[Still camera] On a quiet Midwestern forest road, old and gently falling back to nature in early autumn near dusk, a lone figure walks up from the distance wearing a form-fitting all-black black leotard (with a hood) that covers him crown to ankles, almost dragging his feet, kicking rocks. As he comes closer we see that he is a late-twenties, white male with the beginnings of a soft middle from a soft life and he's balancing a white, coaster-size backgammon piece on his head.
[3/4 aerial shot, half stage right, near]Long minutes pass as he mopes closer, the details sharpen until we can see the expression on his soft-edged face (no beard/moustache) is one of troubled introspection and near-surrender. The only sounds are his steps crunching on the newly yellowed leaves and pea-stone in the road/path and calls of the local animals that have unlearned a fear of humans, ignoring even him. His footfalls are diminutive and lend to the air of an emotionally ineffective, oddly-developed misfit.
[original camera angle] A low rumble on the horizon quickly gives way to the choking growl of a mid-80's Chrysler stationwagon tearing down the road toward him. We watch the boy in black turn to look, take a few steps off the road and stop to wait for the car to get there. It slows from its breakneck speed through the forest only as it reaches him, but still slams emphatically to a halt with the man-child just ahead of the passenger-side mirror. A tall, skinny man leaps out of the car, visibly irate gesturing with a striped leather briefcase and accusing/admonishing the other in rapid-fire, patronizing Dr. Spock phrases.
[eye-level, mid-range shot]Physical similarities (thinning red-blond hair, scraggly to no facial hair, deep-set eyes, etc.) show their relation to each other, but the older one's words do not. He is asking obvious, leading questions of the other, but having no luck catching him in a lie as he remains utterly silent and almost removed during the ambush.
[3/4 aerial, between the two] Finally, the older one gets to the point, and lays the briefcase on the hood of the car, stating that they were having a grand old time and everything was going along nicely until Dr. so-and-so mentioned that his game was incomplete. This, for some reason, is of the utmost importance to the man with the briefcase. He is personally slighted at this social injustice, and though unfazed at the fact that his son is walking down a deserted road in the woods in a black leotard and sneakers, he cannot believe that this boy of his would think, for whatever arcane reason, to abscond with a single game piece and wear it on his head this evening. The only conclusion is, of course, the sabotage of the social gathering and to make a fool of his father, thinks the man. He grabs the game piece from his son's head, throws it violently into the case, slams it shut on the hood and steps back to take it around to the trunk of the car.
[3/4 aerial, chase cam on the man] Coming to his point with a full head of steam, the father stands there with the back hatch open, and the briefcase now nestled in the ubiquitous gathering of station wagon detritus. Prestidigitating a bottle of whiskey and a glass of ice out of the pack-rat pile somewhere, he launches into an angry diatribe of how his work is so hard, so unrewarding and so complete shit. Making the usual allusions to his life and the world in general being a close second to said level of suckage, he finally accuses his son of being out of touch with reality and childishly selfish in this apparent attempt to garner his father's attention.
[mid-range, left horizontal on father, road horizon/sunset in background] Tossing back the rest of his drink, a slur develops and he sprouts nonsensical bravado in the form of talking himself up as a man's man and so-o-o much more experienced in the mysterious ways of the world. "Are YOU a man, then? Can you hang with the big dogs? Do you know what it feels like? A nice bellyful of nickel and the mind of a firing pin?", etc., as he sways almost imperceptibly. Realization dawns in the son's eyes, and a quick smirk of condescension and pity flares up, before the reverse-paternal compassion kicks in, and he helps his dad to give him a manly father-son hug. The physical contact cracks his exterior, and the father breaks down, but tries to hold in and mask the blubbering.
[closer]The few intelligible words that escape mention the boy's mother being sick, and that his dad is at his wit's end to help her, much less explain the illness. He then devolves into a coughing fit that wracks and hunches him over, leaving a bloody mass of mucous on his arm bent to catch the cough. Shocked and newly concerned, the boy helps him to the car , gets into the driver's seat and drives his father off toward home and the bed-ridden (?) mother, all the while his dad laments his impotence in both his marriage and his occupation.
[scene]***Now there was some thing I can't quite recall about the coughing being related to a tickle in his throat that felt like it grew into a crawling when he slept, but he waved off his family's concern saying, "Its just some seasonal bug. My system'll kick it out just fine." Shortly thereafter, he hacked so hard over the bathroom sink that he nearly gave himself a headache, and he could've sworn that he heard a clinking in the basin, but when he looked all he saw was white porcelain and the black hole of the open drain, so he blamed it on minor delirium, instead. A few days later, his wife (the boy's mother) fell to similar symptoms, though hers were more pronounced and quicker to develop.
Fast forward to the above scene, and the two men return home to a ranch-style with the curtains drawn and dust hanging in the rare shaft of light piercing the gloom. The house is in shambles with both stray food containers and an army of empty medicine wrappers and bottles stranded around the rooms. The father, still hacking, escorts his son (hood down now) through the house and a periodic arrhythmic thumping thrumming can be heard growing slightly as they walk closer. It is obviously coming from the bathroom ahead of them now, and the master bedroom outlying is the worst of all the rooms. Completely covered in trash and a thin spider-webby coating, like ancient paper pulp had been cast across it. The door to the bathroom is ajar, and the boy steps to open it as the father shrinks from view, hanging his head.
Pushing it open with his left hand and stepping forward, he hears nothing at all. The complete lack of sound sets the level of shock for when he reaches forward to pull the curtain aside, but as the curtain hooks click their metallic, insectoid march across the white rod, the thrumming erupts from behind it so thunderous that it vibrates him like a double boot to his ribcage. He drops to his knees, holding his ears while his face stretches inhumanly in his silent screaming. The enormous, flitting shapes that hover above him swim violently with the throbbing of his brain, but coalesce into a vague face-shape after a moment of concentration, and he knows a horror in the deepest parts of him. The bottomless black opalescent eyes above him push forth from the head of an abominably huge moth that skitters in the upper corner of his mother's shower and he can see himself in the reflection of her facets.
He screams up from the very roots of his consciousness.
(I think I got it all.)
g a resume, and job hunting and predicting, almost certainly that I will get an awesome job soon (back in the states… back home?)… even though I take steps towards reality I am really just treating it all as a board game that I am playing with myself and my vaulted teak wood ceilings.
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