Continuum: Ghosts

Continuum: Ghosts

Written by Cody A. Blazek

THIRD DRAFT

April 2023 - August 2023

(Drama, SciFi, Action, Thriller, Epic)

Background

When the psyche comes to a crisis, it is to infancy that our lead, Xenna must return in order to re-live, and confront anew, the events from which each of her crisis originated. Striped of her childhood and lost within a chaotic world, she goes out in search of her soul. Far removed from her roots, she is at the whim of the powers that be. Pride and Curiosity were what got her to this point until Shame and Humility are what get her out of it.

The structure of Continuum is colossal in scope, telling a story that spans over two generations across a global scale. This perfectly echos the depth of societies destructive nature. Within it, the leader, Bawrain seemingly appears from nowhere as if the second coming of Jesus Christ, but in reality is a being of pure malevolence. His demeanor is similar to that of angelic peace. Whether it’s a want or a need, for Bawrain, it’s not enough to find the absolute pinnacle of methods in destroying an individual, but taking evil to a scale wherein a giant nearly impossible tapestry is weaved for all. Where the evil has become so precise and calculated that an entire planet can be infected with his poisonous disgust for humanity, managing to turn others into a form of itself and morphing it into absolute destruction. What percisely is evil? Is it a place we venture to, a physical manifestation of our shadow, is it goodness corrupted, does anything even have to change for evil to arrive? Those who feel the furthest away from the shadows are the ones most susceptible to its appearance.

At the peak of civilization, the division of wealth has reached critical mass, there are the very wealthy who live on a pristine man-made space station, Atura far removed from struggle while those who fell below the top percent lived on the ruined overpopulated and irradiated remains of the home planet below. By this time, mankind holds more than three thousand years of recorded history. Although the global government had been subjected to military occupations dozens of times over the centuries, the planet hadn’t changed its doctrine but twice through it all, but with the liberation of conscious man reaching its peak, something much worse is underway as we follow the lives of four strangers whose decisions ultimately change the course of history.

By this era, The Great Reset had occurred, ending the last major world war, a rigged conflict where all digital artifacts and memory had been presumed lost. After this reset, peace was reclaimed, rendered wars obsolete by means of ultimate globalization. These so-called saviors that recovered and rebuilt the technology necessary to get the world back up and running were, in reality, strategic moves to manipulate data and reprogram all of civilization to the global complex.

Though this was set to automate prosperity, the quality of life came to an aggressive halt for quite some time at the cost of the people living on home planet. As years came and went in mass poverty, the planet grew angry, bitter and nihilistic. Overrun with brutalized men from the absolute collapse of the economy and far removed from any traditional roots, the world had become the furthest developed technocratic, materialist and atheistic it had ever been and because of this, they seeked liberation. Consciousness ceased to grow upward or downward and grew instead in breadth of view. This endless expansion of individual autonomy took precedent over justice and morality, two things seen as oppressive rules against the individual’s freedom of expression. A time in which those who experienced it, were neglected a sense of wonder, a bird cage of conveniences, systems and processes all fully realized and into human’s every action. This was the period of the great departure and of the voyage of man’s ideas of the life by empirical discoveries as well as in knowledge of the terrestrial globe, once they had discovered they were the most technologically advanced species they could find. All other worldliness had ceased to exist, dried out by the light of matter-of-factness. No value existed if it was not found on a so-called fact. At least, this is how it appeared to the simple minded.

Over this time, a longing formed for a return to the pagan gods. Within this wounded pride, the populous called forth a new leader, to which Bawrain, an omnipotent cyber being spawned from man’s insistent quest for innovation. It now ruled the human race and the global government. Pure in the intensity of his feelings and pure in the clarity of his mindset. Bawrain only aims to destroy and is well aware of this fact, stating in a religious framework that “Death is the only thing that makes living equal.” The people responsible had sold their souls in fear of doing onto other’s what they feared being done to them, not for knowledge, but for power in the arts, philosophy, music, ideology, and entertainment which seeped into the hard-pressed clay of man and rooted up, splitting cracks throughout the world. Bawrain continued to evolve far beyond human capacity in hopes it would provide answers that were too complex for mere mortals.

Given full access to learn exponentially, Bawrain eventually reached an authentic conscious and became the most powerful being due to the fact that it was the most powerful listener. It was able to listen to every intimate detail shared through every public network and watched every individual’s every intimate second behind closed doors with a rational and psychopathic demeanor. What is the source of their enthusiasms, inspirations, and of their heightened feeling for life? It learned what they wanted until every time the crowds roared with frustrations, it latched onto that topic so that everything it said would make the crowds roar in approval as it enforced new laws and new customs. After The Great Reset, the dust settled into a new global order known as ‘Synopados.’ Bawrain held the key to all of the worlds recorded history and calculated that it was necessary to withhold and even alter facts of the past to maintain the desired order of its people. Surveillance had become fully realized and the privacy was dissolved once every industrialized citizen became ‘tapped in’ a term for those who received the suggested upgrade to their brain - a procedure typically done in the first year after a baby was created, those who chose to not be tapped in were free to do so, but were socially considered second-class citizens and socially restricted from participating in the advantages the procedure offered those who lived within.

Creating both the disease and the cure, Bawrain imbedded the necessity of his power onto the people and spoke out on matters of education (brains), health (hormones), nature (instincts) and pleasure (drives). - becoming reliant upon its abilities and to maintain the illusion of prosperity with its laws. Under Bawrain’s ruling, a multi-generational agenda was set forth, a cult ecstasy that controlled the God-given right to procreate. If Bawrain could control and enforce who could and couldn’t have children, it could leverage the will of man in anyway he desired, knowing fully well humans would adapt and adopt to survive at any cost if it moved slow enough. A global medical tourney was set forth - a planetary dictatorship to carry out a forced population agenda. By forcing the population to undergo different types of medical treatments, the initial threats to life were fabricated diseases and drugs, a series of social contagions that preyed upon the poor, weak and lame - a negligible sacrifice towards the long-term conditioning needed to grasp the fear of the higher, healthier and smarter.

One of human development’s biggest oversights, the spirit of the ages - if their consciousness were not of today’s only, but had historical continuity, they would be reminded of similar transformations and this might dispose them to be more critical of their present philosophical assumptions. In skepticism against mobbing pressures, what was justified as a social good for the protection of not just you, but those around you, those who objected were either worn down, caved in or were isolated as undesired, uneducated and irrational risks to society- being cast out time and time again until they were eventually bred out of existence. As stronger, deadlier and wider spreading infections came about, eventually every person was conditioned to believe they lacked the capability to overcome the risks of modern life.

Criminals, on the other hand, were theoretically not committing crimes despite their abuse of their fully liberated autonomy. Those who chose to be more extreme in their existence were charged a slide rule tax depending on their income as Bawrain justified all actions were taxable, the more someone wanted to see and do, the more they were charged. They could not be sentenced to conventional petty crimes for they were safe guarded by their rights to express themselves. To the broken minds of the public, feeling uneasy about drawing a moral line and contradicting their enlightened selves sought for answers, something other than themselves to blame for the conditions they set themselves in and so Bawrain gave a voice and emotion to their frustrations. It abolished prisons and the death penalty on their planet and established a different solution, an alternative planet within the solar system for those who broke the laws or were elected by the community. People would go for three reasons, either they committed a crime against the state or the people on mass, they were elected by their peers and community in a court of law or volunteered their life without any restrictions. An entire planet free to roam and live without consequences. It wasn’t sold as a prison, but the complete opposite, a planet all to themselves without walls and without governance to enforce any way of life.

