The production office on Warner Bros. Stage 9 was a fish tank of human fatigue, sunlight diluted through frosted glass, everything inside half-bleached by the hour and the repetition.
The furniture was office rental—plastic, ergonomic, meant to suggest both authority and disposability—and every surface bore the mark of someone trying too hard or not at all: a thin film of spilled coffee on the rolling credenza, shredded Post-its stuck at thumb level on the door, two plastic water bottles rolling slow-motion beneath the break table.
On the east wall, a calendar the size of a highway map: sixty squares, fifty-nine crossed out in a Sharpie thick enough to bleed through drywall. The sixtieth was outlined in red, circled three times, with a question mark trailing off toward the edge of the page.
Above the grid, someone had written "JOKER—P-60—THIS IS THE END" in letters that started as a joke and, over time, looked more and more like a dare.
The first assistant director—hair thinning at the temples, eyes in perpetual semi-squint—stood in front of the calendar, arms folded across the chest. The script supervisor hovered to his left, iPad already open, tapping one red-tipped nail on the screen as she scrolled.
Between them, the air was heavy with the scent of energy drink and something like old paint.
The AD drew a breath, then let it out slow, as if the oxygen itself was rationed.
"Day sixty," he said, voice flat but edged with a bitterness usually reserved for death notices.
"You think we make it?"
The script supervisor answered without looking up.
"Nolan's never missed a day in his life. He'll drag us there with our heads in a duffel bag if he has to."
The AD grunted, then turned back to the calendar. He stabbed a finger at the red square.
"Sixty days of this. I haven't seen my actual wife since the read-through. I'm starting to forget she has a face."
The script supervisor tapped her tablet, flicked to the next screen, and squinted at a set of highlighted lines.
"She's the lucky one."
The call sheets for the week lay scattered on a metal table behind them, some still warm from the laser printer, the edges curling where the toner had fused the paper.
The AD grabbed one at random, checked the date, then flipped it over with a sigh that vibrated all the way to the soles of his knockoff Clarks.
He held the sheet up so the supervisor could see.
"Here's the count. Two months since Gotham. Three hundred hours of Joker dailies. Two on-set medical emergencies, four psychiatric wellness checks, and a crew turnover rate that makes Vietnam look like an insurance seminar."
The script supervisor, still scrolling, smiled without humor.
"Is this the part where you ask for a raise?"
The AD dropped the call sheet onto the pile.
"I'm asking for hazard pay. Or a time machine."
For a moment, neither spoke. The hum of the crew radios was a constant backdrop, punctuated by the occasional outburst from the corridor—laughter, a curse, the sharp staccato of someone forgetting they were still mic'd up.
The script supervisor glanced up from her iPad.
"You know, they used to say the hardest thing about film was keeping the director out of his own head. With this one, it's the opposite."
The AD looked at her, eyebrows raised.
"He's not in his own head?"
She shook her head, gestured at the calendar.
"He's in there. Somewhere. But the rest of the time, it's like he's already seen the finished cut and he's just marking time until the rest of us catch up."
The AD chewed on that, then reached for a marker from the tray beneath the board. He uncapped it, scrawled an X over the previous day, then hesitated with the marker suspended above Day 60.
"You think he's nervous?" the AD asked.
"About what?"
"The ending. The wrap."
He let the tip of the marker hover, like a guillotine waiting for permission.
"You think he's afraid it won't live up to whatever's playing in that head of his?"
The script supervisor bit at a hangnail, then wiped her hand on the leg of her pants.
"I think he's afraid it already has."
A beat. The AD drew the X, hard and final, then tossed the marker into the tray with a little too much force. The plastic pinged against the steel and rattled to a stop.
The script supervisor shut her tablet, folded her arms.
"Did you see the dailies from the Barbara scene?"
He nodded, face closed off.
"Saw 'em. Didn't sleep after."
"Me neither." She hesitated, then added:
"He's not method. He's—" She shook her head, as if the word was physically impossible.
"Something else."
The AD let that hang, then grinned, all teeth and no humor.
"Well. Good thing we're not paid to understand it. Just to survive it."
The script supervisor nodded, then stepped back from the calendar, letting the afternoon sun hit her in the face for the first time all day.
"You think the rumors are true? That he never breaks character?"
The AD shrugged.
"I saw him on the lot, once, out by the caterers. Full makeup, no cameras, just standing there staring at the chili dog like it was a murder weapon. Wouldn't even look at me."
The supervisor smiled, but it faded fast.
"What about after the shoot? You think he goes home like that?"
The AD looked at the clock, then at the calendar, then at the pile of call sheets.
"If he does, I hope to God he lives alone."
The script supervisor packed up her tablet, tucked it under one arm, then headed for the door. She paused, just for a second, and turned back.
"Sixty days," she said.
"You ever worked one this long?"
The AD shook his head.
"Not for a living."
She left, letting the door swing shut on its hydraulic hinge. The AD stood alone for a moment, watching the red circle on the calendar like it might detonate if he looked away.
In the hallway, the radios hissed and buzzed, the distant echo of a set in motion.
He wondered, for the first time, what it would sound like when the noise finally stopped.
.....
The sound booth was a bunker, built for insulation and, by this point, self-preservation. No natural light made it inside; the air hung thick with the smell of hot plastic, sweat, and a faint ozone tinge from the power strips running under the mixing desk.
