reckoning rose

THE RECKONING ROSE
By Scott Ferrara


FADE IN:

EXT. NIGHT
GRACE, An achingly beautiful woman is walking the streets, city unknown. Her walk is fluid, a dancers walk. Her eyes have a dreaming quality to them.
She seems to be following a MAN IN RED BLAZER, he has a rose in his lapel. He is handsome, jovial somewhat cherubic in stature. The MAN IN RED BLAZER does not see her. The camera pulls in tightly to her intense eyes.

GRACE ( V.O.)
I did my time. I loved once. I finally found him.

CUT TO:
MAN IN RED BLAZER seemingly on the make with an attractive young woman.


GRACE( V.O)
I was married for three years until I couldn't stand it anymore. The constant attention followed by periods of neglect. Lack of consideration balanced by unwarranted affection and I still loved him no matter what he did. Fists, sticks, belts, any old way.
Cupid wouldn't let me stop it.
It was in Grand Central where the night sky is held hostage on it's enormous ceiling I saw the man in red who once showed me the stars, we had met eyes and he had forgotten who I was. .
I've come to a conclusion.
Or at least a beginning. It was him all along. He never would stick around. Just inflict and leave.

CUT TO:
EXT. DAY – A HIGHYWAY

GRACE is walking down an abandoned stretch of road.

GRACE ( V.O)
I traveled seeking conclusion on that asphalt serpent. Destination rooting in destiny and I have never been more at ease. I climbed the dragons back and caught it dreaming. I overpass the landscape with a casual wonder that comes from too much venom and too many bites. A savage relentless infinity, I grabbed this serpent with it's bites and curses, it's epitaphs and epithets. I walked along its scales unknowing until I saw it staring back at me.

CUT TO:
INT. NIGHT – A BAR
GRACE is watching MAN IN RED BLAZER intently – Images of the abuse she had taken from her ex husband flash through her mind.
GRACE
I couldn't take it, just give me an answer, stay, go, yes, no. I need a reason. To me, there is no bigger obstacle than glorious ambiguity. He would bring stories to me from his escapades.

GRACE gets hit. The Ex Husband

Vodka made him silly. He would come home, only a few months after the wedding, fling open the screen door, 4 am, pounding on the glass because he couldn't figure out the lock.

GRACE gets hit. It’s the MAN IN THE RED BLAZER

I became his womb of foulness and his reason for self destruction.


GRACE ( V.O.)
Until, I became pregnant, or in a family way as my mother used to call it. Then suddenly, miraculously I became the Virgin Mary. The beating stopped. He catered to me. I was flabbergasted. 1,1 couldn't verbalize just how repugnant he was to me. I was too damn young to lock horns with this bull. I was at the point that no matter how much I thrashed my head our horns were hopelessly entangled. I was a mere kitten and all the magic had up and left.
My little boy turned two a few weeks ago. His father will turn him against me. Make him loathe me. Say I ran because I couldn't love him and be free both at once. I was glad it was a boy, I would have been scared were it a girl. I didn't trust him.

CUT TO:
GRACE alone on a bus. The MAN IN RED BLAZER sit behind her

GRACE ( V.O.)

I tried to go and see my son, I was trapped on this horrid bus between two awful men, both prophets, dealers in propaganda and poison. One was an ex seminary student, the other a criminal. They argued incessantly the entire way there. Neither one of them knew how to keep his pants on. One talked about his nine, and a pit bull he shot that he bought for his mother, the other talked of a vision he had of a glowing leaf falling in a Christmas tree pattern to the floor of a church. It was not earth shattering as vision go, but he was proud of it. I had to wriggle free.

The trip was long from the New York to Syracuse. The leaves were bleeding onto the road. We kept moving, to a sore of a town, where I grew up, was married, was battered and later ran away from. I was prisoner in that infection too long. Blood also binds us. Ties us together, and in many ways we are hostages to it. I had only one picture of my boy, at 14 months. He looked too much like his father. I escaped and stood.

CUT TO:

GRACE standing outside a modest suburban home. An Older WOMAN and a SMALL BOY at the door,

GRACE ( V.O.)
Finally there I was, the dusty roads of Nowhere New York. I walked from the station to my house where my parents had Jonathan. He took one look at me and bawled his head off. He was wailing at this stranger in jeans and sweatshirt, gone half his life.

GRACE runs to the small boy, holds him tight and he struggles.

GRACE (V.O.)
Jonathan has big eyes, too big for his little head, like the characters in Japanese cartoons. He moved jerkily, no coordination. When I grabbed him he struggled with his little toy body against mine. He couldn't pull himself away. I held him a long time. He wailed himself into unconsciousness. I was mute. In silence, I gave him back to my folks and went back to my bus. Pulled back to my life now by a two year old stranger who cut my strings.

CUT TO:
INT. NIGHT – An empty room

GRACE physicalizes herself as a giant puppet. She struggles against the invisible force and struggles.

GRACE ( V.O.)

And up we go dancing for your amusement, doing violent little dumb shows where we beat each other with stick. The strings are hooked into my flesh. Controlling my moves. I have no other choice, just manipulation. Servant of the black beast in the dark with a thousand eyes. I am cast in its image. I wonder at times when I sleep alone on 118th street, separated from the other I live with by a blanket, cocooned around me. I wonder if butterflies every come from creatures like me. Call me all right. What does he know of love. He professes it. Claims to be it’s incarnation. He has blood of rose petals.

CUT TO:
The MAN IN THE RED BLAZER – going into his Blazer and drawing a compound bow.


GRACE (V.O.)
Look at him, stirring another disappointment,

CUT TO:
The MAN IN RED BLAZER takes aim and fires.

GRACE
I never asked why he was cheated. Was it the booze, although a phantasm is good enough for me? Was it the hooch or some deeper longing? He has other names – but he was almost invariably a son of a bitch to the women he was with. Although universally thought as a hunter, The Man in red and tonight Cupid dies.

CUT TO:
EXT STREET NIGHT
GRACE charges the MAN in RED BLAZER he turns to her bow in hand. She strips the bow from his hand, and starts to beat him senseless. He produces an arrow in his free hand and lunges at her. She catches the hand with the arrow and forces it into him.

GRACE
I love you too.

FADE OUT: