Movie Trailer
FADE IN:
A party is gathered at a gravesite, a priest at the head of the hole in the ground. A small group of people are gathered. It is fall, the air is crisp, and the leaves on the trees are gold and red. Mist still clings to the sides of the mountains in the near distance. We're clearly somewhere away from urban civilization, here to bury someone in a small town.
CAMERA tracks in on JACOB MARATRE, early-30's, standing on the left of the priest. Standing alone. His clothing is dark, but not black, assembled hurriedly, though not without some sense of style. It is pretty clear he is an outsider at this gathering, though related in some way to the person being put in the ground. Priest is talking, though the volume on his voice is way down. Young man is staring off into the distance.
JACOB (V.O.):
My mother told me that my father died in a house fire when I was eight. It was our old house up on Wilson Drive. All I remember from that day is the red fire engines and the yellow jackets of the firefighters. I don't remember my father at all.The local sheriff told me that my mother died in a car accident. On the s-curves of State Highway 203, coming back from Seattle. It had rained earlier in the evening and the temperature had dropped, making the road slick. It was a dangerous curve, they said, and she was going just a little too fast.
We mark our lives by births and deaths -- beginnings and endings. We frame our conception of existence by what we know, by what we've lost. My father has been dead for years. I am burying my mother today. These are the things I know.
CAMERA continues to pan during his voice-over, moving across the graves and the gathered assembly before finally finding a young woman standing back from the rest of the crowd. She is about the same age as JACOB, wrapped in a black cloak, wearing sensible shoes for the soft ground. Unlike the rest of the gathering, she doesn't seem to be terribly upset by the ceremony. At the base of her throat is a clear white stone, like a circular piece of glass. This is LIZ KIMBRELL. CAMERA comes tight to her face as JACOB's V.O. finishes.
JACOB (V.O.):
In two minutes, this woman is going to destroy everything.
FADE TO BLACK:
JUMP CUT: GEORGES MARATRE, JACOB's grandfather, is being chased through the woods. There is blood on his face from a cut on his head. His glasses are small and rectangular -- fairly distinct and unique looking. His clothing clearly indicates to us that this is the past -- 1949 to be exact. There are people in the woods behind him, but we can't see them. He breaks out of the woods onto a dirt track and stops. Stretching beyond him is the flat surface of a smooth lake. A narrow and squat dam sits on his left. His panics. This is the last place he wanted to be.
JUMP CUT: A white wall in an asylum. It is a tiny cell, a single light bulb behind wire in the ceiling. One of the four walls is covered with writing. As high as a man can reach all the way to the floor. Arcane symbols, unreadable symbols, lines of text, mathematical formula -- it's all here. The occupant of the room is working persistently in the corner. This is JEROME MARATRE, Jacob's father.
JUMP CUT: A Nazi book burning rally in the late 1940s. They youth are vigorously throwing books on the fire. CAMERA tracks around the blaze, zeroing in on four men watching the proceeding. Three are dressed in SS dress blacks, the fourth appears to be a civilian, though finely dressed. CAMERA tracks his amusement at the fervent display of destruction.
JUMP CUT: An air traffic control center. FOCUS is on the air traffic controller's screen and the proximity of three tiny shapes near the edge of his screen. He and several other men clustered nearby are listening to the audio traffic. It's a couple of voices, garbled and cut up by static. One is shouting about having been hit. The other is screaming for permission to engage.
JUMP CUT: The cockpit of the aircraft. It's a fighter jet and the instrumentation and markings are historical -- clearly from some era before the present. The pilot is fighting with his instruments, trying to remain in control of the damaged plane. We can hear the voice of his wingman shouting for permission to engage some sort of target. Suddenly, the transmission is interrupted by a wild chattering of noise, a garbled howl of noise and tongue that is more than language and something less than machine code. The pilot's head snaps back and the plane rolls, falling out of control.
JUMP CUT: A farmer on the back porch of his house, staring out across his fields. His livestock is agitated, but that's not what he is watching. In the distance, a star is falling from the sky, a burning trail of something coming down.
JUMP CUT: GEORGES sits in front of an immense panel of dials and gauges. It looks similar to the air traffic controller's station, but much more arcane, much more homemade. He is listening to something on a pair of headphones. Smoke from an endless numbers of cigarettes floats just beyond the weak light from the table lamp. Paper is scattered all over the desk and he has worked his pencil down to a tiny nub. He's been here for hours, listening.
JUMP CUT: Close-up of a pad of paper on the desk. It is filled with lines and lines of number sequences. Groups of five.
JUMP CUT: The asylum walls. Part of the text on the walls is more of these number sequences. Groups of five. JEROME is working feverishly. It might start to become apparent that he doesn't have a writing utensil and the material on the wall isn't ink.
