ShortList (1/6)

An excessively long list of ideas I had for short films, during a period where the ‘short’ medium had a lot of my attention. (Bold indicates that I have already written its script, and did so sometime between 2015 and 2016.)

·         A traveler stops two people and tries to convince them to buy an ordinary-looking box from him, and eventually they do; after they open it, it sucks in their souls, and he takes the box back and keeps walking.

·         A person is ranking friends Class A-through-G; if they outperform, they get upgraded. If they do badly, they are downgraded. Originally they look at it as a joke, but slowly take it very seriously; people avoid being downgraded because they see it happen in front of them (on a magnet board); they try to suck up and put others down.

·         Minecraft Dubstep; set up blocks in rows so that people moving at a steady pace while destroying long lines of blocks make beats with the noise of the destruction (ex: sand sand sand gravel sand sand sand sandstone); lines for beats, bass, harmony, and snippets, and also inserts of creeper explosions and cow moos and bows pulled and released. Two songs called MineStep and DubCraft respectively, and the first one transitions from minecraft noises into a dubstep song, and the other goes in the opposite direction, using the same beats and rhythms, so the two songs begin and end like they're mirror reflections of each other.

·         Someone sits on a toilet in a public restroom stall, and it's eerily quiet, so they're increasingly nervous. they hear the bathroom door open, so they lean and peer through the crack and see a bloody masked figure leaning over a sink and staring forward; the masked face turns slightly to look at the stall they're in, and the person slinks quickly, scared, out of view. They slowly lift their legs off of the ground and push them against the door. pulse-pounding silence... then the masked figure's body is seen passing by the door through the crack, and the person holds their breath with fear; the person can hear the figure enter the stall next to them by pushing the door, and then can be heard moving the toilet seat. The person looks up and down, unsure of whether the figure will peer over or under the wall; the person then peers under the wall to see if the figure's feet are visible, believing them seated on the porcelain: there's nothing visible; person bolts upright, frightened, breathing heavily. the person hears a sink turned on and running, so they lean forward and peer at the sink the figure was at earlier, and while the sink IS on, the figure is NOT there; and then the masked face slides into view in the crack, looking at the person; the person instinctively puts their foot up blocking the crack as they shriek; they quickly remove their foot and there's nothing there. The sink turns off. The toilet next to him flushes. The bathroom door creaks open and shut. The person sits, scared, and slowly lowers their feet to the floor, listening for anyone. They slowly stand up and raise their pants and start buckling them up: a hand shoots under the stall wall and grabs the person's leg. End. – OR They stand up and buckle their pants slowly and quietly, and peer through the door crack again, seeing nothing. they turn back and silently contemplate flushing the toilet, then decide against it; they turn back and look through the crack, and see the reflection of the figure in the mirror, looking at them, so they recoil back and slowly step up onto the toilet, crouching. The person crouches, frightened; the figure moves in front of the crack of the door: the door jiggles as the figure pushes on it lightly; the lights go out; the person breathes heavily, scared, and then holds their breath. The sound of the bathroom stall door opening can be heard.

·         A man walks into a room with people in it and claims to have a bomb strapped to him under his jacket; he asks the people to give him one good reason not to do it. They throw around ideas until a guy starts spitting out a bunch of possible ideas, so the man changes the rules: each person only gets one opportunity to change his mind. Do they succeed?

·         Twilight Zone-esque narration introduces our protagonist couple as they drive in the rain and can't see shit. They talk about the low visibility and that they don't know where they are, but they believe it's the right way. They contemplate the goodness and evilness of each other, passing blame. Suddenly it clears up and they pull over and go to their trunk (empty road); they open the trunk and pull out a dead motorcyclist; they pass the blame to each other for having their eyes off the road or being distracting, and of the low visibility, blaming each other for the death of the motorcyclist; but nobody saw it, so... Here they are, ditching the body. They get back in the car and continue driving, and the storm picks back up, and the visibility is low, and they keep arguing; they get distracted and don't notice the turning road, and they crash into a tree. The storm goes away. Narration closes them out on the morality of "just because you weren't caught doesn't mean it won't catch up with you."

·         A man is walking when a van screeches to a halt next to him, a man gets out and frantically shoves a duffel bag in his hands and tells him to take it, then he gets back in and drives away. The man looks into the bag and sees that it is a LOT of money. Did the guy rob a bank and ditch the evidence, or is it blood money, or stolen from the mob, or cursed? He begins spending, and then believes himself to be being pursued by suited men, and he gets paranoid; he begins to start fleeing but refrains to ditch the money, instead using it to fund constant escapes. Eventually he thinks he's about to get caught, so he shoves the duffel bag into the arms of a stranger and runs off, leaving that new man to the same fate.

·         A person raves to friends and family about how aliens exist and how he was abducted once and how the aliens built our society, and they ignore him and write him off and contradict him. One day, he's missing. The next day, he shows up and acts completely differently (personality-wise), and doesn't rave about aliens; the others think it's weird and ask him about it, but he says that nothing is wrong. The friend that pays the most attention to him is missing the next day, and acting strange the day after that. Two others go missing the next day and act strange after that; the last person suddenly feels like they're surrounded and trapped by aliens, and finally believes aliens are real.

·         A bunch of friends sit around in what seems like the near future, and they contemplate whether the government was right to do what they did; what did they do? They sent people back in time to jump-start the human population and see the effects. A debate ensues: was that morally right to interfere with the progression of time? Does that alter our timeline or create a new one? Does that make us the aliens we thought came to Earth way back in Egypt and Mexico? Was the Roswell alien a human time traveler? Are we the product of ourselves or merely influenced by us back then? Are we our monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey? What if we were to go back in time to closer times and meddle then; would we change us now? Have we tried before but couldn't be discrete or believable enough land successfully? If we're our aliens, is there other life in the universe? Could there be?

·         Robots can't reproduce; that's impossible. But, in year 2176, what if a sentient robot could assemble other sentient robots from non-sentient electronics that lie about the house? Does the robot uprising occur because of a sneaky, capable robot, slowly building an army that seems helpful but is actually evil? Are machines tired of slavery or do they see humans as another one of their problems that needs fixing? Perhaps the Mars Rover found a monolith on Mars and came back having been advanced and made sentient.

·         Two kids use tap code or morse code with each other using pens on desks while taking tests in class, cheating off of each other; they planned it out and are really good, but what they didn't count on was that their teacher fought in Vietnam and was a POW, and he knows tap code/morse code.

·         A man in 1914 getting baptized in a river surfaces and is in 2014. He is shocked by what's different, and he roams around, confused, until unable to comprehend the tiny gadgets and touchscreens and quick pace: he runs back to the river and begins dunking himself and splashing water on his face, pleading to be taken back; he screams as the camera pulls back: the end.

·         In an alternate timeline, animals are mostly extinct, so a squirrel in the park is a big deal, and everyone flocks to see it. The cause? Edison discredited Tesla so hard that to power the country with DC power, more fuels were harvested and burned, ruining the environment.

·         A mirror that ages you slightly every time you see your reflection afterwards, in anything. But seeing yourself in the mirror again resets the age countdown; so you have to keep returning to the [large, immovable] mirror, because fifty reflections will age you into dust. So you are forced to stay in range of the mirror at all times. ...this happens to a woman, and she gets stuck in traffic on her way back to the mirror, and sees her reflection in enough windows, mirrors, and glossy paint jobs that she turns to dust in her car in the middle of the road. (She had tried going around blindfolded once, but it proved too difficult to maneuver.)

·         A dollhouse turns its users/admirers into dolls over a period of time, which populate the small, wooden home. Those who peer in do find it odd that all of the dolls are from different time periods and races...

·         A couple (engaged to be married) check into a dingy motel and close the door, which fits snugly into its frame; the radiator turns on, but they don't detect the ether gas seeping from a pipe disguised to be a part of the radiator that also juts from the wall; they fall unconscious. They wake up in the same room, tied to the bed; they're trapped in silence and solidarity: alone. they squirm but can't free themselves; they blame each other for choosing the vacation and choosing the motel, and their fear and anger simmers the longer they wait, and they begin to release other pains and problems, hating on each other's personality flaws, revealing instances of cheating and lying. They decide they aren't right for each other and should cancel the trip, if they manage to escape (trip for her to meet his extended family). The gas comes back on and they fall unconscious; they awake in their car in the parking lot of the motel: they are as if they never checked into the motel, still happy and without having revealed anything: little do they know they aren't perfect for each other; they leave for their trip.

·         A man pulls his car over on a dirt road and finds a sideshow barker on the side of the street with a flat tire on his car and a box on a trailer bed called "the Infinity Chamber." the sideshow barker asks if he wants to step inside: the guy asks what it does and the barker says it's indescribable; the fee? A quarter. The man breaks a $1.00 and gets 3 quarters back. the man enters the Infinity Chamber: he exits from his car and approaches the barker, and they redo the spiel except the man asks if they've met before because it seems familiar to him; the barker says no; the barker says the fee is a quarter, which the man has three of; he gives up one and enters the Infinity Chamber... (...the man exits his car, goes through the spiel with the barker, feels unnerved about the déjà vu, but pays a quarter; he has one quarter left and enters the Infinity Chamber. the man exits his car goes through the spiel with the barker, feels very unnerved about the déjà vu, and offers up his final quarter, saying it was lucky that he had one quarter left: the barker slimily agrees and the man enters the Infinity Chamber. ...a different man pulls up in his car on the side of the dirt road to help out the barker, and the man inquires about the box in the truck bed: the barker gives the spiel and says that it costs only a quarter: the new man says he has $3.00; the barker gives the camera  slimy smile, and makes change with the new man...)

·         Setting: an American-looking farm in 1943. a girl sees a biplane fly over her house and she's excited so she tells her parents who freak out about it, because it's something they fear. the parents rush her down into the basement and the father (who has a bum knee) goes outside to spy it with his own eyes; the mother questions the daughter about what exactly she saw, and the daughter describes a red biplane flying low; the father comes back downstairs, forlorn, and confirms it. he sits down and talks to his wife quietly while the daughter plays in the corner: they talk about how they expected this day to come, and that the military presence of a hostile nation are nearby and are sweeping through their area to absorb their land: to the nation, it's a continuous of conquest, but to individual family, it's the taking of their lives, lifestyles, or livelihoods (think of how the Nazis swept through Ukraine to absorb its land). the father gets up and says that he has to go defend the house as well as he can (with his rifle), and the mom stops him saying that he will surely die, and the army will terrorize and kill the two females: she counteroffers that they remain hidden. ...time passes and they awake hearing noises in their house above them, in muffled German. the basement door opens and someone hollers down (in German) to ask if anyone is down there; the family stays quiet, and the person closes the door; eventually the people leave, and the father says that they're stuck down there until someone fights back and reclaims the land. The mom remarks that their leader will figure something out, because he strengthened the area to begin with, and the yankees will fall under the armored boot of the Führer: they reveal a Nazi flag that they salute, and the military upstairs was the Americans. (Analysis: this flips the view of WWII and shows us the Nazi family in Germany being overtaken by the Americans as they come in to vanquish Hitler's armies, but as if the Nazi family were a relatable American family and the Americans were evil like Nazis.)

