Zenith of Desire: The Hollywood Incubus

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*****

Inside the air-conditioned double-wide trailer, Marvin’s assistant, Amy, was in a state of organized exhaustion.

She sat behind a folding desk buried under stacks of international legal directories, overflowing ashtrays, and curling reams of thermal fax paper. She was busy tracking down and contracting the obscure authors that Marvin had casually ordered her to acquire the global rights from.

Because the list Marvin had handed her was extensive, and because it was 1998—an archaic era where the internet was still a slow dial-up novelty—the hunt was proving to be a logistical nightmare.

”I swear to God,” Amy muttered, rubbing her temples as she dialed an international country code into her heavy mobile phone. ”How does he even know these people exist?”

Trying to locate the contact information for George R.R. Martin was difficult enough, requiring frustrating calls to confused literary agents in New York. But trying to legally track down a Polish fantasy author named Andrzej Sapkowski behind the former Iron Curtain, using nothing but a fax machine, phone and a translator? Or trying to locate a tabletop RPG creator named Mike Pondsmith to buy an entire cybernetic universe outright? It was bleeding her dry.

The trailer door clicked open. Marvin strolled in, still wearing Cole Sear’s oversized sweater, yet radiating undeniable pull, confidence, and power.

He took one look at his exhausted assistant. The Incubus charm flared to life in his blue eyes. He walked behind her chair and placed his warm hands on her tense shoulders massage slowly.

He let a soothing pulse of magic flow into her muscles.

”Ahm”

Amy let out an involuntary gasp. The tension headache that had blinded her for three hours vanished. An intoxicating warmth flooded her chest. She leaned her head back, her cheeks flushing deep red under his touch.

”You are working too hard, Amy,” Marvin purred, his velvet voice vibrating near her ear. ”The Polish literary agents can wait until after you’ve had lunch. I cannot have my only assistant collapsing on the table.”

”I... I’m fine, Marvin, really,” Amy stammered. She tried to maintain her professional composure while every nerve ending sang under his hands. ”The Warsaw office is just being difficult about the *Witcher* translation rights...”

Before Marvin could soothe his flustered assistant, the trailer door swung open again. Jeff, his sharp-suited agent, strode in looking like a man who had just won the lottery.

”Marvin! Amy!” Jeff beamed, waving a printed sheet of paper like a victory flag. ”Benjamin from Random House just called me.”

Marvin pulled his hands away from Amy’s shoulders, allowing her to remember how to breathe, and turned to his agent. ”And I presume Benjamin is pleased with our royalty math?”

”Pleased? He’s practically weeping with joy,” Jeff laughed, slapping the paper onto the table. ”Your novel *Kung Fu Panda* reclaimed the Number 1 spot on the North American bestseller list, riding the wave of your Oscar wins. Meanwhile, *Ready Player One*, released just three months ago, sits in twenty-sixth place and climbs like a rocket.”

”Twenty-sixth is acceptable for a debut science fiction piece,” Marvin noted calmly, pouring a glass of water.

”According to Benjamin, the daily sales momentum of *Ready Player One* is greater,” Jeff emphasized. ”It is breaking demographic models. Not only do teenagers devour it, but adult tech executives are buying it in bulk. Random House projects the long-term sales figures for *Ready Player One* will exceed those of *Kung Fu Panda*.”

”You are a terrifying genius, Marvin,” Jeff smiled, shaking his head. ”You print money while you sleep.”

”Oh, my God!” An exclamation cut from the open doorway of the trailer.

Marvin, Jeff and Amy turned to see Bruce Willis standing frozen in the threshold. The action star stared at the group with an expression of unadulterated shock, his mouth slightly agape.

As the four people exchanged looks, Bruce raised his large hand, rubbing the back of his neck in embarrassment.

”Listen, guys, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop on your private business,” Bruce apologized, stepping inside. ”But Shyamalan asked me to find you. They’re ready to block the hallway scene.”

”It’s okay, Bruce,” Marvin replied smoothly, unfazed by the breach of privacy. He grabbed his script sides. ”There are no secrets here. Only ledgers.”