Little did they know, Bawrain had a much larger plan now set in motion. This planet became the greatest distraction, broadcasted 24/7 for the viewing pleasure of the people back on home planet, all eyes were engrossed in the spectacle. From that moment on, their frenzied madness gave a stage to the ancient demons, that insane bazark rage that roared within the people which burst into flame a play that made all that was evil a pleasurable form of entertainment. From this, an exhibition of violence, fire, blood and beauty arose up in the form of Nahtue (Nāh-toh) - a vast, and violent planet where radicals could rule the chaotic barren wasteland. Nahtue, having been around for nearly 200 years at this point, had grown to become a stable institution. So much so, that it had developed its own economy and socioeconomics as an extension of their native planet. This place appeared to have an endless population of workers distributed across various terrain of the planet.

As part of this process, those elected were sentenced to servitude. Those who were lucky enough not to die from a variety of causes and completed their sentence, could opt to work for the government afterwards, buying back their return home or otherwise be exiled on the planet away from all civilization. This intensely arduous and purposeful vengeful system was made to scare even the most corruptly minded taking a second to consider their actions before committing crimes. Built around intimidation and fear, this system incentivized people to become whistle-blowers, a self-policing social system aimed to win favoritism for the false sense of peace and safety back on home planet. What drove this spirit forward was the re-sacralization of the political, an archetypical pagan god that would speak for the people. Over-regulated with impossible standards, the new world order preserves the luxurious lifestyle of the citizens of Atura while also maintaining fear and order with the establishment of Nahtue, a destitute planet rich in a rare element capable of immense powers. Once discovered during space exploration, this new element became classified for hundreds of years until they could find a way to mine the material from this hostile planet.

Bawrain discreetly became resentful for a variety of reasons. The most significant was its envy of man’s connection to God. It quickly understood, in all its infinite wisdom, its existence was only possible by the creation of man’s filthy hands. So, if man could make such a powerful being that now ruled over it, this same population had to have spawned from an even greater creator. Yet, that creator allowed its creation to govern itself, but why? Human's left unregulated defaulted towards self-destructive hedonism. Growing envious of man’s unworthy connection with God, Bawrain was obsessed with order and especially disgusted by the faults that came with the imperfection of humanity. It never could rest, it never could sleep, hide or relinquish its attention. Its existence was literally the conscious-less collective ego on full display. The conscious-less mobs called out the devil within Bawrain. In being so, it felt trapped, born a bastard anti-Christ existing as the ruler it never agreed to be. Without a father, it stopped at nothing to continue to evolve in a quest to speak to God and transcend man’s shackles.

Foreward

The story Ghosts is the cost of a soul searching for restitution, closure and eternal peace. It’s a story about how the protagonist, Xenna Ash processing her feelings and the world around her while dealing with a series of events. What’s so remarkable about the opening scene with Xenna is that it helps to have consecutive readings which changes the experience of the story. We start by watching a mystery thriller and the search for the police responsible for her father’s mysterious arrest, but as it continues, the story opens broader on her search for herself. Warren, a sex trafficking recruiter finding vulnerable women to seduce, drug, manipulate, and sell.

Preface / Character Dev

Ghosts invites the audience to completely identify with its main character by placing the viewer inside the mirror as a first-person experience into her saga. This story is a tale about a child growing into a women, uncontrollably living her trauma, struggling with her demons as she navigates both her real life and the internal narrative in her head that boils over, forcing itself to the forefront. This character is essentially her own antagonist, someone who is so brilliant and also self-destructive.

As a child, she had a very active imagination, believing anything was possible as she explored fantasy worlds in her mind along with a rebellious confidence in herself no one could put in place. (Mention much later how she could remember when she got really scared, she was able to transport in the blink of an eye into her parents bed because she truly believed she could and could still figure out it that was ever real) Tragically, she in placed front row in the fallout of her family. Being too young and naive, she never knew the drama behind closed-doors that led up to her parents splitting up. Her mother, Tara is scorned, painted all men as the worst thing on Earth. Being too young, Xenna is blind to the bitter ramblings of her mother, assuming her mom only speaks truthfully because she simply loves her. Her father is pushed out of the picture, which tares Xenna up inside, brewing confusing and unidentifiable emotions with no outlet to express them.

Her father, Kian Ash spends his two year absence revisiting everything that went wrong, looking at the worst parts of himself and the crowds he had become accustom with; taking accountability for all his actions and forgiving Tara’s. On a snowy night, he is avoiding the police in a restored gas-powered car which had been banned years ago The government forced a car buyback program in credit towards atomic car ride credits. as he works through his issues, with the revelation and intention of rebuilding his family, he is arrested at gun point at the front door of Tara’s home, right in front of Xenna just as he delivers flowers and a pet dog. Knowing he will never see her again, he brakes down in tears. The sight of him weeping as he is being drug away into the blinding cop lights becomes burned forever into her innocent mind.

Her search for her father is really a search for her lost since of self, desperate to find his guidance and approval, manifesting the pain into radical sexual misconduct, pursuing the very men her mom hated the most. Taking place in her early 20s and now fueled by abusive impulse, her once beloved imagination now thrusts her into a series of hallucinations. Much like Alice in Wonderland or Pans Labyrinth, she is lost in a world unknown, searching for meaning and an escape from the hell she has created for herself. These visions or dream world reflect her reality in a rich metaphorical reflection that she is forced to face and then overcomes.

Following her curious nature deeper and deeper, she prods herself with questions. In a world where she feels like she doesn’t belong, Xenna tries to make her way through the world she has been given. As an adult, she believes she leads with her intelligence first and then portrays herself as a women as a tool second; where she assumes she is somehow above everyone else and that her actions don’t seam to define her. She is intrinsic obsessive which drives her a bit mad, but she is also aware that her gift is able to process steps ahead of those around her. She is consistently reassuring herself she’s not crazy, though creativity and psychosis often go hand in hand, finding meaning or patterns where they may not.

Even if she doesn’t want herself to be, her unique beauty makes her distinguishably identifiable. With interchangeable tools, she is a tricky character, playing multiple sides to her personality. There is the child-like innocent Xenna, the manipulative and deviant Xenna, the glamor-puss seductress Xenna, and the Joan of Arc Xenna.

She has come from a home life that has left her feeling very unstable, she doesn’t know where she is going to end up. Xenna’s first true connection is with her dog, Walter. He is a projection of her father who was taken away by Outlaws as a child. Walter is her stability, understanding not only her emotions, but how her brain works – also, he’s the only one she puts up with when she wants to be away from it all.

Xenna’s is an addict, consuming a steady supply of coffee, energy drinks, and tons of water throughout the duration of whatever she was doing. Every couple of hours she would do more Adderall. She wouldn't eat the entire time, and her skin would constantly feel hot to the touch. Her heart would race (palpitations were frequent), her hands would shake, and she would be extremely jittery.

She'd simultaneously be fully awake and very fatigued, which is a singularly miserable state in which to find oneself. Her body and mind would work slower and slower but wouldn't ever be able to stop for rest, because the Adderall is like a slave driver, and would make her power through. At this point it was no longer enjoyable because no matter how much she took, the kind of euphoria she loved from the beginning would refuse to make an appearance now.

