She Brought Her Agent Her Latest Script And Things Took A Terrifying Turn For The Worse

EXT. PLAYGROUND – DUSK

The sun has begun to set below a building. The words: EDLUND ELEMENTARY are etched into brick above twin double doors.

Crimson red shots of light beam across a swing set where a GIRL, about sixteen, is dragging her naked toes through fresh mulch. Her legs are suspended from a swing as she sways in a circular pattern. Next to her is a BOY, same age. His wallet chain drags through the same mulch.

GIRL
So…What did you want to talk about?

BOY
I dunno. Did Bobby ask you to the dance yet? I heard he wanted to.

GIRL
No. But even if he did, I’d probably say no.

She turns her head, brushing her hair back behind her ear, revealing tanned skin across her neck. She is wearing a cross country team t-shirt and it is tied above her naval, revealing an athletic abdomen.

GIRL
Waiting for the right guy and all, you know?

The boy drops his head and smiles, digging a small hole in the mulch with his shoes.

GIRL
Anyone ask you?

BOY
Heh, no. Waiting for the right girl and…

The girl knocks into him like a toppled domino. She wraps her legs around his waist to keep from swinging backwards. She kisses him.

Beat.

BOY
Is that your way of asking me?

The girl smiles and kisses him again. She gets off of the swing and pulls him on top of her. His hand caresses her shoulder and moves towards her breast. She grabs his wrist.

GIRL
First base now. Second and third come later.

They kiss again. A crow caws in the distance. It’s getting dark. The sun has almost completely set behind the school building.

The boy begins to grind against her body, sucking away at her neck. She begins to struggle, waving her hands in the mulch.

GIRL
STOP IT! You’re hurting me!

The boy stops and plants his face into the mulch. She touches her neck, winces, and notices blood on her hand.

GIRL
You fucking freak! I’m bleeding!

His head is now hovering above her. Mulch is hanging out of his mouth. His eyes have turned color, one black, one red. Lines of blood run down his chin. He spits the mulch into her face.

BOY (distorted)
I homer every time I’m at bat, sweetheart!

The girl doubles back on her hands and feet. She catches her balance on all fours and begins to run towards the school, leaving her purse and flip flops by the swing. The boy lay laughing on his back, motioning his limbs to form the shape of an angel in the mulch.

INT. ELEMENTARY SCHOOL – NIGHT

The girl runs down a long hallway, passing a trophy case. Mulch is sticking to the open bite wound on her neck and out of her hair. She shakes her head around, freeing the chunks of mulch from her hair.

EXT. PLAYGROUND – NIGHT

The moon lights the angel shape the boy made. The shape of two horns is ebbed into either side of where the boy’s head once was.

INT. ELEMENTARY SCHOOL – NIGHT

A door is ajar just past a water fountain. OFFICE is printed in blocked lettering on the glass above the door handle. She sprints into the office, her naked feet slapping the tile. She slips just before she reaches the entrance and regains her balance by holding onto the door jamb.

Next to the office is the boy’s restroom. A bucket with a mop is leaning on the wall.

INT. BOYS RESTROOM – NIGHT

A JANITOR, early fifties, is sitting on a toilet. Bad rock music blares from his headphones. He runs his fingers through a salt and pepper goatee and hangs the nudie magazine he is reading vertical, releasing a centerfold poster.

INT. OFFICE

The girl picks up the telephone and dials for emergency. She looks out the window. Nothing. She looks up towards the evening sky as the moon shines down on her face.

GIRL
Yes. Police? I’m being chased by…hello? HELLO?

She turns around. The boy is holding the severed land line in his hand. He removes his chain wallet from his pants and pulls the chain taunt.

GIRL
What the fuck are you doing this for? Why do you want to hurt me?

The boy wraps the chain around each of his fists and SNAPS it firm. He is grinning. The boy shakes his head in disapproval of her escape.

He LUNGES for her neck with the chain, attempting to choke her. She SMASHES the office phone into his face. The boy stumbles backwards into a desk.

INT. HALLWAY

The girl’s bare feet slide out from under her from the freshly mopped tile. She SLAMS into a water fountain and quickly pulls herself up and begins to run back towards the entrance.

The glass trophy case SHATTERS, spewing sharp splinters of glass all over the hallway.

INT. BOYS RESTROOM

The janitor pulls a headphone from his ear, assumes the noise was from the music, and continues reading his nudie magazine.

INT. HALLWAY

The girl is running too fast to slow down and scampers over into the bed of broken glass. She begins to crawl through the mess; glass pierces her knees and hands, forming a bloody prism of light.

Long streaks of red stain the tile floor as she reaches the front door. She extends her arm to turn the knob when…

The wallet chain wraps around her neck like a noose. She gasps and coughs, her breathing gets heavy. The nails from her ring and index finger break as she tries to free herself. The chain wraps tighter around her neck. Blood develops through the links of the chain.

The girl is on her knees, her lifeless head and arms hang forward as the boy’s chain prevents gravity from allowing her body to fall.

JANITOR
Don’t fucking move! I’ve already called the cops!

The janitor is holding his mop, ready to strike as the boy turns around. The red and black color from his confused eyes has dissipated. He looks back at the dead girl, then back to the janitor, and passes out.

Nigel sat across from Paige, arrogantly twirling his Cross pen from behind his desk. Paige was playing with a lock of her blonde hair and chewing on a candy-apple red thumb nail, a habit she’s had since junior high school. She wore a loose cotton t-shirt that had a black and white head portrait of Marilyn Monroe on the front. Marilyn’s lips matched the color of Paige’s nail polish.

“You know Paige, I gotta be honest,” Nigel said, adjusting his expensive leather office chair back to the upright position.

