ShortList (2/6)

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.)

·         Two neighbors have had a persisting duel along the lines of "keeping up with the Joneses" for almost a decade, ever since the Baxter family moved in next to the Holmes family. They were in a constant state of one-upping, with kitchen remodels and barbecue parties and Christmas decorations and brownie recipes. Until one day they both buy the same car; at a stalemate, the husbands each rave to their wives that this is demoralizing, and they have to return the car; the wives, satisfied with the car and tired of the war, try and coax the husbands into using this opportunity to make a peace treaty. The husbands eventually cool down and approach each other on the lawns at the dividing line; they claim to want peace, they draw terms, and they hesitantly shake each other's hand. Mr. Baxter says to Mr. Holmes that he has a nice plant display, and chose never to one-up him in that field because he liked what they did and he wanted to keep it that way. Mr. Holmes says he feels the same way about the Baxter family den. They smile to each other and Mr. Baxter invites Mr. Holmes to his den, and they walk over to his house to check it out.

·         A greedy man eats ice cream when he's sick, against the opposing pleas of his wife, and it makes him worse. He is still sick but eats ice cream again, and he gets pneumonia. The wife berates him for being an idiot, but he shrugs it off and eats more; she takes it from him and throws it out, and that pisses him off. After they go to sleep, he wakes up and sneaks out to the grocery store, and he buys some ice cream and eats it in the parking lot; he spirals into a coughing fit, which causes him to die dramatically like it was a 1952 PSA, and then 1952 text withers onto the screen like a PSA and says "DON'T EAT ICE CREAM or the communists win."

·         A man is at a bar with some friends (all white, European descent), and across the way he spots a girl with her friends (all white, European descent), and he thinks the girl is astoundingly good-looking; she thinks the same of him, but they are both too nervous to talk to each other. The man's friends notice him ogling her and they begin to try and coax him into going over and talking to her: he might only have this chance, she's beautiful, they could be soulmates, she looks nice, etc. He is too scared to go over there, though. Suddenly, she starts coming over to him: his friends are excited and amping him up; she speaks: she says hello, but it's in an Eastern European accent, and the man and his friends instantly go sour and disappointed. The girl is confused but still trying to get his attention; the man tells her he's not interested in getting a drink with her, and he insists after she questions him about it; she leaves disappointed. The man's friends then start to console him and apologize, and spiral off into a conversation of hatred and mistreatment towards foreigners, and how they should stay in their own goddamn country.

·         Guy romanticizes his desired future (a top corporate position) because he is a lowly accountant and he wants money and power and not to take orders. He makes a deal with the devil and suddenly is the CFO of the company, and reminisces and romanticizes his past because it was easy and relaxing, and now he has a lot of pressure and responsibility.

·         1878 black former-slave with noose around the neck walks up to the front door and asks for help: family thinks his rags and noose show he was recently attempted to be lynched, but it turns out -- through discourse -- that he thought it was 1878 until he walked inside the house and was in awe. (Perhaps the family realizes what’s going on, and wants the man to settle down so they can figure out what to do; they have him sit, and they remove the noose, and he disappears, back into time.)

·         Man is "Wonderful Life'd" through an alternate history where Hitler was shot in WWI by that guy, and neither WWII nor the Cold War happened: he sits in a library while reading about WWII, pulls back and wipes his tear ducts, and wonders what life would've been like if Hitler was killed in WWI by that guy who had him in his sights. A suited fellow is now next to him, and says he'll show him: poof, they're in the trenches of France near Marcoing on September 28, 1918: a wounded and retreating German soldier falls in the sights of Private Henry Tandey but he doesn't want to shoot a wounded man, except his presiding officer sees him hesitating and orders him to fire, so he does, and the soldier dies. The suited fellow takes the man to a room whose style is minimalist like the late 1950s, but colorful like the early 1990s, yet with furniture that looks like it's from the mid-1970s; here, the suite fellow sits the man down and describes to him the different timeline... In 1923, no coup was attempted by the NSDAP; and in prison, nobody was writing a memoir, let alone Mein Kampf. By 1929, the Nazi Party was non-existent, rather than growing. In 1933, the German Chancellor is still Franz von Papen. In 1934, the Night of the Long Knives never happened. In 1938, Austria was never annexed into the German Reich. In 1939, Poland wasn't invaded and the Soviet Union was still enduring Stalin's paranoid purges. London was never bombed, the US was never attacked, France was never invaded. Spain didn't succeed in its Civil War. Italy attempted to take over Africa and Greece but failed miserably within 3 years. Japan attempted to take over the South Pacific but was halted by the British from India, the Dutch from islands, the Australians from home, and the USA from the Philippines. Germany never had to rebuild after 1945, there was no Manhattan project and no beginning of nuclear power, and no bombs were dropped on Japan. Germany was never divided by England, US, France, and Russia. The Soviets stayed a feeble manufacturing country whose output was used to attempt to industrialize it; no Berlin Wall went up in 1961. Truman was never president, nor was Eisenhower, nor was JFK, nor LBJ, nor Nixon. Technology never advanced through the 1940s, and the USA struggled through FDR's two terms of trying to repair the country. USA stasis was regained around 1949. Marilyn Monroe was never discovered, there was no Red Scare, no fear of communism, no idyllic 1950s, no science fiction obsession, no Twilight Zone, no counterculture movement, no hippies, no Woodstock or Berkeley protests. No Cuban Missile Crisis, no Beatles, no Gulf of Tonkin, no Vietnam War (the French lost to the Vietnamese in a 1963 revolution, though), no Watergate, no Man on the Moon until 1993. The technology level we know as being 1950 took until 1961, and the technology level we know as being 1968 took until 1992. There was a lack of wars, but a number of uprisings and repressions in territories and imperialized nations; the British Empire lasted until 1988, when enough uprisings were causing too much distress; the US imperialized much of the South Pacific after shutting down Japan in 1951, and tried to absorb Mexico by force from 1973 to 1977, failing in the end. By the 1990s, all nations tried to keep to themselves. Israel never came to be, and Russia has continued to be ruled by totalitarian men; China became communist and so did the rest of Southeast Asia by 1985. British India strengthened its borders against the encroaching Soviet Union, causing the Indo-Sino Standoff (similar to the Cuban Missile Crisis). The suited fellow explains that it's hard to describe how social and economic trends ended up, because they didn't follow the same paths, but you could say that the personal liberation that occurred in the late 1960s in the US and England came to be in the early 1990s, as technology eventually led to a live home-film network similar to television, and since the geopolitical aura of the 1990s was very stressless. Elvis never came to be, and the closest thing to Rock'n'Roll was the advent of Rockabilly and an electric offshoot of Country; there was no Googie architecture, no retro modern, no flower power, no disco or metal or punk music, no hip hop or rap or Eminem, no Madonna or Michael Jackson or pop music, no electronic music or dubstep. No Reagan, no Gorbachev, no Ford or Carter or Iran-Contra or Hostage Crisis, no issues with OPEC or problems in the Middle East, no Bushes or Clintons, no Obama, no gay rights. Who was president? Their names are not important: you do not know of them, for they only got important because of the issues of the day and their views on them. Sitcoms and dramas arose with home-films. There was no McCarthy nor Cronkite, nor Robin Williams nor Stanley Kubrick. Civil Rights and MLK Jr. never happened, but a movement for Equal Rights for Blacks is happening now. America has less police brutality but social structure and conformity are still famous: Keeping up with the Joneses still happened eventually, and it stuck around for quite a while, as people retained the importance of respectable social upstanding, personal morality, and family virtues. After all of this, the man is stunned at how different the world is because of one decision about whether or not to apply 5 lbs of pressure to pull the trigger back half an inch; the suited fellow agrees, and points to the door: "shall we return?" The man concurs, and leads him through: fade to white, cut to black, fade in... The man wakes up in the chair at the library.

·         There's a lightning storm outside a neighborhood; suddenly, something crashes into the front lawn. The family looks outside and sees something metal on fire in the front lawn, but the rain puts out the fire before they can call the fire department; the mom still wants to call, but the father says they should wait and check it out first (he wants to make sure he sees what it is in case the government removes it); the mom thinks it could be dangerous, but the father says they should call the other neighbors and tell them not to call the fire department. The next day, the neighbors gather around and scope out the object: it's a drone, and it's definitely American, even though they were hoping it wasn't. American drones apparently have been spying on their own people, and this one got zapped out of the sky by the lightning: the government engaged in drone warfare against its own citizens. The neighbors are outraged but don't have time to gripe, because two black SUVs show up (full of sunglass-sporting, suited agents, carrying pistols); the agents tell the neighbors to return home immediately or be detained for an indefinite amount of time. The son of the family has his phone out and an agent takes it to check social media: the son had taken a picture and instagrammed it: the agent deletes the post and detains the son, causing the father to fight back, and he's detained, and the neighbors start fighting back, and they're all detained. Cut to a black SUV down the street and around the corner, asking a car to turn around and find another way through: but they live right over there, so the agent tells him to go out and do something for a couple hours; why?, just do it. Cut back to all the neighbors with hands zip-tied behind their backs, with black hoods on, as they are loaded into a nondescript U-Haul moving truck; an agent drives the truck off, and other agents load the fallen drone into another U-Haul moving truck. Fast-forward ahead to the agents finishing fixing up the lawn, and piling into the SUVs, and driving off. The camera follows an SUV down to the parked one, who then allows two idling cars to drive back into their neighborhood; the parked SUV then drives off as well. -- two months later, a curious neighbor (the one from the turned-away car) is jogging by the family's house, and curiously approaches the mailbox, and opens it to find it stuffed with mail, including a letter on top from the US Post Office that says that mail will be withheld from delivery from this point on, and it was mailed seven weeks prior to today.

·         God is on Earth talking to a man (just checking up on mankind) and asking how everything went to shit (last time he visited was 1514, and he was quite pleased with the Renaissance); he's surprised at technology's advance, but they've used it to eradicate each other. Etcetera.

·         A man wants to date a woman. Problem is, she doesn't really pay attention to him; he goes to a dark, quaint library and buys a book on alchemy. He goes home and crafts a love potion (requires his own blood, a lock of her hair (which he had), and ginseng (all in water)), then puts the book on his shelf. He calls the woman and asks her to come over on Saturday and she asks if other people will be over, so he changes his plan and says he's going to invite some other friends; she hesitantly says maybe so he invites some mutual friends, and calls her back and she says sure. When she comes over, it's a party; he greets her and asks if she wants a drink, since he's bartending: he fixes her up something and, while she's distracted with a conversation, he pours the love potion into the drink. He hands her the drink, and she takes it in her hand but doesn't drink it because she's talking: the man anxiously waits, so he comes around the bar to join the conversation. The woman sets the drink down to go to the bathroom with the girl she talks to (to get out of conversation with the man); a male friend of the man comes over to talk to him and console his inability to win her heart: the man smugly says he has a feeling that things will change, and the friend sees the free drink on the table and drinks it, and the man doesn't see it in time to stop it, so he just stares as the friend feels funny and then says "dude... I... I think I love you." "...oh, fuck."

