Chapter 5: The Origin Rehearsal
The package from the studio sat on his kitchen table for two days. Jon circled it like it was a sleeping animal. It was a plain cardboard box, but inside was the costume: a plaid skirt, slightly too-short, a white cotton blouse with a Peter Pan collar, white knee socks. A memory made fabric. They’d asked for details—“what were you wearing, what did the room smell like, what music was playing”—and he’d given them, his fingers numb on the keyboard, selling fragments of a self he thought was buried.
The night before the “Origin” shoot, he finally opened it. He laid the clothes on his bed. The skirt smelled of nothing, a void where there should have been detergent and dorm-room dust and the cedar of his old hope chest. This was the replica. The ghost.
His own bedroom felt like a set waiting for its actor. The neon sign from the pizza place across the street flickered—PIZZA—ZZA—PIZZA—casting a periodic pink wash over the velvet drapes he’d hung to feel opulent. Now they just felt heavy. His makeup vanity was a museum of his becoming: foundations matched to his chest, liners that had traced the evolution of his eyes from boyish to something else. He looked in the mirror. Jon, not Jade. Just a pale, slender man with long hair and hollow eyes.
He undressed. He pulled on the knee socks, the fabric tight and ridiculous against his calves. The skirt zipped with a cheap, tinny sound. The blouse was stiff. He didn’t put on makeup. This was the before. This was the raw material.
Marcus had emailed the “reference object.” A silicone dildo, matte grey, veined but not aggressively so, with a suction cup base. “Aid your immersion,” the email said. It lay on the nightstand like a medical device. Jon picked it up. It was cool, slightly yielding. It was not unlike the one from that night, the one pulled from a dorm-mate’s hidden stash, still in its plastic bag. The memory was a dull pressure behind his eyes.
He sat on the edge of the satin-draped bed. The neon flash. PIZZA. Dark. ZZA.
He could almost smell the stale beer and cheap carpet cleaner. He could almost hear The National album playing softly from a laptop speaker, a soundtrack chosen to seem deep, mature. His heart had been a bird trapped in his ribs. His name then wasn’t Jade. It was just Jon, a secret folded so small inside him he thought it might disappear.
He lay back, the skirt riding up his thighs. He touched himself through the cotton of his white panties—another detail provided, another replica. He was soft. This wasn’t arousal; it was archaeology.
He closed his eyes. Say his name, the director in his head whispered. It was Marcus’s voice now. Use the name you gave us.
“Ben,” Jon whispered to the pink-stained ceiling. Ben with the kind hands and the nervous laugh. Ben who’d said, “Are you sure?” about fourteen times.
With his other hand, he reached for the bottle of lube. The sound of the cap snapping open was violently modern in the memory. He squeezed a cold pool onto his fingers, reached under the waistband of the panties, and found his entrance. He circled it, the slickness feeling clinical. In the memory, Ben’s fingers had been dry at first, clumsy, pushing without enough give until Jon had gasped and reached for the bottle himself.
He worked a finger inside. The stretch was nothing now, after the sound, after the camera, after Lars. But he pretended it was everything. He fucked himself slowly with one finger, panting, trying to recall the specific ache of that first breach. He added a second, scissoring gently. His cock remained limp against his thigh.
“Ben,” he said again, a talisman. He pictured the dorm bed, the twin XL with the navy blue sheets. The careful, reverent touches. The way Ben had kissed his neck as he’d positioned himself, the blunt, rubbery head of the toy pressing against him.
Jon withdrew his fingers. He picked up the grey dildo, slicked it with more lube, letting it drip onto the satin beneath him. He didn’t use the suction cup. He held it like a knife, then positioned it.
He pushed.
The initial penetration was still a feeling of fullness, but there was no resistance, no burning ring of fire. His body opened for it easily, a well-used door. He groaned in frustration, not pleasure. He pushed until the base was nestled against him, the foreign object buried in the ghost of his past.
“Is it okay?” he whispered, mimicking Ben’s high, worried voice. “Does it hurt?”
He answered in his own present tense voice, flat and broken. “It’s fine. Just… go slow.”
He began to move it. In and out. A slow, pathetic rhythm. The silicone dragged inside him, a friction that was purely physical, devoid of connection. He pictured Ben’s earnest face above him, the concentration, the sweat on his upper lip. He remembered the feeling of being seen, truly seen, perhaps for the first time. A boy in a skirt, being entered by another boy, and it feeling like a confession, not a sin.
The memory curdled. The present intruded. This motion, this act, wasn’t for Ben. It was for Marcus. For the camera that would be here tomorrow. For the users who would tip to see the reenactment of “Jade’s Deflowering.” They would own this, too. They would own the whisper of Ben’s name.
