The heat was the first thing, always the first.

  Not the gentle, life-affirming warmth of a distant sun, but the immediate, invasive, almost personal heat of the stage lights. A relentless battery of hot, miniature suns, they beat down from the rigging high above, invisible behind their blinding glare. They sucked the moisture from the air, baked the dust into the atmosphere, and bleached the already faded paint of the backdrop – tonight, a meticulously grimy brick wall signifying Frankie’s dead-end alley, complete with surprisingly realistic graffiti I’d secretly admired during tech week. The air itself felt thick, almost viscous, carrying the ghosts of a thousand past performances.

  I inhaled slowly, deliberately, tasting the unique cocktail of scents that defined my world: the sharp, chemical bite of recently applied hairspray mingling with the musty sweetness of aging velvet curtains somewhere in the wings; the omnipresent aroma of sawdust and decades of human sweat embedded deep within the wooden stage; the faint, powdery ghost of greasepaint, my own and countless others’; and overlaying it all tonight, the cloying, metallic-sweet tang of the fake blood. It was already cooling around my torso, a sticky, unpleasant map of Frankie’s demise spreading across the cheap, deliberately distressed fabric of my shirt. This role, Frankie the fallen hustler, wasn’t the big break I’ve been waiting for -- not by a long shot. Regional theatre, decent reviews maybe, but hardly Broadway or the silver screen I’d spent twenty years dreaming of.

  Still, it was work.

  It was the stage!

  It paid slightly more than ramen… sometimes.

  Tonight, though… tonight felt different. There was a charge in the air, an electric focus emanating from the shadowed void beyond the footlights. The audience, usually a restless beast of coughs, rustles, and shifting bodies, was utterly still. I could feel their collective gaze, a tangible weight, a silent, shared breath holding steady in the darkness. They weren’t just watching; they were in this alley with Frankie, breathing his desperation. Sarah, as Maria, had just spat her final lines with a vitriol that felt terrifyingly real, her eyes blazing with a righteous fury that momentarily made me forget we were acting. Her whisper of betrayal seemed to etch itself onto the silence.

  Now, the final beat. Frankie’s curtain call, delivered bleeding on the grimy stage.

  It was my turn to die.

  The choreography was burned into my brain, drilled through weeks of rehearsal under Barry’s meticulous, often infuriating, direction. Stumble back – sell the impact. Clutch the wound – make them feel the blade. Gasp the final, self-pitying lines – find the pathetic truth. Crumple – hit the marks, Leo, always hit the marks. Stage left, by the overflowing trash can prop, the one that smelled faintly of turpentine and Barry’s stale cigarette smoke.

  My legs obeyed, the stumble feeling authentically clumsy. My worn boots scraped against the stage floor, a familiar sound, the vibration traveling up my shins. Grounding. Even as Frankie was losing his grip. I brought my hand to my side, fingers splayed wide, pressing into the cooling, sticky wetness. The blood pack had deployed perfectly, a small victory in itself. I remembered that disastrous student film where the damn thing had leaked down my trousers halfway through the scene. No, thankfully tonight the tech was behaving. Only the actor left to deliver.

  “Maria… I… I did it… for us…” The words rasped out, catching appropriately. I let my gaze drift past Sarah’s expertly horrified face, focusing on a point somewhere in the dusty darkness above the lighting rig. Frankie seeing heaven? Or just the grimy ceiling? Let them decide.

  I allowed a tremor, practiced but hopefully believable, to run through my hand.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  Acting 101. Show, don’t just tell.

  This is it. This is good work, whispered the relentless internal critic that doubled as my only real cheerleader. Maybe that reviewer from the Chronicle is out there tonight. Maybe this leads to something. Maybe this time… The familiar, desperate hope flickered, even now. Twenty years chasing the spotlight, from humiliating cattle-call auditions under buzzing fluorescent lights to black box theatres that smelled of mildew and ambition, always hoping this role, this scene would be the one to finally make someone notice.