·         A selfish, deviousness guy wants eternal youth and immortality, so he goes to a dark, quaint library to buy an alchemy book, so that he can craft an elixir of life; except someone (the man from the Love Potion episode) snatches it before he can go up and get it. The guy is upset, so he follows the man to his house; after the man crafts the love potion and puts the book on his shelf, then leaves the room to make a call, the guy sneaks in the window and takes the book. He runs home and looks up the recipe for an elixir of life (some of his blood, a gold nugget, a jade stone, and mercury (all in water)); he doesn't have the gold or jade, but he gets the mercury from a broken thermometer, which he does after he cuts himself and puts his blood in. He gets some mercury on his cut, and he recoils in pain, then washes it off. He leaves the house and breaks into a mansion to steal some gold and jade; it is a rough going, and he almost gets caught, but he grabs a gold pendant and a jade broach from a jewelry box. He runs home and tosses them in the cup, then drinks from it. He feels funny but comes to feel better than he ever has before. He coughs, and looks at his hand (which hurts) because it's infected. -- Cut to a month later: he has mercury poisoning, and suffers from its effects (sensory impairment, vertigo, and brain/kidney/liver failure), as he will do for the rest of time. He sells the alchemy book back to the library, displeased.

·         An entitled man wants to marry a woman who has a lot of money; the man wants to marry her for wealth: he's greedy and desires to be a trophy husband. She is engaged to him, but doesn't suspect anything; they're having a party to celebrate it and their closest friends are attending. He comes into the living room after using the bathroom and is shocked to realize he can read minds, after hearing things he didn't see mouths move to, and mistaking things people have thought for things they have said. He starts listening intently and hears that the majority of people think he's ugly and greedy and figure he's only marrying her for her money (which he admits to in his head, but doesn't like that they think that), and he's an asshole and he's stupid and if he wasn't a State Representative, she wouldn't marry him. They think these sour things while giving him fake grins and messages of congrats. He eventually chooses not to talk to any of them, and he goes over to his fiancé and greets her, and she seems glad to see him... He reads her mind: she's bored with him and wishing this party was over and he was late at the office again, so that she could fuck his colleague again (apparently that's been happening for a long time); the colleague is another Statesman, who is his friend and is standing right next to her, with his hand discretely on the back of his waist: when the man looks there, the colleague moves his hand off; he reads the colleague's mind and the colleague just wants the man to go away so he can get back to charming the fiancé. The man is pissed and vocally tells off the colleague, about how he's fucking his fiancé like a degenerate (yes, everyone else is watching); then the man tells off the fiancé for cheating on him. The man, resigning to this whole situation, figures he might as well reveal that he was originally marrying her for her money, but he actually ended up caring for her -- but fuck it: he's out. He turns to the crowd and tries to read their minds, but can't, so he asks "...SO...what do you think??!" The crowd is quiet. The man walks out.

·         This story is about a schlub misogynist who thinks he's God's gift to women and wants to fuck the most beautiful woman of each country. He comes upon a Genie's lamps and gets three wishes: he asks to look desirable to women, to have the charm enough to infatuate them, and that he is irresistible to women in bed. The genie grants him the wishes; he looks in the mirror and sees his normal self, and asks what gives: the genie says he LOOKS desirable to women, but he hasn't been made sexy or handsome beyond his current appearance. The genie says that he gave the wishes exactly as he spoke them, so the man repeats his wishes to himself and confirms that the rest of his wishes seem airtight. The genie leaves and the man goes outside; soon, all women are looking at him with desire. He starts chatting one up but his corny fucking lines are misogynistic and detestable; he looks around like what's up, and the genie is standing a way's away in the room, and pats his pocket as if to tell the man to mimic him; the man pats his pocket and pulls out what's inside: a rabbit's foot; the woman he's with is immediately infatuated with him after looking at it. While the man is bummed about that loophole, he takes the opportunity and leads the woman back to his apartment. They get inside and collapse onto the bed and get under the sheets; she suddenly wants nothing more than to fuck him, so he undoes his pants... But he can't get it up, and he keeps trying and straining and fondling it but he can't get an erection; meanwhile, the hot woman is berating him that she wants him and he should hurry up already! He's frustrated and pissed, and he looks around: the genie is against the wall and he asks what's up: genie says that they're in a bed, and she wants it, but that doesn't mean he can give it to her; he says it isn't fair, but the genie says that he didn't specify that he wanted to be able to give it to her. The woman gets up, causing her to lose interest, and she leaves. The man says it is unfair, and the genie smirks and leaves. (Moral: misogynistic men never will earn a woman, with or without magic, because they do not deserve it.)

·         A "Rosetta Stone" makes a man unable to speak English anymore, but he speaks any other language; that's bad, considering he's a doctor and needs to speak to his coworkers in order to save lives; they think he's messing around originally, but when someone starts coding, they have to struggle to keep them alive, and the doctor becomes an unreliable asset.

·         An army is tunneling under an occupied town in order to invade it. The four digging soldiers and their commanding sergeant talk about the invasion they're working on: digging sucks, keep quiet, why are we invading these people, what did they do, why is capturing this town so important, what's the end game, we were sent out here without a final plan in store, the general unofficially is leading a war of attrition and wants solely for the enemy to be eradicated, and we're to leapfrog from settlement to settlement to kill them all? Turns out, they're digging under a Colony on Mars, because American forces are waging war on their former bases, because the Mars Colonies seceded from the Union, and America wants to reclaim its colonies; so the Army can't roll up to Mars in trucks and tanks because they'd have to breach the airtight shield in order to take it over, but don't want to break that shield; so they have to go underneath the shield.

·         Some lab rats escape and invade the sewers, and infect the town's water supply, causing those who drink the water to become afflicted by the experimental substance that was given to the rats, which caused them to suddenly be all pleasant and robotic (like Stepford Wives mixed with Body Snatchers); a neighborhood becomes like this, but one neighbor, Hank, drinks bottled water, so they aren't affected by this substance. His neighbors, though, are like a hive mind of happy robots who keep trying to offer him drinks of water, or spray him with water, because they want to convert him. His neighbor Jim tries to dunk him in his own bathtub (he broke into the house, with the key that Hank gave him in case he ever got locked out, and filled the tub); Hank gets away from the tub and manages to kill Jim with a blow to the head with a ceramic statuette. To his neighbors, he pretends to be converted in order to get them off his back, by telling them that Jim gave him a nice bath, and they're pleased; the neighbors lead him to one of their backyards for a party (he can't say no or it'll be suspicious); they get there and it's decorated like a Hawaiian tiki party; they gather in the back and find a neighbor gladly tied to a table, and a pregnant neighbor comes through with a crown, and the neighbors greet him, and the pregnant one speaks powerfully to the group and then moves to the tied one on the table, and proceeds to eat the tied one: she is the hive queen and the tied one is her humble offering, used to feed the growing child, who will take over the world when he bursts from her womb. Hank is told all this, after his neighbor explains to his newbie, and he is anxious to leave... then Jim shows up, bleeding but alive, and he points Hank out and the neighbors realize he's not one of them, so they surround him and he tries to escape but is grabbed, and the pregnant queen comes over and feasts from him while he is harangued.

·         Three people sit in a room: red-shirted Henry, green-shirted Glen, and grey-shirted Brian (Henry embodies the Heart, Glen represents the Gut, and Brian signifies the Brain; Henry is emotional and passionate, Glen is resilient and instinctive, and Brian is logical and derisive). They talk about whether or not abortion should be legal or not: Henry says that a life in creation should be born no matter what, Glen says it is up to mom (especially if it's a product of rape or could kill her), and Brian says it's a matter of whether or not the child will come out safely and not be a burden.

·         An ambitious man is successful, yet feels he doesn't have enough time to accomplish everything he wants in life, so he makes a Faustian bargain with a spiffy, snarky Devil; he splits himself into five versions of himself: his physical self (same appearance, now average rather than unique), his intelligent self (smart albeit reclusive), his charismatic self (likable albeit arrogant), his bold self (tough yet risky and confrontational), and his theatrical self (emotional albeit temperamental). His physical self remains in his current job (investor), while his other selves go off to pursue other jobs: the intelligent one goes after a curator position in the Museum of Natural History, the charismatic one goes after a political position in the State Senate, the bold one goes after a slot in the next space shuttle launch to be an astronaut, and the theatrical one goes off to become an actor. They all pass entry level admissions and get on the track to their professions, but along the way, they are let go because character flaws: the bold one is intuitive enough to know how to respond and tough enough to handle the physicality of the journey but not smart enough understand the full machinations of the shuttle as well as that he treats the journey as a thrill rather than a scientific venture, so he does not proceed through candidate selection. The charismatic one is electric and charming, so people are drawn to him, but his ego and superiority turns them off, as well as the fact that he doesn't have any passion or care for the people (it's all about the fame), so he loses the election. The intelligent one clearly knows a lot and could answer any question or build any exhibit with great detail, but he doesn't like being around people (and isn't good at it since it makes him nervous), which makes it hard for him to give tours, so he is let go. The theatrical one is very empathetic and can act any emotion or action on the spot, but is very quick to anger or be frustrated or sad, and no director wants to deal with a drama queen, so the acting coach says they have the chops on camera but not the chops behind the camera, which are more important since they are for life. Meanwhile, the physical average one is let go from his position in the investors office, because he no longer has the ambition or the smarts or the bravery or the compatibility to fit in. Next is a composite shot of the five versions all walking, distraught and unhappy, down the street: 5 shots spliced together (side by side, vertically: [][][][][]). The average one arrives home and the Devil is waiting: the average guy said that he would have the opportunities to pursue other aspirations, not that he would fail at every one: the Devil says that a Jack of All Trades is not an expert at every one, and that combined efforts are more powerful than separate ones: the whole is better than the parts, and the average guy was too ignorant and blinded by zeal and motivation to understand that.

·         A large, wooden crate arrives in a warehouse. What's in the big crate? Four people see four different sides of it: one side has a stamp saying "Exotic," one says "Fragile," another "Confidential," and lastly "This Side Up." Temptation causes each of the warehouse workers to approach the crate. The one who comes to Exotic studies it and hesitantly places his ear against it, hearing only ticking, like a metronome. The one who comes to Fragile studies it and knocks on the box, then jostles it a little. The one who comes upon Confidential studies it and tries to peek through the cracks in the wood boards. The one who comes across This Side Up sees it and pays it no mind, ...but comes back, loosens the top with a crowbar, and opens it up to peer inside; he slides the lid off and we see the top of the lid when it lands on the floor, but we don't see his reaction: stamped on top of the lid is the word "Temptation," which is the title of the short film.

·         A narcoleptic falls asleep in a mall store's changing room and wakes up after the mall closes for the night, and he roams around in awe but feeling he'll get discovered and be in trouble; and he can swear that the mannequins are watching him. He'll pass them and look back to see that their previously-static an indifferent heads are now looking towards him, turned to look at him. He begins to get creeped out, so he heads to the food court, where there are no mannequins, and he tries the doors the exit the food court to the parking lot, but they're locked; he circles around the food court and turns the corner to reenter the main corridor of the mall, and the mannequins from earlier are all lined up and waiting for him. Freaked out, he turns back to the doors and runs to them; he bangs on the doors and screams for help; he looks back and be mannequins are closer. He shakes the door and looks back, and they're much closer. He slinks down with his back against the door, and he's frightened.

