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The sound of rain gently patters against the wide glass panes of Brandy’s mansion, the droplets echoing through the quiet, cavernous space. She never used to mind the silence—it was the kind of emptiness she once mistook for peace. The mansion had been her reward, her proof: every marble-tiled room, every echoing hallway, a testament to her tireless climb up the brutal ladder of fame. She had believed it then—believed that space equated to freedom, that solitude meant control.
But as the years stretch longer and her image on the screen grows younger while her reflection in the mirror does not, the house no longer feels like a victory. It feels like a tomb. The freedom she once craved now feels like disconnection.
The vastness? A reminder of how little she touches anymore.
The dread began creeping in after her latest session at Redream.
She had entered the simulation as Alex Palmer—sharp-tongued, magnetic, the kind of woman Brandy used to believe herself to be. Opposite her, the simulation had cast Dorothy Chambers—obnoxiously beautiful, impossibly precise—as Clara Ryce-Lechere. Clara was vibrant, a character so real in her artificial charm that Brandy had forgotten, momentarily, that she was acting. Or maybe she wasn’t.
Maybe Redream had pulled too close to the bone this time.
And when she woke, alone in her king-sized bed with the city skyline muted beyond the storm-glazed windows, the dread clung to her like a second skin. She wasn’t sure if it was Alex Palmer who envied Clara, or Brandy who envied Dorothy.
A soft sigh escapes Brandy’s lips as she covers her eyes, the memories returning like a storm—violent, unrelenting, too vivid to ignore. That fleeting romance with Dorothy—no, not Dorothy, not really, just an AI reconstruction of the long-dead actress—felt far too real for comfort.
She can still feel it: Dorothy’s breath warm against her skin, her soft lips brushing Brandy’s shoulder blades. The intimacy had been almost unbearable. Then came Kimmy’s voice—cutting through the moment like a knife through silk, her words shattering the illusion like a bucket of ice water. Brandy remembers freezing, helpless. Not Alex. Brandy.
And then—the goodbye. Brandy cradling Dorothy’s face, fingertips trembling, her eyes brimming with tears she couldn’t afford to let fall. Fear clawed at her throat, the horror of losing someone who wasn’t supposed to feel like someone.
But Dorothy had felt everything.
That was the problem.
She remembers the blood, dark and unreal, seeping into Dorothy’s clothes. The AI's chest rising in shallow gasps, head tucked into Brandy’s lap like a tragic lover from some classic war film.
Brandy had wished she whispered, “Stay with me. Please—just a little longer.”
And for a moment, she had wanted nothing more than to become a real doctor, to stay trapped in that fake world if it meant keeping Dorothy alive.
Then came the sob. That desperate, guttural sound as she rocked back and forth, clinging to code and memory.
“I’ll be yours forevermore,” she had whispered, not knowing who she meant it for.
Alex or Brandy.
Dorothy or the ghost of her.
And then—then she lies awake in the real world, on the cold slab of that Redream table, eyes wide, unblinking, as tears pool and roll into her hairline.
The simulation is over.
But the ache… the ache is real.
“Fuck,” Brandy mutters, voice trembling as she turns onto her side. Her hand stretches across the mattress, fingertips grazing the untouched half of the bed. It's cold. Uncreased. Too smooth. The kind of smooth that screams no one has been here.
The sheets remind her—god, how they remind her—of that sickly sweet dream-space.
That damn hotel Reverie.
A place where time stood still just for her. A frozen fantasy, tailor-made for indulgence, for desire. For Dorothy. The AI's warmth against her skin, the way she smiled like she meant it. Brandy had let herself believe it was real. Had convinced herself that if everything else stayed paused, then maybe the love could keep unfolding forever.
But here, in this bed, in this house too big for one person and far too cold for dreaming—there’s no Dorothy. No breath beside her.
Just a pillow that doesn’t smell like anyone, and silence that feels personal.