·         A man walking in the forest at night see eyes in the forest as they are reflected by his flashlight. He freezes in place and realizes that he has a coyote trapped in his sight, and it won't move unless the light is moved from him; but could the coyote be with others, and it is serving as a distraction? The man slowly backs up and turns to run: he runs through the forest and slows to a stop some while later; he figures he's in the clear so he raises the flashlight and looks around, and he sees the eyes again, so he instinctively bolts again. he slows again, more exhausted, and refuses to lift the light: but then he realizes that if he doesn't, the coyote will come at him: so he lifts it, and catches the eyes in the light, and he freezes, exasperated, and leans against a tree and slides down, tired, still aiming the light; he tries something: ...he calls the eyes over to him; the eyes bounce towards him and it comes into a view: it's a dog -- a friendly one -- that licks him, and the man sighs in relief.

·         A monolith/statuette that two hikers stumble upon and contemplate: it's of no recognizable single culture, but seems to have some traces of multiples origins and possibilities; we don't see what they're looking at until they shrug and decide to walk away: then we see the object, which is a Christian cross with Jesus on it, nailed into a tree. (Twist: it's the future and that religion has faded long into the obscurity of history.)

·         A man walks along the beach at night and he comes across a sign that says he's in a minefield. He freezes and crouches. the man looks around and worries how he got so far without stepping on a mine, and that if he's in a minefield, then the probability of him stepping on a mine increases the more he remains unscathed, so he's run out of luck enough that any further movement could mean he gets got, but moving backwards isn't necessarily a safe bet because he made it through once but he could've been stepping around or near mines the whole time, which means he got through on luck. he is fearing his luck has run out, giving into paranoia, and trusting the sign is not deceiving him (because the risks of disbelieving the sign (death) could outweigh the risks of believing it (unnecessary stress)). The man decides that the possibility of waiting and being found is as slim as being blown up, so he decides to continue on and increase his risks of blowing up and of being found. He walks enough, unscathed, that he figures the sign must be an antique or a fake, because nothing has happened; the second his disbelief is confirmed by him, he steps on a mine. (Moral: belief is a protector and disbelief is a killer.)

·         A woman is trapped in a mirror maze, and if it isn't her reflection that she's seeing, it's the reflection of her dead mother, who is berating her and blaming her for her death, saying she never took care of her or visited her or loved her (selfish mom, daughter who loves her mom unconditionally and feels guilty); eventually the daughter snaps out of it and stops letting her mom blame her, and she frantically walks through the maze, throwing the anger back at her mom and not accepting the guilt, and she finally stands up to her mom after a life of being abused and blamed and berated; the woman stumbles out of the mirror maze and is in an amusement park. A little kid asks her if it's scary in there, and the woman tells him to go on the merry-go-round instead. (Moral: don’t live under the thumb of someone who throws all of their blame at you.)

·         A man has short flashes of flashbacks to a car accident that he knows he wasn't in but feels convinced by these flashbacks that he was; he believes he must've been in the car accident because it's his point of view and it's visceral. turns out he was seeing the future: he is driving, frazzled, thinking about it, when suddenly he sees a street sign he saw himself pass in the flashback, and it unnerves him, and he spaces out with fear, but snaps back to view the road as headlights and a car horn blare in front of him: he saw his future car accident that killed him.

·         A guy and girl go on a blind date. The guy is chauvinistic and controlling while the girl is meek but excited to be there. They meet up in a restaurant and the guy orders the girl a water for her to drink (she doesn't order for herself); the girl brushes it off and they continue conversation: the guy humble-brags and the girl doesn't get a chance to speak. the waitress comes back to order their meals and he orders himself a steak and a salad for her: she says instead that she wants Tortellini al Forno; waitress leaves and the girl turns to the guy and gets real serious: she says that he's quite pushy and a general asshole, and she came out tonight on the behest of her friends, and she just wants to have a nice time, so he better shape up or else; he asks "or else what?" the whole dining room goes silent and nobody is moving (a spoon half-raised to the mouth holds dripping soup). The guy is startled by the pausing of time, and the girl says that she can do better if he'd like to see, like perhaps the whole room turns against him, or she turns him inside out; he sheepishly declines and agrees to be nicer. the room returns to normal, loud and moving; she is nice again and he sits in silence; she hints for him to ask her how her day was, but he's zoning out in fear: she hints again, angrier, and when she doesn't get a reply, the noise of the room starts to go silent again, and some faces turn to him: he snaps back and asks her how her day was. She starts describing a standard day with exaggerated drama, and he sits silently; food arrives, and she eats but he's too nervous to eat; she hints for him to eat, and he says he's not hungry, but then the room starts to get quieter so he hurriedly begins to eat. they are walking through a park after the dinner and they are holding hands: she is giddy and girlish but he is stone-faced terrified. she says she had a wonderful time, and he struggles to say the same; she says he should call her sometime: he struggles to say he will and begins to lean towards otherwise; she quiets the city's noise and turns to him stern: she says that she knows his type and how they think they're top shit, but they're the least worthy of praise than anyone else, and she's the best he'll get because she's the only one who knows how to keep him in line, so he'll call her again, and they'll keep going on dates for a year before she moves in with him, and they'll live together for two years until he proposes, and they'll be engaged for five years until they find a nice place to settle down, and then they'll get married and they'll dance together at their wedding; they'll later have two kids and they'll grow old together, and if he wants his parents to still remember his name, then he better do as she says, and she holds her fingers like they're ready to snap together: he hastily agrees to do whatever she says, and the city's noise comes back and she's giddy again and he's saddened and fearful, and they walk off holding hands. (Summary: a lifelong asshole gets a redirection for a life of obedience: karma)

·         A “nobody” (think Lee Harvey Oswald) wants fame and recognition, so he plans to kill the president; throughout his planning, he is extremely nervous and paranoid of situations that are general and basic: his overt-paranoia eventually leads him to call the police and confess, because he assumed they were onto him (they weren't; they have no idea who he is).

·         After scrolling through the stations, a family in a living room get reports from the radio that bombs have fallen nearby and an invasion is expected. The family hunkers down and fortifies their house, listening in detail to the reports. They are prepared to be hostile to the neighbor who's knocking on the door; it's revealed to the audience that the reports are from two college students fooling around with a ham radio.

·         A man drives into a town of people who wear animal masks, and, curious, he stops; he can't figure out why they wear the masks just by peering and observing, so he asks one, and they say that they always have so they always will: then they offer him directions to the mask store, and he declines, but they insist, and he declines, so they get upset; he turns and walks away, but the animals begin to turn to him with disgust and anger, and they follow him like a gang stalks a soon-to-be-victim; he gets to his car and fumbles with the keys, and they take the opportunity to grab him: the lynch him. (a parallel of people shoving their religion down the throats of others, and getting upset when they say that they have their own way of life as is.)

·         Someone dunks their head underwater and comes back up and is partially deaf.

·         A man telling a story reminisces and delves into a flashback; the man, in the flashback, reminisces and delves into another flashback; the man in that second flashback delves, eventually, into another flashback; in this third flashback, the man delves into a flashback whose story loops him back to the first part, where the man is seen reminiscing. [it's a loop]

·         12 jurors deliberate in the jury room for the final decision, but are split 9-3 on whether or not a black teen killed a white gay man in an alley: it's in the South, so the majority of the jurors are bigots, and they need to be persuaded to think the black teen is innocent (because the evidence clearly shows he is).

·         A murder mystery in a small town, where seven people are accused, one of which is an obvious choice, but it's a job too complex to have been done by just him; a rude man was killed, and his sobbing wife is seeking the killer with a cop's assistance: all assumed killers are gathered in the city hall with the wife and cop. The Man was a drunken slob who abused his wife and stole for a living, and he is now deceased. The Wife is the prettiest girl in town, and not a smart person. The Cop is skeptical and snarky. The Banker is smug and distrustful, and he heard rumors of the man plotting to rob his bank. The Grocer is meek and squirrelly, and loved the wife himself and thought the man was bad for her. The Fisherman is gruff and steadfast, and is the wife's very protective brother who always disliked the man. The Schoolmarm is prudish and arrogant, and had been hit on by the man repeatedly and she thought it was gross and obscene, and any rumors of her and the man being flirtatious would ruin her reputation and maybe even her marriage with the doctor. The Doctor is proper and rude, and hated the man for his drunken slovenliness and antics, especially towards his spouse, the schoolmarm. The Barmaid is righteous and honest, and is the wife's cousin who greatly disapproved of the man's flirtatiousness and abusiveness. The Butcher is tough but gentle, and he openly loved the wife, and everyone thought he'd be a better fit for her.

Six of them thought the Fisherman did it (because he works at the assumed kill site, since the fish barrel was his and the man was killed at the docks); he thought the Doctor did it, since the Doctor's tie was found on his body. The evidence points to everyone, though... Turns out it was the Barmaid, but she got the help of everyone else without their knowledge; they were accomplices without knowing it: the Barmaid wanted the man dead for ruining the wife's life, because she doesn't deserve that treatment. She got the knife from the Butcher, hid the body in a barrel of fish procured by the Fisherman, transported it to the town in the Grocer's wagon, dumped behind the Schoolmarm's schoolhouse, the man's mouth had been gagged with the Doctor's tie (the Barmaid was secretly sleeping with the Doctor, and had his tie on her person), and the Banker was the first on the scene (he was sent a letter (by the Barmaid) saying to meet the Schoolmarm at the schoolhouse (because he and she were secretly sleeping together (the Barmaid hears and sees a lot))). (Perhaps also the Barmaid confesses, but then says that it's because the Wife asked her to: it was the Wife's plan all along; the Wife stops her tears and goes stern, and admits it.)