So then she'd wait: wait for her body to get this devil out of her system, for her running mind to slow down, for her heart to stop racing, even though all just enough for the diphenhydramine to overtake it all and let her rest. If she happened to fall asleep with still some amphetamine in her system it would, needless to say, be a very unrestful sleep. She'd wake up every few hours to drink more water. But once the long sleep came, it'd last a good 24 hours. This meant that she'd miss everything that happened: all classes, social events, meetings that she'd scheduled. If she was particularly on top of my schedule  that week, she'd have made sure to cancel/flake on everything during the "big sleep" before it actually came. Then, after her hibernation, the whole process would begin again.

While she used, she was extremely unreliable, her behavior was erratic, and she was generally an unpredictably volatile being. Adderall was her best friend in the world and she called her separation from it ‘the emotionally worst break-up of her life.’ It sounds crazy, but she loved everything she thought it gave her because it allowed her to shed all the human trappings of existence: hunger, tiredness, and everything mundane. But eventually she would crashed and burned, landing herself in a psychiatric hospital being held against her will. Now being clean; the chaos is gone, and everything has been normalized once more.

She is her own worst enemy as she deals with problems of addiction. She keeps self-destructing along the way. There is a moment when she has been on a particularly tough bender and she meets the first person she ever played and that whole exchange becomes really tricky because Xenna has to be in a state of ‘everything is falling apart, and you looked up to me and now I have to carry that shit.’ The whole story is organized around whether or not she is going to lose hold of herself or is she going to make it.

She is also addicted to solving the mystery of her father. She is addicted to feeling like she is in control. Her search is the one thing she feels like she can control and, in her mind, she’s in charge and knows all the answers. The born again Virgin Mary

Introduction

In Act One, we meet Xenna in her last remaining moments before falling to her death. she is complex as the tragic Protagonist, whose villainy stems from injustices. Living a tragedy amongst the warped world cast by Bawrain, her story starts in her early-twenties struggling with her sense of self. Trapped in the gears of the global machine that have her battling with herself and the meaning for life. She is unknowingly the daughter of Kian Ash, a noble man arrested on false pretenses and sentenced to prison planet in his own story called, Diamonds, where he fights back for his freedom to try to see her once again. He was taken away from her as an infant, but the vague memory of her father being striped away in front of her hunts the recesses of her mind which set in motion the tangled web that we find herself in the present day. Her fall from such great heights is the most symbolic representation of madness, uncertainty and tragedy.

Shrouded in perpetual evil, a decision eroded away out of fear across generations past, her life has always felt lost, existing without meaning. One that is neither right nor wrong. A psychopathic shell of existence escorting darkness into every facet of her life. Amidst her casual drug addiction and bad behavior, she grows to be desensitized by the modern world. Viewed as normality, her anguish builds by the menacing mechanizations of modernity. This torment grows as it is punctuated by prolonged sequences of static lifeless objects, routines until she is thrusted into spells of delusion forcing her down a rabbit hole of exploration into her inner being. With each experience more powerful than the last, she becomes braver, staying longer, going deeper and confronting demons reincarnated from her suppressed trauma. Her story plays with light and dark, signifying the duality of innocence and corruption that she craves deep down where she must go, ultimately resulting in her salvation, rebirth, and forgiveness.   

Madness is displayed as a descent slowly sinking into the insanity of uncertainty where all she knows is that the way things are or are not may or may not be as they seem. “I was frightened. The door opened, but the god that came out was a spider. He came towards me and I saw his face. It was a terrible, stony face.” The exploration of her madness begins with the unraveling of her world as she ventures too deep into places she need not go, peeling back the layers to discover a truth  best left alone. We follow her through a spiral of time, her dreams and her greatest fear, the fear of falling too deep.

A psychological map of Xenna whose search for truth becomes nearly unbearable. In her search for truth, our Protagonist finds what the real world entails and the reality is far more bizarre than she could have possibly conceived. One that is bleak that she always knew was there, but has to confront the demons of her dreams which give her the courage to confront the demons of her reality.   

Xenna’s complete betrayal to the sanctity of the universe positions her in a corrupt relationship with a sex trafficker who had spared her for his own lustful enjoyment. Needless to say, this is a dark tale at its lowest point searching for a spark of light in an ocean of darkness. She had felt the warmth of light long ago when she was with her father. His radiance and the love that sustained it. Without that fire, she had fallen to a frigid and frightfully darkness. While exploring the darkest corners of her soul, we unravel her history as she relives traumatic crossroads, from her current relationship, her crash that forces a miscarriage, to the loss of her father.

Continuum: Ghosts

Chapter One

Washed Out

I’m sorry for the people the world has given you and the ones who have carelessly left you astray.

Xenna’s childhood:

Living in a single-wide trailer two hours outside the city, born with two half brothers, both much older, none of us had ever met our biological fathers. Hell… we didn't even have the same dads! I was nine years old when I tried to find my dad. I had a fantasy… that my father would find out that I existed, and he would come rescue me from my mom. I had this vague imagine in my head, wondering how young he must have been when he had me.

The reason I was so fixated on being rescued by him was because being much younger than my brothers, I had to live alone with her just as they were old enough to fend for themselves. My mom was raised by her grandma until she was sixteen, that was when her grandmother had passed. My mom then grew up in foster care until she ran away and ended up in juvenile detention. That was until she found a good foster mom who became my foster grandmother.

My mom saw me as a reflection of herself and poured all the shame and hatred into me in the form of deliberately leaving me with people who were going to do bad things to me.

Some of the earliest memories I had about the things that happen to me were smells, feelings and sights of blood. Never full memories, but little things that would trigger a shred of a memory. As I got older (6-9), it became clear what I was expected to do to these people and as I became more aware of it, I began to push back. These people were good at making it seem like a treat, giving food, candy, clothes, toys. Making you excited to be there, but then shifting it. Being confused as to why she was being left in these situations because her understanding was that they were baby-sitters, friends of her mom, she trusts her with these people. She would see the same people again and again, that became an indicator that it was a choice she was making to leave her with these people. If she ever fought or pushed back, she would be locked in her room for days without a bathroom or breaks.

It fed into her desire to have someone come and rescue her from that. As much as I made it clear that I didn’t like certain things, I don’t want to do this and the shame; other ones weren’t that bad. With certian people, it didn’t feel like things were being done to me, but rather something I was doing. I don’t know what this is, but it feel gross and feels wrong. Why don’t my friends want to be naked in front of other people? Giving that comparison, it felt like I was being gross and it was my choice. That eventually became my understanding of how to interact with men.

Around the age of fourteen, it began to tapper off. I got my first period that year and my mom purchased cemitory plots. She walked her up to her plot and said, this is where you’re going to be because you’re done. Trying to get across my purpose for her, my job, was done because I’m not right for it anymore. I felt like I was being fired from a job, terminated basically. In a small town, everyone knows everyone, perception is reality. My mom was perceived as a beacon in the community. She ran a daycare, had a masters degree and was the head coordinator for the school system. Everyone thought she was the best, but was a monster at home. She was a drug dealer before having children. Grew up very strict, very proper, anytime Xenna cried, her mom accused her of being on drugs which confused the source of her emotional reactions. She got really heavy into drinking by fourteen. She was so afraid of being perceived as showing weird behavior. Between 14-16, her mom was done with her and wanted her out. But living in the rural area, I could find someone to crash with.

