thanh.nguyenhoang.1403@gmail.com
Stories
168
Chapters
1,512
Words
3.2 M
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0
Reading
11 d, 4 h
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The James Dean Screening Room at the Orpheum Institute of Cinematic Arts is a velvet-lined coffin where dreams are either minted in silver or buried in silence. Today, it smells of stale espresso, expensive Santal perfume, and the distinct, metallic ozone of the digital projector. I stand at the podium, my fingers resting on the cold aluminum of the playback console. My heart is beating a frantic, erratic rhythm against my ribs, but my hands are perfectly steady. I have spent seventy-two hours in the…-
23.0 K • Completed
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The walk from my dorm to the administrative quad takes exactly eight minutes. Today, it feels like a march to the gallows. Every time I cross a sunlit patch of the Orpheum’s pristine, Spanish-tiled courtyard, heads turn. The whispers are not even hushed. A group of freshman screenwriters by the fountain fall dead silent as I pass, their eyes darting from their glowing phone screens to my face. I keep my chin level, my eyes fixed on the heavy oak doors of the administration building, but my stomach is a…
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23.0 K • Completed
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The canyon house is a mid-century modern glass box suspended over the jagged spine of the Hollywood Hills. It belongs to a shell corporation managed by my mother’s accountants, functioning primarily as a tax write-off and an occasional set for Mercer Studios' vanity projects. Today, it is our soundstage. I sit on the edge of a low-slung, imported velvet sofa, the stark Los Angeles sunlight cutting across my face through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Across the room, Imani Cross is adjusting the heavy,…
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23.0 K • Completed
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The subterranean archives of Mercer Studios are a cathedral of temperature-controlled silence, buried fifty feet beneath the bustling soundstages of Burbank. Unlike the decaying romance of the Orpheum's repertory theater, this vault is a sterile, corporate fortress. It requires a biometric scan, a retinal flash, and a clearance level that only three people in Los Angeles possess. I am one of them. I step past the heavy pneumatic doors, the air instantly biting at my skin. Rows of pristine, reinforced…
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23.0 K • Completed
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The three heavy, metallic thuds echoing from the physical steel door of the annex shatter the paralysis that has gripped my lungs. Jude moves instantly, his protective instinct overriding his exhaustion. He grabs the heavy brass film splicer off the editing desk, his body tense, shielding me from the loading dock entrance. The projection of our lives continues to flicker on the plaster wall, a mocking, silent ghost of the past week. "Who is it?" Jude demands, his voice a low, dangerous…
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23.0 K • Completed
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The adrenaline leaves my bloodstream with the brutal, shivering crash of a receding tide. I stand in the freezing aisle of the Orpheum’s sub-basement server farm, pulling my dark shirt over my shoulders. The heavy cotton is ice-cold against my skin, a stark contrast to the blistering heat that had consumed Imani and me only moments ago. The server racks around us are quiet. Too quiet. When Imani pulled the root directory onto her extraction drive, the massive cooling fans had screamed in protest. Now,…
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23.0 K • Completed
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The Local 700 annex smells of stale coffee, oxidized metal, and absolute, razor-sharp clarity. For the past twelve hours, the vintage Steenbeck flatbed and the modern Avid workstation have been running simultaneously. I sit in the heavy leather chair, my fingers flying across the editing console, splicing the digital payload we are going to drop on the Orpheum. Jude stands beside me, his hands braced on the edge of the metal desk. He has stripped off his expensive tailored jacket, the sleeves of his dark…
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23.0 K • Completed
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IMANI The countdown reached three. Jude did not ask me to save him. That was how I knew the choice on the monitor was false. Lyra had arranged two endings because she still believed an editor’s power was the power to destroy. Press Y and surrender Jude to her revenge. Press N and surrender every victim to Evelyn Mercer. A binary cut. A bully’s cut. At two seconds, I pulled the network cable. The timer froze. Lyra’s face fractured into blocks of blue light. “What did you do?” “I rejected…
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23.0 K • Completed
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KNOX The needle was three inches long, and it looked like it belonged in a veterinary clinic, not the pristine, white-tiled medical suite of Crown State’s athletic complex. It was Saturday afternoon. Five hours until the championship kickoff. Outside the reinforced concrete walls of the stadium, eighty thousand tailgating fans were already drinking themselves into a frenzy, chanting my name, wearing my jersey, praying to the altar of Texas football. Inside the medical suite, I was being prepared for…-
21.0 K • Completed
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PALOMA I did not kiss him. I did not let the tenderness in his drugged smile turn his collapse into romance. I lowered Knox to the floor, rolled him onto his uninjured side, and called the one number the Booster Kings did not own: Dr. Lena Shah, the cardiologist who had taught my emergency-care seminar before Sterling forced her out of the athletic department. "Irregular pulse, altered mental status, intercostal injection, likely ketorolac and an opioid cocktail," I said when she answered.…
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21.0 K • Completed
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