Brilliant movie idea (Part 8 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.)

At this point you must be thinking to yourself “If I wanted a character to die every ten minutes I would have read Game of Thrones!” Given my constant whining you even might even suspect that it is laziness that is causing this rash of fatalities.

Perish the thought dear reader!

I am simply relating to you what happened to the best of my somewhat limited literary abilities.

Of course, if this were Game of Thrones I would be forced into some weird convoluted description of the tiger’s glistening penis as he mauled Abby to death so just thank your lucky stars I show such artistic restraint. I doubt that I’ll even get to describe Clay’s penis, glistening or not, despite his being surrounded by a bevy of blonde, younger, petite, perky females.

Honestly I’m not sure I could describe the women like they do in Game of Thrones. Once the breasts got to heaving and undulating I’d end up pulling down the Word program and up would come the porn. I’m not even sure what on a woman would undulate but just typing that word gives me a chubby. I stick to blonde, younger, petite, and perky.

Just the fact that you would accuse me of laziness, just because it was apparent from Part 2 on that I was growing weary of introducing so many people, hurts. Here I am, day after day, spending literally dozens of minutes at a sitting crafting this story purely for your enjoyment and all you can do is jump to the crazy conclusion that I am killing off adored characters simply because I can’t keep track of them and the idea of having so many moving pieces going forward has my head swimming and writing run-on sentences as if the period was never invented.

You know it’s a whopper of a run-on sentence when you’re not even sure when it finally comes to an end if the last part has anything to do with the first part even after reading it back.

Now that we’ve straightened that out, let’s return to the story.

In progress.

Well, not so much in progress as much as where we left off.

Now that we’ve straightened that out, let’s return to the story… where we left off.

Well actually, while I’ve grounded everything to a halt anyway I might as well address the fact that I am a male writer. Actually, not just male but “all” man. My name alone should tell you everything you need to know about my maleness but just in case it didn’t I put parenthesis around the word all. I considered putting them around both all and male but somehow just isolating the word all seemed manlier.

Because I’m male and the majority of people who read crap like this are female I’m sure this entire tale will be told through a lens that they may or may not relate to. The only thing I’ll say in my defense is that this story could easily be retold with a single woman surviving and her past boyfriends occupying the planet with her and, if I’m being honest, if a Hollywood producer approached me with enough money I would gladly allow this film to be made.

First of all, you’d be shocked at how low enough money would be.

Second, the movie would suck ass. It would be like when they made Ghostbusters with a female cast (if anything made by mankind, intentionally or unintentionally, could ever be that bad).

The female perspective ruins everything. A woman would turn this dumb story into The Bridges of Madison County. I’m not certain if that was actually written by a female but I do know Bridges: A History of the World’s Most Famous and Important Spans was, thank you Judith Dupre, and it wasn’t funny at all.

Let’s agree to disagree. You stop you’re whining and I will try and avoid anything overly misogynistic. I realize that you assumed that this was a given but you were wrong.

Especially with the shocking bit of information that is about to be shared.

Denise was not wearing the cute little outfit she’d picked up earlier in the day. She was wearing a t-shirt covered in dirt and grime and jeans covered in dirt and grime and if I were to describe her as disheveled it would be insulting disheveled people everything. And that’s difficult as the disheveled are usually a pretty laid back group.

Now the scruffy, you have to walk on eggshells with those people.

For the next few minutes Denise tried her best to relate the events at the zoo so I’ll try my best to relate her relating.

“We decided to stop at the zoo and let out some animals and bring a few monkeys as housewarming gifts, which I thought was crazy but it was also funny so I agreed. Abby was so into it but even after only one day alone all the animals were really hungry and aggressive and I got attacked by a fucking penguin. It came right at me and I wasn’t even holding the bucket of fish or anything.”

She took her first breath.

Others had wandered into the hallway to see what the commotion was about.

“I didn’t even why I’d be setting a penguin free anyway let alone wildebeest. And wolves! Why do we need packs of wolves roaming around Philadelphia anyway? I know they have a right to live and all but not if they are going to snap and growl at me. We couldn’t even get into the monkey cages. It was like a prison, I swear that the zoo must have thought they were all murderers.”

Another breath. What little blood left in her face made its way south.

“Abby tried to let out the tigers. I knew it was a bad idea. I told her not to but she said something needed to eat the wildebeest in the wild and tried anyway and she got into a part of the cage where she thought there was still bars between her and the tigers but there weren’t and a big tiger just walked around the corner ….”