“What are we doing here, huh?”

Paige’s eyes danced below her scrunched eyebrows, confused from the question.

“Look. I’ll be frank. We’re just wasting each other’s time here. The studio is going to pass.”

Paige crossed her arms, then her legs, and sat up in her seat.

“I think it’s time…no, I know it’s time, for you to give this up,” Nigel said, smirking that typical gate keeper smirk.

“This script, it reads like a sitcom for the CW, only, the CW wouldn’t have the sense to make this, this ‘thing’ to anything more than kindle for an executive’s fireplace.”

Nigel flung the script at Paige. The papers went sailing into the air, descending down with a pendulum’s swing. He rubbed his temples with well-manicured finger tips. They were coated with the clear topcoat finish that professional salons use.

“And don’t get me started on your last screenplay I had to read. OH MY GOD, what a fucking drag, man! I mean, who misspells Han Solo? Really. Hans Solo? As in Hans, with a brother named Franz, who are here (Nigel clapped his hands) to pump you up? Give me a break. And this, this boy who turns into a vampire, slash, demon? Not real, not even believable. Your writing is less than mediocre, in fact, its garbage.”

“It’s fiction Nigel,” Paige said. “Fiction. It’s supposed to be ‘not real’.”

Nigel leaned into his desk and crossed his hands.

“Look, I’m going to give you a piece of advice.” His tone was calmer now. “Move back to Ohio. Start over. Meet a nice guy, get married, have kids. This dream of yours, this hallucination you have of becoming a professional storyteller, it’s just not in the cards babe. It just isn’t. Some writers have talent and those writers are the chosen ones. You just weren’t born to do this babe. Give. It. Up.”

Paige stood up from her chair and ran her hands over her smooth California tanned skin. Her face was glowing, much like Marilyn’s face on her t-shirt.

“That’s not my new script, Nigel,” Paige said.

“Heh, heh, what do you mean, that wasn’t your new script?”

“You know what the boy does to that girl? That’s what I’m going to do to you.”

“Oh, well, we’ll see about that!”

Nigel reached for his desk phone, the kind with all those useless buttons. He put the receiver up to his ear and began paging someone at the front desk.

“Um, that’s not going to work,” Paige said, holding up the phone’s frayed line.

Paige closed the window blinds and seductively made her way towards Nigel as he scrambled to find his cell phone in his sports jacket. He grasped the arms of his office chair, bracing himself. Paige slid her hand through his greasy, slicked back hair and sat on his lap. Nigel gasped. She took a strong whiff into his neck, inhaling his expensive aftershave.

“Is that a tiny bump in your slacks, or are you just happy you finally get to have me between your legs?” Paige licked the side of his face, it was salty from his nervous sweat.

“Your assistant told me what you said about me when you had drinks with him last week,” Paige said. “Funny thing about boys, all you gotta do is show a little interest and they’ll tell you anything!”

Paige put her index finger to the corner of her mouth and titled her head to the side.

“What was it? Something like, ‘Oh that Paige, she can’t write worth a shit but I bet she’s a monster in bed’!” She tickled his chin with her red fingernails. “Is that what you want big boy? You wanna a monster?”

Paige placed her hand on Nigel’s light blue tie, by Brooks Brothers of course. She slid her hand down until she reached the metal clip and pulled his face against hers.

“Your feedback on my writing hasn’t been the most professional over the years Nigel. You said in the beginning that I showed promise. To keep writing. Hollywood needs a strong female writer who wasn’t a comedian. Those were your words. Now I’m just beginning to think you said all of those things just to get me in bed with you.”

Nigel looked over at the framed photo of him, his wife, and their two sons.

“Now what’s wrong with the misses, Nigel? I mean she’s pretty. Let me guess, she won’t go down on you anymore, will she? She won’t let you put it in her… (Paige made quotation marks in the air) naughty place? Is that it, she just doesn’t do you anymore, does she?”

“I love my wife. And you’re probably just as bad in bed as you are on paper. And trust me babe, I’ll see to it that you’ll never work in the movie business. Your words are disgusting. Just like your writing. Now pick up your three pages of shit and get the hell out of my building!”

Nigel scooted his chair back and tried pushing Paige off his lap. She grabbed his arms with unusual strength and pinned them behind his head. He struggled to get up, but it was no use. Paige was in complete control.

She closed her eyes for a moment. Nigel looked back at his family photo, then back to Paige. Her eyes were now demonic, one red, one black. She opened her mouth to reveal two long incisors that shimmered at their pointed ends.

Nigel pulled his head back as Paige hissed. She sunk her teeth into his neck, puncturing the skin, and fed off of his warm blood as it pulsed into her mouth. Nigel gasped as his larynx was being shredded by Paige’s teeth. She wiggled her head, getting deeper into the soft tissue. His bone white shirt was now pink as it absorbed his blood.

Paige reared her head back, gasping for air. “I knew I should’ve pulled my hair back for this meeting.” She shook Nigel by the shoulders, causing his limp head to bounce back and forth. Mockingly, she said: “You know babe, you really shouldn’t fuck with a writer’s feelings. Maybe you should give it up, you know, start over.” Paige stuck out her lower lip and slicked his out of place hair back.

“There now, all better.”

She wiped her mouth off with his tie, half of it now brown, and hoisted herself off of him. She picked up the first few pages of her script, stacked them neatly on his desk, and scribbled a note across the top:

Call Paige, this one’s a winner!

Before she left, Paige turned to Nigel’s corpse as it laid sprawled out across his office chair and blew him a kiss.

“You know Nigel, for being the biggest asshole in Hollywood, you don’t taste that bad.”