Clammy hands sweat as they fumbled, pulling on fingers wringing the anxiety from my body. I feel a drop from my forehead, a tear of nerves trailing down my brow and across the bridge of my nose.

A reminder of the bright lights and piercing gaze of the casting director. Their eyes are void of emotion- of the tell.

Did they notice? Did they see me fumble, my pause just a moment too long, the loss of my character’s emotion a buffer into a waiting hint or tip.

I shuffled through the files of my mind.

Bills. Birthdays. Funerals. Weddings. A calendar pulled and torn apart in attempt to fish the lines from the grooves of my mind.

Or perhaps it was flat, devoid of human volume, of an actor’s certainty in their skill.

A light bulb came and went with a flicker before finally the generators kicked into gear and amongst the false crescendo of sadness and hyperventilating lungs the words spilt from my lips.

My tongue tied, as a traumatised girl’s would, stumbling over the sentence I had practiced time and time again.

I tried to see the mirror, my black eyes focused and determined despite the tears pooling in them.

I inhaled a sharp breath before a waterfall that was her scene rumbled into concocted rapids of part acting and genuine desperation.

Did they see me in the girl I was meant to be? Did they catch the blip, the glimmer of me I had tucked deeply away.

She was me though. A girl lost and thirsty for safety as nonexistent CGI creatures approached with a haunting crackle of scales and groans of their supernatural existence. I pounded on the single door they had blocked before me, my feet pressed firmly upon the yellow line as I pleaded entry.

Please

They are coming

I cannot hide

I am alone

Take my child

Only my child

Take the child

I saw my mother towering above me, her hand squeezing the circulation from my tiny fingers. It was too real and the monsters, when I turned behind me, that were figments of my imagination suddenly morphed into my grandfather.

He will kill us

They will kill us

These creatures

That monster

I beg of you

I went on without the script, my mind a flurry as I grew lost in a distorted picture of my memories and reality.

“Stop!” The casting director halted with dead eyes assessing my heaving shoulders, fear tacked hair and streaming tears. Mascara was surely dripping and smudging around my eyes.

I left as soon as I entered when the door creaked open. And I, big and small, without my mother, with the girl’s child, I came through into an actor’s talent.