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The Extra
By Natalie L. Sin
Philip Chow knew he wanted to be an actor ever since he saw Dicky Cheung play the Monkey King on TVB. When he found out a few years later that TVB had its own acting school he pleaded with his parents to let him try out. After three weeks of putting up with his constant entreaties, Philip’s mother ended the matter with the handle of her feather duster. From that point on, Philip kept his ambitions to himself. He was convinced that once he was old enough, there would be nothing to stop him from becoming a wildly famous actor.After graduating high school, he started working in his parents’ restaurant at night and auditioning for acting jobs during the day. By then his mother had relented somewhat on the subject. Philip chalked it up to a genuine change of heart until, unable to sleep one night, he overheard them discussing the situation. Evidently, they were banking on him being a failure. Since he was a smart boy, he would eventually figure out he wasn’t cut out for acting and take over the restaurant. His mother gave him a year, two tops, to achieve this revelation. Nine years later, he was still going to auditions.
As a kid, he naively assumed becoming famous was all about working hard. Once he was in the business, he quickly learned that “working hard” only mattered once you got the job. Before that, you needed good looks or connections. Failing those, you at least needed a face that inspired physical comedy. Philip didn’t have any of that. He was a little too tall, a little too skinny, and he blended in with a crowd way too well. That made him an extra: The kind of guy that got to brush elbows with famous actors he wasn’t supposed to speak to and who would barely know he was there. As far as directors were concerned, he was one step above a prop.
Philip’s lucky break, such as it was, came a few days into production of “Death Triangle.” It was the new Wong Jing film, which got Philip excited. The plot centered around a serial killer that stalked and murdered triad members. The lead, a young cop, was played by the current hotshot actor in Hong Kong: Scottie Lam. He sang, he danced. He made girls shriek his name at decibels only dogs could hear. Philip couldn’t help but hope being in a Scottie Lam movie would be a nice boost to the resume. It happened sooner than he expected.
“Hey you.” One of Wong Jing’s assistants pointed a finger at Philip. “You want to play dead?”
For a second, Philip thought the guy was actually asking him to a dog trick. Maybe to prove he wanted to keep the job bad enough.
The assistant rolled her eyes impatiently. “Look, Mr. Wong added a scene in the morgue and he needs a dead body. So, you wanna play dead? It’ll mean more screen time, especially with the cop having flashbacks.”
“I’ll do it.”
“Fine. Go to makeup and they’ll get you ready. You’ll be in the chair for a few hours, so if you have to piss do it now.”
Philip was about to tell her that he hadn’t had a drink since breakfast, but the woman was already turning on her heels and halfway across the set. He wondered how she moved so fast with the stick up her butt.
The make-up took forever. First they made him pale, then they made him blue, then they made him pale again. After that, it was another two hours to create the wound. When it was all over, it looked like someone sliced his throat open with a jagged piece of glass: the serial killer’s weapon of choice. Philip smiled. He couldn’t wait to show his friends pictures.
“You have an hour or so before they start the scene.” The makeup artist told him. “You don’t have to stay seated, but don’t brush your upper body against anything! And if you need to drink something, use a straw and suck gently. I don’t want to have to redo your lips.”
“Suck gently. Gotcha.”
Philip decided to wander around until it was time to go on. He was paranoid about ruining the makeup. The last thing an extra needed was being labeled difficult or clumsy. A few minutes later, he found himself strolling past Scottie Lam’s trailer just as Scottie was leaving. He got about three steps down before he saw Philip and froze.
“When are you guys going to leave me alone?” He hissed, eyes wild. “I told you to leave me alone!”
Philip’s first reaction was that the guy was drunk or on drugs. He tried to calm Scottie down.
“Are you ok, because you look a little...”
Before he could finish, Scottie jumped past the last few steps and punched Philip in the face. Philip staggered back with one hand raised over his battered nose.
“What the hell?” He yelped.
When he pulled his hand back it was covered in blood and he could feel more slithering down his upper lip.
“You’re alive.” Scottie said it with genuine surprise. “Oh crap, you are alive! Come here.”
He took Philips arm and pulled him into the trailer. Once inside, he pushed him onto a chair and went to wet a towel in the mini-sink.
“I’m so sorry. Here, hold this to your nose.”
“The makeup guy is going to kill me.” Philip groaned.
“Don’t worry, I’ll tell him I accidentally bashed your nose with a door. They won’t yell at me.”
“No kidding,” Philip remarked morosely.
“I really am sorry. I thought you were a ghost.”
“Are you high?”
“No.” Scottie slumped into a chair across from Philip. “That doesn’t work. Thought it would.”
“Are you serious?”
Scottie wouldn’t answer at first. Then his expression slackened. It almost looked like relief.
