Lacuna: Document 21

This is an untitled and unfinished screenplay written by a citizen of Lacuna named Everett Pewter. He was found in a warehouse on the edge of town, having been murdered most gruesomely (he was only identified through his dental records). It seems the fictional veil covering this piece was not enough to stay the wrath of its real subjects, though the film never even entered production.

Open on a close-up of a man’s face. He squints, grimaces, grunts, and we hear the sound of his shit being expelled as his eyes suddenly widen, looking terrified. He seems to almost scream, but the cry dies in his throat as his eyes roll back into his head, which shivers, then falls, flopping loosely to his chest. In the next moment, it is back up. His eyes are closed, but they are clear when they open a moment later, seeming to shine with a cold, hard light. He smiles very slightly, very icily. He wipes himself, slowly and precisely, folding the paper into neat little triangles. Then he stands up, and pulls up his pants. He leaves the stall and walks over to the nearest sink, and begins washing his hands, all with the same precision of motion. He does not appear in the mirror, and does not seem to be bothered by this. In fact, he does not so much as attempt to look at his reflection. As he passed the other stall, there were small noises coming from it, and as he reaches for the soap, there is the sound of an obscenely, disgustingly large shit. The man is completely still for a moment, then finishes washing his hands and dries then with an electric air-dryer, now looking at the offending stall through the mirror. There is another blast, slightly smaller, like an aftershock, and slightly covered by the noise of the dryer. The man turns, walks briskly to the door of the occupied stall, and rips it open with one hand. We catch a brief glimpse of a terrified looking man with his pants around his ankles before the door closes again and the camera pulls away. We pull away from the stall and fade to black as we hear him screaming louder, and still louder, and a pool of blood begins to flow out from beneath the stall’s raised walls and drip down the drain in the floor.

Cut to another tight close-up, this time of a woman’s face. Her eyes are closed.

“Are you alright honey?”

The eyes open, staring straight ahead, right through the camera. They seem confused, and then they regain focus. It is the same clear, cold gaze the man had in the previous scene.

“I… I’m fine.”

The camera pulls back to reveal the woman sitting at a table in a kitchen across from a man, presumably her husband, flanked by two children, a boy and a girl. The table is set with a delicious dinner which looks home-cooked, and everyone is about halfway through their plates. The woman suddenly stands up, the eyes of her husband and children widening in shock as she speaks haltingly, in a strangely hard tone of voice:

“I… have to… go…now.”

She turns and leaves the room, the others staring open-mouthed at the kitchen door slowly swinging back and forth behind her. Cut to her walking out the front door of the house, closing it behind her, and walking across the lawn towards the camera, which is just behind her car. The night sky is dark and cloudless, with a full moon and a few stars shining that light up the grass, which is white with frost. It is utterly silent save for a breeze that makes a subtle susurrus as the grass shivers slightly, the crunching footsteps of the woman, who is also shivering as she walks over the grass towards the car. Then it flashes and beeps as she unlocks it remotely and gets inside. Cut to inside the car, camera in the passenger seat, trained on her face and the little clouds of her breath.

Roll credits as she starts the car and begins to drive. Cut between names and short shots of her driving through the city. There are no obvious landmarks to distinguish the city itself, but she moves from a suburban area to the city center. Once she reaches downtown, she pulls into an alleyway and stops next to another car. She gets out, and goes over to a nearby dumpster, feeling around just inside the lip. She pulls out a key which had been stuck there with black duct tape. She removes the tape, throws it back into the dumpster, and uses the key to unlock the second car, which she drives out of the alley and back into the streets. As the credits keep rolling, she drives out of the city, off the highway, and down a long, lonely country road, a strip of dark and dirty grey in a huge field of purest white. The road ends at a small lake, partially covered with ice. She stops the car, pops open the trunk, and gets out. She pulls a black body-bag from the trunk and hauls it out with surprising ease. She lifts it up and carries it over her shoulders fireman-style, walking out onto the lake. When she nears the edge of the ice she sets the bag down and then pushes it forward. It slides over the ice and into the water, where it sinks down into the black depths. End credits.