Henry had typed the words FADE OUT and fallen back in his chair. In a way, it was astonishing that he’d finished a feature length screenplay in a couple of weeks, but then, that was how they did it in the Golden Age of Hollywood, and those movies certainly didn’t suck.

The twists and turns had written themselves, it seemed, as if his fantasy had finally come true, of the keyboard as an Ouija board and his fingers under a demon's control, some spirit dictating the whole thing from the afterlife.

The only thing that he’d hesitated on was the Love Interest. The writer/forger had to have a compelling reason to unmask at the right time, to Confess All, and of course True Love was the great motivator in that department.

As many authors have done, to their initial dismay, he found himself writing a character who was throwing a wrench into his plans. In this case, the character was fucking up his chance at writing a financially successful script.

The problem was that the character, the future love interest, was a guy. He knew perfectly well that the recluse should have a niece to come storming into the picture to protect the old writer from the forger’s depredations. But instead, somewhere in his subconscious where he fortunately couldn’t see the ruthless behavior of his embryonic characters, the niece got knee-capped and left groaning on the basement floor, and it was the nephew who walked up the stairs and into the scene, denouncing the forger and swearing he’d find out what game he was playing.

“Fuck,” Henry said when he finished the scene. This was supposed to be his big money making idea! And the very presence of the gayness was box office poison, at least in the minds of every studio in town.

And besides, this was his ticket out of escorting, out of stressing on a daily basis about The Bill. It could not be… unsaleable! A niche film! So he was totally fucked in the money department unless he performed gender reassignment surgery on the character.

And he tried. But it was like aborting the baby monster in an Alien movie. It just spit acid all over him and refused to come out. He went back and changed Nick to Nicole, but when he tried to move forward, the dialogue was… shit. He knew every word rang false, that he was writing a cardboard character.

He made Leonard go out with him for drinks and listen to his dilemma.

“What about Moonlight?” Leonard said. “That won the Oscar for best picture.”

“Yeah, sure. It’s all well and good for art films, but this isn’t an art film. I need a movie that’s not… You know, in old Hollywood, when they decided whether or not to make a picture, they’d say, ‘Will it play in Peoria?’ Now it’s ‘Will it play in Beijing, Mumbai, Moscow?’ If not… it’s an art picture. Never mind what the foreign censors think about two men kissing. Then I end up getting paid, shit, probably Guild minimum for an under-five-million-dollar movie.”

Leonard pursed his lips. “It would certainly be easy for me to lecture you about your duty to your art, blah blah. And I know you can’t be an escort forever, Henry. What was the term you used, that horrible cruel thing your friend said?”

Henry laughed. “Aging out. Hardly a friend.” Many of the escorts in town had at least a gossip-level knowledge of each other, which guy advertising himself as “Top Man With Ten Inches For You” was really an insatiable bottom, which ones had pictures that didn’t reflect their last year or two of heavy drug use, et cetera.

And one of them had said to Henry about a third escort, “He’s just bitter because he’s aging out of the scene. Nobody invites him to the hot sex parties anymore, nobody wants to get a summer share with him.”

“But he’s so handsome,” Henry had said innocently, and the other man, an inveterate circuit queen, just looked at him.

“Honey. He’s thirty-five.” And no more damnable words could be spoken, it seemed.

Leonard paused meaningfully. “I think it’s unfortunate, financially anyway, that your love interest turned out to be a man. But if the truth of the story demands it, if you find yourself writing crap, as you say, without him…”

“I am. When I write the nephew, he’s alive. He’s smart and funny and sexy, he’s a bit shy because he doesn’t know how attractive he is, and… oh fuck,” Henry groaned. “Not again.”

“What?”

He couldn’t say it, because he couldn’t believe it. It had happened to Dillinger, and now it had happened to Henry.

He’d written a character, a part, that was perfect for one person. One male person.

Colin.

* * *

He accepted his fate and finished the screenplay, with passion, with verve. Boy meets Boy, Boy loses Boy because Boy #2 finds out that Boy #1 is an impostor and thinks he’s a crook, too. The Villain emerges, the Recluse’s sister, who wants all the monies and tried to engineer the sale of the Audubon book, only to be accidentally thwarted by The Hero’s forged letter.

Then the Recluse dies, and suddenly it’s The Hero’s word against the Villain’s, and the Nephew has to defend him, and they have to unearth a will the Recluse filed in Berlin, so of course they get to take a romantic trip abroad to find it, but with the law hot on their heels thanks to the Villain…

And of course all’s well that ends well, and Boy gets Boy and Villain goes to jail and it was all as perfectly Hollywood as it could be, except, of course, for the unspeakable horror of two men kissing.

But it was good. Very good, Henry thought. Though he knew he’d have to put it out in the world, on as many script hosting sites as he could. He had read a comment on Reddit’s screenwriting subreddit that stuck with him, to the effect that when it came to artistic feedback, you should only trust strangers on the Internet, because unlike your friends and relatives, they had no reason to make you feel good about yourself or your work.

And, most importantly, he’d come to terms with the presence of Colin in the script. All writers are cannibals, he reminded himself. They eat the people around them and spit out the bones on the page. Colin just happened to be a new and interesting person he’d been spending the most amount of time with.

Period, he added firmly.

* * *

The Internet didn’t waste any time telling him what needed fixing in The Recluse, and he didn’t waste any time defending decisions that were clearly wrong. He made the changes that professional screenwriters gave him. Well, other than ignoring the discreet and diplomatic reminder about what he already knew about having a gay hero.

He’d missed the window for the majority of the screenwriting contests, most of which had closed for applications in May. But, he could still put it up on the Black List, and Script Revolution, and repost it on Reddit, and pretty much everywhere else he could get it hosted and visible.

And, he discovered by happy accident, there was a new online film studio that was hungry, nay ravenous, for content. Eccentric Internet billionaire Tate Charleston was now launching a web-only channel. And, shockingly, he was taking direct submissions. No agent required, just… upload your script on the website and hear back within thirty days.

So Henry uploaded it to Charleston’s site, thinking of it as just one of innumerable places he’d need to post his work to get noticed. And then he forgot all about it.