  I started the collapse, a controlled fall designed to look anything but. Knees first, absorbing the shock. The rough texture of the floorboards met my worn trousers – I could feel the grain, the slight unevenness, a tiny snag of splinter catching the fabric.

  Good. Use it.

  Reality in the details. Frankie wouldn’t be thinking about splinters, but the sensation grounded me, Leo, in the moment.

  Then, the world tilted on an axis I didn’t recognize.

  A flash of white-hot agony erupted behind my left eye, sudden and blinding. It wasn't Frankie's stage-managed pain; it wasn't the memory of a pulled muscle from rehearsal. This was alien, invasive. A neurological scream. It was pure, undiluted real. My breath hitched, stolen by the sheer intensity of the experience, far more effectively than any acting choice.

  Wow, okay, maybe dial back the intensity a bit?

  The thought was automatic, absurdly professional even as my vision swam, the edges dissolving into a pulsing, incandescent white. The stage lights seemed to swell, to vibrate, threatening to consume everything. Sarah’s face, the trash can prop, the painted brick wall – they warped and shimmered like a heat haze on asphalt.

  My left arm, the one meant to subtly break my fall, felt disconnected, a dead weight. I sent the command – move, damn you, hit the mark! – but the message drowned in a sudden flood of internal static. Panic, icy and sharp, lanced through the haze of pain. The actor’s control, my shield and my weapon for two decades, evaporated.

  This isn't in the script.

  The floor rushed up, not with the controlled timing of rehearsal, but with the indifferent speed of gravity claiming its due. My cheekbone met the wood with a sickening crack that seemed to echo inside my skull. The impact wasn't cushioned; it was brutal. Stars exploded behind my eyes, red and black against the blinding white. The smell of dust and varnish was suddenly overwhelming, acrid. I tasted blood – thick, hot, undeniably real – flooding the back of my throat.

  Not corn syrup.

  Mine.

  Oh Christ. No!

  My body was a puppet with severed strings. The carefully rehearsed final gasps became ragged, involuntary struggles for air. The script, Frankie’s pathetic excuses, my carefully crafted performance – all wiped clean, replaced by a terrifying, blank roar.

  I saw Sarah lean closer, her perfectly applied stage makeup unable to hide the dawning, genuine horror in her eyes. Her mouth formed my name – "Leo?" – but the sound reached me as if from the bottom of a well, distorted, meaningless.

  Could they see? The audience? Were they thinking, "Incredible realism!"? Or did they see a man dying? The irony was a physical blow, winding me even as my lungs fought for air. Leo Maxwell, the actor who poured his soul into every performance, whose greatest fear was not being believed, finally achieving perfect realism by actually dying? A cosmic joke with a terrible punchline. All those years… the endless auditions, the callbacks that went nowhere, the agents who promised the moon and delivered nothing, the bit parts, the student loans, the cheap apartments, the instant ramen dinners fueling impossible dreams… all leading to this.

  An exit stage left, executed with a fatal authenticity.

  The lights… they were definitely pulsing now, fading in and out, each pulse weaker than the last. The roaring in my ears softened, replaced by a heavy, rhythmic thudding, like a giant’s slow footsteps. My own heart, perhaps?

  Saying its goodbyes.

  The feeling of the rough stage floor against my cheek was the last clear sensation. Then even that began to fade, replaced by a strange, floating numbness. Cold, starting from my fingers and toes, creeping inwards.

  Fragmented images flickered behind my closing eyelids: my mother’s worried face, telling me to get a real job; the triumphant feeling after nailing a monologue in acting class years ago; the rejection letter from that prestigious company, pinned to my wall like a badge of masochistic honor; the flickering neon sign outside my dingy apartment building. Flotsam from a life spent chasing a dream that was now ending in the most theatrical way possible.

  Well, thought a tiny, detached part of my fading consciousness, the actor observing even now, at least the house was packed.

  Then, the darkness behind my eyes became absolute.

  The thudding stopped. Silence.

  And the final curtain fell on Leo Maxwell.