On the short walk across the damp lot to meet the director, Bruce let out a long sigh, shaking his head.

”I have to be honest with you, kid,” Bruce said, looking down at the twelve-year-old. ”Before I agreed to participate in this picture, my agent briefed me. He said you were a best-selling author, and that you had written a popular children’s book. But I didn’t expect it to be *that* successful. And not just one book, but two? Hitting the top of the charts while winning Oscars?”

Marvin laughed—a light, melodic sound that put the older man at ease. ”I didn’t expect the bizarre stories trapped in my head to resonate so loudly with the public.”

”Marvin, you’re humble... and that’s rare for someone with your kind of talent,” Bruce said, shaking his head with a quiet laugh. ”Most people your age are still trying to figure themselves out. Meanwhile, you walk into a room like you already know exactly where you’re headed.”

His expression softened slightly, the respect in his eyes genuine.

”I meant what I said before. Kids can be cruel. Fame makes it worse. But somehow you’ve kept your head on straight through all of it.” He extended a hand toward Marvin. ”It’s a pleasure working with you, kid.”

After spending weeks together on the freezing set, Bruce no longer viewed Marvin as a child.

In the cold currency of Hollywood achievements, the twelve-year-old is surpassing him.

Meeting M. Night Shyamalan at the video village monitors, the three chatted briefly about the complicated filming schedule for the climax.

Then, Shyamalan cleared his throat. He shifted his weight uncomfortably and turned his dark eyes to the Wonder Boy.

”Marvin... there is a favor I need to ask you,” Shyamalan began hesitantly. ”If it is at all possible... I hope you can compose the orchestral background music and the score for this movie.”

Marvin’s expression didn’t change, but his blue eyes shot up. His mind connected the political dots in a millisecond. He frowned, tilting his head.

”Harvey found you in your trailer, didn’t he?” Marvin asked, his velvet voice dropping to a whisper. ”Is this cowardly request what the man meant?”

Shyamalan smiled, an awkward, pained expression on his face. ”You guessed it. Well, that makes me feel relieved. This doesn’t count as me betraying his confidence.”

The young director let out a sigh, rubbing his face. ”Let me tell you the truth, Marvin—I do not want to jeopardize our working relationship over studio politics. Harvey said he couldn’t talk to you about the score in person, because he was terrified that if the financial talks collapsed, it would permanently damage your relationship with Miramax. So, he forced me to be the middleman.”

Shyamalan was deadly serious. The director passionately wanted the opportunity to collaborate with Marvin again in the future, and he didn’t want Harvey’s cheapness to burn that bridge.

”How much is Weinstein willing to pay for the score?” Bruce Willis interjected, stepping forward to ask the key question.

The action star crossed his arms, looking protective of the boy. ”You won’t let our genius—a Grammy, Golden Globe, and Oscar-winning composer—write your damn music for free, are you, Night?!”

”Well... Harvey was hoping for...” Shyamalan stammered, looking at his shoes.

Judging by Shyamalan’s pained expression, it was insultingly clear that ”free,” or something close to it, was what the greedy studio boss intended to extract from the boy.

Just as Marvin opened his mouth to deliver a verbal evisceration that would have made Harvey weep, Bruce placed a warm hand on Marvin’s shoulder, stopping him.

”Marvin, don’t say a word. Let Jeff handle this sleazy matter,” Bruce advised, his voice low and protective. ”Ask your shark of an agent to contact Harvey’s office. You don’t want to get your hands dirty in Harvey’s predatory nickel-and-diming. He’s a snake.”

Bruce Willis didn’t know the depths of Marvin’s business abilities. The veteran actor was simply concerned that the kid might be manipulated by Weinstein’s well known bullying tactics. His caution was well-intentioned.

Marvin looked up at the action star, the Incubus softening into genuine appreciation. He smiled a dimpled smile and thanked Bruce sincerely.

The veteran actor was right. The agent should have taken care of this from the start.