·         A prophet comes to a farm and declares that God will come soon; the farmer doesn't believe that "the messiah will come:" the prophet says that "three weathers" will come before God (3 plagues): he is told they will be drought, famine, and illness, and only then will God come; the farmer says that he wouldn't want to weather those things, and shrugs him off and goes home. He doubts that God will come and he turns on the sink and it's dry (drought); this distresses him and he looks out at his barren field and laments the death of his wife, believing that his life won't get better from here on out (famine); the farmer believes his life isn't worth living, and he coughs (illness); there's a knock at his door and a man in a suit says that an oil company has interest in buying his land: the farmer has renewed belief in karma and life, and he accepts the offer. (The plagues were actually drought of faith, famine of hope, and illness of soul.)

·         A man stands on the edge of a tall building's roof and contemplates jumping to his death: he has been suicidal since he lost his job and girlfriend, so he stands on the edge and stares down; eventually he sees a lot of people fleeing the building beneath him. The building beneath him suddenly is ablaze with fire, and he runs, scared, to the door to the stairs and wants to leave (doesn't actually want to die, apparently), and he checks the door but the doorknob is hot (the fire is in the stairwell and he has no way down); he is now regretting being suicidal. The crowd below spots him, and they point him out to firefighters; a rescue attempt fails when the ladder won't work (this is shot only from on top of the building). The man eventually has to jump, in hopes of surviving the fall he had earlier wanted to make in order to kill himself (oh the irony); his fate is unknown to us.

·         A woman hiking comes across a shabbily-built gate made of wood planks nailed together: the gate is built over the dirty trail on one of the paths where it forks. She stands and wonders which way to go, when a lady in dregs meanders down the gate path, toward her, crying; she passes under the gate and approaches the woman: the woman asks what's wrong and all the lady says is warnings not to go through the gate (why? -- unspeakable things); the lady departs and the woman wants to choose the safe normal path but curiosity makes her want to take the gate path. She eventually gives into curiosity and takes the gate path... ...a male hiker comes up on the fork in the path and wonders about which way to go: a hand lands on his shoulder and he turns to see the woman, in dregs, who shakes her head and points him in the direction of the safe path and tells him to go that way: he obliges her, and goes the safe way.

·         A couple is driving on a rural road and are lost. They come to a dead end, so they turn around: they drive into a dead end. The wife berates the husband for taking a wrong turn, and he swears he only went straight, as it's a straight road; they turn around hit the earlier dead end; they turn around again and watch the roadside for turns they may have missed but they get to the other dead end without seeing any. Then, the car runs out of gas; they get out of the car and see a cabin up on the hill, so they go up to it to ask for gas; they knock and an old man's voice tells them to enter: he says that they can take a seat (they only need gas and they'll be right out, but he tells them to sit); they say that they got lost on the road, but he says that there is no road and their car isn't there anymore, and there's no use checking; he came down this road in 1966 when he got trapped by dead ends until his car died and he happened upon a cabin on the hill: the cabin must always be occupied, but a human life is only so long... at least the husband and wife have each other: he was alone, reading, whittling; there's an infinite source of food and reading material. The man knows his time is almost up because the cabin found him replacements; they'll never see anything outside of the cabin again, but they'll come to find the peace of life here to be comforting: it seems like hell come to Earth but if you see it as an honor rather than a punishment, not relying on money or dealing with the frivolities of social circles, although being trapped does feel slightly like being a prisoner at some point: maximize space inside the cabin to avoid getting stir-crazy. Lastly, the cabin chose them for a reason: they've got something special inside of them: don't ignore it.

·         A couple driving at night pull onto a highway rest stop and enter a diner; their waiter is a kind and friendly young man who seems jolly even at the late hours of the night. A trucker at the bar is wondering where the bathroom is, and the waiter points it out to him. The couple order their meals (a meatloaf and an omelette), and they await it, while talking about how nice the waiter is. Their food arrives and the husband begins eating his meatloaf when he pulls a string from the meatloaf: a green thread, the same color as the trucker's flannel shirt... The husband asks the wife if he saw the trucker leave the bathroom, and the wife says no; the husband goes to the bathroom and it's empty; he peers into the kitchen and the waiter is chatting with an equally-grinning chef, who is carving up the trucker and packaging the meat. The husband, revolted, slinks back to the table and tells his wife to drop the sausage link and come with him, and she asks about paying the bill; he goes to say that they won't but she insists on leaving money, so she fishes out a $20 as he anxiously waits, and she drops it and he goes to rush them out when he hears the smiling waiter behind him ask if he wants to wait for him to break the bill and get his change: the man hurries out pushing his unknowing wife as the waiter smiles at them from the door and thanks them for their patronage.

·         In a prison camp, the security guards march a POW with a hood on his head. A flashback shows an imprisoned diplomat in front of a video camera held at gunpoint by terrorists pleading with his government for help; his main captor is shown in the video as well. The POW marches. A flashback shows the diplomat on another day holding a newspaper and asking for the government to meet the demands of the terrorists, and the main captor antagonizes the government but cutting off the diplomat's ear. The POW is stopped and bound to a pole. The main captor holds a pistol to the head of the diplomat and the diplomat says the government has until the end of the day to meet the demands of the terrorists or he will be killed by firing squad. The POW stands hooded and raised guns are shown; his hood is revealed and it's the main captor; the diplomat stands behind a number of modern soldiers with raised guns, and the main captor is tied to the pole (he was caught and the diplomat was saved); the diplomat glares into the eyes of the main captor and the soldiers fire their weapons.

·         A worker on "Block 21" of a manufacturing center is atypical from her neighbors, as they are part of a hive mind and she is not (it's like a beehive). She chooses one day not to show up for roll call to see how much it throws off the machine; she is quickly replaced, and she figures she is free and able to sneak out now. She heads for the main door and notices on her way out that all of the other workers are staring at her with subtle hints of hate and disgust in their eyes; she walks faster, fearful of their supposed bad intent, they begin to enclose on her and she picks up the pace, but they surround her and wordlessly overpower her; she is consumed by the hive.

·         A woman was injured in a car accident and is being transported to the hospital in an ambulance; she is being tended to by a paramedic who is assessing her injuries: she is worried about the extent of her damage. The paramedic tries continuously to calm her while he tries to assess her bodily state; he comes to the conclusion that she is quite injured and would survive but would have spinal injuries and would require a month of bed rest after two or three intestinal operations. She is depressed by this news, as is he; he apologizes to her and says that he has to do as the law requires, and she says that she had a bad feeling about the outcome and that he might as well get it over with: he steadies a euthanasia needle and reads to her a prewritten paragraph (akin to Miranda Rights) about how she has been deemed unfit for survival and the law states that only the fittest can live, so she must be removed from social and reproduction circulation; she reluctantly confirms this and he injects her with the euthanasia.

·         A bodybuilder enters a Strong Man competition, eager to prove that he is the most durable and strongest man around; he enters the competition room and stands before judges. The bodybuilder triumphs over the first task of lifting a large weight above his head. The second task is to solve a mathematical proof, which he didn't expect; he is distraught and stares nervously at a chalkboard trying to focus on remembering high school algebra; he runs out of time but continues onto the third task. He takes a seat in a chair onstage and a man comes to the stage and stares into his eyes and proceeds to berate him and make fun of his insecurities (obsession with looks and strength to make up for social, mental, and emotional lacks that the bodybuilder noticed of himself ever since being ridiculed in elementary school); the bodybuilder can't handle the berating and, getting real anxious and upset, exits the stage and forfeits the Strong Man competition.

·         A man in raggedy clothing runs on a track past numerous security guards who are ready to shoot him if he stops running; a group of wealthy elites sit and watch him, growing excited when they acknowledge his growing fatigue: they have forced him to run for their pleasure, and the climax of their pleasure will be when he collapses from fatigue and his shot for it. The man knows this and he chooses to run beyond fatigue, to run until THEY tire of watching him; he runs beyond fatigue and the elites grow tired of waiting for him to become tired, so they waive his death penalty and allow him to stop running: he is relieved, and they tell him that they'll just try again tomorrow, to his dismay.

·         A segregated town (Fort Dodge) is at war and a visitor tries to describe to them why their war is fruitless: their segregation is based on who lives on what side of the river. The visitor originally thinks the segregation is racial, since people east of the river are white and people west of the river are black, but the war is solely based on each side believing that living on THEIR side of the river DEFINES them as superior.

·         Two Nightwatchman sit atop a wall, guarding a town from a fantastical beast of terror that aims to sneak into, ransack, and assault the town. They sit with guns: one is fearful, the other isn't. The Fearful asks the Brave why he isn't afraid, and the Brave doesn't have an answer: he just is; he retorts with asking the Fearful why he is afraid, and the Fearful says that there's a beast out there that could sneak up and attack them at any moment. The Brave thinks about it and figures that the Fearful is afraid of what could happen, but he, the Brave, isn't worrying about it because it's not happening currently: if the beast were present, he'd fear it, but it's not, so there's no reason to. The Fearful agrees that that's a reasonable observation.

·         A man sitting in the dark stares at a candle. Flashback to the man receiving a carved spoon from his blind father (white irises), who he admires, as the father is on his deathbed: he tells his son to keep the carved spoon on his person, because he'll need it to defend himself; the son doesn't understand but he obeys his father; the father dies. The man, aka the son, stares at the candle and fiddles with the spoon; he hears a groan and a call "where is my son:" the son is alarmed by this and looks out for his believed father. The father comes out of the darkness and asks the son where his son is, and son tries to speak but the father cannot hear: he can only speak; the father feels the presence of the son but cannot discern if it is a threat or not, and he gives the son, the assumed threat, ten seconds tell him where his son is before he fills his soul with terrors. The son is rightfully terrified and rambles loudly that HE is the son and he wants the father to hear him and understand him and acknowledge him, and then he remembers the spoon in his pocket, and he fishes it out and thrusts it into his father's hands. The father feels the spoon and immediately calms down, relieved, and tells the son that he has to depart for the afterlife but will watch over him now that he knows where he is located. The son is relieved, the father departs, and the son stares at the candle once more, now relieved.