·         A very-religious Catholic man lays dying on his deathbed: they are praying, and he tells his family (with a smile on his face) that it is time for him to go and be with God. He closes his eyes [fade to white and back] and he opens them to find that he is seated on a public train. He looks around, confused. A plain conductor (monotone and bored, because he's gone through the ropes literally over a billion times) comes to him and asks for his ticket, and the man asks where he is: the Train to the Afterlife; he wants clarification: Heaven, right? The conductor says it's The Afterlife: it's neither heaven nor hell: everyone who dies comes here. The man thinks he understands: it's not a separation of good men and bad men (which he is bummed about but can deal with), it's a benevolent God who allows everyone into his Kingdom? Nope, says the conductor: no God involved; this is where everyone goes, no matter their religion or karmic level. The man is confused and pissed; the conductor asks for his ticket: the man says he doesn't have one; the conductor asks if he checked his pockets. The man finds a ticket in his pocket: the ticket has words on it saying it is worth one free fare to the Afterlife, issued by Death on 'date of death;' the conductor punches it and gives him a receipt ticket. The man is stewing and the conductor goes to leave, but the man asks first: what's it like? The conductor says it's like earth except longer (physically and temporally (has to contain a lot of people, and lasts forever)), and it's all what you choose to make of it.

·         An atheist woman proudly doesn't believe in God; some demons take note and decide to attack her, prompting her to instinctively call out for God's help, to which the demons mock her: she only believes in God when it's helpful to her. She tries to explain herself: well, she didn't think there was a Good-Evil dichotomy of Absolutes, but now that she knows there are demons, she figures there must be a God to balance it out. The demons harass her because she isn't true to herself, and God hates phonies and liars, and if she really believed in him, he'd save her, but he doesn't like "being convenient," which makes her a perfect target: and the demons proceed to attack her again.

·         A girl who works at a bowling alley finds a small square box with a red button and presses it: it stops time for exactly ten minutes, and needs ten minutes to recharge. She uses it to kiss a boy she likes but doesn't think she could ever get. The girl tells her coworker about what happened, and the coworker doesn't believe her. Later, he asks her out, and she's bummed that she had their first kiss already and wasted it; they plan to meet up and go on a date later that week. The girl explains how the box works, to the coworker, and the coworker is shocked. The girl takes a heap of money from the vault at work and makes it look like the boss did it; the boss gets fired, but the coworker believes the boss is innocent (since the coworker is sleeping with him) and so she tells the girl that she will tell the police unless she confesses. The girl pauses time because she needs time to think about what to do, and eventually decides to kill the girl, so she puts a bowling ball hovering over the coworker's head and turns (smug but scared) to leave the room, but time restarts and the ball crushes the coworker's head and splatters blood on the girl; she runs out to the parking lot and the boy is meeting her: still blood-soaked, she clicks the button rapidly as to keep him away, but it doesn't work: he sees her soaked in blood and questions it, and she clicks rapidly but nothing happens, so she runs to her car; the boy looks inside the bowling alley and sees the dead coworker, goes to stop the girl but she drives away, so he goes inside and calls the police. The girl is speeding and passes a cop, who flips on his lights and starts following her; the call comes in and he realizes he's right behind the suspect (a teenage girl), so he radios back that he has her, and other police cars join the chase because she won't pull over. She clicks rapidly on the button but nothing happens, and she focuses her attention on the button (whilst crying and scared) and rapidly clicks, and then starts banging the button against the dashboard. Not paying attention to the road, the car drifts towards the end of a guardrail, and she crashes into it just as she slams the button down. She's frozen in time as the car is midway through being crushed, so she is halfway through being crushed, and is caught in a mangled trap of steel that has her legs pinned under the dashboard. She thrashes around, in pain, crying for help; it's dark, she's alone, and the button was broken in the crash. She resigns to the fact that she is stuck, and also that she'll probably die in the crash that comes by the end of the ten minutes' time... But the button was broken, and after ten minutes, she realizes she isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and she realizes she'll die of starvation, which upsets her; she gets over it, though. A week passes and she realizes she isn't hungry or going to die of starvation because gaps in time are like limbo; she assumes she's going to have to live in this mangled car for all eternity. Years later, she's still there, and she's bored and psychotic from loneliness; but she's gotten older, and while she barely comprehends anything outside of her hallucinations from a wild imagination and memory, she understands that her body still ages in this limbo. Many years pass, and she's sleepily drifting around consciousness because of her psychosis, but brief moments of lucidity keep her to be a spectacle: she is 83 years old, and she dies of old age right about then. The indefinite pause of time lasted as long as the life of the person who paused it, since it only applied to her: for everyone else, time never stopped; so the car crashes fully into the guardrail and the police stop their cars and get out: they approach the girl's car with guns drawn, but it's a wreck. Detectives have the body pulled out and it's an old woman, and they think they were chasing the wrong car; they renew the APB, but can't explain why the old woman is in the car, so they check the wallet and it's the girl's license. They bring the boy (as witness) to the body and ask him if he knows who it is (maybe her grandma), and he says he doesn't know her, but that's the clothes of the girl on her.

·         A narcissistic writer includes his personality in every character he creates, and the protagonist is always a mirror of himself, which leads to unexciting written works, and nobody enjoys to read them except for him. One day, he writes that the protagonist gets a phone number from a pretty girl he comes across in the grocery store. Later that day, he gets a phone number from a pretty girl he comes across in the grocery store. He comes back to finish writing and realizes he predicted his event; he continues writing and writes a "witty" dialogue scene between himself and his roommate about struggling as creative geniuses; his roommate walks in while he's writing (interrupting the penning of one of his own lines); the roommate asks if he's interrupting, and the man and he begin to talk about the writing, and they have the exact "witty" conversation about pretentiously believing to be creative geniuses, and the man stops himself mid-sentence (the sentence not finished being written) and he says he has déjà vu, then realizes he wrote it. He writes then that the protagonist is bequeathed a fortune and a media empire in the Last Will of his long-lost grandfather of whom he was the last living relative; while the man writes this, the roommate is asking why he's so feverish and ignoring him. When the writer saves the document and leaves the room excitedly, the ignored roommate is disappointed that the conversation didn't continue and pissed that the guy ignored him; the roommate goes to the computer and adds in that the protagonist is on his way to accept the inheritance at a lawyer's office when he realizes he's an inattentive jerkoff and he drives off a bridge. The man is surely enough driving to the lawyer's office when he suddenly realizes he's an asshole (gets lost in thought) and doesn't notice that the entry to the bridge is out because of construction, and he blows through the barrier and into the water.

·         The following short scenes will be in slow motion and individually reversed, and depict a male and his mother in numerous scenes cherry-picked from throughout a lifetime, and shown in reverse chronological order, all as if this lifetime were moving backwards. An old adult male leans in and hugs his senior mother who lies in a hospital bed that is in her bedroom at home. The middle-aged male toasts to his senior mother at Thanksgiving, and his family joins him. The middle-aged male consoles his old mother at the funeral of his father. The adult male and his family are barbecuing with his old parents, and his mother plays with his son while he grills with his dad and they talk about her. The adult male and his wife show their newborn child to his old mother and father. The young adult male stands at the altar with his soon-to-be bride and gives his old mother and father a happy glance. The young adult male and his fiancée are hanging out in the den of his middle-aged parents' house with them, playing Taboo. The twentysomething male, fresh out of college graduation, is taking a photo with his middle-aged mother and girlfriend. The twentysomething male visits his middle-aged parents' home from college for Christmas, and has brought along his new girlfriend. The twentysomething male moves into his first college dorm with the help of his middle-aged parents. The teenage male says goodbye to his middle-aged mother as he leaves for prom. The teenage male argues with his middle-aged father (who holds a doobie accusingly) and shoots his disapproving mother an angry glance. The teenage male is frustrated while learning to drive a car with his middle-aged mother. The preteen male is unenthusiastic in an amusement park with his middle-aged parents, although he has funnel cake. The preteen male is camping in the backyard with friends when his adult mother brings them smores-makings, and they are delighted. The kid male blows out the candles on his birthday cake as his adult parents stand behind him and smile, and the other partiers clap. The kid male goes Trick-Or-Treating with his adult parents and insists on doing the current house on his own. The kid male lies next to his scooter with a badly-skinned knee, and his young adult mother holds him on the ground and nurses the wound with antiseptic. The kid male nervously stands in the hallway on the first day of elementary school, holding his young adult mother's hand. The toddler male has awoken from a bad dream, and his young adult mother comforts him in her arms while he cries. The toddler male gets dried off in his twentysomething mother's arms after receiving a bath. The baby male is smiled down upon by his twentysomething father as his twentysomething mother holds him and rocks him in her arms. The sleeping baby male is picked up from his crib and coddled in the arms of his doting, happy twentysomething mother. A somber, soft-spoken narration begins on the knee-skinning scene, and continues until the end, where it slows down dramatically to linger on the shot of the twentysomething mother reverse-lifting the baby male from his crib: "your mother was always there for you. To watch over you and guide you. To hold you when you needed her. To support you, with your best interest in mind. Over the years, her love for you has only grown. And she always will love you -- no matter what." Fade to black, and stay on black: "let her know how you feel -- she deserves to know -- because to her..." Lastly, a scene of the twentysomething mother getting an ultrasound and squeezing her husband's hand in joy when she sees the image of her soon-to-be son on the monitor, and she smiles while we faintly hear the fetus' tiny, rapid heartbeat: "it was love at first sight." (Based on the tear-jerking idea that 'there was a day, where your mother put you down, and never picked you back up again.')

·         A wife tries to sing "Do You Love Me" by the Contours to her husband, but the husband (busy reading) puts her down monotonously and indifferently each time she speaks: sometimes before she even finishes her sentence. She gives up sadly and he starts singing "I Can’t Help Falling in Love" by Elvis, which gets her to spin around eagerly and happily.

·         Intro narration sets up that a business man lives each day on a schedule, minute to minute, and doesn't find time for himself or others: only for work; if he doesn't learn to correct that disposition, he'll be stuck to relive his moments until he chooses to deviate from the schedule. The man originally restarts a five minute span and it startles him. The man then redoes that span but five minutes longer: ten minutes. Then it's 15 minutes, then 30 minutes, then 1 hour, then 2 hours, then 4 hours, then 8 hours, then 16 hours, then 24 hours, and then the 24 hours again, and again, and again... The outro narration is the same as before, and halfway through the narrator realizes he's repeating the narration, and adds that if the man hasn't so far realized he needs to make different choices, he probably never will realize it...

·         Texting While Driving PSA: A father looks in the rear view mirror at the camera while smiling and driving; second shot reveals he has his arm behind him holding up a mirror to reflect the in-SUV television screen on the ceiling into the rear view mirror, so he can watch cartoons along with his kids. Next, a woman reads a book in one hand and drives with the other, not looking up at the road at all. Next, a schlub man has an old portable television propped on his dash so he can watch the sports game instead of drive, but he's in the driver's seat. Next, a teenage boy plays his PSP while his girlfriend nervously watches the road since his hands aren't on the wheel; she grabs the wheel to steady the car back onto the road: the teenage boy snaps at her that he has it under control (left hand on the wheel), and he looks back down at his phone (right hand) as he responds to a text; the girlfriend is really nervous, and looks between the phone, the road, and the teenage boy.

·         A busy ground floor of a skyscraper is crowded with morning rush hour business types trying to get to work: there are six elevators but one is closed for maintenance, slowing down the vertical commute. Suddenly the closed elevator opens up and a bunch of eager, selfish business types pile into it; it has room for twelve but fits seven, who each press their floors: the elevator rises incessantly, and bypasses all of their floors (which bothers them) but it continues to rise beyond the last floor (which worries them) and it displays "XX" rather than numbers (they are freaked out); they wonder why the elevator continues to rise, and they panic in unique ways, and each relent their selfishness. The elevator then stops, and opens, and it's the ground floor lobby: they get out, stunned.

