Since Lisa’s breakout role in Addicted Nerve, her agent emailed her with an increasing number of auditions, though she chose not to put herself forward for any of them. Instead she suffocated in long hours of idleness, chugging energy drinks and online shopping as the money in her bank account dwindled. Her days bled into one. She’d worked so hard to get here, survived all of the rejections and the degrading jobs she’d taken just to support her acting career. It had taken her a long time to gain traction and now that she could taste success she wanted to hide away from the world. Every unanswered email from her agent plagued her with anxiety and guilt. Each turned down opportunity might be the last she was offered. It was one thing not to achieve your dream, but it was entirely another to let it slip through your fingers.
Her sister was the only person she confided in.
“I thought you wanted to push yourself to get these big roles?”
“I’m happy with the show’s success but I dunno, it raises the stakes with what comes next. Maybe I just need a break. Time to feel grounded before we start shooting season two.”
“We’re all so proud of you. You were amazing in Addicted Nerve and there’s no reason why you won’t be amazing in whatever else you do. Everyone is saying how incredible the show is, even Dad loved it.”
And Lisa did enjoy the attention, to a degree. Addicted Nerve had garnered a large fanbase after its first season and her character, Tessa, seemed to have resonated with people. She went from anonymity to being asked for autographs in a few short months.
At first it was disorientating when she met fans and they called her Tessa, but slowly she got used to it, enjoyed it even. Sometimes Lisa found herself using a little of Tessa in these interactions. Tessa had a fiery personality and was quick witted, sometimes too truthful. Lisa got a kick out of seeing how fans responded so positively when her personality aligned with her character’s.
The show’s success surprised her. She spent a long time wondering why it had gotten such a positive response when others hadn’t. She tried to limit searching the internet for her own name to once or twice a day but being out of work meant she had nothing else to occupy her time. Her name, and variations on it, were saved in her search bar, and sometimes she found herself scrolling through posts with no memory of picking up her phone.
She liked it best when people reposted high-definition screenshots from the scene in which she sang to herself in the hospital carpark after finding out that her boyfriend Dev had been fatally stabbed. There were some fan edits of that scene that were emotionally charged, filled with so much romance she felt her chest tighten when she watched them. It was funny; she felt more watching those edits than she had when she performed them. When she mentally prepared for filming that day she drew on when she found out that Sally, her childhood dog, had been run over by their neighbour and had died. She hadn’t planned on using Sally to conjure emotion, in fact she tried to repress the memory all together if she could help it. But that morning on the way to set she had seen a little brown cocker spaniel who looked identical to her Sally. The pain of losing her was still the worst grief she had ever suffered. Lisa would never tell anyone it still hurt her more than when her mother had passed away several years before.
queen.
tessa welch, the woman that you are.
still can’t watch this scene without wanting to kill myself.
In their posts, fans praised her chemistry with the actor who played Dev. Rehearsals with him had felt somewhat stilted, but as soon as the cameras were rolling and the adrenaline was high, they’d clicked and it’d been easy to match each other’s energy. Her performance, the posts said, was fueled with such intensity, it almost felt violent. Everyone loved her eyes, how they were a rich, soulful brown, brimming with tears, glittering in the neon lighting they had added in post-production.
i would give anything to see her smile again.
She screenshotted the posts and re-read them when she was feeling her worst.
But for every adoring comment there was always cruelty to balance it. As buzz for the series increased, she noticed the comments were more cutting.
just saw a photo of the actress who plays tessa at that award show and, wow, she is aging like milk.
Lisa looked at some press photos from the red carpet and she couldn’t deny it. Had she really aged that much since they filmed Addicted Nerve? Or perhaps the filters they applied in editing were more effective than she’d realised. She pulled up some stills of herself from episode two and decided that she had looked much better with the blonde curly wig than her real bob cut that was looking a little lank these days. In the red carpet photos she noted how her eyes were now dull and receded into her skull and her skin looked waxy; the makeup artist had made her look like a corpse dressed up for a viewing. That would need to be fixed before they started filming season two. Lisa made a mental note to book an appointment at the beauty clinic.