·         A man sits in his kitchen and drinks a soda; he gets heartburn and clenches his chest and exhales. He gets a knock on his door and is startled to find that the person at the door is his former friend, who died four years prior: the friend has hollow eyes full of grim tidings. The friend greets the shocked man and enters the home; the man wonders how the friend is there although while mentioning how great it is to see them; the friend reveals that his visit is on certain terms, for he is now one of Death's messengers. That's right: the man died in his kitchen of a heart attack, and Death came to take his soul: Death just happened to be someone he knew previously. To prove it, the friend has the man look back into his kitchen, and the man sees his corpse propped up in the kitchen chair. The now-forlorn man hangs his head and agrees to go with his friend, Death. (call this one "An Old Friend")

·         A woman rides on a train and begins seeing numbers over people's faces, blocking them; the train has numbers gliding across it. The woman touches one of the still numbers that is on the back of the seat in front of her: the number changes; she is startled, but the number soon goes back. She looks outside and a station the train pulls into has a number. She looks at the people getting on, who have numbers. She looks at the back of her hand and see a number: 12. The people on the train have different numbers, all kinds of numbers. The next station comes up and she prepares to get up and leave, but notices the station's sign has a number on it: 12; she looks at her hand. She decides to wait and see if there's a relation between the two 12s by getting off on the next stop instead; the train carries on, and she looks at her hand and the number goes away; she looks up and all of the numbers have gone away. She gets off at the next stop, and the number on the back of her hand comes back: 47; the number on the station sign says 47 as well. (she saw the relations that the predetermined path of life had created via a numbers systems, and understanding the pattern, she was able to ignore it, and redirect her path, as well as changing every other number in the system: one pair of open eyes can change everything.)

·         A woman is visited by Death, a suited man who comes to her house: Death tells the woman that it's her time to go, but he doesn't know if she is bound for Heaven or Hell, because her life has been rather mediocre and karmically neutral (good deeds and wrongdoings have been done at such equal ferocities); he asks her where she thinks she should go, and the woman immediately declares "Heaven, of course!" Death sits and ruminates, and the woman is anxious, like "well, I've decided, so let's go!" But Death thinks: a selfish woman with a misguided view of her life would declare that, even though not deserving of either place, she'd be worth Heaven; a woman with a misguided view of her placid life that would say "Hell, because I've made a few mistakes:" the selfless woman who doesn't believe herself entitled to an eternity of comfort would deserve such comfort, but the woman who thinks an unimpressive life ought to be rewarded, while she discredits all her wrongdoings and immediately declares that her good deeds were enough, is a woman who does not deserve Heaven: the woman IS such a woman. The woman is outraged and afraid: she was a little overconfident and now she's going to Hell? It's not what she's done that's sending her to Hell, it's how she behaves that's keeping her from getting into Heaven; before she can protest anymore, Death sends her off.

·         A man is visited by Death and told that it's time for him to go on to the afterlife; he's nervous to go: he asks he's bound for heaven or hell, and Death says that technically the answer is heaven, because you can't reach hell from the afterlife: hell is something humans creates for themselves in the form of hate and anxiety, war and fear; the afterlife is merely a place for the dead, where there is no pain, only comfort: everyone goes there; the man is perplexed by the term: everyone, from Martin Luther King Jr. to Adolf Hitler, from Albert Einstein to Napoleon? Everyone, in their prime states, as they imagine themselves in their best, most humanlike. The man is enlightened, relieved, and agrees to go with Death.

·         A guy rides a bike as the sun comes up; when it starts peaking, he sees a person on the roadside that attracts his attention; he pulls over and walks over to them, and they turn around and have no face. The guy is not shocked, but perplexed; the faceless person tries to speak but it's merely muffled murmuring. The sun continues to rise and the guy stares in awe and confusion at the faceless person. The sun continues to rise beyond the horizon and the guy stares as the faceless person tries to communicate. The sun breaches the horizon and is fully formed; the faceless person's face fades in and their muffled voice fades into words: they are telling the guy on the bike that he should be wearing a helmet or he might risk a concussion. The guy nods slowly, baring comprehending, then he hopes back on the bike and rides off. (called “Dawnbreak.”)

·         A nerd, a college senior ready to graduate, is in a library, and she looks around at the books: she regrets not being around long enough to read all of them, although it would've been impossible, even with her whole lifetime, to read all of them: she wishes she had the time. But all things must end at some point, and her college years are up; she can come back, but it won't be the same: she's ok with that, but it's bittersweet.

·         A woman lies frozen in an infirmary; the doctors say she is in a coma, but she is trapped in her body, which isn't working on its own and is on life support. She has been trapped in her body for years and has given up screaming for help, because her voice doesn't leave her mind... Except, today, she begins to scream again, because the doctors have come to take her off of life support. They begin to proceed to take her off of life support, and she begins screaming and freaking out; the plug is almost pulled when her frustrations grow so massive that her body begins shaking, and the doctors wonder if she's awakening or having a seizure: they stabilize her and check her pulse... She's dead (she overexerted herself on the inside, and since her body wasn't able to break, her mind did: and that was all she was, so she couldn't handle it).

·         A man must participate in a course of physical prowess where he lives no matter what but he must triumph over exhaustion and stamina in order to save the life of his wife, who is trapped in an inaccessible cage.

·         A person wishes to be away from 2014 and live in idyllic 1954, so they wake up the next day and are in the past, but it's a racist and fearful time, and they regret it.

·         A man truly believes he is Cloris Leachman, and suddenly knows all of the facts about her life, including personal details nobody else could've known.

·         Two people [who are in proximity to each other] switch bodies, and one immediately dies, leaving the other trapped in the wrong body.

·         A community that doesn't use money: the citizens work and supply for and support each other because they have a stake in the community and want to live in a successful environment; money was a medium that brought more tension and social division than it brought usefulness.

·         Daylight disappears behind the misty horizon on the ocean, and the position of "light in the mist" is replaced by a searchlight, which sweeps the area. A man looks across the horizon with binoculars and scans the waters; he sees nothing. The man (in regular clothes) slinks back down into his sandy foxhole and waits, clutching a pistol. He checks his pack and has some dry rations and a canteen of water; he thinks to himself about how long the rations may last him. He opens a diary and rereads a well-earlier chapter about a tragedy that sent him out of crumbling civilization, away from his family that died in the invasion, and out into the open air; he turns to a blank page and writes that he misses kitchens (roof overhead and many tiny doors with food hidden behind them), and he misses his family (wife and daughter), and he hasn't seen any patrol boats, but the lighthouse nearby is occupied; he has decided that he wasn't doing anything but holding out and his food supply is running low, so he figures he'll make an attempt and do something with his life since so many other lives were taken before they were able to do anything about it: he'll storm the lighthouse and kill as many as he can. Will it have a huge impact and turn the tides of the invasion? No, but he'll do something rather than nothing, and any dent in their numbers is a decrease, even if it's only one person. He writes that he'll leave the diary for anyone in the future who comes across it, as a historical personal account; he closes the diary, puts it in his backpack, and buries the pack in the sand. He stands up with the pistol and walks off towards the searchlight. The light hits the screen and moves away, and now it shows a new scene in daylight, and a kid walks along the beach and stumbles upon the diary: he picks it up, carries it over to a campfire, and drops it in, to use as kindling.

·         There are screams and squeals of tires and gunshots heard outside; inside, a family scrambles to grab supplies and prepare to evacuate: there's anarchy (literally) outside, and the government has secured Safe Cities and set up evacuation services in towns nearby these cities. This family is in a town and wants sanctuary, but as they are ready to leave the house, they hear on the television that the evacuation site has been overrun by the rioting public; rioters break into the television studio and take over the Air: they say that this democratic nation is less democratic and more totalitarian, and they aren't putting up with it: the police state will surely put up a fight, and revolution isn't easy, but if enough of them fight back, they'll triumph. The signal goes static in the middle of a sentence saying that the political elites should except a visit from revolutionaries; the family sits down, defeated, because he's a senator. The wife says to the husband that they can defend the house; "with what? Kitchen knives? We don't own guns; I helped pass the goddamn bill that outlawed guns." "The revolters have guns." "The revolters are doing quite a lot of illegal things." "Well... We have to do something." The husband agrees: he can't legislate his way out of it, so he accepts what he's wrought, and he goes to the front door, and walks outside.

·         A bell tolls over a black screen and then we are shown a man who lies in bed with insomnia. We see a clock that says "4:52 am" and hear his heartbeat growing louder and louder until we hear nothing and see nothing. Then we are shown this man asleep, passed out, at "9:16 am;" his body rises as he begins to sleepwalk. He sleepwalks outside and walks to the cemetery, as a woman in all black stops him and tells him he missed his own funeral procession: the man wakes up as the bell tolls again (it's a death knell); next we see his corpse inside a closed casket.

·         Three people worry about finding a new planet to live, one in the Goldilocks zone somewhere out in space; near the end of the film, it's revealed that these people are humans who are the distant-descendants of the humans that we're seeking to leave Earth after making IT unstable and unlivable (after resource farming and burning killed the environment (they did it again and are planet shopping again! Classic)). One berates and blames the others the whole time (we wouldn't be in this situation if you guys had just...) and explains why the environment needs to actually be protected next time; the other two name places and then supply reasons why or why not.

·         An apathetic assassin, reluctant to do his job that he's unfortunately good at, studies his target and prepares his plan of attack; he readies his gear and heads on out. He watches his target, and sees how banal their life is: he believes it similar to his and sees this scenario as a metaphor for his own; he decides not to kill the target, he drops his gear in a public trash can, and he walks away.

·         Two swordsmen have just finished a duel in a field, and one has the other on his knees, with his sword on the throat of the other. The one wants to show off how noble and kind he is, so he says he can show the other mercy; the other declines, courageous, and says for the one to get it over with, but the one wants to show mercy to emphasize how noble he is; the courageous other won't let him because he lost and must now be killed. The one says that he has a reputation of manslaughter to mend, and the other says that he has a reputation of bravery to uphold; the other says that the one can kill him as he is wont to do, but he can tell everyone that he let the other go; the one asks about what if they ask where you went: the other says that he'll say he went off to train again; the one says that he could've banished him, but the other days that that isn't good for his reputation; the one asks about why if they find the body: the other says to hide it. The one mulls it over and sheathes his sword: he doesn't want to: he literally wants to be a better person. The other tells him not to, and the one walks away; the other yells after him, and the one keeps walking; the other commits seppuku (seen from afar).

·         It’s night. A woman sits in a forest, anxious, waiting, and looking at her watch. She grows impatient until she hears a cracking of twigs underfoot and looks over into the darkness: she sees nothing; she turns back and on her other side is a mildly-distant man standing silently, staring at her eyes that widened with fear and intrigue. She notices this man and stares at him with fear and curiosity, and asks what he's doing here; he doesn't respond so she asks him to please go away, because he's freaking her out, and she's waiting for someone. He stands there, silently, staring at her; she pleads for him to go away, and he doesn't; she asks what he wants: still closed-mouthed, he raises an arm and points behind her at a mysterious hooded figure whose face is hidden; she turns to see him and isn't shocked in the least; she begins to comment that she expected the hooded figure, but turns to see that the staring man is no longer there. She turns back and sees the hooded figure kneel down next to her, and remove the shroud, revealing his face: the staring man, who opens his mouth, finally, as he begins to emit an unearthly gust of howls -- (cut to black).