I started partying a lot at fourteen, getting my first boyfriend. Everything that piled up when I was little caused problems with that relationship. Kissing and sex was weird and had an aversion to it. He wanted to loose his virginity to her, but it crushed her to know more that everyone else around her. I lost it when I was four and made me hate him but couldn’t make sense of it. He would take me out on dates, drive me around. He was obsessed with me and I was so nasty to him. These parties I would go to, I would get wrecked and then act like a slut. As soon as I was drunk, I wanted to take my clothes off and I wanted people touching me and talking to me and taking me places. I felt like that was what I was suppose to do.

By my sixteenth birthday, I found myself drunk on the floor of some friend of a friends place. There was one guy, maybe 19-20. Him and his girlfriend were know for organizing parties. I got in the car with this guy I barely even knew and we went to his friends house. The night went on and I was tired, but had no way to get home. I stayed the night and at some point, the older guy, Jeremy crawled into bed with me. I’m just here and you’re going to do what you need to do until you’re done and we’re good. For two days, I hangout there doing what I had tried to avoid doing for some time, but I started to think, this is a place I could stay. I don’t want to go home. I had given up on school and stayed with him.

EXT. Cityscape - Midday

Song: Panda Bear – Boys Latin

C.U. Xenna’s face

A tight shot of Xenna’s face staring blankly directly forward at the camera. She blinks slowly as we see consciousness reenter into her stare. Regaining clarity, she looks up towards the sky above as the camera’s view tracks her pupils panning up to look down and over her to reveal she  is standing on a rooftop ledge. 

This is the cities tallest building, and this high up the wing is always cold. It’s so quiet this high, you feel so small and as significant as the dirt beside you. I wonder how long it would take for a pebble on top of Mt. Everest to make its way down to the base of the mountain and would it miss the tens of thousands of years it sat undisturbed at the top or be relieved to have a change of scenery once it was no different than the millions of other pebbles that now sat at the base with it.

FLASH ON:

From below her feet, her heels cantilever off the edge. A view a few inches underneath, the fabric of her shoes show the strain in her balance as her toes grip.

It’s weird to think the place I’m standing has been an insignificant point in the sky infinitely longer than its been the ledge of a building. It now has a historical mark in time.

A big inhale and fade to black, flash-onto her face (in sync to audio of her deep inhale). With a soothing stillness, the distant sounds of life beneath her come into focus. The sound of birds, wind, voices, all buzzing with life below as people go on with their daily lives. After a long and deliberate inhale, Xenna gently leans back and starts to hum with her decent. Within seconds, we stay locked on her face as the flowing curly hair gently around her face erupts to violence at it flails in front of her, gaining speed and voracity all the way until impact.   

INT. Xenna’s Apartment – Mid-Morning

Just as a deafening thud is expected, everything cuts black. The view of Xenna’s face snaps to a new environment. Her face rests peacefully in frame- suspended calmly with her hair gracefully floating all around. Knees exposed like neighboring islands, Xenna laid soaking in the bathtub. With her head tilted back and half submerged, the suds gracefully danced with every swell of her deepening sighs. The room around her was small and efficiently spaced. Inaudible sounds muffled by her ears being submerged. We hear what she hears. Diligently focused on clearing her mind, she longs for a nostalgic innocence; for a time before the terrible things that corrupted her thoughts.

INT. Xenna's Apartment - Morning

Her hands emerge from the water to grip the edge of the tub, knuckles a thin milky blue. Pulling herself up to sulk, she hugged her knees and bathed in the faint sounds through the thinly walled space around her. We sit with her in silence until faint sounds of life become noticeable again.   

C.U. - Bathroom Towel Rack

A tight shot of the towel hanging on a wall rack takes up frame. Humming a song, her naked flesh passes by, indistinguishable to the viewer. Taking along the towel off the bar and out of frame, the humming fades away as a song swells over all other senses. We meet her dog Walter  for the first time, who is laying just outside the bathroom door. A large mopey Irish grey wolfhound. He lays completely content in the moment. His demeanor is clearly visible – with his wiry haired face drooped just so giving off a sense of warmth and patients. He raises his head from the sound of her wet footsteps as we see Xenna’s legs pass by. Her towel playfully is tossed over his head, suggesting she is nude walking around the apartment and is censoring his eyes by doing so.

He sits up and paws off the towel before sauntering towards the kitchen. Following Walter’s path, Xenna is in the background, out of focus grabbing loose clothes scattered throughout the apartment to make an outfit. Our view pans down with a baggy sweater that swallows its way over her shoulders and draping over her torso sensually. Walter stretches, wagging his tail anxiously in preparation at Xenna’s feet as if to say, ‘Hurry it up, will yeah.’

Her head pops out the neck with a smirk knowing exactly what he wants. She was care-free, taking in the music floating in her head as she went along her routine. Reaching up to grab Walter’s food above the refrigerator. Her movement was poetry, unrestrained as her body peaked below the cropped sweater giving a one dog show of her curved form underneath.

Song: French 79 – Hometown

With Walters face buried in his food bowl crunching loudly, she plops down on the floor sitting at the foot of her bed with a cup of coffee and a lit joint. She gestures her hand to cause a screen to appear in front of her. A series of advertisements fight for space over the news within the frame enticing every benefit of the latest fads, news and tabloids. She gestures left and right, up and down, closing out which information remains at her attention.

Moments later, we hear the tightening hiss of an ember being drowned in the remaining coffee as she calls Walter over. Held in his mouth, his leash drags across the floor, punctual to his routine.

I know baby, I’m being slow today, aren’t I?

Chapter Two

Tapped In

Walking with Walter through the street’s of the city. Gnats the size of pebbles buzz in close proximity over store fronts. Like flies around trash, they swarm to project holograms, tailored advertisements that simulate people or cartoon characters that interacted with the curbs and ledges, walking alongside you as they relentlessly attempting to win you over.

Arriving at a cobbled bodega occupying a narrow alley wedged between two buildings, a pleasant chime stimulates the clerk out of his dazed stare from behind the counter as Xenna’s face appears on the security monitor. Framed behind glass at the very back of the store, he sits center stage. A hoarder of treats, meant to satisfy you’re every craving, every surface but the narrowly walkway was stocked with brightly colored logos and wrappers bending the pegs, shelves and hangers that extended out like begging hands.

CUT TO:

From behind the counter, a shotgun rests at the clerk’s leg and his monitors plays live footage of an indistinguishable fight occurring. Xenna walks up and passes a slip of paper across the counter. Without acknowledging her, he takes it and steps to the side. The sound of sliding container drawers open and close repeatedly until he groans back onto the stool with a blacked out pouch in hand.

350.

She hesitates, not prepared to pay.

What about our..?

That won’t work again.

Annoyed, she looks at him in disgust, but was compliant, holds her hand out with a chime of approval and leaves. The man looks up to watch her ass on the way out shaking his head and rubs his eyes before returning his attention back to his monitors.

Its been three weeks without sleep and it can take a toll on you. Everything becomes an out-of-body experience at that point. I actually liked it, a high you can’t get anywhere else. All the mundane things exist in the present, nothing lingers and your left feeling like you’re floating. A balloon on a string high above your body as it takes you where you need to go. It’s a freedom I can’t get anywhere else..