One day while she was scrolling through social media, she found an account with the handle “tesswelch” that had a photo of the character as their profile picture. It had one post with over a ten thousand likes that just said
not doing great today. thinking about dev.
After that she found herself checking the account with increasing regularity. There was a kind of poetry to the posts that she found quite moving.
destined to find each other in every universe [img1]
not doing so good today.
not feeling myself.
crashing out. i miss dev. i miss us. i miss me.
It was Christmas that year when things took a turn for the worse.
Lisa had agreed to visit her sister, even though it meant a six-hour flight and navigating travelling at the busiest time of the year. She’d hated airports because of the people, crowds had always been tough for her. But this was her first time travelling since the success of the show and she found her anxiety was amplified. The thought of the trip terrified her, but she hadn’t seen her sister in such a long time and the prospect of spending it in the safety of her house and eating her home cooked food was so appealing. They had always been close, but Lisa felt that lately she hadn’t been putting much effort in. The Christmas visit was an opportunity to correct that.
But when she got to the airport, with its crowds and the heavy scent of duty-free perfume hanging in the air, she felt like she was being strangled. She wore a baseball cap and facemask, her hair tied back and tucked into a low bun with the hope that she would not attract attention. Head down, eyes on her phone, she mindlessly scrolled without the slightest interest in what she was looking at.
When Lisa finished her coffee, she stood and scanned her surroundings for a recycling can to put the cup in. It was then that the woman caught her eye. There was nothing remarkable about her; she wore a crumpled white t-shirt and grey jogging pants, blonde hair scraped back and a large black rucksack between her legs. In every way she blended in with the crowds. But Lisa was trained to notice when someone was watching her; she had a sixth sense for a camera. And as Lisa turned, this way, then that, looking for a place to put her cup, she noticed how the woman angled her phone toward her.
She felt a prickling sensation in her forehead and the heat rising up her neck. Lisa dropped her eyes to the ground. Don’t move. Don’t breathe. A desire to knock the woman’s phone out of her hand surged through her, but she mastered it, sat down and pushed her facemask up a little higher, still gripping onto the empty coffee cup.
When she spoke to fans she didn’t mind if they asked her politely for a photo, but covertly filming her was something else. Sometimes people crossed lines. Should she just go home? Tell her sister her flight had been cancelled and stay in her apartment for the rest of the holidays? The thought of letting her down again made Lisa’s stomach hurt. And wasn’t this all just part of the job? There were no off days now. She had to get used to it.
In the queue to board the plane, she turned and noticed the woman stood several people behind her. What were the chances that, of all the flights departing that day, this woman would be on the same one as her? Lisa looped the strap of her bag around her wrist and tightened it until her hand turned red. Leaving the queue would attract too much attention. Staying would mean sitting through the flight with this woman. Lisa crossed her arms over her stomach and stared at the ground. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and found a photo of Sally. It brought tears to her eyes. She could breathe again. The pain drowned everything out.
During the flight, Lisa noticed that the woman passed by her on her way to the bathroom several times, but her phone was nowhere to be seen. What an overreaction, she thought. But it was the start of something else.
The new year came without fanfare.
One afternoon she received a notification that she’d missed a delivery while she’d been napping. She took the elevator down to the lobby of her apartment building where the concierge handed her the package. With a kitchen knife, Lisa sliced into the thick layers of sellotape to reveal a cardboard box that contained a small clay model of a dog, painted with brown and black spots. It was clearly handmade, though it had been done skillfully, the paint delicately applied. Lisa turned it over in her hands. On the bottom of the statue, the word “Sally” had been etched into the clay. It was cute; the resemblance was uncanny. Had her sister sent it? There was no note in the box to indicate who it was from. Usually, her sister would tell Lisa to expect something if she was sending her a gift.