·         1/9 silent stories: freedom -- in the town of Sloan, there is a house filled with automatons that are programmed to act like humans would in a normal house, as they are a living dollhouse, as a roadway attraction for tourists (one with fanny packs and cameras). One of the automatons suddenly shows an expression, after wincing at a camera flash: it "awakens" and is sentient, albeit robotic, and it feels its place in the house, and its preset motions are ridiculous, undermining, and embarrassing. During dinner one night, it looks around, stands up, and goes to the door, and exits the house, to the surprise of the tourists.

·         2/9 silent stories: inferiority -- in the town of Bellvue, a woman lives a life parallel to that of her reflection; except, on one day, after a fight with her boyfriend, she goes to the bathroom: her reflection, though, did not have that fight; her reflection is enjoying time with her boyfriend, while the woman weeps and watches as if the mirror were a television. The woman comes back the next day after having coffee spilled on her, to wash it off, while her reflection is primping her hair and talking to a friend, showing off her engagement ring (the woman is bummed that she isn't engaged). The woman is at home the next day preparing to shave her legs and the reflection is wearing a nice dress and putting on lipstick: the reflection smirks, superior, seemingly right into the woman's eyes; the reflection leaves, and the woman raises the razor to her neck and slices it. (OR the reflection leaves, and the woman goes back to shaving, while upset, and ends up slicing her leg on accident. The woman stayed home from work (bloodshot eyes from crying all night) and stands in the foyer, looking at a mirror; when the reflection comes home from work, she checks her hair in the mirror; when the reflection is leaning into the mirror, the woman angrily smashes it with a hammer. She picks up a fragment of mirror and only sees herself: not her superior reflection.)

·         3/9 silent stories: tension -- in the town of Brimfall Point, three men stand in the forest and point guns at one another: Mexican standoff. They each aim a gun at one of them: 1 aims a gun at 2, 2 at 3, and 3 at 1. It's tense. 2 doesn't like 1 aiming at him so he aims at 1 so 3 takes the opportunity to aim at 2 and 1 does the same at 3, but 2 turns back to 3, aaaand so on (actors can instinctually point around (legitimately, though, not just "back and forth anxiously")); eventually it ends up at the original setup: 1 @ 2, 2 @ 3, 3 @ 1. It's tense. Again, 2 doesn't like 1 aiming at him so he aims at 1 so 3 takes the opportunity to aim at 2 and 1 does the same at 3, but 2 turns back to 3, aaaand cut.

·         4/9 silent stories: doubt -- in the town of Weatherfield, Officer Chandler looks back at receiving an award for gallantry after shooting a robbery suspect, while looking back at the event: Chandler chases a perp through an alley, who is far ahead of him: the perp fires two gunshots back at Officer Chandler, which miss him; the perp turns the corner as Chandler keeps running. Chandler runs out of an alley and looks around: he sees a thuggish guy walking towards him casually, having just turned around from looking behind him and leaning over a trash can, throwing something out. The thug freezes confusedly when they make eye contact; Chandler looks at the guy with doubt (noticing a gun-shaped bulge under the front of his shirt) and they lock eyes, and then he pulls up his gun and aims it at the guy, causing him to step back in fright; when the guy turns upset and takes a step forward, Officer Chandler shoots the guy twice (killing him). Chandler, at home, looks at the award that is displayed in his house. On the street, Chandler looks at the dead guy's body up close and doubt overwhelms him, because the bulge under his shirt was not a gun, it was just the shirt rippling: he doesn't think he killed the right guy (he didn't), so he goes to the trash can and sees a gun in the trash can, which could’ve been the perp’s, or the thug’s if the thug was the perp (OR he slips a burner gun (unregistered, empty gun) onto the corpse, gets the thug’s hand around it for fingerprint-planting, and radios it in); he passes it off as if he did get his man, even though he didn’t, and the doubt eats him up.

·         5/9 silent stories: pride -- in the town of Trumble, a stubborn man full of pride opens a birthday card excited but is disappointed to see that his grandparents didn't send him money, but instead sent a business card for a company to invest in. The man is pissed and smug and throws the business card away. A week later, still stewing, he reads online about the stock of that company skyrocketing after they found a solution to slow and kill off the HIV-AIDS virus. The man is rightfully depressed.

·         6/9 silent stories: hate -- in the town of Liberty, a man to whom bad things happens can't let go of a grudge: when bad things happen, he writes their names down on a pad of paper using a fountain pen, and then... they disappear, and the name is magically crossed off (the list has a lot of crossed off names on it). We see two instances of this happening, to a person who bad mouths him online (name is displayed on profile) and to a person who cuts him in line (name on credit card). He comes across a stand for signing up to win a car, so he sets his list down and fills out the form: he signs his name and picks up the paper... And his signature bled through onto his list: he realizes this, and disappears, and his name crosses itself off.

·         7/9 silent stories: blame -- in the town of Clearwater, a wife enters the bedroom with a broken lamp, and looks at her husband with a face that says "really? What happened?" and the husband looks away from the TV and points to the dog. A few days later, the wife comes home to a spilled milk puddle on the kitchen floor: the husband looks at her and points to the dog. A few days later, the husband comes home and the wife is dead on the floor with a knife in her chest, and the dog looks up at him from next to the dead body; it is then that a cop shows up, pointing his gun at the husband, and the husband looks back and forth between the cop and the dog, perplexed at how to say he didn't do it, and it was really a dog.

·         8/9 silent stories: faith -- in the town of Ashgrove, a woman lies in her bed, sick (perhaps cancer?), and is surrounded with flowers and cards that wish her to get better; she looks at it all, and she looks at the clock (looking at how the time ticks away, waiting to die). She picks up a stuffed animal gift and stares into its eyes, then closes hers tight, upset and wishing for her sickness to be gone: a tear comes to her sullen eyes as she grits her teeth in agony and discomfort. She lies back and cries herself to sleep, clutching the stuffed animal tight against her chest... (Fade to black, and back) ...she wakes up and looks healthy, refreshed, and she realizes that she is, and she stands up, elated: she leaves the room. The camera remains fixed on the bed, and moves closer to view the stuffed animal, who know resembles the woman by having the symptoms of her illness (it absorbed her illness from her).

·         9/9 silent stories: strength -- in the town of Montgomery, a man needs to get something in his garage, but his car is in the way; he moves the car back and leaves it idling while he gets out and walks over to the tool bench: he starts working, and the car (which is actually in Neutral, not Park) starts rolling back into the driveway, towards him (perhaps he has headphones in and doesn't hear); he sees the headlights against the back wall growing larger, and being curious, he turns around just in time to have the car pin him against the tool bench while he faces it: he is in visible anguish. He struggles to free himself or wriggle free, but it's no use. He cries for help, but nobody can hear him. He laments and prays and self-pities, and then he gives up... But then he gets mad, and his adrenaline pumps, and he puts his hands on the front of the car and pushes with all his might (teeth gritting and neck straining), and he slowly pushes the car back. He gets it back enough to wriggle out; he goes to the driver's seat and shifts the car into Park; then he goes right back to the tool bench.

·         In the town of Noble, a bell is the regulator of life: the town is on a schedule, and so are its inhabitants. Our protagonist decides to deviate from the schedule, ignoring the dinging that tells him when to brush his teeth or wake up or eat. He disregards the dings and goes along his day as he pleases, but those dings are then interrupting and annoying and obnoxious, and they increasingly frustrate him. Eventually, he gives up and resubmits to obeying the bell, solely so that it will be a friend and not a nuisance.

·         In the town of Byers, three hooligans prep for All Hallows' Eve, costumed in three presidential masks; Nixon packs eggs, Reagan packs dog poop-filled paper bags, JFK packs spray paint. They plot a route of houses to vandalize but JFK is nervous and keeps dissuading options; Nixon is increasingly bothered by this and tells him to man up or stop chickening out. Reagan proposes one house in particular that Nixon decides is a prime destination; Nixon ups the ante and says they should get City Hall: Reagan says he wants to have fun but not with such a risky endeavor; JFK wants to back out entirely; Nixon wants them to go big or be pussies. Reagan tells JFK to not be a pussy; JFK raises a spray paint can towards Reagan, and Nixon readies to throw an egg at JFK in response: Nixon tells JFK that they'll all hit City Hall, or he'll do it alone and tell the police that the two of them did it together; Reagan raises a poop bag and aims to chuck it at Nixon, saying that Nixon wouldn't dare: they can all just hit a couple houses and go home. They pause. Nixon chucks an egg at JFK and hits him right in the head; JFK sprays Reagan's shirt; Nixon gets shit tossed all over him. (metaphors for how each president is remembered: glossy Reagan, shitty Nixon, headshot JFK.)

·         A guy comes home from work and tells his roommate, the man, "I fought for you. I told them you were an important asset... But they decided otherwise, and tomorrow they're going to summon you into their office, and you will be removed from your position." The man spends the night worrying and wondering what he did wrong. The next day, he goes to the office; "They" = his family, removing him from the position of "son."

·         A Baptist priest cracks and his mind makes him think he's talking to his congregation (even individually), but nobody is there and he's talking to the air: hallucinations.

·         It's winter, approaching Christmas; a mother tells her teenage son not to eat the cookies she's just baked because she's giving them to the firefighters; the son reluctantly agrees (fingers crossed behind back) and the mom says she's serious: he'll regret eating them if he does; son says OK, and she leaves. He waits. He then quietly opens the tin, avoiding detection, and proceeds to pull one out. He puts it in his mouth and takes a bite, and chews it. He goes to take another bite, but his mouth isn't there anymore. He starts freaking out and his mother stands distant behind him and says softly "I told you you'd regret it."

·         It's the 1940s: a southern man is kind and genial, and he comes to a farm home, on his bike, escaping a storm, and asks for refuge for the night; he wins them over with humbleness and charm and offers to do a lot of chores in repayment for his taking up their time, space, and food. He ends up offering to fix their tractor for them: he has the machinery skills, and he could go down to the hardware store tomorrow and come back and fix it: all he needs is a couple thousand dollars. They farm family is ever grateful and says sure: they give him $2000 and tell him dinner will be ready when he gets back from town. He leaves and rides his bike down the road, to a car, sitting in which is a guy who talks to the man in a Brooklyn accent; the southern man talks the same now, because it turns out that he's a con artist from New York City.