·         A man finds a square box with a blue button, and pressing on it reverses time ten seconds, so the operator has a chance to redo ten second spans immediately right after they occur. He was never good at communicating (foot in mouth) or at picking up hints; so now when he talks to his boss and tries to weasel out of a mistake, he has the ability to undo his verbal flubs, and the same thing when he tries to flirt with one of his friends who he secretly likes but doesn't know how to approach about it. His conversations get more and more confident, as his ability to redo boosts his comfort levels with being able to communicate, so he gets bolder. Eventually he straight-up asks if they can fuck, and she is shocked and disturbed, so he hits the button again but time doesn't rewind, and she asks what the hell he is talking about: he goes cold and nervous and tries to hit the button rapidly but she keeps interrogating him and the button doesn't work: he is aghast and speechless, but she isn't.

·         A man enjoys a date with a woman: throughout, he barely touches his meal because he isn't too hungry, he isn't seeing anyone except for her, and he says he has to leave early because of a doctor's appointment, but he enjoyed his time. He pays the check, and the two leave: they part ways and the camera follows him to his car: he gets in, and sits there. Her car leaves, his car stays; he stays put, and thirty seconds later, he exits his car and the camera follows him all the way back into the restaurant. He sits down in the reception area and waits; a lady comes in and they greet each other: he leads off with mentioning that he has a doctor's appointment he has to go to later: she quips jokingly, asking he if has another date later, and his shit-eating grin says "no," but you can tell he hides the truth.

·         A large wolf attacks a medieval village and the villagers all pound on the door of the Mage (an herbalist) and ask for his help, but he doesn't answer; meanwhile, the village is being terrorized and people are being slaughtered. The villagers eventually break into the house and find a table littered with various plants, fungi, and animal parts: they search numerous jars and grab one with a bluish-purple plant inside, break it, and (without touching it) smear their blades on it. They run outside and engage the wolf in combat: they struggle, but pierce it numerous times, slaying it: it keels over and lies down. They townsfolk gather around it as the wolf transforms into a smaller, curled-up naked human man: the townsfolk realize that the man is the Mage/herbalist; he had turned into a werewolf. (Called: "The Wolfman and the Devil's Helmet")

·         An insurance company's office building comes under attack by poison gas released by a man who is distraught about having been not given his insurance after his wife died, because he didn't keep up with life insurance payments. Insurance agent Byron York is telling the distraught man (who has a backpack) about how he didn't pay all of the payments (the man thought it was once-and-done, but it was yearly upkeep on the policy); the man says he had a feeling he'd be cheated out of the money (classic capitalist companies stealing money from the Little Guy): he pulls the pin on a canister in his backpack and relaxes (content with his self-sacrifice) as the room begins to fill with poison gas. Byron York flees and tells everyone to evacuate, and he runs through the office (escaping the gas cloud following him) alerting people, and getting four others to follow him: Murphy Jones, Ben Uphold, Rory Abraham, and Beth Socorro. They get cornered by the cloud and locked in a meeting room that has suicide-proof, bulletproof windows and no way out other than the door that they blocked the bottom of with their suit jackets: they are trapped. The gas is slowly seeping through the keyhole, and they suspect that if the hazmat squad doesn't save them soon, the gas will fill the room enough to kill them; also, if the hazmat team opens the door, they'll be subject to the gas cloud immediately. They don't have their phones but are pretty sure that their coworkers know they're in there; but then they realize that they aren't too sure, because they don't quite know who their coworkers are: none of the five know each other in that room, and are pretty sure that nobody else knows who they are: they show up to work, do it, and leave, to live their lives outside of the office (and totally ignore the fact that large parts of their lives exist in the office). They figure they might not live anyways, and they ought to get to know each other: they circle-up and do ice breakers, get personal, and learn about each other. From each person, they learn a deep secret or story (which describes their personality, flaws, and how they changed because of it). They are content with each other but not the situation, and they look outside to see the hazmat squad arrive.

·         A man who loves his girlfriend very much, and she loves him very much, but he has always been betrayed by people in the past, so he is paranoid that somehow this must be a rouse and she's faking it. He sits in his room and thinks in his head about how they have talked about marriage and children; she seems to want more than just his money, but what if she's in it for the long-haul: marry him then divorce and take half his stuff: he should get a pre-nuptial agreement to protect his stuff, but would she think he doesn't trust her if he asks her for one of those? Well if she doesn't trust him, there's no reason it'll stun her that he doesn't trust her; but what if she does trust him? He should trust her, because he thinks she's genuine, but anyone he's ever trusted has failed him: mom and dad abandoned him when he was a kid (put him up for adoption after raising him for 7 years), previous girlfriends have cheated on him, friends have stabbed him in the back and broken promises. He's weak and vulnerable and he's afraid she'll hurt him like everyone else has; but maybe she genuinely wants to marry him and have kids with him... She's been with him through a lot of ups and downs, and she didn't leave him during the downs: in fact, she stuck by his side. Perhaps she does love him.

·         Twig snaps in a forest, and a deer hunter is alerted by it: he stalks in the forest and seems to be following a deer; after numerous close calls seeming about stalking the deer, the hunter's line of sight is finally clear, and he shoots: he shoots a hunter who was also stalking the deer (the hunter was his true target).

·         All we see is darkness with tiny specks of light, as we are looking into a burlap sack: from the perspective of a man forced to wear a burlap sack on his head, with eye and mouth holes cut out but patched shut again: he kills people with sledgehammer. Through the burlap sack, we hear his female victim shrieking, fearing the man who is closing in on her. We see the victim chained to a pole in a basement, and she is losing faith in her chances for survival; the man in the burlap hood draws closer to her, with the sledgehammer in tow behind him, dragging on the floor. The woman turns away from him to keep her eyes off of the impending killer, and he stops a few feet in front of her. He says, in a deep and forlorn (and monstrous) voice, "look at me..." but she doesn't, and he pleads it quietly yet again, but she doesn't; he screams it as an order this time, and she struggles to look in his direction but her eyes dart away often. He says forlornly "why won't you look at me? Nobody has ever wanted to look at me..." She shuts her eyes. "Always ignored, too ugly to get attention..." She starts weeping softly because she suspects his monologue to end with her death. "It's not just about looks, you know..." She starts audibly crying. "Don't cry -- you have no reason to cry." He drops the sledgehammer. "I've cried before; I cried when I was a kid. -- One day I was all dry." He bends down to her level. "I was all out of tears, and instead of sadness inside of me, there was rage." He puts his grisly hand under her chin and lifts it up to have her face look at his, but her eyes are closed. "That rage boiled a fire as if I was a steam engine, and I went out and got to do something about how I felt: how everyone made me feel." He gently removes his burlap hood to reveal a grisly, mangled face. "I killed a lot of people - superficial, beautiful people - and it didn't make me feel any better." She isn't crying anymore. "I actually feel worse; I grew from anger into envy, and what I did was senseless, and I regret it. -- Now I don't know what to do with you." She begins to weep softly again. "Stop crying." She sucks it up. "...please look at me." She doesn't. "...Please..." She slowly opens her eyes and looks up at his face, and she recoils with fear and disgust, and shudders and shrieks. He is enraged by this, and disappointed, and saddened; he tosses his burlap hood onto the ground in disgust, goes and picks up the sledgehammer, and returns to stand over her. "Disappointing as it may be, some things never change." He swings the sledgehammer over his head and brings it down on the woman's head, killing her. He sighs and drops the sledgehammer, picks up the burlap hood, and he puts the hood back on, and tightens it.

·         A guy, when looking through smoke, sees future events: things that happen on the other side of the smoke in 32 minutes' time. He comes across this circumstance when he walks by a schmuck puffing cigarette smoke and he sees the results of a car accident beyond the smoke, then sticks around a minute (contemplating) longer to watch it happen. He doesn't understand how he just saw that, so he walks it off. The guy walks to a bus stop and sits down to wait for a bus; he sees a sewer's manhole smoking, and what he sees through it is a homeless man being beaten up by some preppy teenage males: the guy stands up and shouts "hey!" to get them to stop, but he sees above the smoke and realizes that nobody is there. He is stunned again, and sits down, pretending nothing just happened, and he waits: he watches the preppy teen males beat up the homeless man and walk away; the homeless man lies there, on the other side of the smoke. The bus arrives (between him and the smoke) and he says he'll catch the next one, so the bus drives off. The guy looks through the smoke and sees the police come by and examine the homeless man. The guy looks to the right, up the street, and sees a homeless man walking in his down the street on the opposite side of it: on the left, coming up the street, are three preppy teenage males: all are the same he saw in the smoke. The guy runs across the street and intercepts the three preppy males, and (looking for a distraction) asks them where he can find some hot pussy: they tell him to fuck off, and he keeps going on to make sure that the homeless man gets past them before he finishes talking to them: once the homeless man passes, the guy finally runs off before the preppy teenage males bring the hurt. The guy goes home and hurriedly lights a candle, lets it burn, blows it out, and looks through the smoke at the television set: what was a news story about three new baby pandas drawing above-average crowds to the city zoo changes when seen through the smoke, and becomes about the vice president being stabilized after receiving three gunshot wounds in Baltimore after giving a speech about revitalizing the community: when the VP took a detour to shake hands with the public, an unknown gunman in the crowd fired upon him, and the crowd dispersed with fright (and the gunman hid in the dispersion); police are still looking for the gunman, and the status of the VP is unknown: the President is going to give an address soon. The guy is shell-shocked by this news and calls 911 to report that he has insight on an assassination attempt about the VP in Baltimore; the operator says that the Secret Service has the area and VP locked down and protected. He pleads, but 911 assures him again and hangs up, because this line is for emergencies only. The guy looks back through the smoke and sees the reporter mention that a 911 operator had gotten a warning on the call - perhaps from the killer beforehand - but believed it was merely a paranoid caller and hung up: police are now investigating the source of the call to confirm that it isn't the killer. The guy realizes he doesn't quite have an alibi or a good explanation for how he knew about the assassination attempt, and figures (comparing the news' timestamp of 11:39pm to his clock of 11:07pm) he has half an hour to get out of town: except if he isn't there anymore and clearly left with a bag, he would look MORE like the killer... He doesn't know what to do, so he slouches in his chair in resignation.

·         A woman with Schizophrenia thinks the voices in her head are back, since she hears a man talking to her, so the woman calls her doctor and complains that she must've grown a resistance to the drugs and needs to come in for a new prescription: the doctor asks if she noticed any decreasing of effects over the past few weeks, and she says no: doctor says that the body doesn't adapt overnight and asks if she's been taking her assigned dosage, and she says she has: he says he'll see her next week, and in the meanwhile to keep up the dosage. The voice talks to her, asking what he did wrong to deserve what he got: she was told by her therapist to ignore the voices she hears, but eventually she gives in and asks what the voice got, and he says he doesn't believe he deserved to be killed: the woman asks who he is, and he says his name, and she asks who killed him and when, and he tells her, and she googles it: he was, in fact, a man murdered in her house back in the early 1960s, by his wife, who thought he was cheating on her because he would "work late," but he was shopping around for a different house to buy: it's ironic to him that this is the one he's entombed in now.

·         http://news.discovery.com/space/searching-for-time-travelers-probably-a-waste-of-time-140109.htm A Party for Time Travelers? (Explore other options that this link allows.)

