When Jess Robinson walked onto the Britain’s Got Talent stage, she felt the familiar flutter in her chest — a mixture of fear and thrill, like standing on the edge of something vast and alive.
The lights were blinding, the audience a blur of faces. The first week of the season always carried a special electricity, a sense that anything could happen.
And for Jess, it would.
She took her place center stage, clutching the microphone like an anchor. Behind her, the BGT logo shimmered in gold, and the four judges — Simon, Amanda, Alesha, and David — waited, expectant.
“Tell us about yourself,” Simon said, his tone polite but perfunctory.
Jess smiled nervously. “I’m Jess Robinson, thirty-two, and I do… voices.”
“Voices?” Amanda repeated, intrigued.
Jess’s lips curled into a grin. “Lots of them.”
A ripple of laughter moved through the audience. But as Jess closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, something inside her shifted — a pulse, like static behind her ears.
Then she began to sing.
At first, it was Adele.
Rich, smoky, flawless. The judges smiled, nodding.
Then, without a pause, she became Lady Gaga.
The crowd gasped.
A second later, she turned into Amy Winehouse — voice dripping with gravel and ache — then Whitney, then Ariana, then Freddie Mercury himself.
Each transition was seamless. Too seamless.
Simon leaned forward. “That’s impossible,” he muttered.
Amanda’s hand went to her mouth. “She’s… she’s not just mimicking them. It sounds like them. Exactly.”
By the time Jess finished, the audience was on its feet, the roar deafening. She curtsied, trembling slightly, a small line of blood trickling from her nose.
No one noticed.
Backstage, after the cameras cut and the applause faded, Jess sat alone in the dressing room. Her reflection stared back from the mirror — eyes wide, almost fever-bright.
She pressed a tissue to her nose and watched crimson bloom against white.
“Too long,” she whispered. “Held it too long.”
The door creaked open. A stagehand poked his head in. “Ms. Robinson? Simon would like to see you. Privately.”
Jess’s pulse spiked.
Simon was waiting in one of the smaller production rooms, the hum of electronics filling the air. He looked different now — not the polished TV persona, but something sharper, colder.
“Jess,” he said, gesturing for her to sit. “That was… extraordinary.”
“Thank you,” she said, wary.
“I’ve seen hundreds of impressionists,” he continued, “but never anyone who became the voice. Tell me — how do you do it?”
She hesitated. “Practice.”
He smiled thinly. “No. There’s more. I could feel it.”
Jess shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Simon leaned forward. “Let’s not pretend. You weren’t just imitating. You were channeling.”
Her throat tightened.
He knew.
It had started years ago.
When Jess was sixteen, her grandmother — a faded cabaret singer from the 1950s — had died, leaving her a strange inheritance: an antique silver microphone, engraved with swirling symbols.
Jess had thought it a novelty, until the night she’d plugged it in.
The moment she sang, voices flooded her head — familiar, unknown, ancient, modern — overlapping like a choir of ghosts.
And when she sang again, one of them came through her.
Perfectly.
The first was Judy Garland. The next, Aretha Franklin.
She learned quickly that the microphone didn’t create the voices. It borrowed them. Each performance came with a cost — a small one at first. A dizzy spell, a nosebleed, a flicker of something dark in her reflection.
But the fame grew. The crowds wanted more. And the voices were always there, whispering for release.
Now, Simon’s gaze bore into her. “That microphone,” he said quietly. “You still have it, don’t you?”
Jess’s breath caught. “How—?”
He smiled. “Because I’ve seen it before.”
She stared.
“My father was a producer in the sixties,” Simon continued. “There was a woman — Lena Vox. Incredible performer. Used that same microphone. Every time she sang, the audience swore they could hear the spirits of old legends in her voice. She vanished mid-tour in 1968. The mic was never found.”
Jess’s stomach dropped.
“She was your grandmother,” he said softly.
Jess’s hand trembled. “What do you want?”
“To help you,” Simon said. “That thing is feeding on you. I can make it stop. But you’ll have to give it up.”
Jess looked at him — really looked — and noticed something strange.
In his reflection on the glass door, his mouth didn’t move.
She stood abruptly. “You’re not him.”
The figure smiled — wider now, inhumanly so.
“No,” it said. “But he was easy to borrow.”
Her grandmother’s voice drifted from the shadows behind it — warm, lilting. “Oh, Jessie, my darling girl. You shouldn’t have sung so long. You woke it up again.”
Jess’s skin went cold. “Grandma?”
The light flickered. For a split second, she saw her grandmother’s face — drained, hollow-eyed — hovering behind the figure wearing Simon’s shape.
The entity stepped closer, its tone both mocking and fond. “Do you know where the voices come from, Jess? They’re not yours. They never were. Each time you sing, you let one in. They wear you, just for a while. But eventually, they stay.”
It extended a hand — Simon’s hand, now gray and smoke-veined.
“Give me the mic, and I’ll let you go.”
Jess stumbled back. “No.”
The shadows swarmed around her. The mirror behind her cracked. The silver microphone, resting on the table, began to hum — faintly at first, then louder, vibrating with unseen energy.
The voices rose — hundreds, thousands, overlapping in a haunting chorus.
Don’t give it to him.
Finish the song.
Jess grabbed the mic. “You want voices?” she shouted. “Take mine!”
She sang.
The sound that filled the room wasn’t music — it was a storm. A collision of every voice she’d ever carried: Garland, Winehouse, Whitney, Mercury, Adele, and countless others. The entity screamed as the air shimmered, fracturing like glass.
Then, silence.
When the crew found her minutes later, she was alone — unconscious but alive. The silver microphone lay shattered beside her, smoke curling from its seams.
In the following week, Jess became a global sensation — the BGT clip went viral, dubbed “The Girl Who Sang a Thousand Voices.”
But she never sang again.
Reporters noted that her speaking voice seemed different now — impossible to place, layered, shifting from one tone to another as if multiple people spoke at once.
And sometimes, when cameras caught her off guard, you could almost see it — a faint reflection in her eyes.
Someone else, smiling back.