Villain for Hire

Nine plates, eleven minutes, and you have just been cast

You carry nine covered plates up the east stair, the way you have for years, and walk into a cape two sizes too small. Korin has promised his daughter a proper villain before her tutor arrives at the hour: chalk star on the good rug, four props, eleven minutes, and Jaeger conscripted as henchman, complaining his back is cold. Alicia Arden is on the good settle with her boots on the upholstery and half your sausages already gone, volunteering to play the monster herself and refusing to let you put the tray down. You mean to set breakfast out and go. Instead you are cast. Then somebody tells Jaeger he looks genuinely terrifying, he stops acting, and Alicia stops smiling the way people are supposed to smile. Something breaks that was never in the script. Three people look at you.

You play a household aide who came to drop off breakfast