A sick, hot anger stirred in his gut. His hand on the dildo moved faster, the plunges becoming harder, punishing. The smack-slick sound of silicone against his body filled the room, drowning out the phantom indie music. He wasn’t making love to a memory. He was fucking a ghost. Violating his own past before they could.
“Take it,” he grunted, no longer Ben, speaking to the empty room, to the audience already watching in his mind. “You wanted the innocent hole? Here it is. It’s not even tight anymore. It’s a used-up slut. It’s been sounded and plugged and filmed. Your origin story is a fucking lie.”
Tears finally broke, hot and sudden, tracking through his temples into his hairline. They were not sweet tears of nostalgia. They were acid tears of fury and grief. He was vandalizing his own sanctuary.
His rhythm became erratic, brutal. He angled the toy, driving it hard against his prostate. A sharp, bright bolt of sensation finally sparked, untethering from the memory. It was just the now. The physical fact. His cock thickened, just a little, responding to the blunt mechanical assault.
“That’s it,” he hissed, snot and tears mingling in his mouth. “Come on, you whore. Come for the memory. Come for the subscribers.”
The orgasm that built was nothing like the trembling, wondrous release he’d had with Ben. It was a grim extraction. A pressure valve blowing. He fucked himself with the grey silicone until his thighs shook, chasing the spike of pleasure-pain until it crested. He came with a choked-off cry, his cock pulsing a weak, clear strand onto the blouse, a pathetic stain on the white cotton.
He lay there, impaled, breathing in ragged gasps. The neon sign flickered. PIZZA.
Slowly, he pulled the dildo out. It emerged with a soft, wet sigh. He let it drop to the floor. The stain on the blouse darkened, a Rorschach blot of ruin.
He had done their homework. He had immersed. He had found the raw feeling they wanted: not innocence, but the violent death of it.
He would go to the studio tomorrow. They would have a set designed to look like a dorm room. An actor with kind eyes would play Ben. They would film the tender, clumsy first time. Jon would perform it perfectly, because he had just practiced. He would cry real tears. The audience would tip, feeling nostalgic, feeling perversely protective.
They would have no idea they were watching a eulogy performed by the corpse.
Jon sat up, wiped his face with the back of his hand. He looked at the stained blouse, the discarded toy on the floor. He unpinned the skirt, let it fall. He peeled off the damp, ruined socks.
He walked to his vanity, sat before the mirror in the pink and dark. He looked at his raw, red-rimmed eyes. He picked up a lipstick, a deep, vicious burgundy called “Wicked.” He uncapped it.
He drew a perfect, cruel cupid’s bow on his reflection’s mouth. Jade was back. She knew exactly what she was now. A product. A story. A hole with a price tag on its past.
He smiled. The smile did not reach his eyes. It was a preparation for the camera. It was the only thing he had left to wear.
The burgundy lips in the mirror held no answers, only a final, firm line. He wiped them clean an hour later, his face bare again for the studio’s concealer. The subway car rattled, and with each jolt, he felt the phantom ache of the grey silicone, a reminder that his body had already betrayed the memory they were about to film.
The studio’s usual white void had been transformed. A section was now a perfect, heartbreaking replica of a generic dorm room. There was a twin XL bed with navy blue sheets, a cheap particleboard desk littered with textbooks, a faded band poster tacked to a faux wall. A scent machine emitted a faint odor of stale popcorn and carpet cleaner. It was a museum diorama of a self he’d murdered the night before.
“This is Leo,” Marcus said, gesturing to a young man with a mop of brown hair and, indeed, kind eyes. “He’s studied the notes.” Leo offered a small, professional smile that didn’t touch his eyes. He was wearing jeans and a university sweatshirt. He looked like a sketch of Ben, all the essential features copied but the soul left blank.
Elena helped Jon into the same costume, now cleaned and pristine. The white blouse was starched, the skirt crisp. She didn’t mention the stains. Her hands were brisk. “The blocking is simple,” Marcus explained, pacing before the set. “Leo, you’ll enter after the ‘music’ starts. You’ll have the prop. Jade, you’re on the bed, nervous. The dialogue is improv, but stick to the beats we outlined. The audience wants sweet. They want hesitant. They’re paying for nostalgia.”
The red light glowed. The tone chimed. A low, indie guitar riff played from a hidden speaker.
Jon sat on the edge of the bed, his hands clasped. He felt the weave of the cheap sheets. He heard the door open. Leo entered, holding a translucent plastic bag containing a similar grey dildo. “Hey,” Leo said, his voice soft, scripted. “You, uh… you still wanna try this?”
Jon looked up. He saw the actor. He saw the camera lens behind him. He saw the live feed ticker on the peripheral monitor, already scrolling with comments from users seeing the dorm set.