JUMP CUT: The surface of the lake, calm and smooth. It is just before dawn and there is fog clinging to the edges of the trees. CAMERA tracks across the smooth water, finally picking up a fading ripple. CAMERA tracks to the edge of the dam and holds on a trio of men in black leather coats. They are standing on the edge of the dam, looking down at the widening and fading ripple. One of the men bends down and picks up a pair of spectacles. One of the lenses is broken. He examines them for a minute and then flings them out into the lake as well. It's the same unique rectangular shaped pair we saw earlier on GEORGES. This is the same WELL-DRESSED MAN from the Nazi rally though he now sports a jaunty Van Dyke beard. It doesn't seem quite right on him as if it is something that he is trying on in order to blend in.
JUMP CUT: Graveyard exterior again. JACOB is watching LIZ and it is apparent that she has been watching him. The ceremony is breaking up. She is starting to walk towards him.
JUMP CUT: SERENA MARATRE is driving. She is clearly agitated about something. Her driving isn't all that good. The road is slippery and twisting. She is having difficulty keeping control of the car.
JUMP CUT: The car swerves and plows through the crash bar on the side of the road. It is quite a ways down. Car falls slowly.
JUMP CUT: SERENA at the wheel of her car. She is crying.
JUMP CUT: Graveyard. LIZ has nearly reached JACOB.
JUMP CUT: The white asylum walls covered with lettering. CAMERA pans around the room. It is empty. The door is open and several orderlies and a doctor are standing there, mouths agape. They're clearly expecting to find someone in the room.
JUMP CUT: GEORGES has been caught by the men in black coats on the dam. He is struggling, both angry and afraid, he recognizes the WELL-DRESSED MAN who lands a solid punch on GEORGES' cheek. GEORGES falls to the ground, losing his glasses and his hat. His hat sails off the edge of the dam and, myopically, GEORGES watches it go.
JUMP CUT: The farmer on his back porch watching the burning trail fall from the sky.
JUMP CUT: SERENA's car strikes the bottom of the ravine, tumbles dramatically. No one is walking away from this accident. CAMERA holds on vehicle as it finishes tumbling.
JUMP CUT: Graveyard. LIZ reaches JACOB. She looks around to see that no one else in nearby, sparing but a quick glance at the open hole in the ground.
JUMP CUT: The lake in the hills. It is much smaller than it is when GEORGES is thrown off the top of the dam. In fact, the dam looks very rickety and half-assed in this scene.
Something falls out of the sky, hitting the water hard and skipping. It takes a bad bounce and slams into the structure of the dam. There is an explosive moment, but no fire. Everything slowly settles.
JUMP CUT: The integrity of the dam has been breached. It is starting to fall apart, water spurting through developing cracks. It won't be long before the whole thing falls apart.
JUMP CUT: The graveyard scene. LIZ is standing before JACOB. There is a break in the clouds and the stone at the base of her throat picks up the sun.
LIZ:
I am sorry for your loss but there is something you should know. Your mother's death wasn't an accident. She was murdered.
FADE TO BLACK.
JACOB (V.O.):
Who can you trust?
SFX: (soft at first) The wild howl/chatter which ran through the cockpit of the air craft. As the sound grows…
FADE IN:
The air-traffic controller is listening to his headphones. He stares at the other men clustered around him and shakes his head. He can't understand what he's hearing.
SFX: Sound grows in intensity and continues through the following scenes.
JUMP CUT: GEORGES' radio studio. He's listening to the same sound on a reel-to-reel tape. He slows it down and the sound becomes intelligible. It is the number sequences again. He frantically searches his desk for the pad of numbers and starts paging through them. He finds the one he is looking for and begins to follow the intoned numbers across the pad which he has already written.
JUMP CUT: The white room in the asylum. The numbers continue to be read off. A hand follows them exactly along the wall. CAMERA pulls back to a wide shot, revealing that it is JACOB who is matching the numbers to the sound.
JUMP CUT: The CAMERA pans up the cliff-side from SERENA's accident, finally reaching the roadway again, coming up past the twisted metal of the crash guard. There is a man standing there, looking down into the deep ravine. It is JEROME and his expression is inscrutable.
FADE OUT.
SFX: Numbers continue to be read in their groups of five, fading slowly...
writing
This is a reasonably comprehensive list of my published work, both virtual and physical.
THE MISFIT LIBRARY
I am Nine of Thirteen, one of the members of the Misfit Library, a writing collective which puts out a quarterly journal of our respective work. We are scattered across the globe and determined to change the face of the planet one story at a time. The link above will take you to Misfit Central where you can acquire copies of the journal as well as read exclusive online material.
SYMBOLIC
I wrote a column for OPi8.com's Transmit blogs: journals of the new dark underground. SYMBOLIC tracked the novel I was working on, referencing the process and the research materials which mad up the backbone of the work. In addition, SYMBOLIC busied itself with ruminations and considerations on the nature of language and communication. And a wee bit of mythology. The first 100 entries of SYMBOLIC can be found here on this site as well as at OPi8.com.
LITERARY REPRESENTATION
I am represented by Scribe Agency as my literary agents. Please contact these gentleman if you have any queries about my work.