Neil Randall is delighted to announce that his new short
story Sick Kid has just been published by Pulp Literary Journal.
Sick Kid
is based on a true story.
Back in the
1970s-80s, Star Wars actor Mark Hamill received a call from his agent regarding
a potential visit to see a terminally ill child at the hospital – only the
young boy wanted Mark Hamill to appear as his sci-fi alter ego Luke Skywalker.
People can be
both generous with their time as much as they money – and that’s certainly what
happened in this case. Hamill/Skywalker visited the child every day until he
sadly passed away.
Be warned, Sick Kid is a very different story. But one not without its own dubious merits.
Here are the opening few pages to give you a better flavour of the story:
Brad Fad’s cell phone started to vibrate. A call from his
agent Matt Williams. In the normal scheme of things, Fad would’ve let the call
redirect to voicemail. Willams hadn’t got him a decent gig in over six years.
But Fad had been drinking steadily since long before breakfast-time and had
reached that mellow stage of intoxication where he’d reconciled his many
differences with the world.
He accepted the
call.
“Brad-a-saurus,
how’s it going, baby?”
“Not good,
Williams. The script you sent me last week was for a voice-over for a sanitary
towel commercial. I thought you said Scorsese wanted me for a part in his new
picture.”
“He did, he does.
But you know what Marty is like. The guy is so hard to pin down. I’ve left two
dozen messages, maybe more, with his personal secretary. Look. If the picture
gets the green light from the studio, the part is yours. It’s in the bag. But
that’s not the reason I’m calling.”
“It isn’t?”
“No. An
opportunity has fallen into our laps for some kick-ass PR. The mother of this
sick kid called me about twenty minutes ago. Her boy has got terminal cancer –
bone, bowel, brain – I can’t remember which. To cut a long story short, he’s a
huge fan of the Fantasy Star franchise, especially your Leon Minewalker
character. He’s got all the action figures, the posters on the walls, he’s read
all the spin-off books.”
“And?”
“And he wants you
to visit him at the hospital, Brad. Like I said, the kid is real sick. He’s got
less than four weeks to live. If you could go down there and talk to him for
half an hour, forty-five minutes tops, I’ll make sure every journalist in the
city writes a feature about you. It’s like gold dust in terms of opportunities.
And it could put your face right back in the spotlight. There is one proviso,
though.”
“What’s that?”
“He wants you to
visit him as the character Leon Minewalker not the actor Brad Fad.”
Fad felt like
terminating the call. The last thing he wanted to do was visit some sick kid
riddled with cancer, bald through chemotherapy, coughing and hawking up what
was left of his vital organs. Moreover, he’d developed an almost pathological
hatred for Leon Minewalker and everything he represented. Granted, the role in
the sci-fi blockbuster had made him a household name. Granted, the royalty
cheques still came thick and fast and provided Fad with a decadent lifestyle.
The five bedroom house in the Hills, the pool, the maid, the top-shelf liquor.
But it had left him typecast, cut adrift from the rest of the industry, unable
to land any decent roles.
“Brad, you still
there?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m
still here. Only I’m not sure about this one, Williams. I’ve been under the
weather myself recently. Maybe the hospital with all those pesky germs isn’t
the best place for me right now. So, with a heavy heart, I’m going to have to
decline the opportunity.”
“No way. Out of
the question, baby. We can’t pass up on this. Believe me. It would be suicide.
You’ll regret it for the rest of your life. For years, I’ve been busting my
hump trying to get you back on top of things. Time and again, you either turn
up to an audition drunk, or are so rude to everyone involved in the production,
they have to get security to remove you from the premises.”
“That only
happened one time, and I was severely provoked.”
“One time, two
times – word gets around that you’re an asshole and casting crews are reluctant
to consider you again. It’s a small town. People talk. Now, if you were to
visit a sick kid in the hospital and make all his dreams come true, it would go
a long way to repairing a lot of that damage.”
Fad tried to
argue his way out of the situation, but with wavering conviction. Much of what
Williams had said was true – and Fad knew it.
“Okay, okay,” he
finally relented. “I’ll do it. What hospital is the kid in and what time do I
have to be there?”
“Saint Mary’s,
eleven o’clock. Please, don’t be late. I’ll make sure the papers are there to
take your picture.”
If you’d like to read the story in full online, click on
this link and scroll to Page 72.
And if you’d like to read more of Randall’s published work, why
not take a look at his Amazon page?
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