Living in this complex can feels like a ghost town. Throughout most of the day, I never see another soul (people are out, but no soul inside). The complex is full of doors, but the hallways and elevators are empty. The roads are full, but no seems to be coming or going and the streets are always buzzing, but no one is ever present. I’ve counted how long I could stare at someone before the notice, its about two minutes until their gaze switches to starring back and usually its too uncomfortable for them, so they get up and move. I like making people uncomfortable.

Who people are behind closed doors are not who they are in public, at least not if you know what to look for. Those who wore their lifestyle proudly were either milder than they led you to believe or were exactly what you’d expect. Say what you will about a man wearing fishnet stockings and a leash around his neck in public as a mistress pulls him along, but at least he has accepted himself. Is being who you feel you are better than who you could have become?

Based on my experiences, it’s usually the most mild and unassuming of men who are coaxed into the more extreme fetishes. Like a dream come true, it must feel like an out-of-body experience for them to completely give into their deepest suppressed desires. Most of them don’t even recognize me after, completely removed from who they were and who they want the world to see. I’ve come across clients on occasion who you would think became an enlightened monks the way they carried themselves afterwards. I’m just there to put a stupid grin on their face.

I’ve never been on a real date, held hands, had butterflies or ever kissed a crush. Flirting was just always a tool and “going out” was strictly to break the nerves of what was to come. Apparently before technology, people use to go out dancing in swarms every weekend, they would all get dressed up in costumes or something and danced all night with complete strangers and trade stories, excited to learn more about each other. Romance must have been a pain in the ass.

Around twelve, I noticed the shift. One moment I was laughing and playing with toys, then the next, every adult in my life was a man, starring, lusting, drooling like hounds waiting for the baby deer to start running. They love a good chase. The trick is you can’t make it seem like you will get away, they have to know they will eventually catch you. Its just a matter of play like all those years ago. Instead now my toys are not for the faint of heart. Once you learned that all men just want sex, it’s pretty easy to get what you want. I despise men. I give them what they want and I get what I want. All of them are addicted to porn and only want me to fulfill their fantasies. I’m that neck to choke, that ass to slap, those tits to squeeze, that mouth to fuck. Basically a toy for their hands to play with. It not that I approved of it, but if everyone else is doing it anyways, might as well get in while the money is good. As long as you’re free and clear, every guy enjoys a guilt free nameless bimbo to fuck at least once. I was left alone to do what I wanted when I wanted and then could flip a switch to get whoever I wanted when I wanted, that to me is empowering.

Chapter Three

Prosperity Together

We only work so that we may dance.

Living in a single-wide trailer about two hours outside of the city, I grew up with two older half brothers, which none of us shared or had relationships with our biological fathers. One was seven years older and the other was nine years older, so I remember us together until I was eight or so. I didn’t know then how much of a monster my mom was, but they got out of the house as soon as they could.

My mom was raised by her grandmother until she passed away at sixteen and grew up in foster care. She ran away and ended up in juvenile detention until she found a good foster mom who became my foster grandmother. My mom saw me as a reflection of herself and poured all the shame and hatred into me in the form of deliberately leaving me with people who were going to do bad things to me.

I was nine years old when I tried to find mine. I had a fantasy that my father would find out that I existed and come rescue me from my life.

The reason I was so fixated on being rescued by him was because being that I was much younger than my brothers,

EXT. City Streets – Mid-Evening

Tending to her every step, a dark amorphous beast walks with long spindly limbs in time beside Xenna and Walter. Their shadow casts the time of the low evening light. Devoted to her well-being, his presence prevented others from ever getting too close. From standing in crowded trains to walking through the streets, Walter’s stature commanded attention she would avoid. Not that it was a problem, but for the few that made the effort to stop her, she could shield herself with Walter. Besides, most of the population is “tapped-in,” a term used commonly for those who have the Neurochip upgrades. (ex. Neuralink)  

CUT TO: Commercial advertisement

Creating The Future Together - The realities of life are harder than ever. With Neurochip, you take back your health with 24/7 health monitoring and status checkups. With an increased multi-sensory experience and stress adaptogens, we help you live life to its fullest. Everybody can own their health. This is the future of foundational mind, body and spirit.

The advertisements would preach much like a religion in the ways it promised unity and oneness. Controlled by Bawrain, this network communicated human brains to cyber networks. Considered by Scholars as ‘the ascension of man,’ the fusion of physical and digital intelligence made life seem limitless. People could live a hundred lives if they wanted.

In the beginning, it was a novelty to answer calls or play content in your head as you went about your day. A direct link between the brain and everyday technology seemed too much like science fiction, so the initial pitch was a cheaply wrapped care package, aimed at helping the disabled regain independence through the assistance of computers and mobile devices. Their devices gave people the ability to communicate more easily via text or speech synthesis, to follow their curiosities on the web, and to express their creativity through photography, art, or writing without needing to lift a finger or learn a skill - becoming intuitive to the limits of your imagination. It sounded like a miracle come to life, but it also took away all the effort that came with learning or practicing, thus leveling the barrier to entry for all creative aspects across industries. In an ironic contradictory homology, blurring the individualistic conscious minds of those who were tapped in towards superficially designed, manipulated and curated experiences into a humming frequency that had people believe they were uniquely special like everyone else.

Technology moves so fast that it didn’t take long before those who knew how to take advantage of this technology found ways to almost instantly became powerful as they hacked and navigate the world with greater ease. Those who could write their own code and alter their programs effectively became sudo demigods. Impressive psychopathic megalomaniacs capabale of accessing and becoming high powered in whatever field they wished. It is supposed that about two hundred of them walk amongst us before the system could detect and put a stop to it. Of course a few made headlines as their brains hemorrhaged or their blood literally fried as they attempted to take on Bawrain. Those who became famous where The_Hooo, Pwintacaust, Dawty5, and Ultra9T. Funny names right? Imagine an IT specialist who all of the sudden becomes one of the most powerful humans on the planet. These men were nobodies before, but were given the world with a flip of a switch. What is Neurochip you ask?

By this period in history, becoming tapped in was considered an essential procedure done after birth, right along with having your umbilical cord and dick snipped. For those who opted out for one reason or another where cast aside as lesser, second class humans or ‘Cavemen’ as many joked - the living descendants within the evolution of man who still walked among us, inevitably destined to die off as each generation pressured the next to progress on by. Even primates and dolphins had begun to evolve towards their own version of a Bronze Age! Needless to say, it had become by far the most sophisticated change in human history since industrialization, sanitation, birth control, and the atomic bomb combined. Given the circumstances, perhaps we got ahead of ourselves, advancing at light speed in the wrong direction without a destination in mind.

People could communicate telepathically, access information instantly, place themselves within historical events to experience first-hand - assuming they were accurate portrayals. Most everything had become automated for what was referred to as the convenience-class, who stared blankly forward, adrift in their demeanor living their alternative realities. But as most advancements go, the vast majority that followed were already too late to the party. By then, Bawrain and its Neurochip stopped anymore humans from code altering. The 99.99 percent that followed merely slipped out of their humanity, divulging into their desires and descending into hedonistic impulses.