She placed it on the kitchen countertop, then went into the living room to find her phone so that she could call her sister to ask her about it. Scanning the room, she noticed that on the shelf where she kept the photos of her family, there was one missing. The photo of Sally had disappeared without leaving a mark in the dust.
Lisa’s sister said she knew nothing about the statue nor the missing photo.
“I didn’t even know you had a picture of Sally, doesn’t Dad have all our old photos?”
“So you didn’t take it?”
“I didn’t touch your photo shelf. It was probably your cleaning lady. Perhaps she broke it and thought you wouldn’t notice if she didn’t mention it.”
“She hasn’t been here since before Christmas. I definitely would have noticed that the photo was missing since then.”
“Why hasn’t she been? What’s going on.”
“I told her not to come any more. I’m pretty sure she was opening my mail.” She paused, but her sister did not fill the silence. “I think that was the only physical photo of Sally we had and now it’s gone.”
That night she dreamt without sleeping. When she cried, she sobbed into her pillow, trying to be quiet in case the neighbours heard.
At 3am she got up for a glass of water. The model of Sally sat on the kitchen countertop. The black glass beads that had been used for the eyes glinted in the faint light coming in through the window. Something moved slightly on her peripheral vision.
It was the small things at first, the kind you’d write off to poor memory or coincidence, like the window she swore she’d closed when she went out for coffee. She hated the feeling of being out of control and bought a new leather planner with different sections, where she wrote down everything so that she wouldn’t forget, though it seemed to do little to help with the slip-ups.
The doctor prescribed her with antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication. During her consultation, the doctor told Lisa that she’d really enjoyed Addicted Nerve and that both she and her husband were looking forward to season two. Lisa smiled automatically and thanked her for her support. She pretended not to notice as she saw the doctor scanning through her records with increased interest.
The medication took the edge off but left her feeling spaced out and lethargic. The doctor also recommended that she speak with a therapist. The first person she contacted did not respond to her email and the second did not show up to their online appointment. He contacted her later that day to say that he was sorry, had she not seen his message asking to reschedule their appointment? When she checked her inbox, there was nothing there. Messages seemed to be going missing with increasing frequency. She joked to friends that she must be getting old when she had apparently deleted their voicemails without having listened to them first.
And then the bank called to tell her that her account had been frozen due to fraudulent activity. Her credit cards were nearing their limit, she applied for a loan to cover her until they started filming season two of Addicted Nerve.
Ginseng, apparently, helped with memory and so she started taking it, but it did little to help. What would Tessa do? She’d have shrugged it off, said not to sweat the details. If only she were strong like Tessa.
Her apartment fell into disarray. Every messy surface irritated her, but she had no energy to tidy. Though what bugged her the most about the place was the high-pitched whining sound she could hear all the time. Sometimes she went to sleep just to be rid of it, though she needed little excuse to stay in bed. She slept for upwards of 16 hours a day, sometimes more on the occasions when she was tired from leaving her apartment. These days she only went out for salon appointments, trips to the beauty clinic and doctors’ appointments.
Every time she went into the kitchen, she saw the statue of Sally on the countertop and her mind would wander back to her childhood. Like the time when her sister had dressed Sally up in one of Lisa’s old baby dresses and they had laughed so hard they couldn’t breathe. Or the evening when their parents had been distracted by trying to fix the broken fridge and Sally had eaten all of the toppings off the Friday night pizzas. Thinking about the past hurt.
After a distressed call to her doctor, Lisa was prescribed with a higher dose of antidepressants. When she received the text message from the pharmacy that the pills were ready to pick up, she trudged out of the apartment building in a daydream. Even walking down the street felt like a performance now. She was conscious of every little movement she made. It seemed as if everyone she passed was watching her, their eyes lingering a little too long as she made her way to the pharmacy.
As she crossed the road, a woman with curly blonde hair passed her. Lisa turned abruptly and stared. It was her, she was certain of it, the woman that was filming Lisa at the airport.