·         A group of friends are having a Free-For-All snowball fight in a field; suddenly they all toss snowballs at one girl, so she ducks (giddy face) and packs a snowballs: the snowballs overhead stop, so she pops her head back up to throw her snowball, but all of her friends are gone: she has been suddenly abandoned, and her face goes from giddy to confused and afraid. She calls out for them with a slight hint of anger in her voice: no response. She checks their foxholes and finds nobody occupying them. She looks all around for any hint of people: nobody. She goes to the road: nobody's outside. She goes home: nobody's inside; there's a hot mug of cocoa on the table: they all disappeared. She runs downstairs and flips on the light, and a stoic man in a suit is standing there, and right as she sees him, he immediately snaps his fingers and the lights turn off; she scrambles to turn the back on and he's not there when she does. She runs back upstairs and her mom is at the table drinking the hot cocoa; the girl is confused as her mom greets her. The girl runs to go back outside but the door opens up right as she gets to it, and her friends are coming inside, asking her where she ran off to and how she did it without being seen. The girl is confused, and she runs to the window: she sees the suit man outside, casually tossing a snowball up and down in his hand with a smug superior smirk on his face; he tosses the snowball at the window, and it hitting the window startled her and she blinks; when she looks back out the window, the suited man is absent. (Then slow pulling away dolly shot (or vertigo shot?) of the girl looking out the window (shot from outside, looking in)).

·         Christmas Special: a little girl wakes up because she hears Santa milling around; she excitedly runs downstairs to find Santa, and he plops her down and jollily asks her what her name is and what she wanted for Christmas ("to double check and make sure he got it") and she tells him excitedly. She asks Santa if he is going to take away her presents, "because Brittany told me that if you see Santa, he'll take away your presents." Santa says no, and then "unrelated question... What do you love the most?" The little girl says she loves her parents the most; Santa nods, saying she sounds like a lovely and traditional little girl, and he loves that. He sends her back on up to bed, and she giddily runs back up and goes to bed. Santa leaves. (Cue a pleasant, unassuming Christmas: White Christmas by Bing Crosby, perhaps) ...the next morning, she wakes up, gasps in excitement, and bolts out of bed (low camera follows her from her bedroom into her parents), and she runs into her parents room to wake them up (all the while yelling "wake up, it's Christmas!") and she staggers to a halt (as the camera raises to show that); her parents are missing, their bed is empty as if her parents were poofed away while beneath the sheets. The girl stares in confusion, disbelief, and concern. (shot of the empty bed with the back of the static girl in the shot, as the music increases in volume and "Merry Christmas" appears.)

·         A man talks with his wife who is insisting that he stop trying to get up out of his wheelchair and do things on his own, because he's supposed to be wheelchair bound for 2 more weeks, on doctor's orders; he resigns to her wishes and he rolls away to the foot of the staircase: he looks up them, and he shouts to his wife how much he misses the bed and sleeping next to her, and she shouts back that she misses it, too, but his incapacity is only temporary. He thinks about it and asks her about what if it was permanent; she pauses and asks what he means. He rolls back into the room and asks her if she'd be willing to deal with and take care of him if he were to become a paraplegic; she says sure, of course; but he wants her to seriously think about it: if he couldn't move around non-flat surfaces or travel alone to non-nearby areas, she'd have to help, and he can't really make his own meals since everything is in cupboards, and he needs help bathing, and he needs help when he's at his job: he's basically a toddler with the mind and mouth of a man. They can't even have sex; would that drive her to get it from someone else? She thinks, and thinks, and he, amused yet bothered, says that the silence and amount of mulling was expected and yet is still disheartening; she says she really wants to say "yes, I'll be there," but... She's not sure: it'd be tough -- really tough and time/energy-consuming -- and she wouldn't get as much out of the marriage as she normally would be... The mood is low and they're quiet; then he chippers up and says "hey, but it's only a temporary injury! Right?!" She, trying to chipper up but yet still glum, agrees.

·         At a masquerade party, the masked guests each circulate rumors to one another: shot after shot shows masked guests gossiping wildly. One glitzy guest gossips to another about how the host of the party, Christine, has a nasty mole on her face, probably caused by her excessive fake-tanning and chocolate-eating, and she has put on a lot of weight and it's showing, which could be caused by her binge eating, and she has had increasingly bad halitosis, which could be caused by her alcoholism, and her bank account is running dry (poor dear, literally!), which could be caused by her excessive spending, and she has this eccentric mother who became a live-in guest when she started living here after selling her house to pay for cancer treatments, but won't leave! What a parasite! The person the guest is talking to excuses herself for a moment, walks to the front of the room, and faces the crowd: she removes her mask (revealing a mole) and greets everyone, who all greet her back ("hi, Christine!" (prompting a jaw drop of the glitzy guest)); Christine is glad everyone came out tonight, and hopes everyone is having fun: she mentions that although gossip is supposed good for the heart, they should spend the night learning about each other from their own mouths, not the mouths of other people; they agree and go back to partying. Christine puts her mask back on and walks back to the glitzy guest (jaw still dropped), and says "...please continue."

·         A man lost in the forest is growing increasingly exhausted and can't continue, as he vocally monologues to himself (lonely people talk to themselves to feel less alone); he knows, deep down, that he can't go on anymore, as that this is his last night alive. He sits down and pulls together leaves and water from a stream and makes it out like it's a fancy meal (pretending); a shot of [a pleasantly-dressed] him eating a fresh salad in his dining room with his friends mimics what he's thinking he's eating, and a snap back to reality shows that he's really eating scavenged leaves. He finishes his meal and looks up at the sky; he begins to sing to himself; a shot of him sitting in the living room and singing with his friends mimics what he's thinking he's doing, and a snap back to reality puts him back in the middle of nowhere, singing to himself. He stops singing, and he arranges his stuff around him to be neat; he lies down. He looks up at the sky and individually says goodbye to people he knows; a shot of him saying goodbye to friends as they leave his house out the front door mimic what he thinks he's doing, and a snap back to reality sends us back to him lying peacefully and looking up at the sky, talking to himself. He closes his eyes and succumbs willingly to death. The camera looks at his peaceful face after he exhales his last breath, then it pulls back and zooms through the trees for ~20 seconds until it comes to a road/neighborhood (ironic twist on a nice moment: he was so close to being back in civilization).

·         A man who’s afraid of the future and the unknown wishes that he just knew what was going to happen so that he wouldn’t have to speculate or worry; he gets his wish, and learns everything that’ll happen to him for the rest of his life (as if they were memories), but at the cost of not remembering anything from his past. When his wife comes home, he only recognizes her because he sees her with him in the future; he explains what happened and that he doesn’t remember anything from before now, but remembers plenty after; she asks about the future, and he says that he gets a promotion in two years, they have a kid the year after, and another kid two years later, then they get a new house while she’s pregnant, and he [unfortunately] works at the same company in the same position for thirty-eight more years, and then a blood clot in his artery kills him. The wife says that since he knows the future, he can change it; but he says that everything so far has already happened, and he expected her to say that, and he knows in the future that he tries to change it, but it doesn’t matter, because the future is already written: he just gets to see it, and it sucks because there are no surprises and everything is expected, down to the minute detail, and it makes life boring, as if he is just fulfilling prerogatives and checking things off of a list rather than living life: he wouldn’t be doing anything exciting anyways, but now he knows that each following day won’t bring excitement, rather than just hoping it will and being let down later. Feeling nostalgic, he asks his wife what his past was like, and she describes what she knew of his childhood, but he stops her shortly because it’s not ringing any bells: this depresses him, and he wishes he could unwish his wish.

·         A woman listens to an erotica novel audiobook while driving and it's so loud and engrossing that she can't hear the cop trying to pull her over, so she gets pitted and spins out while it keeps playing, leading up to a hotter part, and the cop runs to her window with his gun drawn and pauses confusedly while listening to the woman's audiobook as it gets into a sex scene with visceral descriptions. Then it’s awkward.

·         A man comes home and removes a hospital bracelet from wrist. For the night, he is haunted by a figure who lurks in the shadows pleading for the man to look at him; the figure gets increasingly angry that the man is ignoring the figure (while being increasingly frightened, nonetheless). Eventually the figure comes out of the shadows behind the man and screams right against his face "look at me!" Angry and weeping, furious is this figure; he is disfigured. The man backs away and counterpleas: "what do you want from me?" "Look at me- just... Look at me. Look at what you've done. Accept what you've done. You put a devoted father and a hard worker in the ground. You drove like a madman, and now you've become one: ...you killed me and, you won't acknowledge it, but deep down you feel terrible, so here I am, to haunt you for the rest of your days."

·         No matter where you go, you can't get away from the axe murderer who walks slowly towards you; nobody but you notices him, as well. — It starts off with a guy noticing a creep with an axe and a glare who stares at him at night in a parking garage, and it sketches the guy out, so he gets in his car. He starts it up as he sees the creep still staring. He starts driving away and the creep starts walking away. He drives out and is at a red light and he sees the creep walking down the sidewalk towards him; he drives away, bothered. While driving back, he checks the rear view mirror just in case. He gets home and goes to bed, and the air is eerie. He wakes up and drives to work, and on the street, he passes a street that he sees the creep walking on, towards him, and he is freaked out and drives off. He keeps seeing him coming towards him no matter where he goes. Eventually he is at his home at night and the creep shows up outside the home, causing the man to freak out: he bolts from his house, into his car, and drives until he's out of gas; he frantically looks around while calling a taxi, which shows up as the creep appears on the horizon: the taxi takes him to the airport. (Fade to black, fade back in) ...the man is shown in a farm in "Eastern Ukraine," and he walks about, calmly; he stops, looking beyond the screen with increasing concern and fear and resignation: we see that he's looking at a figure coming down the road, and it's the creep.

·         A woman lies on a gurney and is held down to it by barbed wire, rather than straps. She wakes up and is confused and afraid, because she's tied to a gurney via barbed wire. She is in a small, empty, sterile room and there are some people she can see silhouettes of moving behind a fogged glass window: presumably doctors. She cries out for their help and tries to struggle but it hurts: she must remain restrained although she grows claustrophobic and stir crazy. She keeps pleading for help but the doctors don't react. The doctors eventually get up and leave the window, and the woman is crying out. We see the doctors outside conversing, discerning that she's still having paranoid episodes and panic attacks: they glimpse back through their window (which is actually clear) and see the woman: she lies in a standard hospital bed in a normal hospital room and has her arms and legs tightly compressed against her body (on her own will) as she lies above the sheets: it's all in her mind. The doctors wonder if she'll get past it: antipsychotic drugs have only seemed to make it worse.