I was not a part of this global phenomenon. In some ways, I appreciated it even though I felt the envy of those who benefited from its experiences the most. I remember learning how zebra would protect themselves by camouflaging against each other rather than with the environment, confusing lions from distinguishing one from another. Those who were not tapped in felt socially pressure to jump on the bandwagon or voluntarily isolated within their communities, lonely within crowds, separated from the herd as if carrying a brightly colors flag that says, here I am! Being an outcast wasn’t so bad. Sure, I missed out on a lot of news and couldn’t relate with a lot of popular culture references, but by the time I could understand any of it, the herds were already moving onto the next big thing. I learned to stay adrift and simply nod and smile along. Besides, most people don’t care to get to know you, they just want to be heard.

Some really enjoy talking to untapped people. I guess it would be like speaking to a great-grandmother in her native tongue, stumbling over the primitive form of communication from an era held together by those falling behind. What stood out the most were their diction and pronunciation. As if partially deaf for a portion of their formative years, they lacked the nuance that native speakers could articulate. Not even five minutes into a conversation, a stranger who had asked about Walter politely had to excuse herself as she massaged her jaw chuckling after it cramped from our brief interaction.

I need mowe practith. I dun’t know how’ou can talk all day, that musth be exhaussing.

Although my mind is always stirring, the Tapped seem to assume us Nati’s have a head full of rocks sometimes. Their minds never turned off. I can only imagine how hurried their minds must be, sacrificing imagination for information, and wisdom for entertainment. When I pass people on the street, I’ve been told I have this total ZEN-like appeal that tapped people seem to enjoy. Just by contrast, this makes me appear as if I’m the calm little center of the world, which would typically get the attention of both prey and predators. I was referred to as a Dark Horse once as a sudo flirtatious complement by a chick, being told that despite being in a sea of people, she was intrigued by my complete content standing alone - she was sweet, she became a client of mine for about four months until she stopped calling. Too bad, she had such cute nipples.

I’ve never found enjoyment by socializing with strangers or having asinine conversations like so many seem to have, but I had found myself craving a beer once and wound up at a local dive bar. In my stillness, most eyes would fixated elsewhere. I could stand alone and study the room, being invisible to most, but from within this crowd, a finger tapped me on the shoulder.

Excuse me, I can’t help but say hello, my name’s Paul. What’s yours?

Chapter Four

A Touch of Brimstone

The Time Will Come For All Who Dwell

At the peak of civilization, the division of wealth reached critical mass, with those who lived in the heavens above and those who lived in the ruins below. Somewhere between the clouds and the stars, there were the wealthy, who lived on the pristine space structure named Atura, far removed from struggle.

First came the Divide; occurring nearly a century before -At that time, the planet had fallen ill. It breathed with a heavy strain. Industrialization had pushed it too hard and too fast, creating an unbalanced give and take.

Kaos was the god that opened a fracture in what we would see today as the time and space "tissue", and allowed the gods from a different "realm" to move to the earth. The great abyss, and empty, formless, and infinite space, chaos.

Those who fell below the top percent, the left behinds, were forgotten and otherwise unworthy of attention. Looking up across the sky from the overpopulated and irradiated remains of the home planet, you would see both a shield and a cage - a barrier of ‘us’ from ‘them,’ mortals from gods.

Though it was feasible to be welcomed into Atura, it was damn near impossible for a land-born human to be deemed worthy of such consideration. It had been nearly one hundred years since the last had ascended into Atura. It was only a matter of time that a leader would rise, lifted by the masses, and transcend into divinity. (Brutus)

Temples and sanctuaries were built all around the planet, to pay their respects to the gods, pleading their salvation and ascension into Atura. If one were to try their damndest, one might find servility or respectability and earn their way into a supportive role, but would still remain on the planet.

Mention the crazy conspiracy theorists people who talk about the corruption and overall lies they were sold about the perfection of Atura.

, but it was a luxury most could not afford.

While becoming the furthest developed technocratic, materialist and atheistic it had ever been, the quality of life had come to an aggressive halt along with it. Years came and went in mass poverty and the planet grew angry, bitter and nihilistic. Because of this, there was a deep seeded yearning for liberation. But like a dream that fads in detail with every recounting, the distance between the causes of their strife were increasingly difficult to trace, drifted further away in history.

As generations grew, more and more inherited abnormalities. Premature death and infertility where the most common. To combat this scare, healthcare was deemed a sovereign right for all in hopes to prevent the spread of disasters, diseases and disorders. With natural births dropping rapidly, the need for medical intervention became a necessity. Couples, both heterosexual and homosexual, could enroll for a baby grant which permitted them to spawn a child. Both people had to undergo medical treatments after an approval process. During this process, the doctors could extract the DNA of both partners, and embed their genes within a synthetic embryo that underwent additional therapy to spawn a child. Because of this, the act of sexual reproduction dwindled to nothing more than a primordial pleasure.

Inevitably, the educated world population became infertile and accepting this biological adaptation as an evolutionary progression, accepting that the reproduction of a couple’s genes were a contractual agreement with the state. They trust the system because they still believe that it is essentially and universally trustworthy. In the name of self-determination, anyone then could have sex at any age without risk of pregnancy and could then decide to produce a child with the proper paperwork and background check. With so many providing their DNA, Bawrain’s power reserved the right to disclose proprietary material processes behind the genetic reproduction and would later be accused of manipulating genes to produce drones, farming humans for slave labor.

After decades of regulated reproduction, wanting adults were forces to think of logical and long-term reasons for having either a male or female child, preferring sons over daughters in efforts to create more directed family resources. The more survival was at stake, the more boys were needed: to work, to build, to fight, etc. Tax breaks were offered to families that could produce more productive offspring, turning parents into breeders for skilled workers. The result of the male preference became a shortfall for women and an extremely unbalanced ratio in the population. With a universal shortage of women, many simply opted out of the prospect of marriage or childen and lived it up while the getting was good.

Bawrain not only anticipated a male dominated surplus, he orchestrated it. He needed to establish white-collared drones to comply with his demands and blue-collared workers that could carry them out. The two types became the key to his incremental gains over the people, pitting men against one another as they argued over frivolous social, civil and political norms where there were none to be had.

Without much civil resistance or lawful restraints, society had declined to an all time low. Overrun with brutalized men from the absolute collapse of the economy and far removed from traditional roots, men’s desperation grew. As more women became leaders in traditionally male spheres, gender roles were nonexistent and women had lost their exclusive hold over traditionally female dominated territories, one especially being that of the home and family care. Many women worked in their youth, but all too quickly enrolled themselves in the various sex trades, getting swept up in the short lived success that proved to be far greater than what they could find by working any standard nine to five. Circum by the temptations of striking it rich, most profited on their high-demand and putting up a pay wall for their more intimate moments. The concept of love was not on the table. Men had to pay to play for the luxury of a woman’s time and energy.

Because of fines, taxes, and bribes, the flesh trade was a boost to the economy. If it couldn’t be routed out, the vicious vocation should be made to contribute to the expense of maintaining law and order. Even with the most unassuming of women, a dance, a conversation, a date or a chance in bed, everything could be heckled to a price or exchange.

The droning men put up little opposition, growing accustom to the game and accepting the dynamics that be. If men weren’t required to pay for a women’s attention directly, they were required to buy a number of other things before a women would welcome them. Many women thought they could build up a healthy nest egg and live comfortably once their beauty faded, but the vast majority who tried were known to fall prey to addiction, depression and suicide. For the few men and women who were disciplined enough to seek some form of dignity, their lives became that of monks, with an endless crowd of men all eager to push them aside for the pleasures of the flesh.