·         Two rival artisans with shops across the street from each other: a younger man who went back to human tradition (keeping the rhythm of human progression rather than following technology’s progression, like everyone else has (he “knows” that the people passing his shop are envious of how he has returned to his roots and they’re stuck in an office)) and carves wooden furniture (especially spoons), and an older man who carves tiny figures into gemstones (as intricate art with meanings that make sense within the stone) to wear for jewelry (and has been practicing his craft, honing it, for years). Based on the Barn the Spoon (http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22467510) and Wallace Chan (http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29364613).

·         An 85-year-old man has put up with the mafia running Sicily his whole life – and it hasn’t been a necessarily spectacular life – but he finally won’t have it anymore; he is going to run for mayor on an anti-corruption, anti-mafia ticket against the incumbent, who is part of the mafia. This could get him killed, but he’s 85, so he doesn’t care anymore. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29364585

·         The last inmate from an old island prison, who chose to finish out his sentence on the island – huge and decrepit – alone, after the prison closed officially (for 21 years beyond its closing). He leaves the prison and recounts his tales of his time in the prison, and how terrible it was, but will not talk about the crimes he committed to belong there. (Basically, whatever the news video on Julio de Almeida says: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28883518)

·         Christmas episode: Percival Smithers is a banker who loses his job on December 23rd, and walks down the street with no money. A homeless man (same age but with a thick beard) asks him for change and he sits down next to the homeless man to join him in begging. Percival recounts to the homeless man how yesterday he wouldn't have given him a glance let alone a nickel, and he was so greedy and caught up in attaining wealth and power -- and holding onto it; and his whole life he always wanted more and more, even if he only needed a little to get by, but now he has nothing, all he wants is enough to get by: he doesn't want any more than he needs, because having excess would be a miracle compared to having enough to buy a sandwich. He used to carry nothing lower than a $20 bill, and now he is lucky to see a whole $1 bill; he doesn't even have enough money to buy his kids Christmas presents (he's divorced from his wife, and she has them (he has so little money after recently buying a larger house that he's in debt)). The homeless man knows what he means about wanting, but never had more than "enough," and has never had a real home: he was born from a homeless woman who was raped, and he's been homeless his whole life: his mom and he got split up when he was nine and he has been on his own since; he loves coming across books because he has something to read, but after a couple rereads it's too much to carry, so he has a stash of found books that he keeps in a crevice in an alley. The homeless man takes Percival to the alley (Percival is nervous about alleys), and shows him the book collection: at least fifty ratty books. The homeless man says Percival should take two to give to his kids; Percival declines because the homeless man has nothing and Percival could eventually get hired elsewhere since he has work experience; the homeless man insists, saying that he knows how important charity is more than anyone else: Percival is grateful and says he'll repay him eventually, but the homeless man says not to worry about it. Percival picks out two books, then introduces himself, and they tell each other their names and shake hands. Percival says he'll come back next week, hopefully with food, and they can hang out again; the homeless man says ok, and Percival leaves, and the homeless man says to himself that he knows Percival will get a job before they meet up again, and whether he'll have time or not is no bother, because he knows Percival will be swept back up into the craving-for-wealth he has known his whole life, and he will forgot all about the homeless man he met. And yet he is glad he gave up two books to save Percival's Christmas for his kids: tis the season of giving.

·         The Keyhole (creepypasta (find writer and attribute them)): A man went to a hotel and walked up to the front desk to check in. The woman at the desk gave him his key and told him that on the way to his room, there was a door with no number that was locked and no one was allowed in there. Especially no one should look inside the room, under any circumstances. So he followed the instructions of the woman at the front desk, going straight to his room, and going to bed. The next night his curiosity would not leave him alone about the room with no number on the door. He walked down the hall to the door and tried the handle. Sure enough it was locked. He bent down and looked through the wide keyhole. Cold air passed through it, chilling his eye. What he saw was a hotel bedroom, like his, and in the corner was a woman whose skin was completely white. She was leaning her head against the wall, facing away from the door. He stared in confusion for a while. He almost knocked on the door, out of curiosity, but decided not to. This disinclination saved his life. He crept away from the door and walked back to his room. The next day, he returned to the door and looked through the wide keyhole. This time, all he saw was redness. He couldn’t make anything out besides a distinct red color, unmoving. Perhaps the inhabitants of the room knew he was spying the night before, and had blocked the keyhole with something red. At this point he decided to consult the woman at the front desk for more information. She sighed and said, “Did you look through the keyhole?” The man told her that he had and she said, “Well, I might as well tell you the story. A long time ago, a man murdered his wife in that room, and her ghost haunts it. But these people were not ordinary. They were white all over, except for their eyes, which were red.”

·         The Rake (creepypasta): recreate all source material, beginning with dramatic recreations of the journal entries, and having the bulk be a wife who recounts her tale spliced together with a dramatic recreation; http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/The_Rake

Or perhaps just extend one of the journal entries into its own story. (I prefer this one)

·         A woman who works for the district attorney of a major city marches into the police station. Elsewhere, a cop drives in the city in the evening. The woman marches, and cops in the station watch her walk past. The cop drives, and slows as he spies a lady who is alone and not doing anything out of the ordinary. The woman opens the police chief's door and interrupts his phone call by putting the phone on the receiver and asking for him to explain the piece of paper she's holding. (All the while with his eyes on the lady), the cop slows down, gets out, checks his utility belt for all of his weapons, and shuts the car door: he struts over to the lady as the woman says in VO: "explain this to me." The cop calmly calls out to the lady for her to stop, and she turns to realize he's talking to her. The chief looks over the paper and asks what the problem is. The cop approaches the woman and asks her to set the bag down and lie on the grass with her hands clasped behind her head. The woman angrily says that he allowed a cop with Extreme Violent tendencies (recorded in a psych evaluation) to be placed back on the force, on the streets. The lady is confused by what the cop is saying, and he whips up his baton and smacks her in the face. The chief doesn't know what to say. The cop tries to restrain the lady but she's struggling because she didn't do anything and she's shocked. The woman wants answers. The cop whips out his pepper spray and sprays the lady in the face, and she screams. The chief is also getting heated because he doesn't know what he's supposed to say and he knows he did wrong but wasn't thinking. The cop flips the lady over and proceeds to start punching the shit out of her, while shouting repeatedly that she's supposed to obey authority figures. The woman knows already that the chief wasn't thinking when he made that call. The cop hoists up the lady and double-checks that the handcuffs are as tight as possible; she struggles as he leads her to the back of his police car: pedestrians are watching but saying and doing nothing. The woman wants to know where the cop is. The lady won't allow herself to go into the back of the police car, so the cop sighs, whips out his taser, and zaps her: as she loses muscle control, he tosses her into the back of his car; he gets in the driver's seat. The chief says he doesn't know where the cop is, and the woman is pissed that he can't even keep track of where his men are let alone what mental illnesses they have. The cop drags the lady from his car into the police station (through the back exit, where cars dock and perps are walked into processing): he tells the attendant that he found her stealing, and she wouldn't comply and resisted arrest, so he used force: she denies it and he says that of course she's going to lie and claim innocence. The chief and woman hastily exit the office and the chief radios in for where the cop is, while the woman berates him for complying to giving the cops psych evaluations but not actually adhering to them; the radio operator radios back and says that the cop is on patrol: the chief asks where, and the operator gives him a street corner. The first scene of the cop replays, except it starts earlier than before, and begins with a shot of the crossroads' street sign, then proceeds up until it shows the cop spying the lady, who is walking innocently down the street.

·         Scientists viewing the sun with telescopes see it glowing brighter than average, because solar flares are going crazy: people stay indoors to avoid the extra heat and radiation. The scientists watch it suddenly fade down to nothing, followed by a couple bursts of light, and are alarmed to see it may be experiencing self-eradication: the sun seems to be going dark, and the scientists predict that there will be less than sixteen hours until the sun goes out; people freak out, and the temperature is dropping considerably. Anarchy erupts: some people start killing each other and doing whatever they want. Other people hunker down and try to live out their last days with friends and family, trying to fight anxiety with distraction. Some people try and allocate their resources from preparing for the apocalypse to account for no heat or light. People have settled into their new ways, when the scientists report in that the sun is actually brightening again -- presumably back to normal; it appears the solar flares were like when a campfire finds a rich part of a log and heats up considerably, then dies down afterwards as a means to balance out the energy consumption, and it's coming back to normal. The people of the world are thrilled they're alive, but disappointed that they have to rebuild civilization, because they so easily destroyed it in a course of hours (as well as a number of people, and some countries launched all-out war since they had nothing to lose (nuclear, air, and on the ground)), and here they find that society merely hid the evil within them.

·         A modern US fighter plane goes down and the pilot ejects, and the jungle he lands in is not on Earth: it is a place whose ruins, city, and humanistic natives have a culture he doesn't know, that is alien to him. He shows them his technological prowess and helps figure out solutions to problems that they have, like agriculture and irrigation to help grow crops, shaving down wood for planks and building boats by fastening them together, and loosing fluffy plant produce, spinning it together, and producing thread to weave clothes. The pilot doesn't understand the native language, but they communicate through body language and he slowly learns the basic words, but the natives understand a few English words and know how to fish, set snares, write down their language, and make paper and ink. Throughout the experience, the natives treat him like he was their God that they foresaw coming; they take him to their temple after the experience and they show him etchings on the wall: a big-headed figure with lanky limbs has beams of light come from his head: the pilot thinks it looks like the Roswell alien, but the natives thrust his pilot's helmet into his hands and have him put it on: he does, and spreads his limbs like he's showing his body off, and the sunlight hits his helmet's visor and brightens up the room: he was the alien they foresaw, because he is not the first to visit: they then show him a different downed airplane that is nestled in the jungle on the other side of the city: a WWII pilot from the UK had crashed here earlier in time and taught them a few things. The pilot is amazed and asks what happened to him, so they show him the grave which is an elaborate crypt, and he sees the body which is decomposing but garnished with fresh flowers, and he sees a fancy dagger plunged between two of the corpse's ribs: the pilot realizes that the WWII pilot was sacrificed, and he tries to leave, but the natives gleefully oblige their gods and snatch him up, and they carry him to the sacrificing table: they tie him down while he protests.

·         Nuclear expert is kidnapped and asked by men in shadows (presumed terrorists) to divulge knowledge/secrets on building nuclear weaponry, and he won't budge; the lights come on and the presumed terrorists are actually US military who were testing the resilience of their scientists to interrogation and threats.