Just like Jeff had done with the *Titanic* contract, which dumped $4 million of pure cash directly into Marvin’s accounts. That was still the highest single upfront deal he had made with any studio. Of course, that historic $4 million check was explicitly for a James Cameron blockbuster that possessed an infinite, over-budget reservoir of cash.

Miramax was notoriously cheap, and *The Sixth Sense* was capped at a strict $45 million.

Marvin knew he wouldn’t extract a $4 million upfront check from Harvey Weinstein without drawing blood and guns.

’But,’ he thought darkly, a wicked smirk playing on his lips as he looked toward Harvey’s distant trailer. ’I can ensure the fat man gives me real money.’

—

Exactly how Jeff Raymond and Harvey Weinstein discussed the intricate backend contract points, Marvin didn’t know nor care.

In the end, Harvey was miraculously willing to cough up a staggering **$700,000** upfront in liquid cash for the entire orchestral score and background music Marvin has to compose for *The Sixth Sense*.

This was an astronomical amount of money for a single composer. In the late 1990s, the world-famous film scoring master Hans Zimmer—who possessed multiple Oscars and a massive European studio infrastructure—typically charged between $700,000 and a maximum of $1 million to score a blockbuster movie, depending on the workload and studio modifications.

For Harvey, notoriously the cheapest executive in Hollywood, to willingly hand that elite ceiling figure to a twelve-year-old boy was an unprecedented surrender.

But Marvin understood Harvey’s hidden intentions.

It was a calculated marketing gimmick.

This shrewd businessman wouldn’t suffer a net financial loss on this deal. He was banking on Marvin’s musical momentum.

Marvin was already a multi-award winner for his music, and currently vastly more famous for his pop songs and bestselling books than for his acting or script writing. Harvey knew this public perception would change the second this haunting ghost movie hit theaters.

Today, physical CD sales of Marvin’s *Marvin 1* trance album were booming in international markets. The single sales for the *Titanic* anthem *’My Heart Will Go On’* had recently shattered 3.7 million units in the US alone. His complex compositional ability had been recognized by the Grammy elite and the vicious Oscar critics.

So, heavily promoting Marvin’s first solo soundtrack for a horror film served as another multi-million-dollar marketing selling point for Miramax.

The sweating executive had even hinted in a late-night phone call to Jeff that Marvin could even hire a ghostwriter or a hungry Juilliard composer to do the heavy lifting if he couldn’t come up with anything as sweeping as the Celtic magic he did for *Titanic*. Harvey sleazily offered that as long as the ghostwriter signed an ironclad NDA, and allowed Marvin’s name to be slapped on the final poster, Miramax would look the other way.

Marvin immediately rejected that idea.

Just like he had once softly told Jessica in the dark of his room.

*”Everything in the past eventually leaves traces.”*

He was a demon building an empire. He would not leave hidden dangers lying around like landmines for his future.

Besides, it was just a psychological thriller soundtrack. He possessed too much material locked in his mind to ever need a ghostwriter or anything.

Not to mention the original movie soundtracks stored in his encyclopedic memory bank from his previous life; he could effortlessly find too many terrifying melodies among the music he had heard long ago as the Demon in the World of Gods and Demons.

For example, some of the dissonant tribal songs from the ancient Night Stalkers—a nocturnal species he commanded in a previous millennium—could send freezing chills down a mortal’s spine. Those jagged audio frequencies possessed the magic to make human beings feel physically frightened, triggering their primitive fight-or-flight response just by hearing the opening chords.

Coupled seamlessly with the suffocating, grey visual scenes of Shyamalan’s movie, Marvin guaranteed those music frequencies would keep the theater audience on edge, digging their fingernails into the armrests.

He came from a brutal, billions-of-years-old world full of impossible magical creatures. Coming up with music and stories was the easiest thing in the universe for him. After all, this world’s stories were nothing but a watered-down reflection of human imagination or the reflection of the past.

Imagine a race possessing minds that had witnessed massive civilizations rise and burn for billions upon billions of years. A mind full of dead gods, towering monsters, and bloodthirsty devils. How much material could he pull from that endless abyss? The global audience had no idea what was coming for them; as long as he continued to live joyfully, they would never experience boredom.

*****

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