Flashes by William Fulks

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SUMMARY: In the near future, death row inmates are used as movie stuntmen and the actors become executioners. When one star's fame begins to fade, he tries carrying his act over to the real world.

At some point during the middle of the 21st century, the blurred line between entertainment and politics was finally dissolved. As more celebrities ran for political office, voters found themselves supporting their favorite movie characters rather than the real person. Comedians became mayors. Action stars became governors. Veterans of the entertainment industry, those people who had earned the coveted ‘household name' status, were finding seats in Congress. The current President's only political experience is that he played the President in two different movies. It is all about looking good on camera, and it takes a great actor to say anything with a smile.

With less experienced people in higher positions, one might think that the nation would suffer, but this was not the case. The systems, which had been put into place decades ago, were still in motion. The economy still went up and down. Crime, according to the national average, was stable. The prisons were still overflowing.

The President had an idea that would forever change the prison and motion picture industry. To deal with the rising costs of maintaining maximum security prisons to house death row inmates, it was suggested that prisoners be used as movie stuntmen. Of course, it would be the inmate's choice to die on camera. The law passed through Congress with little resistance, and soon thereafter the prisons were flooded with movie scripts.

Some states allow prisoners to choose the way they shall be put to death. Often times, their only choices would be a firing squad or lethal injection. With the new law in place, their choices were multiplied. Now, a convicted killer could choose to be blown up, run over, shot, smashed, crushed, or even set on fire. Only the really famous ones got the choice roles, such as getting to crash a Ferrari into a wall or jumping a motorcycle off the top of a building.

The execution stunts were designed to be as dangerous as possible, so that there would be no chance of survival for the inmates, and to ensure that death would be practically instantaneous. It has been years since a movie critic used the term ‘death-defying' to describe any stunt work in films.

Once the system was fully in place, audiences immediately took to the new realism in movies. No one seemed to mind that they were seeing real people die on screen, since they had seen it so many times on the news. The only difference is that instead of the grainy video on television, they could watch people die on digitally color-corrected film, in 6.1 channel THX-certified digital surround sound.

The first time an execution stunt took place was in American Freedom Force, an action movie about an elite paramilitary group who fought Islamic extremists on American soil. In the opening scene, a terrorist walks into a restaurant with 10 sticks of dynamite tied to his chest and blows up the entire building. To accomplish this, the director used a body double to show the terrorist from behind as he walked into the restaurant full of customers.