$User_Nostalgia: omg the poster I had that one
$VirginityFX: she looks so scared
“Yeah,” Jon whispered, his voice Jade’s, higher, softer. “I’m sure.” He wasn’t. He was a million miles from sure. He was empty.
The scripted clumsiness unfolded. Leo sat beside him, their knees touching. He fumbled with the lube packet. His hands, when they touched Jon’s thigh, were warm and dry. They lacked the specific tremor of real desire. “Can I…?” Leo murmured, his fingers hooking under the skirt’s hem.
Jon nodded, tilting his head back to expose his throat, a move he’d perfected in a dozen other shoots. Leo kissed it, his lips mechanical. The camera on a jib arm swung silently around them, capturing the profile, the tender angle. Leo’s hand slid up his inner thigh, pushing the skirt to his waist. The white cotton panties were a glaring flag of innocence.
“You’re so beautiful,” Leo breathed, a line from the notes. He hooked his thumbs in the waistband and pulled them down. The air, cool and recycled, hit Jon’s exposed cunt. He felt himself clench, not with anticipation, but with a profound sense of exposure. This was a lie. A beautiful, expensive lie.
“I’ve never…” Jon whispered, the scripted line ash in his mouth.
“I’ll go slow,” Leo promised, his tone flawless. He slicked the toy, the sound amplified. He positioned it, the blunt head a familiar pressure. Leo’s other arm curled around Jon’s shoulder, holding him close for the camera. “Ready?”
Jon closed his eyes. He didn’t see Leo. He saw the memory of his own hand, frantic and furious the night before. He felt nothing. “Yes.”
Leo pushed.
The penetration was smooth, a well-rehearsed motion. The silicone filled him, a dead weight. Leo began to move it, a gentle, rocking rhythm. In, out. The lubricant squelched softly. Leo buried his face in Jon’s hair, his breathing artificially steady. “Feel good?” he mumbled into Jon’s scalp.
“Mmhmm,” Jon hummed, a performative sound. He arched his back for the camera, letting a shudder run through him. The live feed scrolled faster.
$Subscriber_Dream: so pure
$Owner_97: wish that was my cock
$TipForTears: make her cry
The directive hit Marcus’s ear. Jon saw him give a slight, almost imperceptible nod to Leo.
Leo’s thrusts became slightly deeper, more claiming. He shifted the angle, hitting Jon’s prostate with clinical accuracy. A genuine spark of sensation fizzed in Jon’s gut, a purely biological response. A soft, choked moan escaped him. It was real. It was also worthless.
“You’re taking it so well,” Leo murmured, his voice laced with a director-inserted pride. “My good girl.” The words were Ben’s, but the ownership in them was Lars’s, was Marcus’s, was every user’s. Jon felt a tear leak from the corner of his eye, tracking hot toward his ear. It was not for Ben. It was for the theft in progress.
“I’m… I’m close,” Jon panted, following the beat sheet.
“Come for me,” Leo said, his rhythm stuttering into something more urgent, a simulation of losing control. “Come on your first time.”
Jon let his body convulse. He screwed his face into a mask of overwhelmed ecstasy, his mouth a silent ‘O’. He clamped his muscles around the invading toy, milking it, his hips bucking. He let out a thin, keening cry as his cock twitched, spitting a pathetic drop of come onto his stomach. The orgasm was a shallow, technical event. A ripple, not a wave.
Leo held him through the aftershocks, then slowly withdrew the toy. The sound was wet, obscene in the quiet set. He pulled Jon’s panties back up, smoothed the skirt down. He kissed his forehead. “That was perfect,” he said, but he was looking at Marcus.
The red light died.
The warmth evaporated instantly. Leo stood up, detaching. He handed the slick toy to a production assistant who wiped it down with a disinfectant cloth. “Good job, man,” Leo said to Jon, patting his shoulder like a teammate after a game.
Marcus was already at the monitor. “The tear was perfect. Triggers a huge protective instinct. Tip surge in the final minute. We’ll cut to a close-up of that in post.” He didn’t look at Jon. “The ‘corruption’ arc is solidifying. Next, we move to the ‘Exploitation’ chapter. The boyfriend who shares the videos with his friends. We have a performer in mind—he’s got a real frat-house vibe.”
Jon sat on the navy sheets, the starch of the blouse scratching his neck. He watched Leo walk away, already scrolling on his phone. The dorm room set, so real a moment ago, was now just painted wood and rented furniture. The memory it was built to mimic felt scorched, replaced by the sterile smell of the wiping cloth and the electric hum of the studio lights.
He had given them his first time. They had packaged it. He felt no grief now, only a cold, clear space. The vessel was not just empty. It was a clean, white room. Ready for the next set. Ready for the next performance. He stood, his legs steady. He walked off the set, towards the dressing room, where the wicked burgundy lipstick waited in his bag. It was the only truth he had.