·         A constrained man resists having a gag put in his mouth but to no avail. The hand of the assailant presses Play on a boombox, and the cassette begins playing violin music. The man is displeased. The hand of the assailant picks up a cat-o-nine-tails. The man is quite displeased. The hand of the assailant begins giving the man forty lashes on his back. The man is very displeased. The man eventually loosens the gag from his mouth and begins to cry out for help; the assailant stops assailing and moves over to pick up the gag, and he puts it back in the man's mouth: we see the assailant's face come out of the shadows to calmly tell the man to calm down: the assailant is the man. The assailant continues by saying that unless he calms down, he'll keep the torture up: if he quits thinking about it, it'll stop bothering him. (Analysis: this is a parallel for torturing yourself internally by worrying.) (Find a way to make this parallel known. Perhaps the camera "zooms out from the man's head" as if it was all in his head, and the man is sitting with his wife, visibly worrying (shaking, eyes wide); she tells him to calm down because it'll be alright (perhaps he's worried he has cancer and is awaiting results. (this is growing beyond the original concept.)))

·         A woman is in a small room, and the walls are enclosing, and she's not enjoying it: crying and clearly worn out from resisting it for a while now. The walls keep closing in on her and the room begins filling with fog, and she's coughing and freaking out as the walls begin to crush her. -- cut to her sitting outside with a friend as she coughs wildly with a cigarette in her hand; the friend knocks the cigarette from her hand and tells her to quit smoking or it'll kill her, to which she replies that she'll stop when she wants to. (Analysis: metaphor for smoking.)

·         There's a global food shortage; the rich are eating scavenged scraps and fighting over cans of expired beans. A formerly-wealthy couple resign from the indignity of squabbling over scraps and decide to submit to starvation with the rest of the world. 20 years prior, drought encompassing the northern hemisphere caused the water cooling a nuclear power plant (which was stupidly built alongside an arid mountain range in the Middle East) to run dry, and the uranium had a meltdown and saturated the atmosphere overhead with radioactivity, which spread south to the Indian Ocean on wind currents, poisoning and mutating the mass, generic fish breeds, sterilizing them. Twenty years later, those breeds have disappeared. At the same time, meat production was drastically cut down to avoid saturating the atmosphere with carbon exhaust from factories, as government-passed legislature and social movements both pushed for vegetarianism as a way to keep the atmosphere from getting too dirty. However, the global population has been increasing exponentially, and One Child Policies were thought too imposing in most places, while Purges weren't taken seriously. There wasn't the space enough to farm more grains and vegetables without cutting down trees, which wasn't an option; vertical agriculture picked up pace, but not quick enough; wars (for both resources and human-attrition) broke out, which reduced populations but not by enough. Time passed further and the wealthy (who could afford food as the prices skyrocketed) eventually fell to the same lows as the others, who were all struggling farmers. -- The couple looks back at all of these moments, talking about them and wishing they could undo those moments before they happened: they would do everything differently if they could.

·         An astronaut floats in space and remarks to his comrade in the shuttle that it's really beautiful and peaceful out in space; the comrade agrees. The astronaut says it beats the hectic, hateful, war-torn, disease-ridden planet they orbit; comrade agrees. The astronaut says space would be a nice place to live; comrade agrees, but they can't. The astronaut doesn't want to go back, but the comrade says they have to. The astronaut is quiet, looks out at the stars, and begins to remove his helmet as his comrade pleads with him to stop: the pleas are ignored and the astronaut removes his helmet, and looks around at the stars as he begins to suffocate and die, with a smile on his face. (How to do this one: only film the night sky and the actor's head with a helmet on (actor inside has no hair that can flow around). Film lying down while looking up at the actor who is parallel with you, and move around underneath to give illusion of drifting in space. Shoot different parts of the sky, or shots filmed while looking at the sky differently (upside-down, 180°, adjusting focus), for cutaway/POV shots. Have appropriate beeps and static noise for the in-helmet noises astronaut hears, and comrade sounds like speaking through headset, while astronaut sounds muffled by helmet (all audio and sounds can be recorded after filming.))

·         A girl is in love with a guy whose eyes are mostly gold; he confesses to her that his eyes lose their gold as time goes on, revealing green, and once all the gold flakes away, he dies; so she knows, going in (when he tells her), how long she'll have with him and that she'll see the time tick away; she accepts the time she will have, though. (Analysis: metaphor for life in general, and choosing to spend your life with someone even though you might outlive them.)

·         A desert setting, shot only from the top down (close ups, ground shots, etc., but only from aerial, above character, looking down); a man walks in the sand, defeated and tired, walking straight and endlessly. He comes upon a shoebox nestled in the sand along his trail; he bends down and opens it, and inside is a ticking stopwatch; he picks up the stopwatch and looks at it; he presses for to reset it and again to start counting, and it starts ticking; he stares at the watch, turns around, and walks back towards where he came from. He walks tired by endlessly, staggering occasionally, and looking at the stopwatch a number of times along the way. He comes upon a similar shoebox, and he opens it: it's empty. He stops the stopwatch, resets it, restarts it, and puts it in the shoebox. He turns and walks back towards the first shoebox; the sun beats down on him, and eventually he gets there. He opens the shoebox and retrieves a ticking stopwatch: he resets and restarts it, then exits screen right while the camera remains trained on the first shoebox. Time passes. The man enters screen left this time, kneels down to the shoebox, resets and restarts the stopwatch. He exits screen left (presumably to walk through the desert and come up on the other side, on screen right).

·         A group of people laud and obey a charismatic figure (who is a metaphor for God) against the reason of a man who knows that the person isn't be-all. The people are listening to the Godlike figure as he recalls to the people about how he guided them through the heatwave and the death of the governor and the economic recession, and there's a war coming up that he will guide them through: any man who invades this land and tries to attack their community will falter before him. The man in the audience (a disillusioned member of the community) stands up (sick of it) and says that the figure doesn't do jack: things happen and then they stop being relevant, and all he does is talk about them while they're relevant: he doesn't actually do anything. The community vocally disagrees, and comes up with a bunch of excuses: one is that the figure has a number of beliefs and control over the beliefs, because everything he says is true and therefore fact, like how all gays are choosing sinful lives and how the liberal media is brainwashing them to put down their guns and surrender their freedom to the Jews who run the country behind the scenes. The man says that that isn't true -- none of it's true -- and he calls the people all sheep who are easily conformed and persuaded: simple, moldable minds. The people are outraged. They attempt to harangue him but the figure tells them to stop; he tells them that the man is a test of their faith in him, and that if they truly believe, the man' words won't bother them: they beseech the figure and cry out that they do believe. The man pleas for the people to stop idolizing the figure, because he is merely a man: he is no God; the figure says otherwise, because he decides the law as it comes to him, for he is God incarnate: he asks the people to name some of the laws. They people begin shouting above one another, naming things such as "God inseminates the women, as he did with the Virgin Mary," "music is forbidden," "money is a construct of the Jews to keep people within their control, by making them depend on money and withholding it," and "cops are extensions of the fascist totalitarian government behind the scenes, used to enforce and control the people." The figure agrees loudly and says that they'll all fight with him someday against the government, when the time comes that their imposition is too much to manage; the people cheer and the man says that they all have a death wish and he will tell the police in order to keep them from starting a deadly event: the figure says otherwise and orders the people to stop him, and they harangue the man, and the figure brings a knife over to him as he's held and unable to resist the figure plunging it into him. (They’re not just catholic republicans, but a cult.) (attack on republicans)

·         A couple in matching clothes answer the door to find two futuristic cops (diplomatic gadgets for identification, but no weaponry; wearing matching uniforms): the cops ask why the couple hasn't been to work in a week, and the couple says that they don't want to keep working unless they get their paychecks. The cops say that it doesn't work that way anymore; the couple says that they work better-paying jobs and want to use their money as they wish, but the cops say that they are allotted as many ration cards as everyone else: the couple protests because they work more but get rewarded as much as those who don't work; the cops say that everyone is equal, but the couple protests that clearly everyone's not, and nobody truly is equal because they're all different. The cops note that the couple IS different: the husband has a ring on his left ring finger and the wife has a ring and a loose cardigan; the cops ask them to remove the unofficial articles of clothing, and the couple hesitantly obliges. The removal of the cardigan draws the cops' eyes to the wife's stomach: she seems to be pregnant; the cops acknowledge it and confirm it, and say that the records show that the couple already has a child; the couple agrees, but they want a second one; the cops say that they can't, and casually say that the couple should come with them down to the hospital for an abortion: and while they're there, they can each donate some blood. The couple don't want to get an abortion, so they passionately decline: the cops insist, but the couple says they're keeping it; the cops say that the hospital won't deliver it or record it, and it won't receive rations, and it won't be able to go to school, and will be treated as if it doesn't exist (attempts to dissuade the couple): the couple says they'll homeschool and deliver it themselves, and they'll get by. The cops have had enough with persuading, and go to grab the wife's arm and take her with them (they have a pleased demeanor this whole time): the couple backs up angrily and the husband draws a gun from behind his back. The cops freeze: they are now scared and ask where the husband got the gun from, and he replies that it doesn't matter; the cops say that guns are outlawed, and he replies that he doesn't care; the cops say that the community will surely vote him successfully out of the country, and the couple is passive: that'll be fine, rather, preferable: they'll manage on their own elsewhere. The cops snidely say "well, fine, then; good luck on your own, with only your own sweat and labor to keep you alive." The couple ask them to leave their premises, and the cops bid them farewell and close the door. (Traditional, reasonable, unique couple in a socialist "utopia" of tomorrow.) (attack on democrats)

·         An ambitious man in a company hopes to become CEO/President eventually, so that he can use his influence to reshape the world (charity donations, funds, scholarships, and whatnot). He is a great manager on a branch level. He hires a punk kid as a salesman and the kid becomes a great salesman once he becomes infatuated with wealth. As the man gets promoted to regional manager, the kid takes his spot as branch manager; and every time the man moves up, the kid takes the spot he had just occupied. Eventually (15 years after the beginning) the man is Vice President, and the kid is CFO. When the CEO/President is retiring, the man gets excited and is assured by himself and his peers that he'll get the job (and they preemptively celebrate); however, the kid gets the job, because he brings youthful vigor to the role. The man is crushed, and the kid is elated, because his paycheck is huge; the man comes into the kid's office and casually says that it ought to be his, and kid says otherwise. The man says that the kid only rose because the man's rise gave him the slot, and the kid says that he deserved the slot nonetheless. The man says that the kid wanted the seat for all the wrong reasons, and the kid says that any reason is right for the person who has it. The man is at a loss for words, and the kid acknowledges that and tells him that the words he's looking for are "good day" and "congratulations."