·         In the urban ghetto, a skinny gang banger is an informant: an ear to the streets lets him update his gang on the goings-on of the rival gang. The gang banger runs to his gang's HQ, with a backpack on his back, and passes a drug deal and a beat-down on his way; he passes bodyguards outside the HQ apartment building stoop who let him in, and he runs upstairs and bursts into the room, interrupting gang members weighing and packaging dime bags of coke and ounces of marijuana. The banger briskly walks to the back room and knocks on the door: he hears sexual sounds and commotion (since he's interrupting a blowjob) and asks the gang leader to come out because it's urgent. The gang leader is upset but comes out anyways; the banger says that the rivals are mobilizing to take Jefferson street at the bridge. The gang members are uproarious because the two gangs made a treaty last year to end a turf war that said that they get Jefferson street at the bridge and the rivals get between Elm Street and city limits; and the rivals are gonna go back on that deal? The gang leader says they oughta mobilize ASAP and get that area locked down before the rivals show up: the gang leader has another member call the base at Jefferson street and have that area begin fortifying: the gang members from the HQ (and some from elsewhere) will come help protect it; the gang members have dropped their drug packaging and have assembled their guns. The gang leader and others head out, pumping themselves up with preemptive patriotism; the banger stays behind and waits until he hears that the gang members have gotten away from the building. Once clear, the banger starts clearing the drugs off the table and into his backpack: he packs other stashes of drugs and clears out the safe, and he pauses to snatch an iPod off of a nightstand, as well as a watch; he hurries out the apartment door and down the stairs. – At the Jefferson street bridge, the gang members are standing around (guns drawn), waiting for something to happen (some hiding in wait, some out in the open), and the gang leader is anxious: he feels he might’ve been duped; the gang leader turns to one of the bodyguards who was at the stoop and asks if anyone was in the building when they left: the bodyguard says that everyone left the building together, except for the banger. The gang leader flips out and gets real upset, and rounds everyone up and tells them they got conned by a fake brother: the banger jacked them and ran off; he might be with the rival gang now or he might be skipping town, but the gang leader wants him found – ASAP; the gang members fan out to search the city (some walk, some carpool, some take motorcycles). – The banger, meanwhile, is on a bus, heading out of the city; he clutches the backpack on his lap, and he looks back behind him with a forlorn expression, but turns around and looks forward with a look of righteous determination; the banger puts in ear buds and turns on the iPod, to drown out his past. The bus is heading for Los Angeles.

·         An ex-Marine Man wakes up from a PTSD nightmare and needs a glass of water; he goes downstairs and flips on the light: curled up on his chair is an emaciated Vietnamese teenage boy, who pleads that he wants to go home. The man tries to help by asking where that is, but the boy doesn't say anything other than that, repeatedly, growing more and more homesick and sad with each repetition. The man goes to touch the Vietnamese boy when the lights turn off, and the man can't see; the lights come back on, and he's alone in the room now, reaching towards an empty chair. The man stands upright. The lights go off, then come back on: the Vietnamese boy is face to face with the man, and his eyes are pure white, and he says softly "the sins of our fathers," and the lights go off. The lights come on and nobody is there.

·         A man leaves work, and from the parking lot all the way to his final turn onto his residential street (through all side streets and highway stretches) he is followed by a black SUV. The next day, it happens again. Fast-forward two weeks and he's paranoid that the government is surveilling and following him: but why would they do that? Perhaps it was his college thesis paper on the justification of the Taliban (a devil's advocate stance but still frowned upon): plus, he vocally disapproves of the president on Facebook. The next day, he's even more paranoid on the drive home, so he drives past his final turn and sees how long he can drive until the SUV turns away from following him (SUV takes the third turn after his). The next day, the paranoid man decides to force a car accident by slamming on his brakes before his final turn; he gets out of the car and confronts the dazed driver of the SUV (who wears a button-down shirt and tie just like the man), and the man interrogates the driver asking who he is and why he's following him: the driver is scared and explains that he works in the same office complex and was just as shocked as he was to find out that they not only did they live nearby in the same town but both prefer to work an 8am-4pm workday. The man relaxes, and realizes it was all a misunderstanding; they exchange insurance information, the man apologizes, and the man leaves; the driver than changes from understanding to stoic and presses on his ear and speaks into his watch: the man is catching onto them: he knows he's being followed: the CIA has a bigger problem than they thought. (The driver actually was pursuing for the government, deep undercover, and they let their agency know that the man is onto them -- the man wasn't paranoid wrongfully.)

·         Joan Stafford arrives home to find Death in person, waiting for her inside her house (upon finding him in the house: "how did you get in here? You come through the door behind me?" "The door? Madam, Death does not use the door; Death doesn't even knock. Death arrives when the time comes, no matter where you are.") Death says that she has a stint of vertigo at 7:43 PM at the top of the stairs, and falls and breaks her neck: but she's racked up enough karma points through church (she thinks her churchgoing giving her karma is because God is real, but Death says not to jump to conclusions: it's because she's very charitable), so she has the opportunity to get a warning ahead of time, so that she can tell loved ones goodbye: it is now 7:18 PM. She doesn't want to die, so she is determined to stop Death from taking her within the 25 minutes allotted to her for making calls: she stalls by asking if she's going to go up or down, and Death says that the afterlife is a horizontal move: from the plane of the living to the plane without heartbeats (the afterlife is merely a world adjacent to the one she knows): 21 minutes left. She asks which religion is correct, and Death says all religions are correct because they are belief systems and apply to the individual (whatever a person wants to believe is True, is True to that person; some are just more widespread and institutionalized beliefs): 17 minutes left. She asks how karma comes into play: Death explains that really good people get better options for revisiting the living plane in dreams or being reincarnated, and really bad people have to stay on the living plane as ghosts, no longer able to interact with the world they took advantage of (kind of like taunting them); standard good people work up to really good by acting as guardian angels, standard bad people make amends by spending time in purgatory (a privatized thinking chamber for each person that extolls their sins in their faces until they repent); karmic neutral people are like the Middle Class of America (there's a lot of them and they're average, so they know both sides of the spectrum), so they are to design the souls of the people who are yet to be born (which is more challenging and time-consuming than expected, because each construction has to be unique, but any bad attribute has to be balanced with a good attribute, so that the baby is born neutral so it can choose its own karmic level): 8 minutes left. She thinks for a second and asks how she meets up with people she knew on the other side: Death says that you obtain a sixth sense for the location of others (think of a person and you just KNOW (in your gut) where they are), and movement in the afterlife plane isn't restricted by physics: you can move at walking speed or at light speed: 4 minutes left. She asks what the afterlife is like: Death says it's like an amalgamation of the most beautiful places that ever have been, are, or will be on Earth, and then it's even more beautiful than that: there are gorges and valleys, old Roman buildings on leafy hills, Victorian mansions on the seaside, Tudor villas in mountains, undersea caves and rocky arches on the beach, cities with towering steel and glass structures that intertwine and connect: the afterlife has a home for everyone and a locale for everyone, and every desired place is represented: bikers have advanced machine shops and florists have vast expanses of flowers to choose from: the extents of the afterlife are only limited by your imagination, otherwise it's infinite: whatever you dream can be real: it's 7:44 PM. She gloats to Death that she passed her expiration date; Death is not phased: he turns to look at the digital clock and waves his finger nonchalantly counter-clockwise, and time reverses to 7:18 PM: the woman is stunned; she runs to the TV and turns on the news to see that the time really is 7:18 PM again. Death says he can't be cheated, and if she wants to retain the ability to be reincarnated, she shouldn't be so selfish: and was she even listening, because he just explained how amazing the afterlife is and she still wants to stay here. She is speechless, and regretful; Death tells her to call her family and then go to the top of the stairs: she asks if she should pack a bag, and Death says she doesn't need a bag, but she shouldn't dilly-dally this time.

·         In a not-busy corridor coming off of an expensive restaurant's kitchen, a pompous perfectionist of a head chef speaks to his new recruits: they are on a trial basis, and if they fuck up, they're out. They've been to culinary school, they've done their stints in diners and dives: they know what to do, so there is no reason to fuck up. This is a high-pace environment and it is very demanding: your attention is on multiple dishes, and each one must be excellent, in the dictionary term of the word. You will have to act on your own accord and make decisions on the fly, but I trust you; you are my disciples, and I will show you how to create food. You know how to cook food, yes, but here you will create food: it is an art, a lifestyle. I will make new people out of you, my disciples. Now, get into the kitchen and prepare for the lunchtime rush: it's your first time to shine, and your first time feel the pressure of shining.

·         Ronald Spaulding reminisces to a video blog about how he grew up without any friends and he was always bullied; it seems like he did get the shaft throughout his life when he gives his shorter initial examples, but when he begins to extrapolate the others (along with his personality as he talks to the video blog), we realize that nobody liked him because he's an arrogant and entitled little shit whose idea of fun is making fun of everyone else. He grew up angry and alone because he is a bastard -- he's just too ignorant to understand that, and he will forever be too ignorant to understand that.

·         A husband and wife watch a news program: the anchors have asked a brash republican political talk show host (John Cabal) to come on and talk about the war opposite a meek democrat, who allows himself to be interrupted and shot down and dominated over by Cabal; the husband remarks that he hates Cabal, and the wife agrees: Cabal is practically universally hated, except for by other loud, arrogant republicans. After the guest spot concludes to commercial break, Cabal takes pride over his domination and the democrat tries to tell him he was out of line by Cabal is too cocky to listen; Cabal leave the news studio with everyone there hating his personality. Cabal goes outside and walks down the sidewalk, and people on the street remark to him that he sucks, and he deflects their comments all back at them with either more and worse insults or complete uncaring of what they say. He gets to the subway station and people all sneer at him and whisper about how much he sucks, but he holds his head proud because he thinks he's awesome: but he does sneer, because he thinks they're all assholes. A mother who is turning to talk to her friends doesn't see that her stroller starts rolling away from her, and Cabal sees the mother whispering, then notices the stroller; since everyone has eyes on him, nobody else see it: and the train is coming. The stroller hits the lip of the subway platform, so Cabal starts sprinting for the stroller: it's then that everyone realizes what the stroller is doing; the stroller falls down onto the rails of the subway and the mother shrieks, and Cabal continues to follow it by jumping down after it; he flips it up to reveal a crying baby with a cut on its head. He picks up the baby and looks over to see the train closer; Cabal looks up to the mother who is leaning over the platform with anguish, and Cabal tosses her baby to her: just then, the train arrives in the station, plowing over Cabal before it could slow. He sacrificed himself to the train in order to save the baby, and he took the impact full-well knowing that he was doing exactly that. The people on the subway platform are stunned, at both the event and the man: even an asshole can be good.

·         In the future, thrill-seekers can go to a building that modifies gravity within a chamber (the parallel to today's indoor skydiving). Two adrenaline-junkie employees there get free usage of the chamber after the building closes each day, so they're playing around with it. The chamber is a room with an oculus rift and a number of ergonomic chairs (depending on the severity of the G-forces you want to subject yourself to, you want to be stabile when being pressed down upon by the G's, otherwise it could cause bodily harm (tip: always face the G's so keep looking at the ceiling (that's even on a sign in the chamber))); there's a window looking into the chamber from the control room, and the two rooms can communicate with a PA system. The two close up the front doors and eagerly run to the chamber; one worker hands his phone and wallet to the other and tells him he wants to feel like he's flying a fighter jet; one enters the chamber and other shuts the door behind him; other goes on the PA and says he's loading the fighter jet simulator: one sits in a standard chair-type that lies on its back, and one puts on the oculus rift. Other says it's loaded and asks one if he's ready, and one is pumped; other turns it on, and one feels the G's and loves it. While one is enjoying the ride, other looks at one's phone which is buzzing with text after text: all are sexual texts from a girl named Emily; the other is very interested in these texts because they make him distraught and angry. One finishes the ride, the G's go back to normal, and one takes off the oculus rift, and comes to the door and gleefully says that it was fun and it's other's turn. Other is distracted by the phone and doesn't hear him, so one repeats himself, and other asks one if it's the same Emily; one goes stoic and defensive and claims to not understand the question; other asks if one is sexting other's girlfriend Emily or if it's another Emily; one hesitates and then feigns like it's another Emily; other knows it's a lie and says one isn't a good liar; one immediately tries to replace the blame saying that she came onto him and the correspondence is her coming after him; but other knows it's going both ways: one says he's playing along and was going to tell him about it because then he'd have proof she's unfaithful. Other starts loading a new program and one asks him to open the door; unanswered, one asks what he's doing; other says he's loading the deep sea diver simulation. One denies that other has the balls to do it, and other says that he DOESN'T have balls anymore since he's been cuckolded by his supposed best friend and an unfaithful girlfriend; one tries to plead but other flips the switch and engages the simulation: one starts contorting under the pressure and begs for mercy; other turns it off. One lies on the ground and complains of being warm inside and of having leg and back pains; other tells him to be a man and stand up, and he'll let him out: one stands up. Other changes the simulation to the preloaded shuttle launch simulation; one says sorry and that he's waiting for the door to open; other hits the button, and the G's of the shuttle launch break one's spine, crumpling him up on the floor (remember the sign); other watches intently, coldly; one stays crumpled until the shuttle breaks through the atmosphere, and then slowly one's body rises off the floor and begins to float around inside the chamber. Other remarks that one was now spineless in more than just a social manner.

