Kill the Lights by Jangryang
Proofreader/Editor: Kaima, Hwarang
Ch. 1 Part 2
***
At the same time, a house in LA–
It was an expensive-looking house but pretty gloomy, probably because the lights were turned off, or that the house was in a secluded place. Or it could be just the white moon. The house was so quiet that it seemed like no one was living there.
Deep inside the house was a basement, a small storage space down the stairs. From within the basement door there came a sound, of a small machine and running water, which went on and on. But suddenly, after a while, the noise stopped.
The wooden door opened and a man with a tired face exited. Something definitely happened in there. The man was replete with cold sweat. He opened the basement door a little and stared at the wall outside with his blood shot eyes. There were many shiny camera lenses pointing at him.
Those damn paparazzi… He could see the people waiting outside the compound wall, trying to get a picture. He pressed a button, and all the windows in the house were covered with blinds. Coldness was permeating the living room. He accidentally kicked a pile of newspapers on the floor.
His manager, Tony Bridget, had brought these in the morning. Those newspapers were filled with provocative headlines.
‘….Haley confessed to Raynoah?!’
‘Did Hollywood’s scapegrace, Haley Lusk, actually confess to the American sanctuary, Raynoah?? – Last night there was a shocking news that Haley Lusk confessed his feelings to Raynoah.’
And the article was full of ridicule and criticism. There were some crappy pictures of the man.
‘Oh my god! Haley proposes to Raynoah! Finally gone crazy?’ Beside the provocative headline they had used a picture of him taken last year, when the man was climbing over the walls of a rehab facility in order to run away. On the paper where it said, ‘Haley Lusk vs. Noah Raycarlton,’ there was a picture of him falling down, holding a cup of coffee, after a court trial for drunk driving. He hated that picture.
The man turned around, stepping on the newspapers.
In the living room, unlike the pictures in the newspaper, there were several beautiful portraits of the man. Everything was from when he was a child.
He was a child actor. When he was little, he used to be popular, but after his parents died, he destroyed himself quickly. Drinking, smoking, unrestricted sex, and getting high, was all he ever did. The once cute and lovely face had declined to a gloomy and normal face.
His parents’ money and the wealth that he’d earned were uncountable, but the gold digger cousins and his extravagant life-style had nearly forced his finances to bankruptcy. The accounting agency had warned that if this kind of life-style continued, he’ll definitely go bankrupt in one year, but he didn’t care.
Because, in his eyes he still looked cute and lovely, like when he did as a poster child. He thought that the pictures taken by the paparazzi were all out of malice, and even the pictures that he sometimes took for modeling looked bad because the photographers hated him. He still thought that if he took care of himself a little bit, he would definitely bounce back in a short time. And he will have all the ads and movies and would earn a lot of money.
He went to the kitchen and took out an Evian water bottle from the refrigerator and turned on his answering machine.
Beep- soon 27 messages were pouring out. Out of the 27, only two were not from his manager Tony. ‘Liz? Liz! Why aren’t you answering? Are you serious? Don’t you know you have schedules tomorrow?’ He started skipping his whining messages and deleted them. ‘I’m seriously gonna stop being your manager!’ He erased all 25 messages indifferently. ‘Hi, Haley,’ said a gentleman’s voice. ‘I’m Lauren.’ He always thought Lauren was annoying, but he decided to listen.
‘Haley. I heard that you still collected those weird stuff? Rachel told me you used 300,000 dollars on something suspicious. You’re kidding right? Your accountant said that you’re nearly bankrupt…. Do you even have the money to pay your fine if Raynoah sued for defamation?’ The man continued to listen quietly and after hearing the ridicule he said, ‘bitch’ and deleted the message. This guy was an asshole. He got mad and pressed the button to hear the next message. This time it was a woman.
‘Hey, lovely Liz~ Honey. I’m Rachael. Did you use the thing I gave you? How was it?’ He frowned that she used his nickname. He murmured to the answering machine, ‘I did use it, but I don’t think there was any effect. Honey!’ Almost as if she had heard him Rachel said, ‘you are not gonna get the effect right away. But hold tight. I do understand that all the other things I sold you didn’t work, but this one is different. I brought only three from Japan. Honey, you know my friend Billy? The day after he used this charm, Angela came to his house and went straight to bed. They are getting married next month. –Actually, ‘doing that’ could be a little scary and nasty, but the effects are guaranteed.’ She said in a sweet voice.
‘You just wait. Your wish will come true soon.’
Of course it was supposed to work, it was worth 300,000 dollars! The man smiled. He was about to take another sip.
‘Oh yeah, honey. I told you this right?’
He dropped his water bottle. The bottle was rolling and water was spilling everywhere. Instead of looking at the bottle, the man was holding his chest. His eyes opened wide.