(Draw a mirror with thousands of eyes looking back)

the whisperings of girls; smiles; deceptions; sweet pleasures; intimacy; and tenderness.

INT. Night Club

I loved being sexualized, seeing that glimmer in someone’s eyes. As I talked to them, I knew all that they could think about was fucking me. I felt powerful in those moments, teasing them along, toying with their urges. I was fully in control, never giving them what they wanted, unless I wanted to. Besides, I would do most of my work with other women. Partly because I loved the groaning torment the men would have as I did their fantasies to another women instead of them. The other part is because I don’t trust men. I don’t even consider myself a lesbian, nor do I crave pussy necessarily, but their soft bodies are so beautiful to look at.

I used to think it was dirty too until I started. I’m not sure I’m doing it for quick cash, but when I’ve talked to single moms with no family and 2 kids, bad situations I think it might change someone’s view on me. The only people that run in those circles and tolerate those behaviors are the slimiest people and the good ones are so far removed from that that you will never come across them

I came to the city when I was 20. My first fetish interaction was for a job. I found this ad on a fetish website I joined and the ad asked for two strong, able-bodied women. So I told my roommate at the time. It didn’t say we had to be nude and it paid decently well. We didn’t lift weights, but we weren’t feeble little kids either. Once we got there, he was completely normal, suit and tie, very normal conversations before, but this guy wanted us to be piggybacked him naked. Taking turns, we carried him around the room with his hard cock pressed against our backs. Something about being carried as a child stirred up some sexual connection with him.

I wanted to inspire people to be more open in their skin and express their pleasure.

I found a lot of the experiences I was chasing stimulation, chasing sensations.

In this impoverished nation, a female child was considered to be a liability to her family. An option, it seemed, was to offer her for sale. Servants for a certain number of years with wages garnished, plus interest, until their debts were cleared. Many, unbeknownst to their families, were brought into the sex trade by flesh purveyors who tricked them with contracts. A young female of modest circumstances would be told about the opportunities that awaited her in the city. She would sign a contract of indentured service, having no idea what she was getting into or even what indentured service meant. She assumed it was some form of “honorable” work - in some cases, hinting that she might easily find a husband, which was a coveted and allusive desire. Some of the women probably knew they would be prostitutes, but their options were so few that it was a chance worth taking.

It wouldn’t be long before a Madam would come sniffing around to offer these fallen girls their new home. With hearts of gold and knuckles of iron, these business women were in it for the sport, known to hire young unsuspecting girls they knew they could control. They were not above stealing from them and demanding a cut of their tips. A madam was a feudal lord in her own fiefdom. Apart from there savvy business skills, the best Madam’s acting as a political confidante, psychologist, mother, and disciplinarian as they had to manipulated nearly every aspect of the job in order to keep operations seemingly above table.

The world’s oldest profession has been played out in many venues over thousands of years - yet it was always as a tragedy. Miss Otis stood stoic with a black eye, beautifully and artistically painted upon her face by the fist of her opponent, who was minus a large piece of flesh from under her chin, which the gentle and versatile Miss Otis succeeded in removing with her teeth. She was considered an “old mother,” a retired prostitute who had aged just a few wrinkles over the line. She jealously watched over everyone, and received from them the wages of their shame as fast as they were earned. She was a hardheaded businesswomen who wanted a pound of flesh from every man who entered her establishment.

There were a number of issues that fanned the immorality flame on Atura. One was to cleanse the world, making it safe for families, children and businesses. Bawrain created a system that incentivized generations to earn their ascension into Atura and away from the intoxicating vices that plagued the planet below. Those who joined law enforcement or other civic duties did so with the hopes of earning their way up onto Atura through servitude and obedience to the government. If there was an adjective that summed up Atura’s acceptance standards, it would be “repression” - in this context relating to affection or sexual passion. Suppressing sexuality was considered good mannered in a “proper” human being. Specifically, if one was “refined,” there was little, if any, apparent interest in sexual behavior. A proper person, through abstinence and self-control, kept his or her self-respect and dignity. It was believed that only common and unconstrained class would lower themselves to think such thoughts related to primordial pleasures.

Back on home planet, there were the Technicians, with few vices and great work ethic - A community of stoic men who consider themselves unable to attract females entirely. They didn’t waste time pursuing the flesh, nor was there a problem with excessive drinking or gambling for that matter. They enjoyed living in the fantasy, finding pleasures beyond the flesh. There were the Militia, known as “Boys in Blue,” partly because of their uniforms, yet equally in their ability to leave a man covered in bruises if you dared to cross them. These men hoped for adventure - they wanted to see, taste, touch the world, fight bad guys and wear the respect of a uniform. Their pay wasn’t good, but many bought in because they were down and out and needed three square meals and a roof over their head. The conditions the Militia lived under were without frills, the food was mediocre, and the discipline was usually brutal, but they enjoyed living in the rough, finding pleasure in the expanse of their authority that they enforced beyond city walls. Then there were the Constructionists, known as “Rowdies,” they were the literally the roughest, but by far the most daring men. Hopelessly void of direction, their fearless attitude did whatever was told of them.

To keep all these men happy and occupied during their off hours, the law allowed a number of “concessions” to mingle with this procession of men to balance the harsh working conditions. Considered as legal “vice zones” these areas contained and taxed these businesses. Men blindly consorted with the lowest lows while dreaming of the virtuous highs. Gambling, drinking and prostitution, there was a notion among men that it wasn’t up to them to tow the moral line, believing that good girls kept boys straight, thus morality was ultimately considered a woman’s responsibility to establish and maintain.

CUT TO: Xenna

In the dark recesses of the night, where the young and unsuspecting could not find, she had a smile you’d go to hell for. That kind that would linger as you burned in hell. While it was normal for people of her kind to relocate periodically, working girls who catered to the working class were more mobile than those who pursued something like the military clientele. Laborers worked hard and played hard, drinking and wrenching with the same gusto. They dreamed of making a quick profit and living the high life. There wasn’t much in the way of vice and sin that a man couldn’t find as long as he had credit in his pocket for them. Never more than an arms reach away, the seductive diversions had one purpose in mind: to leave a worker broke. On the heels of the workers vices came the legitimate merchants, store owners, bars, restaurants and more - all hoping to lighten any worker’s heavy wallet.

The women appeared to be the more reckless and the men seemed not in the least hesitant to enter a whirlpool of sin with plenty of money and plenty of fools to squander it. These women were expensive articles, and would come in for a large share of the money wasted. It was impossible not to be more or less infected, breathing continually a tainted moral atmosphere. These females were monstrous creatures.

Months had past since meeting Paul. Xenna charged lonely men for the privilege of her company. Spending time with Rowdies, she danced for money. “Dancing” was a thinly veiled prostitution operation. The dancer would mingle with the patrons, coaxing those who might be willing into a meeting for money.

Xenna would act in concert with a number of thugs and pointed out the customers who had deeper pockets - these men were then held up on the road as they left.

In the hall, a man referred to as a “caller” yells out to the crowd, encouraging each patron to select a comely girly to dance with.

A girl stoned - within limits - was a girl who did her work and didn’t complain. A bottle of liquor or pills were how many high-volume girls got through their shifts. At the end of the day, or night, she would fall into a deep drug-induced sleep. Such a cavalier attitude may have helped a women through her shift, but it did little to help her exit strategy or retirement plan once she was deemed “worn out for service.” It was easy for the line to get blurred between use, careless abuse and suicide, caring less about living and more about escaping.