Brandy lets out a low, frustrated grunt and yanks a pillow over her head. The world is too loud in its silence, too bright in its emptiness. She squeezes her eyes shut, willing sleep to take her—drag her down, if it has to. Maybe, if she’s lucky, she’ll wake up somewhere else.
Somewhere warm.
Somewhere with Dorothy’s voice humming low in the background.
-
Brandy wakes to a new morning, bleary-eyed and unwilling. Her phone rings—loud and shrill—bouncing off the high ceilings, ricocheting through every empty corner of the room.
She sits up slowly, her body heavy with the kind of fatigue that sleep never seems to fix. She doesn’t want to move. Not yet. Not after Redream. Not after that.
The ringing stops. For a moment, she dares to hope that’s the end of it.
Then it starts again.
A loud, guttural groan escapes her as she drags herself out of bed and fumbles for the phone.
“Your reboot of Hotel Reverie is such a big hit!” her agent’s voice bursts through the speaker, manic with glee.
Brandy flinches, pulling the phone away from her ear as if the enthusiasm might burn her.
“I’m glad it did,” she murmurs, voice flat.
It had to be good. It has to be.
Because everything in there—every look, every touch, every heartbreak—was real.
To her, it still is.
“You’re definitely opening new doors for yourself with this performance,” her agent gushes. “This is it, Brandy! You’re on the cusp of a second golden age—I can feel it! I swear, I can already see the offers piling in. I can’t wait to see you lighting up the screen again.”
Brandy rolls her eyes, already tuning them out. She places the phone face down on the nightstand, muffling the voice with a soft clack, then drags herself to the bathroom like someone moving underwater.
The mirror greets her with a version of herself she doesn’t quite recognize—eyes puffy, expression unreadable. For a moment, she just stares.
Let them celebrate. Let them cheer.
She knows what she lost in there.
“Well! I won’t keep you much longer. I’m sure you’ll want plenty of rest before the big premiere tonight! I’ll see you soon, Brandy. Rest well.”
Brandy turns her head slightly toward the door as if the voice were physically in the room, lingering in the air. Her agent’s chirpy farewell cuts off with a click, and silence rushes in again, thick and heavy.
Another long sigh escapes her lips.
The premiere. Right. She still has to show up.
She winces just thinking about it—the lights, the red carpet, the cameras flashing like little white lies. All for Hotel Reverie .
All for that performance.
“Performance of a lifetime.”
“Marvellous reboot.”
“Brandy Friday stuns as Alex Palmer! A refreshing queer take on the 1949 classic.”
She remembers the headlines. They had flooded every feed, every entertainment blog. The critics had raved. Her fans had exploded with love, begging for behind-the-scenes, for stories of filming, of feeling.
She used to love this part. The screenings, the panels, the Q&As where she got to peel back the curtain just a little and share what made her fall in love with the craft in the first place. Even when the roles weren’t her dream picks, she still poured her heart into them.
Brandy loved being an actress.
She still does, maybe.
Somewhere.
But she regrets the day she let AI into her art. The day she touched synthetic feeling and let it touch her back.
Redream didn’t just assist her performance.
It consumed her.
“Welp,” Brandy huffs, eyes fixed on her own reflection.
A bitter smile pulls at her lips, “Life goes on.”
She turns away from her sink and walks into her walk in closet. Brandy stands in front of her open closet, staring blankly at rows of carefully curated gowns. Designers had sent them in weeks ago—dresses that screamed elegance , drama , main character energy . The kind she used to get excited over.
Now they all look the same. Expensive fabric for someone playing pretend.
She reaches for the sleek red dress that her stylist swore was “timelessly devastating,” dragging it from the hanger with all the enthusiasm of someone clocking in to work a shift she didn't sign up for.
She slips into it, mechanically, movements dulled by the weight in her chest.
She smooths the fabric of her dress, tugging it into place like that might fix the hollow underneath.
“Time isn’t going to stay still for me anymore,” she mutters, voice soft, almost swallowed by the room.
Not like it did in there .
Not like it did with her .
“Are you ready?” her chauffeur asks, holding the car door open for Brandy.