‘After doing the ritual, you need to be careful about everything you do. The wish always come true, but sometimes the spirit enters and something goes wrong. Haha… but it’s probably a made up story right? It still creeps me out because, going through it is a little weird.’
A laughing voice could be heard from the answering machine, but the man was hardly breathing. His big, open eyes looked outside the window and saw the white moon.
Bang… his heart rate was dropping. It cannot be a mistake. The man frowned and grabbed onto his chest. He felt a pain, as if his heart was being ripped apart. For a second there, he had the vision of a desert and a man. This man had black hair and eyes and looked normal. Even though he had never seen him before, he knew who he was.
His heart, head and body were shaking. The voice of Rachael was saying something through the answering machine, but he couldn’t hear anything. Something had gone wrong, but he couldn’t turn back now.
He listened to his heart stop and soon collapsed on the floor. Cold, spilled water was drenching him, and the man had his eyes wide open and took his last breath.
His world was shaking and collapsing, and then it started to rebuild again.
This world was different, a desert, and there was the man from his vision a second ago. His black hair was cropped like a soldier’s, and he woke up with a tired face. As soon
as he woke up, he took his gun and looked around. And he took care of his team members. He looked over his shoulders, and Haley felt like they made an eye contact, for a second.
Mason Taylor…
He murmured his name and the two overlapping worlds were once again pulled apart.
Few hours later, Tony Bridget, who was mad since nobody received his calls, went inside Haley Lusk’s house. That was when saw him, lying on the kitchen floor, with his eyes wide open.
He wasn’t breathing and his heart had stopped. Tony called for the police right away, and the police verified that he was dead. Right when Tony was sobbing and saying ‘What about next week’s schedule?’ Haley coughed. Everybody stopped working and looked at him. And a young police, who was standing closest to him, startled a bit and put his ear to his heart.
There wasn’t any sound coming forth.
“…. Did I mishear?”
Was there a cat in this house? Just when he was thinking so–
“---?”
He felt a small breath. A while ago he thought he’d heard something wrong, but now he could definitely hear a small thump from his heart.
“Ahhhhhh!”
“What’s wrong?”
The young police officer screamed and stepped back, and the other officer asked. The young police officer paled visibly and said,
“He, he, he’s alive…”
He’s alive, this…! He shouted and Tony, who was standing stupidly nearby, ran towards him and checked his heart.
He wasn’t lying. His heart had indeed started to beat again.
“Like a miracle.”
That was only the beginning of all changes.
It was an expensive-looking house but pretty gloomy, probably because the lights were turned off, or that the house was in a secluded place. Or it could be just the white moon. The house was so quiet that it seemed like no one was living there.
Deep inside the house was a basement, a small storage space down the stairs. From within the basement door there came a sound, of a small machine and running water, which went on and on. But suddenly, after a while, the noise stopped.
The wooden door opened and a man with a tired face exited. Something definitely happened in there. The man was replete with cold sweat. He opened the basement door a little and stared at the wall outside with his blood shot eyes. There were many shiny camera lenses pointing at him.
Those damn paparazzi… He could see the people waiting outside the compound wall, trying to get a picture. He pressed a button, and all the windows in the house were covered with blinds. Coldness was permeating the living room. He accidentally kicked a pile of newspapers on the floor.
His manager, Tony Bridget, had brought these in the morning. Those newspapers were filled with provocative headlines.
‘….Haley confessed to Raynoah?!’
‘Did Hollywood’s scapegrace, Haley Lusk, actually confess to the American sanctuary, Raynoah?? – Last night there was a shocking news that Haley Lusk confessed his feelings to Raynoah.’
And the article was full of ridicule and criticism. There were some crappy pictures of the man.
‘Oh my god! Haley proposes to Raynoah! Finally gone crazy?’ Beside the provocative headline they had used a picture of him taken last year, when the man was climbing over the walls of a rehab facility in order to run away. On the paper where it said, ‘Haley Lusk vs. Noah Raycarlton,’ there was a picture of him falling down, holding a cup of coffee, after a court trial for drunk driving. He hated that picture.
The man turned around, stepping on the newspapers.
In the living room, unlike the pictures in the newspaper, there were several beautiful portraits of the man. Everything was from when he was a child.
He was a child actor. When he was little, he used to be popular, but after his parents died, he destroyed himself quickly. Drinking, smoking, unrestricted sex, and getting high, was all he ever did. The once cute and lovely face had declined to a gloomy and normal face.
His parents’ money and the wealth that he’d earned were uncountable, but the gold digger cousins and his extravagant life-style had nearly forced his finances to bankruptcy. The accounting agency had warned that if this kind of life-style continued, he’ll definitely go bankrupt in one year, but he didn’t care.
