HANNAH GARGANTUA

1.

It was the start of a 36-hour act-a-thon at stage ➋, and Hannah had already seen one actor’s mediocre face briefly contort to disturbingly handsome proportions during his heartthrobber of a line read, another sing in such a cherub-like pitch that even the most callous and apathetic among listeners were rendered inconsolable within seconds, and an actress’s upper jaw crank so far backward during her diabolic audition as to resemble an actual human PEZ dispenser. The high cackle of doom that careened out of her throat cracked the metal legs right off several OBSERVING chairs facing the stage, sending Hannah and others floor-bound.

Hannah herself would soon be trying out for at least two roles in a yet-titled HB_ show starring Paul Dano, but her fellow auditioners—no-name thespian scroungers, much like herself—were clearly cheating performative limits. They were acing their matchups. Scoring scores higher than high. And if Hannah, at the age of thirty-nine, was hoping for her puny and terminally disappointing life to finally, at last, start its one big bloom, which she most certainly was, it was in jeopardy. 

They were inside the underground section of the defunct Sierra Nevada Studio backlot, far from any city. In prior times this subterranean complex, with its leftover horror props and staircases leading to nowhere, would merely traumatize production workers who found themselves wandering alone between takes. But these weren’t prior times, were they? No, these were not. These were desperate and economically bleak times all around, save for those soon destined to be up-and-coming starlets at the pix. 

“…Hannah had already seen one actor’s mediocre face briefly contort to disturbingly handsome proportions during his heartthrobber of a line read…”

Now every twitchy actor in the room (i.e., all), to Hannah, looked like they were jonesing to malform upon their first utterance of scripted dialogue on the stage. That is until she saw, per her name tag, Sybil Wersch, who had abruptly abandoned her plastic seat and started for the exit. She zeroed in on Sybil with a squint, forming a faint silhouette around her unenthused face. Hannah furtively cornered her. “Hi, sorry,” she said. 

“For what?” said Sybil. “Just move aside. I’ve seen enough shit today.” 

Sybil then tried a sidestep. Hannah gently matched her.

“Okay, so, yes, about that—do you know what’s going on?” Hannah gestured, with her eyebrows, to everyone around. “With the, uh, freakish abilities on a whim?”

Sybil slowly nodded her head, and then said, “The drugs everyone’s on?”

“Drugs?”

“The PEDs?” said Sybil.

Hannah blinked a few times. 

“Performance enhancing…stuff?” Sybil added. 

“Oh. Um. What?”

“Yeah. They’re in the lobbies, being handed out like candy. Go see for yourself. Me? I’m out. It stinks in here.”

Hannah had a rough inkling of newer and wacky breeds of steroids that soldiers were using to level their enemies in wartime (disguised faces made by a mere grimace, bombs placed under pillows at night by long arms stretched over rooftops), but the constant memeification of everything online and shoddy reporting made it hard to gauge what was actually happening. And HB_?

Sybil was now safely past Hannah, who saw she had 28 minutes till her first audition at stage ➏, according to one of the hanging monitors above, which showed the WHO (the actor), the WHEN (the time), and the WHERE (the stage) like a flight schedule.   

She followed Sybil out the PA-rigged exit doors and split for one of the lobbies.

2.

A long line had formed behind Hannah in the lobby, explaining how she was able to miss the PED handouts when she first arrived—she avoided lines, hated waiting in them. She was impatient, always short on time, and opted to stomp through life in her own unlivable smog of discontent and uncertainty. In front of her, mounted on the wall, was a ghoulblin head from the 1996 film Feeler X that had been repurposed into an intercom. Distressingly elongated and noseless, yes, but the voice coming through was singsongy and pleasant. 

“It’s all in the NDA. Take them, don’t take them, take a little, take more than a little. But do ask yourself: Am I happy dawdling in minor roles? Will I be okay dawdling in minor roles for the rest of my career now that I’m nearing 40? Is there anything I can do to change that? Is there anything I could ingest, with my mouth, that could give me an edge, knowing that my time on this planet is short and death is forever?” it said.

“Okay, I get it,”  Hannah said quietly. 

Dozens of small and rainbowed candy balls then poured out of the ghoulblin’s mouth and into Hannah’s hands. These were the PEDs. 

“They’re chewable,” said the ghoulblin. “They’re yummy.”

“And FDA approved…?”

“Well—all in the NDA. Good luck with your auditions!”

“In front of her, mounted on the wall, was a ghoulblin head from the 1996 film Feeler X that had been repurposed into an intercom.”

She heard the fuzz on the intercom click off, and her first thought was: screw the NDA. It was in size 0.6 font and, glowering through it, held such gems as: PARTICIPANTS ACCEPT ALL POTENTIAL KNOWN AND UNKNOWN SIDE-EFFECTS, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO DEPRESSION,  IRRITABILITY, SEVERE MUSCLE TEARING, CONVULSIONS, AND, IN RARE CASES, SUDDEN EXPIRY. 

So she could skip the PEDs, sure, but then she’d be shorthanding herself against all those freaks in the other room. And if she could nab a part, it would change just about everything for her. She made most of her monies by dispiritedly writing CC for late-night TV ads: amphetamine gasses for the focus-deficient, online getaways for the maladjusted, and political sewage for anybody ready to slosh right in. Distraught, she barely slept at night. The most she had ever won were a few non-recurring grunt roles on network crime procedurals in Chicago. That was it. And all that had done, long-term, was wreak devastation on her tiny and increasingly irredeemable soul (the only possible redeeming act being: actually making something of herself, like getting one of these roles).

But dying via candy didn’t sound great either. 

She ate three quarters of a single ball and pocketed the rest.