Brilliant movie idea (Part 5 of 10)

(A few years back I started to write an odd/comedic movie idea down. Every day I would add a small scene and see where it went. It went nowhere. Now it is going nowhere again because I’m on vacation this week and need to fill up the days. Plus, there has been an uptick of Hollywood-types nosing around the website and I’d like to make it perfectly clear that I’m NOT blockbuster material. Enjoy.)

Patti was upstairs working the internet. She didn’t know how long it would be up so she was looking up medical information and printing at a frantic pace. There would be no worries about getting drugs but knowing one from the other would be tricky.

She printed instructions on how to build fires and boil water.

And finally she looked up the address of a fertility clinic. If they were going to have to repopulate the planet the ever-growing legion of whores descending on her house would have to think twice about using Clay’s seed. Patti would be damned if she was going to allow the planet to be crawling with three-armed mongoloids because of a few generations of inbreeding.

With any luck all would agree that they needed to sprinkle in some various ethnicities and couldn’t all shoot for blonde and blue eyes. Someone would need to have a baby with Asian in it. This messed up new world was going to require math.

They could just look through the samples until they found a Wang or a Dong.

Rather ironic that.

Clay was pacing in the hall. Trying to figure out a way to let Patti know that yet another old girlfriend of his was inbound. What he needed to do was sit down and make a list of all the girls he’d been with. If they were in fact going to be hanging around this reality then he’d better find out where they were at and figure out a way to contact them.

He owned them at least that much.

Tina had sat down and watched TV. The movie channels were still on and she figured she’d enjoy them until they went black.

Eventually, after sifting through so many bad movies that she honestly felt that humanity somehow deserved to have the television go dark for eternity, she stumbled on an Eric Clapton documentary. She watched it until it ended and wondered why they didn’t call it An Asshole Who Played Guitar Well. Having never heard the story behind the song Layla she immediately fell in love with it.

She turned on her laptop and listened to it.

When the chorus came she sang along.

She played it again and sang louder.

Then she started to cry.

Let’s make the best of the situation
Before I finally go insane.
Please don’t say, we’ll never find a way
And tell me all my love’s in vain.

Layla,
You’ve got me on my knees,

Layla.
I’m begging, darling please,

Layla.
Darling won’t you ease my worried mind.

She wanted to be someone’s Layla.

Donna had been having a bit of trouble leaving Manhattan. Her first attempt at going through the Holland Tunnel had ended rather badly. It became clear that when people disappeared they didn’t have much notice and bringing their vehicles to safe and orderly halt was not a priority. It must have happened when their wasn’t much traffic but there were still enough wrecks that it was tricky to weave through them and then about three quarters of the way through the tunnel it became impassable.

Turning around in the tunnel wasn’t necessarily difficult but it did creep her out. She suddenly felt very claustrophobic.

When she finally made it back out into the light she decided to give the Lincoln Tunnel a miss and headed a little further north to the Washington Bridge. She opted for the upper level and almost immediately regretted it as a multi-car accident had it completely blocked.

She pulled a u-turn and gave the lower lane a go.

It became a video game. Weaving and occasionally grazing the other empty vehicles. Near the end of the bridge she stopped the car and got out.

It wasn’t a video game.

She looked at New York City sitting quietly behind her. If it weren’t for the fact that she was completely alone in the city that now slept it might have been a beautiful moment.

She looked west towards New Jersey. Somewhere down that road there were the only people that she knew still existed.

Above her head a few birds circled and she found that comforting. Hearing them screech and complain made her feel attached somehow. The wind felt nice on her face.

She looked down at the water below.

Did some people really have the courage to jump?

“Well” she said to nobody “let’s see where this road takes me.”

At this point I’d like to point out how much I want to skip a head a few weeks or months or years in the story. Anything but continue to introduce all the characters and explain how they all got together.

This writing a book stuff is hard.

I’m sure you’re saying to yourself “Reading this book is no picnic either.”

If you only knew the awesome possibilities the premise has opened up you’d change your tune. I’m constantly sitting at my computer when I’m supposed to be writing and telling myself to remember to jot down some good idea I had for the story before returning to listening to songs on Youtube and forgetting all about it.

Getting back to the skipping ahead … I feel like if I explain the back story of all the people it will be another fifty pages before I get to something interesting and explaining the interesting stuff will be another fifty pages and before I know it I’ll have a book half done.

“Isn’t that the point?” you might be asking yourself?

Well, yes and no.

Mostly yes if I’m honest with myself.

You realize, of course, that if I make the characters fascinating and you start to develop empathy for them that I could write a dozen books with this premise. Decade after decade I could ramble on about their deeds.

Eventually word would get back to Steven King about how he inspiring/forced me to start this experiment and he’d have to write a long apology to the literary world that he never intended to incite the Manion’s of the world to pick up a pen, in fact quite the opposite.

Well, no reason put this off any longer. Time to make another character interesting so you’ll grow attached.

Donna didn’t trust music.

As she drove through the silent heart of New Jersey, highway 78 taking her directly west, the setting sun was directly in her eyes. As she squinted and changed CDs frequently and then frequently hurled the recently-played CDs out the window she decided it was time to think a little bit more about why she didn’t trust music.

It was because of the damn Moody Blues.

When she was younger music was everything to her. She spent every penny she had on music. She knew all the up and coming bands and read all the trade magazines.

One day her Dad approached her and it was clear he wanted to share something with her. He saw that she was very into music so he told her that he was much the same way at her age.

You’ll note that this would be an excellent time to put Operation Endearing Characters into play and make you fall for Donna but I’m afraid it’s never that easy.

You see, at that time Donna was young and dumb and didn’t see her Dad wanting to talk about music for what it was. Although the memory was a bit fuzzy she did think at some point she even rolled her eyes at him.

He was holding a record, vinyl if you can believe it, and asked that she give it a listen and see what she thought. He then went on to tell her what the songs meant to him. How the lyrics spoke to him.

With a small snort she retreated to her room and put on the album.

Nights in White Satin by the Moody Blues.

She hated it. A lot.

Later in the day her Dad asked her if she’d had a chance to listen to it and she said she did and that she thought it was horrible. He smiled and walked away and they never really talked about music again.

Her Dad was an awesome Dad in retrospect. He was caring and intelligent and was always around until he wasn’t.

One of those healthy guys that just falls over dead from a heart attack out of nowhere.

One of the hardest days of her life was going through his record collection and seeing all the bands he liked, although he never really played any of it when she was in the house. So many bad bands with bad haircuts.

How could music work like that?

She had loved him so much and yet their tastes were so different.

Maybe music wasn’t so sacred after all. Maybe it was just one more distraction to pass the time.

Whatever it was, she never trusted her own views on music again.

Still squinting she opened up the glove compartment and took out a CD that hadn’t been opened. At this point I can’t blame you for hoping it was Nights in White Satin by the Moody Blues but it wasn’t. It was MGMT’s Late Night Tales.

I know, if it had been the Moody Blues CD it would have been perfect but I can’t go shoving Moody Blues CDs into glove compartments just because it’s convenient.

And why would I keep reminding you that she was squinting instead of perhaps telling you what she was wearing or adding a hipster hat to the mix?

Because she was driving west and the sun was going down.

She fumbled trying to open the MGMT CD with one hand but eventually grew frustrated and hurled it out the window and into the silent heart of New Jersey.