Sweet Romance11 min read
My Name Was Matilda — The Actress They Tried to Kill
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The system screamed inside my head like a child in a storm.
"Host, stop. Ahead danger," a tiny voice said, squeaking with urgency.
I opened my eyes to night steel and a row of blinking towers. I was on a rooftop. My legs had already swung out over air that would not forgive a fall. I pulled them back like a puppet with a cut string and sank to a brick corner, lungs heaving.
"This body—she jumped," I whispered. "She was me."
"Correct," the little sprite said, floating before me like a purple dumpling. "Complete her wishes, claim remaining life."
I checked my phone. The world hated the woman whose life I now rented.
"#CastingChoice Matilda for 'Crossroads'!#" trended. Comments ran like a river of stones:
"Who is Matilda? Did she sleep her way to the top?"
"Director Tomas Black must have a reason. Gold-digger."
"If she's the lead, I'm unsubscribing."
"She used an assistant as a human shield with acid!" they wrote, and the puke of those words filled the feed.
Someone had thrown acid in a panic three days ago. The assistant—the poor girl with bright eyes—took the worst of it. The headlines said Matilda had pushed. The mob decided she had pushed without a trial.
I tasted someone else's shame. I pressed my palm to my chest and the body's heart stuttered like a trapped bird.
"She had three wishes," I said. "Help the assistant. Be a true actor. Make her family proud."
"Tasks set," the sprite announced, face smug. "Detect sabotage?"
"Yes." I fed the system a command. Two breaths later it returned with proof: paid trolls, bots, a hired smear campaign. Someone had orchestrated the pile-on.
I went to the hospital.
Joyce Barron blinked when she woke, bandages white as fragile paper. Her hair was shaved away, only her eyes left to speak. When I took her hand, she flinched.
"Don't be afraid," I said. "I'll see you through."
"Who are you?" she asked, voice sanded thin.
"Matilda," I said. It was a lie and a truth at once. "I found you. I'm staying."
I paid the bill. I bought herbs and reagents and spent the night over a pot, making a salve from old recipes the sprite fed me—recipes from other lives. At dawn I drove toward the only man who made my breath fold flat when he looked my way.
His name tag read J. Church, but everyone called him Jayden Church. He owned an empire called Meridian Media. He had a clean, severe face and an aura that put salt into the air. When I dove into the passenger seat of his car, I hit something warm and solid. He was narrower than the statues of businessmen, but his eyes—amber, like coin in shade—stopped me.
"Are you all right?" he asked in a voice that did not invite gossip.
"I jumped into your car," I blurted, mortified. "I didn't mean to. Thank you."
"Matilda," he said. "Jayden."
He closed the door, and for a second the world shrank to the distance between our breathing. He smelled faintly of soap and quiet. My fingers twitched toward his waist like a thief toward a map, wanting the one mark that would tell me if the refugee of my search—the fallen immortal I once worshiped—was here. I wanted to know whether his body wore the carved mark, the life-signature of a god who died.
"I—" I stopped. "Did you just fall asleep in the bath?"
He blinked at me as if I were an odd bird. "No. But the doorcode is 250520." He said it flat, then frowned. "How did you get the code?"
"Memory," I said. "Luck."
He let me ride to the studio. When we arrived at the gate of the set, Gloria Hofmann—glamor and headline—moved like a queen. She saw me climb out of Jayden's car and one small animal part of her panicked. She smiled at him like everything was sugar. Then she swung toward me like a viper.
"You," she hissed. "You stole my part."
"I didn't steal anything," I said. "I'm here to work."
She prodded me with nails and words. A runner tripped and coffee came flying. It hit the air. For a fraction of a second the hot drink looked like lava. My hand struck the nearest tree and launched me forward; the coffee splashed the exact spot I had vacated. Gloria's stunt blew her cover—cameras flashed. Tomas Black looked up.