“What the heck, it’s not like anyone will believe you if you rat on me. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“When I was little, I used to see ghosts all the time. I don’t know if they knew it, none of them ever acknowledged me or anything. After a while, I stopped even really noticing.”
Philip stared back. It felt like he should say something, but he had no idea how one could add to that kind of story.
“Anyway, then I started to get famous. All of a sudden, they wanted to talk to me.”
“Maybe you’re supposed to help them?” Philip offered. “I saw this movie from America where the kid saw ghosts and that’s what he did.”
“I saw that movie. It doesn’t work. They don’t want help, they don’t even listen!” Scottie got up and started pacing.
“They just talk. They show up and they yap at me for hours on end about stuff that’s none of their business. One time I took a girl home. We were on my bed fooling around, and you know what happened? A bunch of dead fan girls shows up and start yelling at me! How can I perform like that? I ended up sending her home and for the rest of the night I had to listen to the three dead girls. You know what they wanted to talk about?”
Philip shook his head.
“Makeup. What classes in school they thought were hard. Cute names they gave their stuffed animals. All. Night. Long.”
Philip wanted to laugh. It just sounded so stupid, being haunted by the ghosts of giddy schoolgirls.
“You don’t believe me.” Scottie looked like he might cry.
“If you thought I was a ghost, why did you hit me?”
“Sometimes it startles them and they disappear for a while.”
“Do you see any now?” Philip asked. He was actually starting to believe the guy.
“No. They’ve been quiet for a while. I was taking a nap, so maybe they got bored. Sometimes I can go almost a whole day without seeing one, though.”
“So every day they come to yell at you?”
Scottie shook his head. “Usually they just want to tell me stuff. Career advice, what they think of the movie I’m in, what girls I should date, how I shouldn’t date girls until I’m ready to marry. It’s always a different opinion and they all want me to pay attention.”
“Have you told them to go bugger their mothers?”
“Many times. Some laugh, some get insulted. Like I said, different opinions.” Scottie sat back down. “Sometimes I think about giving up, just leaving. That way they can’t bother me any more and I can be happy.”
“You would give all this up over them?”
“I don’t know. I think I’m getting there. All I want is peace and quiet.”
“Maybe you’ll get used to it, like when you were a kid?”
“Maybe. Hey, we better get going. You need to get to makeup, right?”
“Yeah. We’re in the same scene, right?”
“The morgue one. I go in to identify you as one of the Black Lotus gang, then I imagine that your corpse is talking to me.”
“Life imitates art, huh?”
“I guess.” Scottie smiled a little. “What’s your name, anyway? I never asked.”
“Philip Chow.”
“Well Philip, thanks for listening. You’re the nicest dead guy I’ve ever talked to.”
“Well, if I die before you I’ll come keep you company and shoo all the other jerks away, how about that?”
Scottie laughed as they exited his trailer. “You’ll get tired of me. They all do. The problem is that there are so many of them.”
As Scottie predicted, the makeup crew didn’t bat an eyelash when he told them the story about bashing Philip with a door.
“No problem, Mr. Lam. It was all a silly accident! We’ll have this guy ready in no time.”
They even started treating Philip a little nicer. If an actor wanted to go slumming for friends, they knew better than to have an opinion. In no time his nose matched the rest of him and Philip was lying in the morgue while Scottie Lam and a character actor playing the coroner talked over him. For the first few takes, Scottie did well. Then he started mumbling between his lines. At first Philip could barely hear him. Then, in the middle of the coroner’s explanation of cause of death, Scottie freaked out.
“I said SHUT UP! Go get reincarnated as something that isn’t a waste of my time!”
With a wide sweep of his arm, Scottie sent the coroner’s tools crashing to the ground. When he stormed off the set, nobody moved. Even when the gunshot went off, Philip was the only one to start running. He found Scottie on the ground. What was left of his head had bled out over half of the trailer. Philip dropped to his knees, stupidly trying to find something to stop the flow. When the crew found him, he was using the same towel Scottie offered for his bloody nose.
It took five people to pry him off, and by the next day he was a celebrity: The man who tried to save Scottie Lam. When the production company decided to go forward with the movie, they offered Scottie’s role to Philip. It was a publicity move: By then everybody wanted to know who Philip Chow was. He took the role with Scottie’s permission. Philip had been seeing a lot of him lately.
© Sin, 2008
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Natalie Sin has previously been published in "Necrotic Tissue" (issue 3), "Strange, Weird, and Wonderful" (issue 1), and "Macabre Cadaver" (issue 2). In addition, she will be appearing in the upcoming Northern Haunts (Shroud Publishing) and Tainted (Strange Publications) anthologies.