"Hey," he smiled and waved awkwardly at the video camera. "I'm Alfred F. Jones. I'm sixteen years old, and I'm auditioning for the lead role of Ethan Johnson in your movie Chess, Version 4.0."
He grinned, winking. "I'm sure you people who cast the characters don't actually read the résumé, so I'm gonna say it now before I forget later,"
The blond cleared his throat and stared at the ceiling for a moment. He looked back down and sheepishly rubbed his hand on the back of his neck. "Um, I've been the lead male role in my school's plays and, like, theatre performances since the fifth grade. I've taken ballet and tap lessons since third grade and stopped at eighth because I've started up vocal lessons." He smiled. "I've been getting straight A's in all my classes, but you casting people don't really care about that, ayuh?
"This, from the vague description you've given us audition people, is an action movie, amirite?" Alfred double-pistol-and-a-wink-'ed at the camera, showing his perfect rows of straight, blindingly white teeth. "I love action. I've broken the mile, push-up, and flex-arm hang records all the times I've done it at my high school. Feel free to hit up Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology for my name and proof," His pose was reminiscent of a East Coast surfer's 'right-on' expression.
"To tell you the truth," the blond shyly winced at the camera, "I don't like singing. Gag me with a spoon! My parents forced me into the lessons 'cause they're musical geeks, and they figured that if I'm doing dance lessons, might as well give me a vocal coach too, you know?" He playfully rolled his eyes.
"But I've always been into action movies, and I've always looked up to heroes, not people prancing around the stage screeching their vocal chords away." Alfred mimicked a tap-dancing person, complete with an invisible top hat and cane and the Academy award-winning smile. And then he stopped and shook his head. "It looks totally silly in my opinion. I love the fast-paced chase scenes, car crashes, the dead-set clicks of guns when they're about to be aimed at someone's head, and fight scenes. Fight scenes. Duuuuuuuuuude," he laughed heartily, "those are hella fly! I live for those."
He shrugged his broad shoulders. "So of course I forced my mom to sign me up for karate. I'm currently a Hachidan, or an eighth degree black belt. That's two degrees away from the top rank," Alfred held up his belt and certificate, bringing the certificate closer to the camera. "I do Uechi-ryū. That'sa style of karate from Okinawa. My master title is Kyoshi." He said proudly, not once tripping over the foreign Japanese words. He moved the certificate slowly around the lens, and then brought it away to reveal his grinning face once again.
"I know this movie probably requires me to fight, not have self-defence prerequisites, but I don't think it's right to fight, you know?" The teen's smile wavered, and then fell into a slightly more serious face. "No one should get hurt intentionally. A hero helps people, and he has to help himself too, so I think that heroes should all know ways of self-defense, not necessarily kicking and punching and whatnot."
"So I'm pretty sure half or more of you watching this audition video are asleep, getting coffee, checking your nails, or reading some magazine. So," he took a deep, dramatic breath. "This is my audition."
The group of people assigned to watch audition videos stared at the exuberant teen on the screen.
"This kid's genuine. Look a' that smile." The curly-haired brunet noted from his seat, pointing a pen towards the shouting teen on the video recording.
"I 'unno, Tonio. He's nice 'n all, but he's a bit showy to be in 'n action movie, yanno? And he practically dissed Broadway!" The Brooklyn-born woman with the mysterious sunglasses flicked her wrist and placed another pretzel stick in between her teeth again, chomping away. Her cherry-red lips curled down into a scowl.
"Oh, come on, Amelia! You're being too harsh on the boy! Look at him; I just wanna squish his cheeks!" a woman with a flower in her long, chestnut locks squealed.
"He's very...emotional." A man with a flyaway hair and a mole on his cheek coughed into his pristine white gloves before writing a sentence in his notepad.
A woman with short blond hair and a headband blicked away on the Macintosh in the corner of the room. She yelled, "You guys! AOL says that his high school's a selective admissions magnet school!"
"Seriously?" A few people rushed to the clunky computer that took up the whole corner desk.
A woman with a blue bow in her long, platinum blond hair grumbled. "It's like this video's your porn or something, Francis. You've never focused on an audition video this much before."
The Frenchman, not once taking his eyes off of the screen, chimed in teasingly, "Are you jealous of the attention it's getting and you're not, Natalia?"
"Shut up or I'll chop your balls off."
The albino man in the room snickered and mumbled, "Like a boss."
"Gilbert. Natalia. Focus on the audition tape, s'il te plaît? This boy looks like he has potential."
Antonio smiled brightly. "He does, actually." He turned back to the video and scribbled some notes into his tomato-red notebook.
The blonde with the headband spoke up again. "The way his glasses glint in the lighting could be really useful in the intense faces scene we had planned out. You know, unreadable expressions?"
And the room got quiet again, aside from the sound of fast-moving pencil graphite and fancy ballpoint pens against paper and Amelia's constant pretzel crunching.
The next audition video was creepy. It wasn't in the sense of Halloween-creepy, but this kid was just like Alfred.
This boy was only fifteen, though. He had a much softer voice, and was much more modest than the Alfred kid was. But if he cut his hair an inch or so, he would look exactly like Alfred.
Matthew Williams was his name. He was Canadian and lacked the stereotypical accent, not that the casting people minded. He seemed shyer, but was rather snarky. And his witty comments, while they were lacking in the American kid, were hilarious and made the whole room laugh loudly. They even cracked a smile out of Natalia.
The young blond was a very good actor, yes, but his actions tended to speak louder than his speech. Because he was soft-spoken, the group of people didn't care much for him. The group of casters was about to turn off the audition video, when they saw his actions.
Holy fuck, the guy had muscles. They were more noticeable than Alfred's.