The only illumination came from the tangle of monitors and the sequenced LEDs of the preamps, which painted the faces of the two men inside in alternating shades of prison blue and blood orange.
The lead tech sat hunched in the rolling chair, legs wide, back curled, as if every hour spent in this room had eroded another inch off his spine. His shirt, once black, was now a saturated charcoal, the armpits stained to Rorschach inkblots by six weeks of deadline panic.
A pair of battered studio headphones hugged his skull, the foam tape on one earpad so dirty it had gone a shade lighter than the skin it pressed against.
Beside him, a younger tech—maybe a student intern, or a nephew of the producer, nobody was quite sure—watched the monitors with the anticipation of a man waiting for a test result that might ruin his life.
On the main screen: Marcus. Not the real Marcus, but the digital ghost of him, blown up to 4K, every flaw and tremor preserved with surgical indifference. The playback was looped, forty-three minutes of footage from the Barbara set, raw and unedited, timestamped in the bottom corner with the digits ticking up in real time.
The lead tech froze the frame, then wheeled closer to the screen. He lifted a finger, crusted at the nail with some fossilized snack food, and tapped the image twice.
"Look at this," he said, voice the color of old cigarettes.
"You see it?"
The assistant squinted, leaned forward.
"See what?"
He hit play, let the video run for ten seconds, then paused again.
"There. Go back."
He rewound, frame by frame, the eyes of the on-screen Joker never wavering from the lens.
"Jesus," the assistant muttered.
"He's not blinking."
The lead tech nodded, lips curling into a smile that was both vindication and despair.
"Not once. Not in the whole take."
He let the sequence run, watched as Marcus advanced through the kitchen, stared down the camera, delivered the lines with a precision that made the skin crawl.
Every other human on set—the girl, the extras, even the crew caught in the background—blinked at the normal, unconscious rhythm. But not Marcus. His eyes, rimmed in black, wide and unblinking, drilled through the screen.
The assistant reached for the keyboard, toggled the playback to 2x speed. Still no blinks.
"Maybe it's the contacts?" he offered.
"Like, maybe they dried out his eyes."
The lead tech shook his head.
"I've been doing this twenty years. You ever seen an actor not blink for forty straight minutes?"
The assistant hesitated, then:
"No."
The tech leaned back, let the chair creak under his weight. He wiped a line of sweat from his forehead, saw the red of the recording light reflected there, then turned to the next monitor.
He queued up a different take—same scene, different angle. The camera caught Marcus in profile this time, the jawline sharp as a blade, the mouth set in that perpetual not-smile. He ran the footage, eyes tracking every movement.
The Joker walked the length of the set, drifted behind the girl, then stopped and stared directly at the camera for a full minute. No movement. No twitch. The only thing alive was the faint, arrhythmic pulse in the corner of the jaw.
The tech ran the footage again, this time at 0.5x speed.
"Even when they throw dust in the scene," he said, nodding toward the frame,
"nothing. Not a flinch."
The assistant shifted in his chair, clearly uncomfortable.
"Could be editing. They could've comped the blinks out."
The tech grunted.
"This is raw. No edits. That's the whole point."
For a moment, neither spoke. The hum of the server fans blended with the high-frequency whine of the monitors, a sound you could only hear if you'd been in the room long enough to lose your sanity.
The tech's phone buzzed on the desk, a single vibration that sent an empty coffee cup skittering toward the edge. He caught it, then silenced the phone without looking.
From the hallway outside, footsteps approached—heel-to-toe, deliberate, with the authority of someone whose ID badge weighed more than yours. The steps stopped at the door. A knock, then the door opened just wide enough to admit Nolan's assistant, a woman in a black suit with a white stripe down the leg and an expression that said she had thirty seconds and nothing to waste them on.
She glanced at the screens, then at the two men.
"Everything good in here?"
The tech nodded, maybe a beat too fast.
"Yeah. Just prepping the takes for review."
She looked at the screens again, at the looping video of Marcus's dead stare. Her expression did not change.
"I need the audio pulled for the 2 PM," she said.
"Nolan wants clean lines, no background. And he needs the Joker's direct mic isolated for the next five scenes."
The tech nodded, began tapping commands on the keyboard, the screen filling with spectrograms and waveforms.
The assistant lingered, just long enough to make her presence felt, then turned and left. The door shut with a pneumatic hiss.
The lead tech exhaled, then let out a laugh so low it barely qualified as sound.
The assistant looked at him, nervous.
"You think she knows?"
The tech shrugged.
"If she does, she doesn't get paid extra to care."
He ran the sequence again, zoomed in tight on the eyes. They watched back, unblinking, and for a moment it felt like the room had lost all oxygen.
He muted the audio, let the video play in perfect, silent horror.
Then, softly:
"You ever feel like you're not watching a movie, but a security tape?"
The assistant didn't answer. He just stared at the screen, waiting for a blink that never came.
.....
[Okay I've decided to put a target out there! If you want more chapters then gotta trade for power stones! I don't know if 50 per extra chapter is fair but let's start with that for now. You can complain here if it's not and let me know! Next I will also trade youa chapter per 5 extra reviews... seems excessive but we can change it later if it's too much but it seems achievable if you really want extra chapters.
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