“I hope so,” Brandy replies with a strained smile, slipping into the backseat. Her voice carries the kind of apprehension that hope can’t quite cover.
“It’ll be fine,” he reassures, joining her up front. He catches her eyes in the rearview mirror—quiet, faraway, not like the Brandy he’s used to driving to premieres, hair wild and laughter louder than the radio.
“It’s just like any other premiere,” he adds with a soft chuckle.
“You killed it in this Hotel Reverie reboot. Everyone’s going to adore you. You don’t have to worry about anything.”
“I know,” Brandy says, barely above a whisper, “Thank you.”
She glances down and notices her necklace has shifted. As she adjusts it, her gaze flickers to her silver handheld bag on the seat next to her, where her phone screen glows, still lit.
An auto-playing promo.
Dorothy Chambers.
Or rather, Clara Ryce-Lechere —red lips parted, soft breath caught in a moment of vulnerability, frozen in that now-famous scene. The one where Alex Palmer, her character, kneels beside her, examining a twisted ankle with unspoken intimacy.
It wasn’t like how Ralph played Alex Palmer.
That version felt like a film. Safe. Detached.
But Brandy?
Brandy had reached up Clara’s calf slowly, feeling the soft muscle, the heat of skin rendered too perfectly. And when Clara had looked at her—Dorothy’s eyes, Dorothy’s smile—it had felt like the air had left the room.
Like time had truly stopped.
Not for the character. Not for the scene.
For her .
Brandy’s throat tightens. Her fingers tremble slightly as she taps the phone screen, cutting the video short. She places it face-down on the bed without another glance.
Just a promo.
Just a highlight reel.
Dorothy’s digital reconstruction moves like she’s alive.
Breathing.
Waiting.
Waiting for her .
Brandy clenches her jaw.
Blinks hard.
She told herself she was past this.
That she could compartmentalize.
Be professional.
Be Brandy Friday , award-winning actress, darling of the screen.
But seeing Dorothy like that—immortalized, perfect, unreachable—it guts her all over again.
She turns her head, forcing her thoughts into silence. Inhales. Exhales.
This is just part of the job.
Just another premiere.
Just another night pretending that none of it actually mattered.
-
The premiere passes like a breeze.
Just like her chauffeur said, everyone adores her.
She remembers seeing Judith holding court near the velvet ropes, proudly chattering about the reboot of her “finest directorial achievement,” champagne glass dancing in her fingers. Brandy had laughed when Kimmy joked about needing to learn Clair de Lune properly now—“so I can pretend I understand what I made you feel!”
It was all noise.
Beautiful, glamorous, empty noise.
By the time her car pulls up to the front of her mansion, the glitter of the night feels like it happened in another lifetime.
“Thanks,” Brandy mutters as she steps out.
She makes her way up the stone steps when something catches her eye.
A package.
Right on her doorstep.
No name on the box, just a familiar scrawl on the label that makes her stomach tighten.
Kimmy.
Her brows knit together, lips parting slightly as she crouches and picks it up. It’s not heavy, but it feels weighted somehow.
Inside, the house is dim, quiet.
She places the package gently on the dining table like it might shatter.
Then she takes her keys and slices along the tape. Her movements are careful, but her heartbeat is anything but. There’s a part of her that wants to leave it sealed forever. Another that’s practically clawing to know.
The flaps unfold with a soft sigh.
Inside: a sleek black box.
On top of it—a handwritten note.
Brandy freezes.
The handwriting is instantly recognizable. Slanted, casual. Kimmy’s.
Her breath catches as her eyes fall on the first line of the letter.
‘Got Jack to rustle up a gift for you. Enjoy! —Kimmy’
Brandy stares at the note, her heart thudding louder than she wants to admit. There’s something too casual about Kimmy’s handwriting. Like this isn’t a grenade dressed in ribbon.
Beneath the note lies a solid-state drive and a red telephone handle.
Her breath hitches.
Not just any phone handle—the old kind. Heavy, plastic, with a coiled wire that never quite untangled. The kind you had to turn the wheel on to dial out.