Matthew said he played hockey. The Canadian continued talking softly. "I also do a bunch of self-defence martial arts. I do karate, tae kwon do, boxing, kickboxing, judo, jiu-jitsu, wushu, and um...one more..." the blond was holding up his rank certificates and top-rank belts and medals as he listed the variety of martial arts, and he stopped to search for the last one. He looked back up to the camera and smiled apologetically. "Terribly sorry. Let me find my last certificate..." He bend over to the side and started rummaging through a box.
Gilbert wolf-whistled at the screen. "Toned ass. It's like he planned to lose the last certificate for us to see how fit he really is. Look at those biceps; he's obviously showing off."
The brunette with the flower rushed up to get the box of Kleenex. She smiled rather creepily and asked, "You enjoying the view, Gilbert?"
He scoffed and turned his head away. "Shut up, you crazy bitch."
"Ah!" Matthew's face brightened and he showed the video camera lens his last certificate, fixing his glasses. "Okichitaw. It's a type of Canadian martial art. This is my gunstock war club." He held up a wooden stick in the shape of a rifle. "It has a blade,"
The whole room seemed to drop a few degrees.
"I'm also training in Defendo, which is also called Combato, and Wen-Do. Those are both Canadian martial arts,"
He shyly blushed a bit. "When I was smaller, I practiced target-shooting with arrows, and when I got a bit older, hunting rifles. In third grade, I started baton-twirling, and once I got skilled, I started twirling light swords and bayonets," He reddened a bit more and quickly added, "But that's just a hobby!"
The Frenchman blinked, sounding surprised. "Just a hobby?" He let out a long whistle.
On the screen, Matthew sighed. "So, that's my action and martial arts background. It's usually to vent my anger. Mama says I'm passive-aggressive."
While the video kept playing, the whole room was silent, save for the quick scribbling of pencils on notepad paper.
"Fuckin' A, this kid is amazing."
"Definitely considering him."
Alfred sighed and stared at his Russian textbook. It all looked like gibberish to him. He eyed the AOL browser he had open to a translation page.
It didn't look right.
He had finished all his homework already, except for his Russian workbook problems. Learning a whole new alphabet was too damn hard; can't they all just speak English?
Alfred stared out the window, blowing some straight, short blond locks out of his sight. His chin rested on his left palm and he scribbled random things in his workbook.
He saw the mail truck come. The mailman shoved letter-white envelopes into the mailbox, the door-less van sputtering away in less than a minute. Alfred opened the window and yelled a "thank you," forgetting the fact that it was the middle of winter.
The sharp chill of the breeze instantly hit him hard. He slammed down the window and shivered, wrapping himself up tighter in his bed's Captain America comforter. The American teenager took a sip of his coffee-spiked hot chocolate and watched as his father's white Cadillac Eldorado convertible pulled up in the short driveway. Alfred's dad climbed out of the car and slammed the door, walking through yesterday's snow to get the mail.
The man trudged into the luxury apartment building, the light wind making his American flag-printed wool scarf fly behind him. He opened the door to their seventeenth floor apartment and closed it, enclosing the inside of the house from the slight hiss of the wind outside.
Alfred ran to the doorway and hugged his dad hello, taking the mail and ignoring his father's daily mutters of "those damn Commies 'r takin' over the office, whyja choose the Commie language to take at school, Alfie."
He flipped through the envelopes, tossing the bills and letters meant for his parents to the counter like a Frisbee. The last letter came in a large, heavy, pale yellow envelope with ridges on the surface. The text was all fancy and professional, and the sender was "New Line Cinema."
And yes, that name written in the receiver space was Mister Alfred F. Jones.
A steady stream of "holy crap's" flowed from his mouth as he carefully opened the clasp and pulled out the papers. The blonde's sky-blue, vision-corrected eyes frantically skimmed the leading document, skipping over particularly large blocks of text and reading every other sentence or so. And then his bright irises landed on the very last sentence of the letter.
His pupils widened, and he clutched his stomach as he fell down onto his knees. Alfred's right hand flew up to cover his quivering mouth and his eyes widened even more. The whole living room around him started spinning, and time froze. Everything focused on that white piece of heavy, professional paper.
His father was wondering what the fuck his son was doing, is this what a seizure looks like?
The young blond's whole body started shaking a bit. Tears brimmed in the corner of his eyes, threatening to spill out at the words right in front of him.
Meanwhile, further up north, Matthew Williams pulled out his acceptance letter very calmly, but his eyes still widened at the text and he still fistpumped the air. "Yes! They want me for callbacks..."
He immediately ran to his mother, who was in her bed. "Look, look! They actually considered me, mama! I'm going to a live audition in Washington DC next month!"
His mother's impassive, sickly face brightened considerably, despite the fact that she was slowly dying. "I'm...so proud of you, Mathieu. I knew you could do it..." Her words quivered.
Matthew's eyes shone with unshed tears of happiness. "I'll make you proud, maman."
HEY
I DIDN'T FEEL LIKE UPDATING MY OTHER STORIES SO MY FINGERS SPIT THIS OUT BEFORE THE PLOT BUNNY COULD ATTACK MY HALF-WORKING BRAIN
this is taking place during the Cold War, around 1970-1990, if you didn't notice already. Since it's after the McCarthy issue, I imagine that the "Commie/Russians" thing is just a heavy, hanging suspicion that's still somewhat disapproved by the public. I wouldn't know (since I wasn't alive then), but if anyone happened to be, please tell me what people thought of Russians back then!
Amelia is fem!America. The eventual pairing is IvanxAlfred, though. Keep that in mind.
okay I feel as if this plot's been used somewhere else before. idk I'm loving my plot, but it feels familiar
SO TELL ME WHATCHA THINK.