·         In city-turned-battlefield (think Sarajevo or Baghdad or City 17), a Soldier (split from his squad by sniper fire) saves a citizen wife and two kids (one boy, one girl), by ducking them into an old restaurant to avoid the spray from a machine gun nest in a 2nd story window. The Soldier and family introduce each other and start walking through the back door and across the street: he's trying to get them to an evacuation site; they sneak into an old apartment building before drawing fire (they're safe). They navigate up the stairs, through rooms, and across rooftops, and through alleys, and across streets; all the while, talk about how the war sucks. The war starved them, and it killed the father of the family: he was drafted by the militia and died within the week because he had no training. The family lost their home to mortar, and now they have nothing except what they salvaged and put in backpacks: it's a broken family with no father, no home, no job, no lifestyle... The Soldier says he's afraid he'll die the same, and leave his wife and daughter back home with no husband/father; it's not even a war that their country is supposed to be in, but a little disagreement between an allied nation and an oppressive one drew them in: he was in the Reserves, too, but he got called up. The mother says that he could don some of her husband's salvaged clothes and pretend to be with them, and go AWOL, then find a way back home; the Soldier likes the idea, and says it's possible, but if he got home, he'd be found out for going AWOL and he'd go to prison. The mother says that prison is better than being dead, to which the Soldier agrees; but the Soldier wouldn't want to go to prison, and he learned something in the Reserves: he's made for war: he understands the battlefield and has intuition and technical skill with a gun: it comes naturally. They come to an alley where they can see the evacuation site and refugee camp: they stop; the mother says it's his last chance to come with her, and he politely declines: he can make more of a difference on the battlefield than in prison, like how he helped her. She reluctantly admits that he has a point, and thanks him for being the Savior for her and her children: he is grateful for her gratitude. The four of them walk out of the alley and to the evacuation site: the family goes to the processing center and the Soldier goes to a squad of men he recognizes who sit at a humvee and chat -- they part ways.

·         An imprisoned man in handcuffs is being interrogated by detectives who want to know why he tried to hijack the airwaves: he was trying to get out a message (he's a hacker with a slightly paranoid, but very radical and open-minded, view on the world, and he thought he would help everyone else "see the light:" "What Is Truth?" Who decides what is real? History is written by the victors, physicists and philosophers choose what we base beliefs on, teachers teach as the government's ideology demands them to (unless they try and assert their own ideology, if the government  isn't strict), and institutions have their own ideas about what is true (work: work is life, church: God is life).

·         A guy leaves a diner at night with his friends, and he splits off to go to his car; a man in a trenchcoat in an alley calls him over: he tells the guy that his girlfriend is cheating on him. The guy disbelieves it, saying she loves him; the man says otherwise, and the guy knows it's not true but is paranoid and wants to hear more; the man gives barely-plausible evidence as to why it could be true. The man says that the guy is being cuckolded by his best friend (who is one of the people he just left the diner with), and the guy says he doesn't believe it: but the man says it's true. The guy vehemently says it's false, but the man matter-of-factly says otherwise. The guy says the man is crazy, and the man tells the guy that he's paranoid: the guy is speechless, and the man says a little part of the guy believe him. The guy denies it but does say that the fear won't leave him. The guy says he doesn't want to hear anymore and he goes to his car; the man calls out that the guy's also secretly being videotaped and his whole life is a reality show for everyone else. The guy gets in his car, and he calls his girlfriend saying he just had some paranoid thoughts, and she calms him down and consoles him and reassures him that everything is ok...

·         A man berates himself over his mistakes, then tries to commit suicide: he puts a pistol in his mouth and fires it, but it missed his brain: the bullet went out the back of the left jaw; he writhes in agony on the floor, screaming. In the hospital later, while his father and ex-girlfriend console him, he is glad he didn't die.

·         It's a post-apocalyptic world; a man is upset that the revelations came and there wasn't a rapture along with it, because he is a God-loving man: this man protects his Bible closely, because it could be the last one for all he knows -- he needs God's word to live on. A ravager (another guy; a bandit) stalks the man to try and kill him to take his backpack and the resources inside it. The man catches onto the ravager and runs away: the ravager follows; the man runs further, in and out of ruined buildings; the man tries to hide, but the ravager finds him. The ravager kills the man; the ravager takes the man's backpack. At the campsite of the ravager, he rifles through the man's stuff and finds the Bible: the man flips through the Bible but it means nothing to him, so he tosses it on the dwindling fire because he needed more fuel for the fire. (To the man, the bible was the most important thing in the world, but to the ravager, it's highest usage is as firewood.)

·         Society continues advancing towards more singles than couples, until being single is the norm and being a couple/committed is seen as mock-worthy (taboo), and people are accosted for wanting to be tied down, and are made fun of for being monogamous (which is now a slur). A monogamous couple risk being seen on the street as they hold hands after leaving a romantic dinner; a group of thuggish teens (both genders) spot them and follow them, whistling lovey-dovey and mocking them: the couple notices and try to ignore; the punk teens get closer until they snatch the couple and pull them into the alley. In the alley, the teens pin the couple against opposite walls and touch them each inappropriately to mock them both that someone else is touching them in their intimate zones; the teens are vicious and angry, raised to be hateful of monogamy. The teens take the two left ring fingers of the couple and they bend them both back until they break (as a literal and figurative message about how they think monogamy is terrible). The teens laugh, deliver their last kicks, and run off; the couple lies in agony, but barely recuperate enough to help each other up: they look each other in the eyes and kiss, and silently reaffirm that being together is still worthwhile; they walk off (knowing inside that they can't go to the police since the police wouldn't do anything about it).

·         Man is tapped by a coworker to be in a secret society: middle class actually does secretly rule the country; those with the right beliefs are brought together to pull strings (and public opinion) to keep illusion of power/class struggle, since world needs balance to function (ex keeps it democrats vs republicans, whites vs blacks, rich vs poor, etc); Aristotle's Golden Mean actually has come to be true: a select few of the virtuous majority control the world.

·         Cocky leader of UK declares utter war on Scotland as Scotland prepares another insurrection: leader doesn't want to trifle with the Scots wanting independence, and refers the feudal age when Scotland beat England when England tried to take over; leader showcases his bravado and declares war ON TELEVISION rather than through diplomats, and announces that the English government will bring total annihilation to Scotland and turn it into the Anglo-Saxon fields it used to be, for more living space for British.

·         A person in a coma has his Last Will and Testament read out to his friends and family in the hospital room where he lies; this is intercut with seeing black and hearing barely anything. Slowly, the muffled voices grow audible and we realize we're hearing the reading of the Last Will continuing during the intercuts. The Will approaches the end, and the family is all sad; we hear another muffled and confused voice start to arise behind the darkness, but we don't hear anything like it when in the hospital room. A present doctor concludes the reading and asks if everyone is ready to remove the body from life support (the last half of which we hear from inside the closed-eyed comatose person). Except, the second muffled voice begins to arise and we hear that it's the comatose person's inside monologue slowly coming out of confusion and realizing what's happening, and they scream inside that they are waking up and they plead inside for the doctor to wait. Shots of the hospital visitors each accepting that the comatose person "won't recover" and agreeing to pull the plug (Will stated all present parties had to agree with removal of plug) intercut with shots from behind the closed eyes of the comatose person as they scream to let them know that they're waking up and the plug shouldn't be pulled. The plug is pulled; the mouth opens and a breathy exhale comes out that sounds reminiscent of words, but the doctor says it's just air leaving the lungs and passing through the vocal chords; the eyes almost flutter open, but only open a crease before the comatose person dies; one last shot from the inside as the voice softens to nothing.

·         It's dusk: a jogger runs down a path; when she checks her phone while running and doesn't see a wasp hive when she runs past it; she swats at them and stumbles off the path, and down a hillside. At the bottom of the hill, the wasps have been left behind, but she lies in agony: covered in wasp stings and with a compound fracture: a broken leg. The jogger lost her phone at the top of the hill when she fell: she has to climb up and get it, but dragging her broken leg is painful; she drags it through the dirt and eventually makes it to the top: she gets to the top, writhing in pain, and reaches out for the phone, which balanced on the edge of the gutter.

·         A woman (Miranda) is abused by her husband (Dwight), and police are often called by neighbors about domestic disputes: the same cops show up each time and she keeps shrugging off the injuries, saying they were accidents: the cops don't believe her but she's the only proof and she denies it and won't press charges, so the cops can never do anything about it. The woman gardens in her spare time and does so to keep herself busy and work her anger out through energy (stabbing and carving up the dirt with spades and hoes to make flower beds); each episode of abuse leads to the addition of another bed of flowers or row of vegetables, until the backyard is beautiful. The woman is abused again, and tells the cops nothing happened; the cops don't want to keep coming back only to have her say nothing: she needs to stand up for herself. The woman makes her husband soup for dinner and cuts up things from her garden to add to it: carrots, potatoes, celery, parsley, and a purple flower. The husband eats his soup without saying thank you; in the next shot, paramedics remove his corpse from the house: neighbors can prove she was in the yard gardening the whole time, and the detectives declare it a heart attack, which is was. The cops (Officers Farkas and Seabolt) who visited after each abuse are present, and note that she doesn't seem earnestly upset, and they also know of her expertise as a gardener: they notice a gardening book on the bookshelf with a bookmark in it: they look at the marked page, and it's for a purple flower called Aconitum variegatum, aka Monkshood: there's a warning beneath it saying that even small levels of ingestion may cause heart attacks. The cops look at the woman (a barely-grieving expert gardener and abuse victim) and back at the book (a source with a warning of possible death matching the death of her husband); the cops remove the bookmark and put the book back on the shelf (it may have been a crime, but it was a worthwhile one that she deserved, and the cops understand that) -- she gets away with it.

·         An antique piano is donated to an art museum with a note: the beautiful instrument can be owned by and on display for the museum for all of time, for free, but the only stipulation is that it can never be played. A very inquisitive and devoted curator at the museum is very pleased to have such a beautiful piano in the museum, and is very eager to hear it be played -- but must abide by the stipulation. The piano has all 88 white keys, and most are in great condition, except for the 23 on the left, which are all cracked. The curator hesitantly places a "Do Not Touch" sign on it. The curator goes about the week watching people look at the piano, and he glares luringly the piano, aching to play it. After days pass, he's closing up the museum one night, when he passes the piano: he stops to look at it. He grazes his finger across the ivory, sliding it on every key; he presses down on one key and it plays a note. He presses another: note. He looks around; he begins to play the piano: he plays the first few moments of a beautiful, slightly-recognizable concerto: he freezes in place, frozen in fear, unable to speak as his finger holds a note and has a thousand-yard stare. His mouth opens and he turns into ash, which dissolves in the air. One more of the keys cracks up: 24 ivory keys are now cracked. (Called "The Stipulation.")

