All Chapters of The Final Cut: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

CHAPTER TWOThe camera pushed in to a close shot of the Mediterranean guy’s face. He was still babbling desperately as two dark figures moved in on either side. The figures were blurry shadows, underlit and out of focus. Sam wasn’t sure how they’d achieved the effect because the Mediterranean guy’s face was crystal clear, so were the scalpels the figures held.The blurry figures moved in unison, as though choreographed. They stretched a tight strap across the guy’s forehead to keep his head still. Only his eyes rolled wildly as he pleaded for his life. Then the figures each took hold of an eyelid and pried them apart.With their other hands the figures brought the scalpels down into the corners of the guy’s eyes. Using tiny, deft movements they severed the muscle tissue holding his eyeballs in place. The guy stopped imploring the figures and shrieked with pain and fear.Thin streams of blood spurted from the guy’s eye sockets. The figures put down their scalpels and each produced a

CHAPTER FOURIt was a short walk to Bethnal Green Road but it seemed to take forever to Sam. The sun was really bright and he felt ridiculously exposed. He was dripping with blood and he’d wet himself, how could he not attract attention.Sam and Jimmy kept to the back streets. The blood dried quickly and seemed almost to evaporate, disappearing as mysteriously as the blood in the lock up. No-one paid them any attention when they hit the main road. Typical Londoners, ignoring everything they didn’t want to see.Sam tried hailing a couple of black cabs but they weren’t having any of it. Eventually an empty one pulled up at some traffic lights and they tried to jump in.“Sorry lads,” said the driver, a middle aged guy with thinning hair and brown teeth. “But I can’t have you in the back like that.”“Please,” said Sam. “We’ve got to get out of here. It’s all dried, we won’t ruin your upholstery.”“Listen, whatever it is, I’m not interested. I don’t want any trouble.”“It’s not like

CHAPTER SIX“So who’s sending him these links?” said Sam.“What?”“Who’s sending him these links?”Jimmy took a deep breath and heard his chest rattle. His childhood asthma always threatened to come back when he was stressed. Script meetings weren’t usually so stressful. It was normally one of the most fun parts of the film making process. Jimmy came up with ideas for the plot, Sam picked holes in them and they solved the problems together, throwing out all kinds of solutions and plot directions till they had the sucker nailed. It was how they always worked.Only right now it wasn’t working and they weren’t enjoying it. They shouldn’t have held the meeting at Sam’s apartment, the place held too many recent memories.“It doesn’t matter.”“Of course it matters, it’s a key plot driver. It’s like having a murder mystery and never finding out who does the murder.”“But that’s the point, you just said the key word.”“What key word—murder?”“No, mystery, that’s what make it so unner

CHAPTER EIGHTJimmy hated auditions. They were an exercise in mutual humiliation. You sat behind a rickety table, in a musty rehearsal room, and pretended to be interested in the resumes of a dismal procession of drama school drop outs, who pretended to be interested in your film.Because it was an Indie horror film, none of the agents they contacted sent their brightest or best. The guy they’d just seen had nothing but extras work on his resume. The highlight of which was a Swedish advert for haemorrhoid cream in which he’d been: “at the front of the queue of people who pushed their way out of the lift at the end.” This gave him a “full second close up in the lengthier cut.” The saddest thing was that, although abysmal, he wasn’t the worst person they’d seem that day.The next two actors pulled a no-show.“Maybe that’s a blessing,” said Jimmy. “Let’s just knock it on the head and go down to the pub.”“No,” said Sam, ever practical. “We’ll give them ten more minutes then we’ll go

CHAPTER TENThe studio they were renting was on the top floor of a converted warehouse by the river. Sam was with Melissa, filming the scenes where she, as Nadine, was alone in bed, dreaming of torture in a dingy cellar. Jimmy wondered what Melissa would think if she could see the footage they were going to splice in as the dreams she was having? He guessed she would see some of it eventually, just not in its current form.Sam and Jimmy hadn’t finished the script yet, but they’d worked the bedroom scenes into shape. Those seemed the best things to shoot first. They both agreed it was the easiest way of breaking Melissa into the project.Neither of them was sure she was going to show as they waited for her that morning. They’d had no contact with her since the audition, nearly three weeks ago. She did turn up though, and only twenty minutes late. She’d been firm about keeping to her condition of having only one person on set with her at a time.She’d chosen to work with Sam that day