Brandy’s fingers close around it. The weight is too familiar. Too intentional .
Memories come flooding in—flickers of childhood, of late-night calls and whispered confessions—but she shakes them off, clutches the SSD tighter, and rushes down the hallway.
Her study is silent. Still. Her laptop sits closed on the desk, like it’s been waiting for her.
She plugs in the drive.
The screen wakes with a soft hum.
A familiar logo glows: ReDream.
Brandy’s hand freezes over the touchpad.
Her finger hovers above the trackpad, the little arrow blinking like it’s taunting her.
Just a peek.
It’s just a file.
It’s just a—
She clicks Start.
The screen glitches briefly, then flickers to life.
A static hum, and then—
Dorothy.
Brandy’s breath catches in her throat.
Young, radiant, impossibly alive .
Dorothy Chambers, standing next to an old rotary phone, eyes glimmering with unspoken emotion. She's acting as Clara Ryce-Lechere—soft-spoken, sincere, and heartbreakingly human.
Brandy’s eyes don’t blink.
She remembers this.
The audition tape.
The first tape.
The one she found when she was deep in research.
The first moment she really saw Dorothy Chambers. The moment she was intrigued with a woman she could never touch.
“So I… I just pretend it’s a normal telephone call?” Dorothy asks, pointing at the rotary phone on the little table beside her. Her brows knit together in endearing confusion. Her accent lilts in a way that Brandy has memorized.
“Yes,” a man’s voice replies off-camera.
Dorothy hesitates for half a second, then straightens her spine like she's boarding a ship, her fingers grazing the phone as if it were something sacred.
“Well, yes—right you are, Captain Keyworth,” she grins, slipping momentarily into Clara’s persona.
Then, she laughs.
Brandy’s heart tugs violently at the sound. That laugh—unfiltered, unrehearsed—bubbles from Dorothy’s chest and echoes through Brandy like muscle memory.
It’s not Clara.
It’s not the script.
It’s just her .
Dorothy. Real, messy, radiant.
Brandy smiles instinctively, her cheeks aching with memory.
That laugh had danced through the quiet halls of Hotel Reverie when time stood still. It had filled the bathtub while Dorothy poured them champagne. It had echoed against Brandy’s skin the night Clara whispered secrets into her shoulder blades.
Now it’s here.
In this dusty tape.
In this pixelated loop.
Still alive, even when Dorothy isn’t.
“I’m… I’m here waiting for it to ring,” Dorothy says, easing down into the chair with a kind of grace no one teaches. She presses her palm to her chest, laughing again, her eyes wide with amusement. “But it’s not connected, is it?”
Brandy’s smile falters as she watches the girl on screen— her Clara, the woman she touched only in simulations—reach out for a phone that never rang.
“No,” comes the amused reply from the off-screen producer.
And Brandy’s gaze slides slowly to her desk, to the red phone handle lying beside her laptop. Her stomach twists.
That gift.
That stupid nostalgic gift Kimmy sent her with no idea what it would do to her.
The rotary receiver gleams under the soft glow of her study lamp. Waiting.
Brandy’s thoughts start clicking together like tumblers in a lock.
The SSD.
The phone.
The setup.
This isn’t just a gift.
It’s an invitation .
Brandy connects the telephone handle to the SSD with shaking hands, each movement careful, reverent. The old-school red receiver feels foreign in her grip, a relic of another time—both Dorothy’s and her own.
She presses the dial button on the SSD.
A low click.
A hum.
Her breath catches.
On her laptop, Dorothy’s video flickers slightly, then continues. She’s still seated beside the phone, her fingers drumming lightly against her knee, waiting—just like before.
Then—
Rrrrnnng.
Brandy jolts.
The rotary phone on screen rings.
Dorothy jumps in surprise, her eyes flying toward the phone as though she hadn’t expected it to actually come to life. She looks off-camera, a flash of real confusion dancing across her face.
Brandy’s hand clamps around the receiver.
The sound on the other end of the line isn’t silence.
It’s not static.
It’s breath.