·         1979: senior citizen double agent in the later Cold War figures he's done enough (has been active since 1943) and figures he should get out of the game, since he's growing old (he's 81 -- born in 1908). He figures he should fake his death for both sides, and then escape to Bermuda. He arranges an event between both sides (USA and USSR) where the two will come with agents to France to pick him up, since he tells them both that he's a double agent and he's willing to surrender, and will bring all information he has on the other side in exchange for immunity from prison, since he's old and wants to die free and with a clear conscience: he says he's staying in a hotel on the cliffs of France, and he's going to kill himself unless they arrive quick enough, because he'd rather die than risk them going back on the immunity and killing him. The two sides send agents to come get him, and they each arrive hastily and armed, and they each sneak up to his hotel room from two different angles, and see each other: a small physical altercation happens in the hallway where the two sides' agents fight each other with highly-skilled unarmed combat. The remaining, not-incapacitated agent (USA) opens the hotel room to find an open window, which leads down to the cliffs and rocky water: he presumes the worst: they were too late. Also in the room are two phones on the desk, which prompts that he called both sides at the same time (which he did): a limping, amiable Russian agent notes this, and also that nobody could survive that fall: the US agent says he really did it -- he killed himself. Out on the horizon, beyond the rocky water, is a boat. On the desk is also a pistol and a stack of files for each side: the two opposing agents look at the files (which were labeled for each side with a post-it note) then back at each other with grave urgency. A flashback shows the double agent hang up both phones at the same time, sit back and relax, and then go to the closet: he pulls out a hang glider, opens the window, unfolds the glider, and jumps out; he soars out to an awaiting boat and dives into the water next to it; he swims to the boat, turns it on and circles a bit; he picks the glider out of the water as he drives past it; he drives off to a pier, looking up at the road next to the hotel as a car with the Russian agents arrive at the hotel's back door. The double agent drives to a pier and boards a larger vessel that he also owns, and he pilots that one (which has a lot of resources and stuff on it) out to open sea. Cut back to the present, and the two opposing agents are finishing up a second scuffle, where they were beating each other up over the files (while exhausted), and have gotten so tired that they're struggling to thwap each other with the Manila folders, let alone throw punches.

·         A man doesn't understand the sculpture The Thinker, and talks about it while overlooking it with a friend at an art museum: "I don't get it." "Get what?" "'The Thinker.'" "What's not to get?" "What's he thinking about? What takes this long to think about?" "The human condition, maybe -- I don't know; he's a real philosophical guy." "But it's been hundreds of years -- take a break, read a book, use the toilet." "It's a snapshot of a moment or a representation of an abstract concept: it's not a performance art -- it's stone, not a real man." "Yeah, but he's so one-dimensional as a character." "It's not trying to tell a story -- it might not be trying to tell us anything; it could simply be a sculpture of someone thinking." "Yeah, but why choose that as a model?" "The artist liked to think, maybe? Thinking is pretty important, you know." "As a subject of art, though, it's kinda boring." "Seeing as the artist couldn't craft 'thoughts' out of stone, he carved the person who thought the thoughts -- which I'd say reflects better on the human condition." "What's up with you and the human condition?" "Without philosophers and innovators -- men who run on brainpower -- we wouldn't be so advanced today. One hominid picked up a rock and used it as a tool; his descendent used a stick; his descendant combined the rock and the stick. Hammurabi invented laws, which Justinian turned into Justice, which eventually became the court system. Plato invented Liberty, which was defined over the years by the stooges of authority figures, until John Locke said each person has a right to life, liberty, and property, and our Founding Fathers wove that into their Constitution when they created the first modern democracy. Aristotle defined the class struggle that Rousseau, Marx, and Foucault built off of, eventually becoming socialism -- one of the most popular ideologies. Cicero and Polybius leant Rome the idea for what we called Congress today, but was originally Legislators and res publica -- the ruling of the people alongside the leader. Some of these terms existed already, but we didn't have names or definitions for them. We wouldn't have had the Digital Revolution without the Industrial Revolution, which happened because of the Enlightenment, which would not have occurred if we didn't have the Renaissance, which we wouldn't have had if the Reformation never happened, which was a result of the Roman Pope's Empire -- which held the Crusades, which wouldn't have happened if St. Augustine didn't come up with a system of thought that appeased both the Christian church and Julius Caesar. The world is ruled by nation-states -- no longer feudalism -- which came about with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, that led to the creation of the first nation-state, which was built off of notions about power that were defined by Machiavelli; later, Adolf Hitler was influenced by Benito Mussolini's ideological manifesto -- aka his thoughts -- of which Mussolini was influenced to have, and Hitler combined power and nationalism with the ideology to raise a frustrated nation-state to combat socialism and attempt to take over the world: the people rallied and fought to impress the natural rights of others, and were opposed by half of the global powers; the losers were tried in court to determine their deserved punishments; the result of the war was a major technological advance which ushered in the atomic era, aiding the invention of suburbia, television, canned food, and computers. So not only did thoughts allow for us to come to the age of iPods, but thoughts invented the iPod." "...Yeah, ok, but a guy with his fist under his chin seems like a boring subject." "Agree to disagree."

·         A series of news anchor spots delivering various news stories depict the following long narrative across a short span of time: a sociological poll is taken by a Harvard lab and finds that 81% of the large test subject group don't appreciate drunkenness, and 63% could go without ever tasting alcohol again (although only 39% approve of a prohibition): the press dubs them "the Silent Majority;" a gallop poll shows similar numbers in the nation's people, and a second prohibition is being considered (moral, social, and civil increases would be benefits); a referendum comes to Congress, and the nation is asked to vote for a new prohibition. The news anchors note that these numbers could be a fluke and the only those who agree voted, meaning not an actually majority wants this; the nation seems actually in favor of this, but recalling the last prohibition, it had a popular moral beginning but it led to a huge rise in crime, secret illegal speakeasies, and a load of detest towards the government; today's the day, and the votes are being tallied, and the side that gets the most votes wins (side with over 50% in favor, by the time it's midnight in the most eastern stretch of Alaska): they note that any number of nostalgic criminals or anarchists could vote in favor because they want to try to recreate the turmoil and underground liquor industry of the 1920s: so far, it seems the numbers are holding up closely to the original scientific study: 42% approve of prohibition -- this number has barely fluctuated: later, over time, the approval side starts to slowly tick up (although it flickers up and down sometimes (two steps forward, one step back)), and it approaches the end of voting as the vote approval ticks up and up to 50%, but we don't see who wins and we don't see the end of voting -- merely the approval go up as time goes in towards the end, to assume it does pass in favor.

·         A man in idyllic suburbia is afraid of his neighbors, because he thinks they're manipulative, smart zombies. The nation (and world) haven't mentioned the invasion of zombies, but he's pretty sure they're zombies -- and they blend in well with society because they're smart zombies; they don't want to give away that they're zombies yet because it'll ruin their chances at building an army large enough to combat the world's militaries; they're currently living normal lives and manipulating people into visiting their homes so they can be infected. Their skin is deteriorating so he's catching onto them; he'd post something online about it, but doesn't want to be institutionalized, put on a government watch list, or have the neighbors find out and then break in to kill him -- they'd surely eat him rather than turn him. The neighbors keep trying to cover over and visit, or invite him to barbecues and hiking trips and beach trips; this weekend is a house party for the adults of the neighborhood, and everyone except him has RSVP'd, and only half of the neighborhood is zombies, so he feel obligated to go to the party and warn the human half to escape; it's against his will and better judgement, but he goes. The zombies and humans mingle as if the humans can't see that something is wrong, because they don't see it: but our hero does: he's on-edge the whole time and won't talk to anyone -- especially zombies. He gets cornered at the punch bowl by a most fervent zombie who asks him if he's enjoying the party, and if he'd "like a bite to eat," and if he "craves anything," and that if he really wants to have a good time, there's a "secular bash with a small feast" out in the shed in the backyard -- a real blowout: ("Silly Love Songs" by Paul McCartney comes on): the man declines but the zombies coerces him and leads him out the back sliding glass doors; the man stops himself halfway across the lawn and declines so the zombies continues on to the she's but says that he can join them whenever he wants -- the zombie just wants the man to feel like he's a part of the neighborhood, since he's seemed really distant. The zombie goes in, and the man curiously but hesitantly sneaks up to the shed's window and peers in to see a circle of people in chairs talking: the zombie comes in behind one girl and puts his hand on her shoulder; the others seated are zombies, and the zombie covers her mouth so the other zombies can hold her down while he muffles her, and a second zombie bites her leg under the dress to infect her: the second then says infection can wait -- he's starving: he bites her neck and they all begin to eat her. The man is startled and hurries across the grass back to the house: he sees through the window a man burrowing his face into the bosom of a girl who cries out: her bosom has red liquid on it; the man runs in and stops him, thinking he's a zombie, but he was just licking the spilled fruit punch off of his giggling girlfriend's chest. Behind him, the zombie asks the man what's making him so nervous; the man spins around, nervous, and sees red liquid spilled on the zombie's shirt and mouth as well: the man starts to flee the house, shoving himself though the crowd of confused partygoers; as he leaves, he hears behind him that partygoers are screaming, and he looks back to see struggling; once he gets out of the house, he starts to run: behind him, he sees people try to flee the house, but they're mostly all nabbed by zombies that chase them. The man keeps running until he gets to his house; he runs inside and looks out the window, down the street at the party: it's all calm and there are no people dying in the streets: he says that they covered up that scene real fast, but that means that all of his neighbors have now been turned... He decides to call the police, since there will be evidence of the zombie attack in the shed. The police arrive and he leads the two cops to the party, where they have the music turned down and have everyone stand aside: the zombie asks what the problem is, and the cops tell him that one of their neighbors called about a murder; the neighbors all groan about the man, and the zombie persuades the cops that no murder would've or could've happened here unless all of the neighborhood got together and consented to it, because they're all here: and the man has a grudge for not feeling welcomed by them even though they've offered many times to include him; the cops say they believe him but still need to check it out (the man is bummed and pissed but is at least is glad they'll still look). The man leads the cops and the zombie to the shed, and hesitantly has the cops open up the shed: the cops go inside, and the man gives the zombie a cocky but scared look, and the zombie returns a cocky innocent look; the cops come out and say that it's just a normal shed with no signs of a murder: the man is stunned and runs inside to find that the floor is actually covered in blood and the girl's corpse is in the corner: the door behind the man closes and the light comes on: behind him stands the zombie and two cops, and the cops remove their aviator sunglasses to reveal that they have the same dilated, grey eyes as the zombie; the man realizes that he is outnumbered and nowhere is safe: the cops and zombie walk towards him. There's a struggle between silhouettes viewable from the shed's window as the camera backs up from the shed and backs into the house through the open sliding door ("Silly Love Songs" by Paul McCartney plays again), and it backs up amongst partygoers who all have shriveled skin, grey eyes, and blood stains, and the camera backs up through the front door and out onto the stoop, looking beyond the doorway into the zombie party: a different zombie comes to the door (with grey eyes) and smiles (with blood-stained mouth), and closes the door: there's a bloody handprint on the outside of the door, and we still hear the music playing inside as the credits play over the door. (If set in the early 1950s, this becomes a metaphor for the Red Scare.)

Original document created 12/13/2014.