Mortal Web

Chapter 1

“Keep your head, Bailey,” she whispered under her breath as she walked the dusty cracked sidewalk to the Old Grand Theater resting like a wasted, drunken whore in downtown Detroit. “You want this, you really want this bad.”

Bailey hesitated, a bitter wind lashed down the nearly deserted street, sucking up dust and debris like a starving beast. The gray concrete street was lined with pathetic shells of buildings once proud.

In her mind, Bailey heard the critical voice of her mother screaming like a dark-souled witch. She reminded Bailey that she was never going to make it, she didn’t have the talent. Sure, she was pretty enough, but to be an actress you need that special something, and Bailey’s mother was convinced her daughter was simply a talentless spoiled child.

Star Quality was what it was called in Evita, Bailey remembered. She wanted Star Quality more than life itself. Bailey watched the other in her acting classes at college and knew none of them possessed Star Quality like she did. There were a few pretty faces and handsome leading men, but they had no substance to their talent. Not like she did, she was convinced of it because it went unseen by her parents. The only successes so far were in her high school plays.

Just below the shattered marquee stained with rust, she questioned herself again. The place was a dump. Maybe this was the wrong theater for the audition. She looked at the crumpled flyer in her hand, but confirmed the address: the Old Grand Theater. It was the correct place. Besides, she’d already called in sick, pretending to be her mother on the phone. The secretary at Belle Park High School, Mrs. Neeme, was clueless.

No one ever said Detroit was the place to start a career in the spotlight. She knew California or New York was where she needed to be, but couldn’t afford it right now. In her head she knew she could be the next Rihanna, Megan Fox, or Kirsten Dunst. It didn’t matter that her parents were rich she wanted to do this on her own. Her mother would be proven wrong, even if she did have to start in porn. Bailey laughed to herself, a mixed voice of vindictiveness and trepidation that would really put another nail in her mother’s coffin.

Trash blew by in the blustery March winds. Downtown, cooler air came off the river. Tattered posters and flyers snapped against the sides of the building as she walked closer to the bank of old, paint-chipped doors of the Grand. The box office was vacant and the glass was shattered by the tell-tale spider webs of bullet holes. Someone had slapped up panels of plywood from the inside to deter vandals.

The first door she tried was strongly held from within, as was the second and the third. Bailey turned her back to the theater and looked back down the street from where she had come. It wasn’t the street she was looking at, though. She saw the path of her life leading up to the locked doors of the Grand. Seemed it was always that way: put your head down into the wind Bailey and don’t look up. You know what you want and you don’t dare listen to her tell you otherwise. Then, she angrily hit the locked door.

“Damn,” she whispered to herself as she pushed stray strands of bleached hair back beneath her hood. “This was a stupid mistake. I should have never come down here. This is ridiculous.”