Because, in his eyes he still looked cute and lovely, like when he did as a poster child. He thought that the pictures taken by the paparazzi were all out of malice, and even the pictures that he sometimes took for modeling looked bad because the photographers hated him. He still thought that if he took care of himself a little bit, he would definitely bounce back in a short time. And he will have all the ads and movies and would earn a lot of money.
He went to the kitchen and took out an Evian water bottle from the refrigerator and turned on his answering machine.
Beep- soon 27 messages were pouring out. Out of the 27, only two were not from his manager Tony. ‘Liz? Liz! Why aren’t you answering? Are you serious? Don’t you know you have schedules tomorrow?’ He started skipping his whining messages and deleted them. ‘I’m seriously gonna stop being your manager!’ He erased all 25 messages indifferently. ‘Hi, Haley,’ said a gentleman’s voice. ‘I’m Lauren.’ He always thought Lauren was annoying, but he decided to listen.
‘Haley. I heard that you still collected those weird stuff? Rachel told me you used 300,000 dollars on something suspicious. You’re kidding right? Your accountant said that you’re nearly bankrupt…. Do you even have the money to pay your fine if Raynoah sued for defamation?’ The man continued to listen quietly and after hearing the ridicule he said, ‘bitch’ and deleted the message. This guy was an asshole. He got mad and pressed the button to hear the next message. This time it was a woman.
‘Hey, lovely Liz~ Honey. I’m Rachael. Did you use the thing I gave you? How was it?’ He frowned that she used his nickname. He murmured to the answering machine, ‘I did use it, but I don’t think there was any effect. Honey!’ Almost as if she had heard him Rachel said, ‘you are not gonna get the effect right away. But hold tight. I do understand that all the other things I sold you didn’t work, but this one is different. I brought only three from Japan. Honey, you know my friend Billy? The day after he used this charm, Angela came to his house and went straight to bed. They are getting married next month. –Actually, ‘doing that’ could be a little scary and nasty, but the effects are guaranteed.’ She said in a sweet voice.
‘You just wait. Your wish will come true soon.’
Of course it was supposed to work, it was worth 300,000 dollars! The man smiled. He was about to take another sip.
‘Oh yeah, honey. I told you this right?’
He dropped his water bottle. The bottle was rolling and water was spilling everywhere. Instead of looking at the bottle, the man was holding his chest. His eyes opened wide.
‘After doing the ritual, you need to be careful about everything you do. The wish always come true, but sometimes the spirit enters and something goes wrong. Haha… but it’s probably a made up story right? It still creeps me out because, going through it is a little weird.’
A laughing voice could be heard from the answering machine, but the man was hardly breathing. His big, open eyes looked outside the window and saw the white moon.
Bang… his heart rate was dropping. It cannot be a mistake. The man frowned and grabbed onto his chest. He felt a pain, as if his heart was being ripped apart. For a second there, he had the vision of a desert and a man. This man had black hair and eyes and looked normal. Even though he had never seen him before, he knew who he was.
His heart, head and body were shaking. The voice of Rachael was saying something through the answering machine, but he couldn’t hear anything. Something had gone wrong, but he couldn’t turn back now.
He listened to his heart stop and soon collapsed on the floor. Cold, spilled water was drenching him, and the man had his eyes wide open and took his last breath.
His world was shaking and collapsing, and then it started to rebuild again.
This world was different, a desert, and there was the man from his vision a second ago. His black hair was cropped like a soldier’s, and he woke up with a tired face. As soon
as he woke up, he took his gun and looked around. And he took care of his team members. He looked over his shoulders, and Haley felt like they made an eye contact, for a second.
Mason Taylor…
He murmured his name and the two overlapping worlds were once again pulled apart.
Few hours later, Tony Bridget, who was mad since nobody received his calls, went inside Haley Lusk’s house. That was when saw him, lying on the kitchen floor, with his eyes wide open.
He wasn’t breathing and his heart had stopped. Tony called for the police right away, and the police verified that he was dead. Right when Tony was sobbing and saying ‘What about next week’s schedule?’ Haley coughed. Everybody stopped working and looked at him. And a young police, who was standing closest to him, startled a bit and put his ear to his heart.
There wasn’t any sound coming forth.
“…. Did I mishear?”
Was there a cat in this house? Just when he was thinking so–
“---?”
He felt a small breath. A while ago he thought he’d heard something wrong, but now he could definitely hear a small thump from his heart.
“Ahhhhhh!”
“What’s wrong?”
The young police officer screamed and stepped back, and the other officer asked. The young police officer paled visibly and said,
“He, he, he’s alive…”
He’s alive, this…! He shouted and Tony, who was standing stupidly nearby, ran towards him and checked his heart.
He wasn’t lying. His heart had indeed started to beat again.
“Like a miracle.”
That was only the beginning of all changes.
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Continue to Part 3
Continue to Part 3
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