"Matilda, you have fighting skills," he said, smiling like a man given a rare pebble. "We should shoot a martial sequence."
Gloria's face folded. She was sure a million lenses would hide her envy. She had not counted on my hands.
I rubbed my palm where she had nicked me with a mean word. Later, she sent a drone to film something else and planted audio meant to crush me. I found those audio files and cut them. I left only the part where Gloria spoke venom without a pretense. The recording went viral.
"You're a monster," she had said. "I will make you vanish."
When she reached for my face on set that day, I moved and she missed. Someone tried to photograph the slap; a paparazzo made himself late to glory and ran. Gloria chased him, leaving a record: she had thrown the first blow.
That night the net went wild. People who had called me names before woke to a different picture. They saw her temper and remembered the recording. They saw kindness where I had been accused. Their favorites were not saints.
A public correction came next—at my hand and through a voice that sounded like a church bell.
"Gloria Hofmann," I said into the camera of a livestream I edited and released, "you spoke to me as though I were dirt. You tried to buy silence. You paid people to ruin me. Why?"
Gloria did not answer. She sent lawyers and tweets: "This is manipulation." The platforms shrugged. Money buys things, but not always belief. Her agents called. Her friendly face—her 'image'—cracked.
She had pulled the strings that pushed a girl to the edge. Now we would see how she liked being watched.
"You can't just ruin someone's life and walk away," I told the broadcast. "Not anymore."
Tomas Black called me the next morning. "I didn't want this war," he said. "But your skill—your truth—makes the camera sing. Will you play the lead?"
"No," I said. "I will not take away what was hers by right if she can own the role."
He blinked. "Then who?"
"Give it to Y. Clement," I said, naming an actress who had been hanging in the wings like a dry leaf. "She needs a chance."
Tomas sighed. "You are a strange girl."
"I'm not strange," I answered. "I am stubborn."
The press had its feast. Gloria's sponsors dropped her like autumn leaves. A big company—the Temperance Group, led by my father's circle—posted a note: "We stand for healing." No names, but the world knew our family. A week later a medical journal announced a miracle cream—CollateralCare—sailed onto the top of the headlines. People called it impossible. They were wrong.
I had lied; I was not a chemist. I had only mixed old cures with modern chemistry in a saucepan and dared to call it a salve. The hospital director closed his eyes and then stood taller than his own fears when he saw Joyce in the ward the next morning with her face healed like a turning page.
When the story of the salve spread, everything else tilted.
Gloria tried to buy silence again. "Matilda, we can make a deal," she whispered in a TV spot she thought confidential. "The world is small. I can fix this."
"You tried to kill someone," I said. "You made my assistant wear your crimes."
Nerves frayed. Agents pleaded. People watched and spat and cheered. The sound of the net changed from screaming to a feverish, sharpening joy. The tables were turning. But the law is patient and clumsy. This was not a courtroom drama. This was a street-level unmasking.
I wanted to make sure Gloria could not walk back into the glow she had used to hide the strings. So I planned a moment that could not be edited away.
Two months later, in a ceremony for a film fund, the industry's glittering teeth gathered. I had been invited as a guest—my name had become a fragile new star. Gloria had been invited as the golden face everyone remembered.
I walked in in a plain dress, a cut like a draw of breath. The lights were white and honest. Cameras bloomed. A thousand guests were talking and smiling with teeth like knives.
"Matilda," a reporter hissed into my hand-held mic. "Would you like to say something about last year's scandals?"
"Yes," I said. "I would."
I stepped onto the low stage where award recipients had once stood. No one expected anything. They expected the prettiness of a reward and the rehearsed applause.
"Gloria," I said, my voice holding steady, "would you join me?"
She blinked in the same way a person blinks when rain arrives inside a building. She rose like a queen called to a tribunal.
"I am not doing this," she whispered, too soft. Her publicist tugged at her sleeve. The cameras hungrily tilted.
"Please," I said. "Join me."