Soft. Barely-there.
Like someone is holding their breath, too afraid to speak first.
Brandy's throat tightens, and a soft gasp escapes—guttural and involuntary.
She hears a rustle on the tape.
Dorothy’s eyes darted back to the camera, lips slightly parted as if she senses it, this… something.
On the screen, Dorothy reaches out slowly—deliberately—for the phone.
Brandy nearly drops it.
A beat.
Then Dorothy’s hand hovers over the receiver.
Another beat.
Dorothy picks up the phone on the screen.
And smiles.
Not Clara’s shy, demure smile.
Dorothy’s smile.
The one Brandy saw when they were tangled in silk sheets, when time didn’t exist, when love felt like it could conquer memory, technology, even death.
Brandy can’t breathe. Her chest feels like it’s collapsing in on itself.
And then, Dorothy speaks.
“Hello, Ryce-Lechere Residence.”
Her voice is tentative.
Present.
Excitement swells in Brandy, tripping over her thoughts. Her brain stalls—spinning, flaring—searching for the perfect thing to say.
All she can manage is a breathless, hesitant: “Hi.”
Dorothy pauses.
No— Clara pauses.
She looks off-camera for a moment, confusion softening her features. But she slips easily back into character, composed and measured.
“Who’s this?”
Brandy’s throat tightens. She hesitates, the silence stretching.
“A… friend?”
Clara’s brow lifts ever so slightly, curious, “Do I know you?”
A thousand memories detonate in Brandy’s mind. The warmth of Dorothy’s hand brushing hers. The shared glances on set that lingered just a beat too long. The faintest whisper of skin against skin, laughter under blankets, the smell of citrus and night cream. The ache of a goodbye that was never really spoken.
How do you name something like that?
She exhales slowly, “Yes… and no.”
Clara chuckles.
It's soft. Her eyes shine, just barely—not scripted, not digital, not quite.
Like recognition flitting through a dream.
“What an intriguing answer.”
She says it with Clara’s clipped elegance, but Brandy hears Dorothy beneath it.
Hears the teasing, the challenge, the woman who once kissed her with trembling hands and whispered, Don’t forget me.
“Well,” Clara continues, voice velveted in charm, “tell me more.”
Brandy smiles, touched by the absurdity and the tragedy of it.
God, she missed this.
Missed her.
“How much time do you have?” she asks, voice caught between amusement and something deeper—grief, maybe. Or longing.
Clara tilts her head, that familiar flicker of flirtation dancing across her face.
“Since you’ve got a kind voice…”
A pause. A smile. A tilt of the head.
“I’ve got all the time in the world.”
Brandy lets out a breathy chuckle, running her hand through her hair, eyes still fixed on the screen. Her gaze softens. She nods faintly to herself, as if convincing her body to follow her heart’s lead.
“Well…” she begins, voice almost breaking on the word.
She swallows.
There’s so much to say—and yet, how do you talk to a ghost?
-
It takes her weeks.
Endless searches, emails, dead ends.
A few quiet favors pulled from old industry contacts.
And then—finally—Brandy finds herself standing in front of Dorothy Chambers’ grave.
The cemetery is tucked away on a quiet hillside, the city far enough to sound like static. There’s a breeze picking up. Her coat flutters, but she barely feels it. Her eyes are locked on the headstone.
Dorothy Chambers.
The name carved clean and soft into the stone, beneath a photo of her smiling—dazzling, almost defiant, like she knew the camera couldn’t contain her light.
Brandy stares.
It’s the first time she’s seen the actress outside a screen.
And yet, she feels closer to her now than she did even when they were filming.
A different kind of presence.
A stillness. A finality.
She breathes out, slow. It doesn't shake, for once.
After the call—that night with Clara, or Dorothy, or whatever strange in-between she had stepped into—Brandy had found ground again. A cracked, trembling one, but something solid nonetheless. There were tears, yes. So many. And laughter, too—genuine, startled laughter that cracked out of her chest like sunlight through blinds. There were silences. Long, unafraid, comfortable silences that neither of them dared to break.