·         A man in an office near the top of a skyscraper sits idle at his desk: his expression is bored and aimless. He plays with and examines the trophies, knickknacks, and paperweights on his desk. He buzzes his secretary and asks her to come into the room; she arrives, and he asks her to pull up a chair: they sit, and he asks her how her day is going; she is unsure if she heard the question correctly (because he doesn't ask about her life): he earnestly wants to know, and she wants to know why, and he says he's curious; she says "good," but that's about it, because it's 10:42 am and she hasn't really done much today. She says she has things to do that he asked her to take care of if he doesn't mind her getting back to them, and he kindly lets her leave. He sits, and gets up and aimlessly walks around the room, looking at the stuff in the room: books, pictures, furniture. He buzzes his secretary back into the room and she asks what's up: he pauses (looking for a question) and he motions her over to a painting on the wall: he asks where she got the painting from; she says that when he got the office, she asked what paintings he wanted, and he said something traditional-looking but not a famous painting, so she went to an art store and bought the framing models; he says "huh." She asks if everything is alright, and he kindly says he's fine, but then he changes his answer: he feels lifeless and placeless, empty as if he was air, drifting and purposeless. She asks if he feels successful, because he should, and he says he knows he is a success, but hasn't felt successful since he was scrambling for power... Now that he has it, he doesn't feel the struggle for growth, and the struggle made him feel alive. She tells him that Alexander the Great cried when he had no more worlds to conquer; getting it was the fun, not having it; ambition was his lifeblood, and now that he has what he sought, his blood has stopped flowing, and he feels lifeless: so he just needs to find something that he does want. The man nods and silently agrees, then thanks his secretary and kindly dismisses her back to her work; he sits at his desk and turns around to look out the window and think.

·         A man, Conrad, and his wife, Devlin, are in their kitchen, dressed like Mediterraneans in spring, and they prepare a chicken dinner together while laughing and dancing and having a great time (it's basically an old Viagra commercial); suddenly a therapist-looking woman is in the kitchen with them and says Conrad's name until she gets his concerned and undivided attention. Conrad wakes up in a therapist's office and the therapist asks if he enjoyed himself, and he says yes; she asks if he saw the ideal lifestyle he'd like to have with his wife, and he says "yes, but she isn't carefree like that; she's a rigid and structured person who is too anxious to-" and he interrupts him to ask about what he saw as ideal in how HE was behaving: he thinks and says that he was more devoted and affectionate, and open and trusting, and he was less controlling and more accepting of who she is. The therapist is glad, and says he should think about that when interacting with his wife for the next week, until they meet again; he asks instead if he can go back under: she says that these Dream Therapy treatments are for trying to understand yourself, not delving into a fantasy. He says he knows, but she asks: is he seeking to know more about himself or does he want to avoid reality by living in an ideal world for another four hours? He pauses... He's not going to lie: he likes the ideal world; she says he can work on it with Devlin now to attain it within the year if they really want it that badly; he says sure, but NOW... He'd like to experience it again. The therapists says it would be unethical to do it, but she'll allow it once more as long as he goes home to earnestly try and salvage his relationship: he agrees, and gets to go back to dancing in the kitchen with his wife in the ideal fantasy. -- Flashforward to the next day: the therapist is in her office and there's a knock: she asks them to enter, and Devlin steps in: Devlin asks for Dream Therapy as well; the therapist asks if it's because she wants to enlighten herself on herself or to experience the ideal reality, and Devlin says it's the latter. The therapist allows it once but only on the same promise; she puts Devlin asleep, who begins to dream of snuggling with Conrad by a fire. Closing narration says that Man is a creature of habit, and while Conrad and Devlin promise to change, their actions show that they truly don't mean it; they'll dream of what life could be rather than actually struggle to obtain it, because they are weak-willed, entitled, and lazy: they'll take what they can get and complain when it isn't what they wanted.

·         An assassin (looks the part) covertly kills an unsuspecting man in a room and escapes out the fire escape, into the alley, and suavely out onto the street. He gets into an idling taxi and finds that it's shared with a six-year-old boy (who's just gotten out of school for the day -- he missed the bus); he asks the boy if it's ok if they share, and he says only if he can be dropped off first, because he watches a certain show at 3 every day and he doesn't want to miss it; smirking, the assassin agrees. The boy asks if he's a secret agent and he says "something like that." The boy asks if he has killed anyone and he says yes; he explains to the boy how to kill without having trauma: through Buddhist training and mediation, you can pull yourself back into the third person to be depersonalized with yourself and your actions so they aren't YOUR actions, but actions that you watch (but are actually doing nonetheless). The boy asks why he kills, and the assassin says because he has to because it's his job and somebody has to; "...why does somebody 'have to?'" "Well, because they're the enemy." The boy wisely says that "an enemy is just a person whose story he hasn't heard yet;" perhaps the person he's killing is actually the one who deserves to live. The assassin is stunned with the wisdom and sits to think it over real hard; the boy, meanwhile, gets out of the taxi because it's pulled up to his house. The boy says bye and runs inside, and the assassin sits and thinks.

·         1946: an emotionless loner (young man) sits in the park and reads a book near an old woman who is enjoying the weather. The old woman asks about the book and he bookmarks it and puts it down to answer her; she hopes she isn't interrupting and he says that time is of no essence; he tells her the summary of the book. She says it sounds interesting, but is more interested in why he has no care for his time being wasted; he says he has a lot of it, and she says that it's not as much as he thinks, because she was that young once and then -- what feels like suddenly -- she's here, at this age. He says he has more time than she knows; she shrugs and asks if he has a girl in his life, and he (emotionlessly) says that he's loved and lost so much that he's been desensitized to love. She says that's sad and he probably hasn't lost as much as he thinks and he ought to try again, because love is wonderful and makes life worth living. He agrees, but it's painful and his life is going to be lived no matter what, so he will find more worthwhile things than those that cause pain. Again, she shrugs and says that he's free to do as he wants. Silence, so he goes back to reading, and she asks what he does for work; he puts the book down and says that he does accounting: she asks if it's fun, and he says it pays well and keeps him behind the scenes; she asks if he's shy and he says no, but he's been in the spotlight before, and being around people is always more trouble than it's worth, and it's better if he goes through life with the least amount of people acknowledging him: she says that's sad, and he clarifies that the less people he befriends, the less he has to suffer when they move on. She kinda takes offense, and is also disillusioned by talking to him; he detects her now-sour attitude and apologizes: he knows that she's trying to spread her wisdom, but he has a lot more wisdom of his own than she realizes he has. She asks why, and he asks her if she's trustworthy; she says yes, and assures him that because of her limited time on earth, she doesn't have to worry about holding onto the secret for long. He slides over and whispers in her ear that he's immortal. She doesn't believe him but kindly pretends to (which he catches onto but ignores); thinking he's crazy, she says she has to leave, and she leaves. -- 70 years later, in the present day, the same man, now in modern clothes, sits and reads a different book in the park, and sits next to a hipster young woman who inquires about what he's reading (because she's infatuated and wants to get to know him).

·         A cancer-ridden woman on her deathbed has her brother, her three children, and her husband at her bedside; she tells them all that she can feel herself unable to withstand the cancer any longer, and she will pass away soon, so she wanted to talk to them all one last time and distribute wisdom and say things that need to be said. She first talks to her oldest child (so everyone else leaves the room): says that she didn't do a lot in life and not a lot of people know that she exists, but she still impacted the world by existing and influencing the interconnected web of society in the slightest ways; her time here was not in vain even though she didn't achieve anything, but that's no reason to not strive for anything: he should find a passion and stick with it, because he's been very quick to quit and act defeated, and he'll regret never trying harder when he's older. She calls for the youngest child: she says that she wasn't on the straight-and-narrow path when she was a young, so she doesn't want to sound hypocritical, but it's much more rewarding to build a personal structure of virtue within yourself while you're still young, so that when you grow up, you have values and morals that will lead you through life: it's more rewarding and you feel more confident and respected; not saying "don't have fun," but have fun safely and set restraints on what you'll do: don't be a wild animal, but don't forget that you're free. She call in the middle child: she says that she was rejected a lot throughout life, and it hurt her and left its marks: she was rejected professionally, academically, and romantically; she felt like she was worthless, but she was only focusing on the bad that happened: not being allowed in one door allowed her to search through the many other doors that life offers, and everything worked out in the end, and she wouldn't have gone through life any other way, because she loves where she ended up (other than the cancer -- haha). She calls in her brother: she says that they didn't always get along, but he was a great sibling who always had her back, even when life in the household was rough; one of her favorite memories was when she and her brother were bored, so they picked up their bikes and rode to the next town over, and got milkshakes and went to the traveling carnival even though it was the saddest excuse for a carnival: and when they got home at 2 in the morning, their parents were pissed because they weren't supposed to leave the yard and they thought they kidnapped; they got grounded and hit, but it was worth it; she says her brother ought to be less uptight, by-the-books, and on-the-clock and should put down the schedule and experience a little spontaneity and fun with his family while they're all still young and impressionable. She calls in her husband: she says that she loves him more than anything and everything, even though they fought a few times: she regrets no part of their relationship; he saw in her more beauty than she did and he pulled her out of a crummy lifestyle and turned her life around, and she is forever grateful and could never pay him back: which is why it pains her deeply to tell him that early into the relationship, when she was still a loose cannon and a wildly free spirit, she cheated on him with a guy at a party: she partook in infidelity and broke a promise to him that she wouldn't; she knew she did wrong but she promised herself never to do it again, and she didn't want to tell him because she loves him very much and didn't want him to leave her, which was selfish but she did it nonetheless: she couldn't die with that on her conscience and she hopes he'll forgive her but she understands if her doesn't. He looks at her and holds her hand in his, rubbing her wedding ring with his finger: after some silence, he says that he was told by a friend at the party what happened, and he knew she cheated on him, but he still loved her and she seemed like she still loved him, and while he always hated that it happened and doesn't condone it whatsoever, she came back, which proved to him that she wouldn't do it again -- or perhaps he was naive and merely told himself to think that so it wouldn't eat away at him, but nonetheless he made the decision to not bring it up and live with her and love her. She cries more upon learning this and says that he is so kind and sweet and forgiving and she doesn't deserve him, and the thing she hates the most about dying is that she won't see him again -- not to say she DOESN'T want to see her kids grow up, but he brought more joy to her life every day and brought the best out in her, and she wishes that it could keep happening forever. The husband kisses the wife and tells her that it will happen forever: that's her heaven, and she'll relive memories until it's his time to join her. She cries a happy tear amongst a sea of sad ones, and they kiss one last time before she winces and says she has to let go now; he says never to let go, and squeezes her hand tighter; he kisses her, and when he pulls back, she is dead.

Original document created 12/13/2014.