The audience leaned in. The film fund director squinted. "What's this?" he muttered.
I held up my phone. Behind me, on the big screen, rolled a sequence of proof. Not a stitched-together smear, but recorded messages, transcripts, bank records, the email chain ordering smear accounts, and—most damning—the footage of the runner tripping, of the coffee arc, and of Gloria chasing the camera man.
"Do you remember these?" I asked.
Gloria's mouth flew open. Her face had color when she walked in, like a painted apple. That color drained. "You can't—" she began.
"Listen," I said. "This isn't personal. It's public. You paid others to attack a woman. That woman died. You said it would be better if she was gone. You arranged anonymous attacks to make people hate her."
There was a pin-drop silence. Someone in the back coughed like a small sound in a great hall.
"Why?" a man in a suit demanded. "Why would someone do this?"
"You wanted a role," I said. "You used money like a blade and left a girl to fall."
"You're lying!" Gloria screamed. Her voice cracked like thin ice. "You're a liar! I didn't—"
"Look," I said, and I played the recording. Her voice, crisp with fury, filled the room. "You can't wash it away with a press release."
She went white and then red and then white again. For a long moment she seemed a puppet with its strings suddenly burned off.
Then denial, sharp as glass. "This is edited," she cried. "Trap! Set up! Forgery!"
Someone in the crowd hissed and laughed. A woman clutched at her pearls and whispered, "Oh my God." A few people fumbled with their phones; others stood perfectly still, watching the queen fall.
"Is anyone here who remembers asking to be paid to post about Matilda?" I asked.
A shaky hand rose. A producer's assistant, eyes rimmed like tea-stained paper, walked forward. "She—she hired me," he said. "She offered fifty thousand. She gave me a transfer."
"Thank you," I said. "Does that look like editing?"
More hands rose. A chorus of names came: usernames, bank transfers, messages. Each confession was a nail hammered into a thin door.
"You wanted to erase a life," I told Gloria. "Now you must answer to everyone."
Her face flickered. Embarrassment moved into fury. "You're lying. I will sue. I will ruin you."
"You already tried to ruin one woman today," I said. "You cannot erase what you did."
She clenched and unclenched her fists. Her argument dissolved into wails. "No one will—no one will believe a pack of strangers!" she said. "I will call my team. They'll see—"
Around her, people began to stand. The audience's mood had turned. Some gasped. Several pulled out phones and started filming her reaction—no longer a flattering clip but a record of a fall.
One of her own sponsors stepped forward. "Our brand cannot be associated with violence," the spokesperson said. "We are terminating our contract. Effective immediately."
Gloria shrieked as if someone struck her. The cameras swung like a vulture. People cheered at first, like the final bell of a long fight; then the cheers froze, replaced by murmurs—questions that would not go away.
Her publicist tried to speak, but words fell like cracked glass and scattered. No one offered applause. Her empire of image had no floor.
She had once stood in a thousand ad campaigns and award nights. Now she stood in a room that had chosen a different measure: accountability.
A crowd gathered outside the venue, phones held high. They filmed, they shouted, they traded details. A line editor from a tabloid read the timeline out loud. The director who had once called her "a safer choice" looked small.
She tried to beg. Her voice slid from rage to pleading: "Please, please—"
"Don't," someone in the crowd said. "You don't deserve it."
Her knees buckled. She looked like a statue losing its pedestal. Then she put her hands to her face and sobbed, not the diva's wail she had practiced for tabloids but a raw, thin sound that was all the more terrible for its honesty.
I watched her change from predator into a frightened animal. It did something to the crowd. People snapped photos, some posted them; others stood with horror. There was no joy in the exposure, only a relief that truth had been aired.
She had arranged misery and now felt it aimed back like a mirror. Her face registered outrage, then incredulity, then the panic of someone who watched reputation collapse in real time.