At this point there was a lot of crying and gibberish. You know how girls get when they are describing seeing someone get mauled to death by a large cat.

Clay considered trying to lighten the mood by saying “So no monkeys then?” but thought better of it. Instead he ushered her into the living room where everyone did their best to comfort her. Someone turned on the TV but they were showing an old Detroit Tigers game so they changed the channel but it was Frosted Flakes commercial and it was obvious that Denise was imagining Tony pouring milk on the children and eating them so they changed the channel again only to see When Animals Attack was on so they turned off the TV.

“I couldn’t look away” Denise continued. “I literally watched her being eaten alive!”

Apparently she wasn’t going to let this ‘Abby was eaten by tigers’ thing go.

Watching Denise suffer got to Clay. Not just how you think but for a reason you’re unaware of. This is the shocking bit of information I mentioned earlier.

He knew of at least one other person who might also be suffering.

You see, once he figured out the common thing that all the women who’d survived whatever the hell this was he’d chosen not to answer a call from someone he worked with. A woman he was having a relationship with currently.

A woman that he thought he cared for deeply.

If she arrived Patti would immediately know that he’d had sex with her and he couldn’t have that. Old flames showing up were one thing but this was something completely different. He wasn’t sure if the word marriage still meant anything but if it did then it would be over.

He felt a brief sense of relief that he never banged a divorce lawyer.

Patti wouldn’t take him back if he were the last man on Earth. Which he might be.

So now somewhere only a few miles away there was a girl who was probably going insane. Wandering around all alone and scared.

Just like the hooker from Atlantic City he’d met during a bachelor party he’d gone to a couple years back. He didn’t even know her name but she seemed sweet enough. She certainly didn’t deserve what she was no doubt living through.

His attention was drawn back to Denise as the efforts to calm her down continued but the guilt he felt about Cindi was intensifying. She needed him and he wasn’t there for her.

He asked Patti if they had any sedatives and she replied that they didn’t.

“I’ll go down to the pharmacy and pick some up. She’ll need them to sleep tonight.”

With that he grabbed the keys to the car and departed, knowing he had one stop to make beforehand.

Almost immediately after Clay left Samantha asked the group a simple question; “Are we gonna talk about this?”

They exchanged glances, confirming that the ‘this’ she was talking about was the same ‘this’ that had been on each of their minds.

“I mean no disrespect to you Patti, and I thank you for welcoming us all into your home under such difficult circumstances, but your husband appears to be the only man left on earth and it’s a pretty big coincidence that the only females left with him are his wife and his exs.”

Patti suddenly felt defensive. “What are you accusing him of?”

“Nothing. Really. It’s just really odd” Denise said. “Abby thought he might be God.” Saying her name out loud brought back memories of their short time together and her subsequent being a Panthera tigris entree. Perhaps it was too soon for Denise to have spoken.

Tina wanted to accuse him of something but didn’t know what. Since she’d been with him he seemed as lost as everyone else. She went to speak but nothing came out.

“This is just too fucked up. Too fucked up for words. Too fucked up to be real.” Jennifer hit the nail on the head and several heads nodded in agreement.

Samantha wrestled back focus. “Does he expect us all to just be ok with the fact that he somehow dragged us all into his weird fantasy world?”

“But he didn’t” Patti protested.

“Then how do you explain us all sitting in your living room?”

“Let’s all just relax and think this through” Jennifer interjected. “We have some pressing things to worry about if this is in fact real and we’re going to be stuck in this reality for the foreseeable future.”

“I was thinking the same thing” said Patti, clearly happy to finally be able to reveal her plan to repopulate the globe. “There’s a fertility clinic about an hours’ drive form here and I think we should think about getting some of you pregnant before the power goes out and the refrigerators go out and all the sperm spoils.”

I’d like to say that this statement caused a pregnant pause but it was much longer than that. Too bad really, it would have been perfect.

Meanwhile in Atlantic City things were quiet. The only noise in the whole town was the crash of a door swinging open on the roof of Harrah’s Waterfront Tower. The breeze off the ocean was strong and the sound of it swallowed up everything else.

Eve had spent the last two days looking for her son. She was aware that everyone else was gone but she didn’t really care. All she cared about was finding Allen. She used to tell her friends that she lived and died for that boy.

She walked over to the edge of the building. It sat forty five stories up so she could see for miles. Miles out into the blue ocean and miles of the decaying structures that made up her life and where she’d plied her trade. She had been plied in most of the buildings at some time or another.

She screamed Allen’s name at the top of her lungs and then, quietly to herself, “I love you.”

Then she walked off the roof.