Make a wish

I do not have words for the days you survive.  I do not have your faith.  My gift to you is an incomplete thing, built in tribute to someone else who was lost.  Someone told me the story for you and I thought it would help even though it can’t.  There was not time for any birds to sit on the branch or build nests for the next one in line.  There was not time for his big sister to tell him it was dangerous to jump from the tree too soon.  She may never even know, a memory lost before mama was really known.  Stoic, strong mama sitting in the chair, I do not have your faith but I wish I did.  I am afraid to give you this gift.  I will not tell you my name.  I have nothing to give you but the breath that I held and a thank you for hearing his broken heart.  (For SH and her boy.)

Opening

[Opening Credits – Intro]

Audio (A): A phone rings in a distant room, gradually louder. Sound is dirty.

Visual (V): Lights come up as if waking. Seen from Seth’s (S) point of view (POV). Steady but sleepy, lazy. The camera remains slightly out of focus. Shadow burns the edge of the frame and occasionally obscures view.

Scene (SC): Middle class ranch style home in America. Average size, average décor, it is clean but not tidy. The house is empty except for Seth.

Seth wakes and reaches for his mobile on the dresser by his bed.
It is dark and silently dead.
A phone still rings and Seth wonders why the machine doesn’t pick up.
He groans to a stand and shuffles through the house to the kitchen.

Reflections throughout the house (hall mirror, picture frames, etc) show a boy, mid to late teens, wearing disheveled hair and loose fitting, striped boxers. He is not interested in his reflection. He is confident in himself. In his confidence he is attractive, otherwise he is average.

Seth picks up the receiver of an old fashioned wall phone
bolted to the yellow and green tile by the kitchen door.

A: Silence except the sound of traffic. New to the scene, the sound of the highway hums and whines and rushes like an irregular heart beating.

Transition (TR): Cut to black. Gradually introduce non-distinct shadows of color – mostly blue and gray.

[Opening Credits – Title Screen]

V: Title appears slightly off center as if someone writes it. Script is untidy.

A: Sound of breathing, of lead and of skin brushing on paper.

Fixing Seth Parkinson

V: First ‘Parkinson’ is scribbled out, then ‘Seth’. The title is then erased roughly, unevenly and the following is written over top in small print:

fix me

V: Overexposed. Bright at first then less so. Gradually visual dims to an overcast sky. Credits appear as the title did throughout the following scene. They are written with no respect to the margins of the frame – some fall off almost completely.

A: {song: acoustic version of ‘This House’ by Bloc Party}

Seth Parkinson
Diane Weston-Maczhewski
Lincoln Reiches
Ellen Lark Abimelech

– play themselves.

Also featuring Alexandra Powell & Davis Heier

– who also play themselves.

Anyone else appears as who they are
not as they want to be
nor how they see themselves.

Following visual is cut, spliced together strangely with progression to Seth’s movement but with no balance or rhythm.

SC: Seth walks alongside a rural mountain road. Confused, he is not sure where he is and does not know how he got there. He is dressed now. He wears baggy jeans and large black boots, a faded non-descript t-shirt covers his broad, solid shoulders. He blinks rapidly at first, the lights are too bright. He comes to a small mountain town and wanders as if drawn by the need to find life. He sees no one but hears voices.

A: Voices, conspiratorial tones, come from behind a fence, around the corner, inside his head. They are faint, intermittent. Some words are incoherent or trail off. There is some static and the ever present murmur of unseen traffic. Seth imagines he is chasing ghosts.

Lark (La): Look, he’ll fall…

V: A shadow crosses the broken flagstones in Seth’s path.

Linc (Li): – he fell years ago.

La: Not like this. He’s dying.

V: Movement through the slats and eyeholes of a six foot wooden fence that runs alongside the path and ends abruptly with no purpose. Seth turns the corner, carefully, casually, looking back over his shoulder to find nothing…just an empty, abandoned lot behind.

Grey (G): He’s not. He’s just coming inside.

Li: Why would he do that?

G: You don’t think he’d want to?

Li: I think he’s never been inside before.

V: Seth turns onto a rural main street. Wooden, Victorian structures, latticed with peeling paint flank both sides of a narrow road void of cars, people or any sign of life. Through the wide store front windows Seth sees antiques, or empty cafe tables. His reflection in the glass is not alone.

La: What difference does that make, if he’s coming inside now?

G: What are we going to do with him?

Li: I don’t care.

G: I do.

Li: I think it’s hopeless. He’ll die here.

G: Why would he die here?

La: Are you going to kill him?

Li: What difference does it make if we do anything with him?

La: Always logical.

Li: Always bullshit.

La: You have no spirit.

G: Shh. He’s coming… shh.

[End Title Sequence]