The punishment lasted hours. Journalists dissected bank transfers. Sponsors announced terminations. Directors withdrew offers. Fans, betrayed, began to unfollow thousands at a time. Her old manager apologized through her Instagram. Lawyers circled like sharks, mouths open.
At the close of the night, she was left with a small group of handlers who could no longer pretend to be loyal. The crowd had recorded every second. The net would not forget.
When I left the stage, policing eyes followed me. Jayden met me at the side door, expression strict, then soft. "You did what you had to," he said.
"Was it necessary?" I asked.
"For her to learn? Yes." He paused. "For you, Matilda? Are you sure this fills what you owe her?"
"I wanted her to stop hiding behind a smile," I said. "And I wanted Joyce to get a voice."
He put a hand over mine, a touch that did not demand anything. "You're dangerous," he said. "In a good way."
We walked into the night like accomplices. People posted their versions of the event for days. Some called what I did savage. Others called it justice. A few called it cruel. I did not argue. I had promised three things, and the first two were on their way.
Joyce's recovery continued. She laughed with a little piece of her old brightness returning. My family—Amos Durham, my brother, a man who ran tall in the city and who had once scolded me for leaving—met me in a bright corridor and said, "You have my support."
"Thank you," I said.
"Don't be reckless," he warned. "But don't be foolish either."
"You always love empty warnings," I teased.
We were not done. The show that had flown us into the island—the survival program—aired live clips and mine reshaped how people saw me. I moved through that wild day like a person with no time for small cruelties. I found a cache of supplies, and while I could have handed them to the pair who had left me behind, I chose to let the audience decide how they would see it. They saw a woman who would survive and whose survival did not come from pretending to be helpless.
Later, notes arrived: offers, apologies, contracts. People I had never known sent messages. They wanted the truth. They wanted a real life, not a story they could fold into a glossy magazine.
Gloria's fall continued. She tried to sue. The law moved slowly. The city moved quickly. Her endorsements vanished. Her fans shrank. She stood in a small press area and begged for a second chance. Cameras and human mouths answered in a language that was not kind.
Jayden and I sat across from each other, watching the news. He touched my fingers. "You look tired," he said.
"I am," I said. "But settling is a new kind of peace."
He smiled, tiny and private. "Then let's go make honest work."
I had not planned to fall in love, but slow things happen. He was not a man of many warmths, but his small kindnesses—refilling my water, steadying a temper, an unremarked text at midnight—turned into small bolts inside my chest. Once, when he watched me sleep on the couch after a long night at the hospital, he breathed, "You fight like a woman who will not be lied to."
"Do you?" I asked, pulling the blanket closer.
"Yes," he said. "And I would not have it otherwise."
We kept working the edges: I finished the film, my role marked by a rawness that critics could not ignore. The crew whispered that I had a rare field—someone who could walk onto a stage and make the camera look like truth. Jayden's company backed a small production, and the studio gave me enough light to show the world more than the old headlines.
As for Gloria, her punishment had been public. Sponsors left; directors moved on; the fans who had loved her idolized a fiction. In a way, she received the harshest thing she had dished out: the world watched her shrink.
I stood at another rooftop weeks later, where I had almost ended someone else's story. The city below blinked like tired eyes. The sprite floated at my shoulder, cheek squashed with pride.
"You did it," it said.
"I finished a promise," I said. "And I found something for myself."
"Next task?" it asked.
"Keep Joyce safe," I said. "Make sure the story ends right. And let my family be proud."
We watched the skyline. Lights winked like little human hearts. I was not the same Matilda who had come into that body; I was a woman who had learned to use truth as a weapon and mercy as a shield. I had taken the hardest way to clean a life. It left me tired, but awake.
"Whatever you were in some other life," Jayden said later when he walked beside me, "I am glad you are here now."
"I wouldn't have known that without you," I replied, and for once the words matched what we both felt.
We stayed because there were still things to fix. The world had teeth. So did I. But now, when people looked at my name, they did not only see the blood. They saw the hands that wound healing.
The End
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