That night she fell asleep, exhausted from crying, with the statue of Sally gripped tight in her fist.
There was that sound again, the high pitched whining just barely perceptible. It was glacial and felt as if her temples were being pierced with the tip of a shard of ice. Lisa searched every room in her apartment looking for the source. She took to wearing noise cancelling headphones for most of the day, watching clips of her old work online. It was becoming more difficult to recognise her younger self. Every day Lisa was confronted with the fact that the person she used to be was slipping away. She felt like neither one thing nor the other.
When she wasn’t watching her videos, Lisa spent hours taking photographs of herself for the purpose of analysing, zooming in on isolated elements of her face. Her nose, the folds of skin over her eyelids. Tiny purplish veins spidered out across her cheeks. She needed a change, something to lift and brighten her complexion. Hours in the salon resulted in a curly, blonde perm to match the wig she wore as Tessa. That helped, for a while.
ok hear me out. recast tessa, who are you picking?
[img1] [img2]
[img3] [img4]
omg imagine the chemistry between Dev and [img3]
Lisa opened the profile of the “tesswelch” account.
i wish i could tell you i was feeling better but no medicine in the world can fix this. [img 1]
The accompanying photo was blurry, clearly taken from a distance. But she knew instantly it was taken of her leaving the pharmacy yesterday morning.
This couldn’t go on. Lisa decided she would break her contract for the next season of Addicted Nerve. She would never act again. She had to do something to pull herself out; living like this was unbearable.
What did dreams matter when she couldn’t breathe?
lisa. tessa. lisa. tessa. lisa. tessa. lessa. tisa. lies.
Her plan was to eliminate all stress from her life because she was trying to get better, she really was. The television production company would threaten to bring a lawsuit, but Lisa knew that it would be more expensive for them to enforce her contract than just let her go.
When she went to compose an email to her agent to explain that she was quitting, she saw a message from his assistant asking if she would like them to forward the fanmail they had received on her behalf. She imagined all of the terrible things the letters might say. Cruelty came in many guises. Even the ones that were full of praise might make assumptions about her that she did not want to hear. She ignored the email, picked up the statue of Sally and curled up on the sofa. It was as if she were made of several different images of herself layered one on top of the other.
The one year anniversary of Addicted Nerve’s premiere passed by so quickly.
Her sister called her every day, though she rarely answered. The high-pitched whining grew louder until it felt like she was in a tunnel of white noise. She wrote it off to tinnitus. It was so distracting that when she did answer her sister’s calls, Lisa could hardly focus on what she was saying.
“Why don’t you stay with me? You need to get out of that apartment for a while. Get some sun. Breathe in some sea air.”
Her sister continued talking, making plans that Lisa heard herself agree to until she began to drift. She was able to watch herself from above, leaning over the phone placed on the kitchen countertop. How pathetic it was, this drive to continue existing. She willed herself to give in and collapse. A weak, sludgy feeling settled in her limbs. She scrabbled to gain purchase by grabbing onto the wooden countertop, but in doing so, knocked everything off it, including her phone and a pile of unopened letters. The small statue of Sally skittered over the edge. Lisa lurched forward, already aware there was nothing to be done to save the ornament, but she could not suppress the urge to save it. She watched as it smashed open on the grey slate of her kitchen floor.
She dragged herself over to the statue and picked amongst the shards of clay. Lying amongst them was a tiny electrical device.
The high pitched whining noise was gone, though she felt no relief. All she could hear now was her sister’s voice coming from the speakerphone.
“Lisa, are you there?”
She dreamt of a camera that could capture everything she felt and thought. A camera that knew everything about her. Rewinding the video could make Lisa a little girl again, safely tucked up in bed with a book, Sally sat on the rug beside her, nuzzling into her hand, the soft dampness of her muzzle against the palm of Lisa’s hand.
When Lisa woke, it was still night and she was lying on top of her bed still fully clothed. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw the silhouette of a woman at the foot of her bed, outlined in the bluish light seeping in through the crack in the curtains.
