. And the exact same string of nonsense was returned to me.

I stared at the blinking cursor for a long time, shuddering in the half-darkness of my room in dread, certain nothing about this was normal, and yet the prevailing emotion to my heart was just pure, boisterous rage. Whatever it was, whatever she was, it was clear she was keen on driving me insane, forcing me into the piths of my own madness, until all there was to my existence was my obsession with this double that had stolen my life and made a spectacle out of it—while no one believed me.

So I looked for her. It wasn’t hard to figure out where she lived, not with all the gossiping magazines stalking her to the gym, to the store, to the movies, complaining about her outfits—outfits I owned, too. It simply took a little patience, some careful watching, some geographical studying of her movements, and within two weeks, I managed to figure out where she lived by simply following her route home.

It was night when I finally decided on confronting her. She turned the street and walked ahead calmly, hands deep in her pockets, and I stalked her into an empty alleyway with barely a light on. She stopped in front of a closed door, placed her hand on it and turned around—looking straight into my eyes with a twisted, perverted smile. Then, she pushed the door open and went inside—and left it ajar for me.

The building was bare empty. I mean bare empty. Every light was off, the lift not working, no sound coming from behind any door in any hallway. No plants, no garbage bins, not even a piece of advertising flapping off some mailbox—nothing. As if nobody lived there, except her. It was so vacant, so hollow, it made me shudder, like I was walking into a trap, and were it not for my obsession on hating this woman, on setting this matter straight once and for all, I would have gotten out of there. I was shaking in terror, absolutely mortified of the idea of what I would find there—I mean, the walls were dirty, with chipped off paint, some of them riddled with old graffiti—it seriously looked stripped bare of life, and like it had been so for a very long time.

But I still went inside. Terrified of what was to come, quivering at the sight of every dancing shadow, breathing heavily, I went into that dark, hollow building, reeking of old pipes and copper, and found the only door open with light inside.

I went in, but the flat appeared abandoned as well. There was but a ratty old sofa in the middle, a broken coffee table in front of it, no TV and no electrical apparatus of any sort, just old furniture scattered about. No curtains either, just the electric lights outside shining in with ease, and it cast a faint glimmer of yellow and orange on the absolute misery that was the flat. Even as I crossed the door, a million things cracked under my soles and I saw, to my surprise, there was just rubble everywhere, pieces of old stone crumbled down, broken glass here and there and garbage. A dusty bottle in a corner, a syringe glistening beneath an old chair, cigarette butts and empty crisp packets everywhere.

She stood under a doorway, her face absolutely frozen, the traits of her that composed me barely visible under the lack of light—and I trembled at the sight. I hated her, but there was something inhuman to that woman, something out of this world. She wasn’t normal. She was not supposed to exist. She was not something someone just made happen, something that just existed, that was just… there. She was like a glitch, a malfunction that nobody set straight, and I wondered—how long had she been there? Had she been there all my life and I hadn’t noticed? Had she been watching me from afar, waiting for the right time to reveal herself in full and take over my insecurities and failures to aggrandize them and twist them to her own liking, making me the sorrowful, miserable looser on the fringe of despair?

I didn’t know what to do for a long time. All my body felt compelled to do was cry, just curl into a ball and cry, and sobbing into my clothes, bawling like a toddler, I just said: why? I wanted to tell her I hated her, I wanted to pick up a shard from the floor and stick it into her skull, I wanted to cut her and make her bleed, to watch her wither in pain and maybe even cry too—but I just teared up and shrivelled in tears.

I don’t know how long it passed, but it seemed quite long. Throughout, she didn’t move—she just stood and watched. When I finally wiped my tears and looked into her eyes, she was smiling—that same perverse smile of someone sketched into reality solely to cause you fear and horror and make you tremble in your whole existence, just someone tailored to be your very own tormentor. I hated her still, but what I felt more vividly inside my pumping heart was utter, paralyzing fear. Fear she would take over me so completely I would eventually vanish, evaporate like sand in the wind, gone into thin air, forever; until all that was left was but a faint memory of someone who might have been there once, but wasn’t anymore—until that too would be gone. And I’d be nothing but a mistake forged somewhere in the past, by two people who had sorrowfully made sex one night to produce a child, and that child would fall into oblivion, stolen from the memory of the world forever by an alien meant to mimic my very own self.

I was so terrified she would take everything away from me that was all I’d be left with: nothingness, obscurity. Worse: me. Just me. Just my failures and my life. Just a life led through a string of mistakes I had swept under a rug to pretend they had never been there and moved on with a false sense of security, terrified of starting over. I was terrified this woman, who had stolen everything that was me, was there to laugh one last laugh and take all that I had left: my broken self.

And there she was: the projection of a failed dream. Successful in all I had never been, able to overcome every step I had climbed down, clambering her way up while I kept on falling. The ideal. The past and future without so much as a hint of the present—in the flesh, through me, in my image. Laughing in scorn.

She gave a step forward, picked up a shard from the floor, twisted it in her fingers; her smile grew, white teeth glinting silver, and something daunting fell on my shoulders as I watched in silence, quivering in dread. She looked again at me with a glare, and the corners of her lips fell abruptly as she frowned and pressed the shard between her fingers.

“Is this what you want?” She asked; with one swift gesture, she pulled up her sleeve and gripped the shard. The glinting piece of glass entered her flesh, a slick, thin line of red slithered up her arm, and it thickened as the pressed deeper and deeper—eyes locked on mine—until the blood pooled on the ground beneath her.

I flinched, gasped and held onto my arm; I felt that jabbing pain too, but it was somehow sweet, and instead of warding it away, I embraced it—though the crying returned, and this time more copious than before. And when she was done, she did it again—slicing herself until the blood squirted out and her fingers were covered in red, and not a slight sense of pain to her. All I could say was one thing: stop hurting me.

She stopped, dropped the shard on the floor and walked away. For a very long time, I couldn’t move, cast over a sense of paralyzing terror so great I was afraid of opening my eyes and find things I didn’t want to see—but glad, so glad she was gone. And I knew then—somehow, I knew—she was gone for good. Gone from my life. Gone from the world.

I looked down at my arm, pulled up my sleeve, and there was a scar there, long and thin, but marked with a lump of creasy skin.

It was morning when I went home. From that day on, she ceased to exist. No more articles about her, her name wasn’t listed in any movie, and every poster ever made with her now featured someone else. When I told people her name, they didn’t recognize it.

She was just gone, as if nobody had even noticed she’d been there at all. 

And now, being the only one who remembers her, who remembers all that horrible, gnawing pain that ate up my arm that night, or that paralyzing dread of seeing my double steal from my failures, feels like being stuck inside a cage forever.

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Past Challenges:

Wordtober Day 1: Ring

Wordtober Day 2: Mindless

Wordtober Day 3: Bait

Wordtober Day 4: Freeze

Wordtober Day 5: Build I

Wordtober Day 6: Build II

Wordtober Day 7: Enchanted (Encantada)

Wordtober Day 8: Frail

Wordtober Day 9: Swing

Wordtober Day 10: Pattern

Wordtober Day 11: Snow

(Skipped Day 12)

Wodrtober Day 13: Ash

Wordtober Day 14: Overgrown

Wordtober Day 15: Legend

Wordtober Day 16: Wild

(Skipped day 17)