She hadn’t kept track of the time.
Only noticed, in the end, that her laptop’s glow had been overpowered by the soft orange spilling in through her window.
Sunrise.
She had hung up when she was ready.
Not before. Not after.
And now—now she is here.
Brandy kneels down, running her hand gently over the engraved letters.
The stone is cool. Smooth. Permanent.
“Hey,” she says softly. A whisper, as if anything louder might undo her.
She doesn’t speak much after that.
She just sits with Dorothy for a while, like she had over that strange red telephone line.
No script. No cameras.
Just two women, across time and silence, finally saying everything they’d never gotten to.
Once she’s done, Brandy gently places the bouquet of carnations on the grass patch, just below the headstone. They’re fresh, soft pink, still beaded with water. The kind Dorothy used to keep in her dressing room—Brandy remembers that from some grainy behind-the-scenes photo she’d seen years ago.
She stands. Her knees ache slightly from kneeling too long, but she barely notices. For a moment, she just stands there, taking in the quiet. Then, with a slow breath and one final glance, she bows her head in quiet respect—then turns away.
As she begins to walk back through the winding rows of headstones, the late afternoon light casts everything in amber. The sun is just starting to set, long shadows stretching like fingers across the grass.
That’s when she sees her.
A woman, walking toward her from the opposite direction.
Tall, elegant.
Her dark hair tucked loosely behind her ears, wind catching her coat just so. Her steps are unhurried, casual—but her gaze is fixed directly on Brandy.
Brandy slows. Her heart doesn’t race, but something shifts in her chest.
The resemblance is unmistakable.
Not quite Dorothy Chambers—no. But close enough that it steals the breath from her lungs.
The bone structure.
The tilt of her head.
The exact same curious smile.
The woman stops a few steps in front of her, head tilted slightly, “Brandy Friday?”
Brandy nods, instinctively, “That’s me.”
“Visiting someone’s grave?” the woman asks lightly, peering just over Brandy’s shoulder. Her eyes land, with eerie precision, on the bouquet now resting at her grand-aunt’s headstone.
Brandy hesitates.
“Just a friend,” she says, voice quieter than she intended, “If you’ll excuse me—”
“You did a marvellous job,” the woman interrupts, smiling more fully now, “Playing Alex Palmer. In my grand-aunt’s old film, Hotel Reverie .”
Brandy’s breath catches in her throat. She turns slowly to look at the headstone once more.
Then back to the woman.
“…Grand-aunt?” she echoes, her voice barely above a whisper.
The woman nods. Calm, composed.
That same ghost of a smirk Dorothy used to wear when she was playfully trying to get under Brandy’s skin.
“You look just like her,” Brandy says before she can stop herself.
“I hear that a lot,” the woman replies.
“I always thought it was a bit exaggerated. But now, looking at you—I think maybe it wasn’t.”
They stand in silence for a beat too long. The wind moves between them like a breath.
Then, the woman leans in slightly, her tone softer, almost wistful.
“Really wished she was born in this time and age,” she says, “She’d have really liked you, you know.”
Brandy doesn’t know what to say to that. Her throat tightens, words caught somewhere between memory and mourning. She just nods once, slowly.
The woman smiles gently, “Maybe we’ll talk again someday.”
With that, she turns and walks off, her figure fading into the gold-hued distance of the cemetery, coat swaying softly with each step.
Brandy watches her go, something catching in her chest.
“What’s your name?” she calls out, a little hurriedly.
The woman pauses, just before the bend in the path. She glances over her shoulder with a smile that feels both old and new, something deeply familiar.
“Dorothea,” she replies, “A tribute to my grand-aunt. The actress I aspire to be someday.”
Then she’s gone.
Brandy stands there for a moment longer, the sun dipping low behind her, casting long, reaching shadows across the ground.
She lets out a quiet breath.
And then, with a small, almost imperceptible smile, she turns around and begins to walk toward the cemetery’s entrance—step by step, leaving the past behind her, but never far.
The end.