Chapter 6 – A Villain’s Performance

"What we do not understand we have no right to judge." - Henric Frédéric Amiel.

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Chapter 6 – A Villain's Performance

As the door clicked shut behind Ethan, Sam let out a small breath, rubbing the back of his neck. The house was quiet again. Too quiet.

He stood there for a moment, staring at the door as if expecting Ethan to knock again with some last-minute warning about the guesthouse. When nothing happened, he shrugged it off and turned toward the staircase.

"Audition script… where did I put that thing?"

Sam climbed the steps and made his way to his room, stepping over the pile of clothes he still hadn't folded, and began rummaging through his desk for his audition script.

It took a while, but he finally found it—wedged between an old notebook and a takeout menu. He unfolded the slightly crumpled pages and stared at them, feeling an odd mix of excitement and self-doubt.

"Gotcha."

Plopping onto the chair, he flipped through the pages.

The script was from a psychological thriller—one of those indie productions trying to feel deep. His character, Vincent, was a cunning, silver-tongued antagonist who manipulated everyone around him with calculated cruelty. He was cold. Ruthless. The kind of villain that made your skin crawl.

Sam sighed. "And yet, here I am, struggling to even sound mildly threatening."

Still, he had to try. He cleared his throat, straightened his back, and started reading.

He'd already read the lines a dozen times, but something still felt… off. The role he was going for—a villain with a cold, calculating aura—needed a level of menace he wasn't sure he could pull off. He had practiced, tweaked his delivery, even experimented with different gestures. And yet, every time he ran through the lines, he felt like something was missing.

Sighing, he stood up, rolling his shoulders. "Alright. One more time."

Taking his stance, he readied himself, eyes narrowing as he stepped into the character. His voice dropped lower, smoother, laced with an arrogance he imagined a true villain would have.

"You think you have a choice? No, you lost that privilege the moment you stepped into my world."

At first, his delivery was awkward. He couldn't quite get the right level of menace into his voice. His attempts at a chilling smirk looked more like a constipated grimace in the mirror. He tried lowering his tone, adding a sharper edge to his words. He practiced his pacing, his gestures—anything to make Vincent feel real.

He adjusted his posture, slowed his movements, and let his voice stretch out the words.

"I don't need to raise my voice. Fear isn't in the volume… it's in the silence between."

He took a step forward, gesturing as if confronting an invisible foe. The script was decent, but he needed to own it.

"You will kneel, not because I force you to… but because you know there is no other option."

His fingers twitched. His breathing evened.

Frowning, he walked to the mirror.

He squared his shoulders. Furrowed his brows. Let his lips curl into something cruel.

Then, he spoke.

"You think mercy is given? No. It is taken, pried from my hands. And you—" His voice dropped into something colder, heavier. "You will have none."

Silence.

His reflection stared back, unimpressed.

Sam groaned, running a hand through his hair. "Nope. Still sounds like an actor pretending to be a villain."

He tried again, adjusting his stance, his gestures, but the result was the same. Something was missing—something deeper than just a change in tone.

As he repeated the lines, something in him shifted. His voice grew steadier, his movements more refined. He wasn't just reading anymore—he was performing. The room seemed to shrink, the world outside fading away as he got lost in his role.

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And he wasn't alone.

From the shadows of the room, something watched.

A figure—barely more than a silhouette—stood in the corner, observing silently. It did not move. Did not breathe. It simply watched, as though something in Sam's performance had stirred a memory.

There was… potential. But also, something was lacking.

Coldness.

A true villain wasn't just confident. He was merciless.

The shadow lingered a moment longer, then—as if losing interest—it vanished.

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Sam, unaware, continued rehearsing, pushing himself to perfect the role. The missing piece eluded him.

Sam, oblivious, let out a frustrated sigh. His throat felt dry, and his stomach made a low, disapproving noise. Right. He hadn't eaten in hours.

Leaving the script on his bed, he made his way downstairs, heading straight for the kitchen. He grabbed a glass, filled it with water, and downed it in one go before setting it aside and rolling up his sleeves.

Most people thought he couldn't cook. And to be fair, most orphans didn't have the luxury of learning. But Sam wasn't most people. Living alone had its perks—one of them being that he had mastered the art of feeding himself.

His cooking? Four-star hotel level.

He got to work, moving through the kitchen with practiced ease. Within minutes, a simple yet well-balanced meal was ready.

After eating, he stretched and let out a satisfied sigh, then turned toward the living room.

That's when he noticed the guestbook.

It was still on the sofa, right where he had left it. But something felt...off. He frowned.

Ethan hadn't even glanced at it. Hadn't asked about it. It was like the book didn't exist to him at all.

Sam hesitated before shaking his head. "You're overthinking. It's just a book."

Still, for some reason, he reached out and closed it. But instead of taking it back to his room, he left it there.

Yawning, he headed upstairs, flipping through his script one last time.

Sam barely made it through the first page of his script before his eyelids grew heavy. His body sank deeper into the mattress, exhaustion wrapping around him like a thick fog. With a final exhale, he drifted off, the pages slipping from his hand.

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The house fell into stillness.

But it was not the stillness of peace.

The air inside the guesthouse grew dense, thick with something that couldn't be named. Shadows clung stubbornly to the corners, darker than they should have been, unmoving yet somehow alive. The wooden beams let out the occasional creak—not the sound of a house settling, but something… listening.

It was a silence that stretched too far, pressing against the walls like a held breath. The kind that wasn't just quiet—but expectant. It settled in the corners of the room, clung to the wooden beams, and pooled beneath the furniture like something lurking just out of sight.

Then—

A whisper of movement.

The guestbook on the sofa twitched.

The motion was subtle, almost imperceptible, like the slightest exhale disturbing the pages. Then, as if responding to an unseen presence, the book trembled.

And then—

It flipped open.

Not in a sudden, violent motion, but something far worse—slowly, deliberately, as though unseen fingers traced along its edges, turning each page with care. The paper crinkled, ink bleeding onto blank pages as new words formed, scrawling themselves out in frantic, overlapping scripts.

A conversation no living soul had written.

A conversation no living soul was meant to read.

—"It's been a while, hasn't it?"

—"Has it? I thought we just got here."

—"Oh… right. I forget how it works."

—"Do you think he'll open the door?"

—"He doesn't even have the key."

—"Wait, which one are we talking about again?"

—"Shh. He might hear us."

—"He never hears us. None of them do."

—(A sudden shift in handwriting.) "Are we waiting for something?"

—"Aren't we always?"

The final line bled into the page before fading, the ink vanishing as if it had never been there.

And yet, the weight of those words remained.

Beyond the locked guest room upstairs, a whisper of something unseen passed through the empty space. The air shifted. The dust stirred.

The door did not open. The doorknob did not turn.

But somewhere, beyond the veil of reality, something was waiting.

And it was patient.

---END.