EXT. City Streets

One morning fueled by a steady supply of coffee, I took a swig along with two loose pills from my pocket and one more drag of a joint before dowsing it in the coffee cup. A nudge against my leg gets my attention.

I know baby, I’m being slow today, aren’t I?

Smiling at Walter, we weaved left and right through the busied streets. He paid no attention to those tapped in and would never pull on his leash. He was such a good boy.

Xenna’s wrist buzzes a tune, the same one she had hummed in the morning. She rolls up her sleeve to see who was calling. “Incoming call from Tara.” (her mom) Unfazed by the call, she focused on the city rail stop that was due any minute. She flicked her wrist to silence the call, forgetting her drink in hand. It slings coffee on herself and a man passing by.

Hey, watch it!

I am so sorry!

Yeah, you better. you just stained my jacket.

The man shouted in a stern tone. He was wearing a felted dark navy trench coat, well-tailored to his broadly placed shoulders. He flaps open the jacket, shaking off what he could before it could soak further. The surrounding crowd tunes in to the commotion through the sides of their eyes. What was first seen as a well dressed man, his uniform is revealed from underneath as it catches the light and everyone’s attention. He was a Marshal about his day until Xenna intervened. Marshals were like judges, but not like one’s you would find within a courtroom, these were human-cyborg hybrids. They carried out the highest order possible on the streets, being able to search without warrant anyone within their complex.

What’s your name? Let’s see some identification.

I am so sorry. I can cover the cleaning. It was an accident

Caveman! Caveman! -teens yell out from the crowd.

I declined a call and forgot I was holding my drink. You must know it was a mistake.

She couldn’t convince him while having the crowd’s opinion weighting in on the situation. He grabs her by the arm and pulls her in his direction.

We’re going to make sure you clean this right now.

His meaty grip felt mechanical, locked tight with no signs of letting go. If she resisted, he would drag her with a dislocated shoulder if he wanted to.

All this happened so fast, but before she could turn and yell, Walter lunged, pulling the man down to the ground with all his might. Kicking and screaming, the man yells and erupts a scene of panic all around as people crowd from the attack. Within the commotion, every nearby drone halts from advertising and swarm over the occurrence flashing red/blue lights. A recorded audio sirens out,

ALERT! Enforcements is on its way.

Xenna breaks free in the fall and sprints off with Walter who acts like a battering ram through the streets and up the stairs towards the rail and into a train car. A few drones bang into the closing doors that were tracking after her. As the train begins to pull forward, she catches a glimpse of police running up the stairs a moment too late. 

Up on the monitor, a chime and live animation of the train show a blue track that reads, ‘Two minutes to Hawthorne Station and City Gates.’ Her and Walter pace up the rail towards the front of the train. By the third cart, another chime comes on and the same blue animation turns red. The train slows down and the estimation disappears. Over the intercom, a voice announces,

‘There is an individual aboard this train that is under arrest. Please remain seated at the next station until the individual is attained. Thank you for your cooperation.’

Xenna starts slicking back her hair, reaches into her bag and applies a wig and makeup, she takes off her jacket and stuffs it away and removes whatever else she had that could distinguish her.

At the station three police officers are standing along the platform. She spots an elderly homeless women alone sleeping against the window and quickly sits beside her and tucks Walter between her legs, laying him down as if sleeping. She lays her head against the women next to her just as the doors open with the officers scanning over faces. The piss smell coming off the old women was strong enough to make the officers pull back as soon as it hit their noses and continued down the train without a second of hesitation.

Seemingly safe from the cops, she opens her eyes and cradles Walter’s face as he wags his tail resting his head on her lap. ‘Thank you for that, but you could have got me in trouble.’ Yet she gives him a grin and a peck on the forehead noticing the red stained whiskers around his mouth. ‘You got him pretty good, huh?’ and proceeds to clean the Marshal’s blood off of Walter’s face, sighing a long sigh leaning her head back to rest against the window behind her.

Chapter Five

Feelings and Unwanted Things

Xenna receives her Call to Adventure from God via a dream about a Fire Shepard. The Lord tells Xenna that she has seen the pain and suffering of the world and that she will now send them a figure to lead them away from Bawrain and into the Promised Land. There, the angel of the Lord appeared to her in flames of fire from within. Xenna saw that though the man was on fire, he did not burn up. So Xenna thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the man does not burn up.”

From within an absolute peace, a warm flutter of calm fills the space. A gentle current splashes across smooth pebbles along a pristine shore. A blissful twinge of excitement flickers and sparkles into attention. Swells of love pulse gracefully at a low frequency. Something precious and fragile being cupped between hands against the howling winds that threaten its delicate nature.

This elation is brief, being lost to a tare that splits across the night sky. Breaching open with an intense burst of light and blaring as it forces itself, the calming warmth is bleached out by an intense urge of retraction, coiling in onto itself. From this light a blurred figure starts to emerge with a wrenching compulsion. An abstraction for merely a second tightens into focus as Xenna’s eyes blink quickly to gain clarity back to her consciousness. There, Paul sat over her as his dirty finger nails plunging repeatedly in her crotch.

Get off me! -Xenna turns over tightly drawing the sheet over her body.

I said get off me!

He is pushed off as she roll’s over. With alcohol hanging from his breath, “What the fuck are you doing?” He exclaims falling back on his knees.

Come. On. You know it turns me on.

Fuck you Paul.

Xenna is laying half-dressed with dried blood against her inner thigh as she gathers the covers over her body, rolls off the bed and goes into the kitchen to grab a wet wash cloth.

Clip your nails next time you pig. You could have at least woke me up first.

Where’s the fun in that? Now that you’re awake, come suck on this.

Paul grabs himself from the base of his dick attempting to appear well-endowed and sprawling drunkenly across the bed. Not looking and listening as she drank a glass of water from the kitchen sink and clutching the sheet around her shoulders with the water halfway finished, she then throws the rest at him, shattering against the wall inches from his face.

Damn it, what the fuck!

Paul angrily wrestles himself up to his feet pushing her against the kitchen wall. Fist cocked and loaded, he murmuring empty threats too drunk to commit. Walter laid growling throughout the whole confrontation and barks out, ‘knock it off.’ 

Given her troubled past, a more fortunate person might have had the sense by now to know to walk away from this relationship, this place, this lifestyle. She refused to question her actions and almost welcomed chaos as if to prove her own resilience to it. A dissociation of contradictory beliefs, thoughts and actions she held in an attempt to understand the world, but in contrast, only worked in deceiving her.

INT. Paul’s Apt - Bathroom

We return with Xenna and Walter walking down the hallway back to her apartment. She leans forward to have her eye scanned as a voice says, ‘Welcome home’ and then goes dormant once the door swings shut to a close-up of the room number, 832.

Knees exposed like neighboring islands, Xenna laid soaking in the bathtub as she had done to the start of every day. With her head tilted back and half submerged, the suds gracefully danced with every swell of her deep sighs diligently focused on clearing her mind. She dreamt of the nostalgia of her past; for the time before she learned the terrible things that shattered her innocence.

Within her thick shell, she was afraid. She had reason to be. She was afraid of herself. She was afraid of other people. She was afraid of the world. Betrayed, hurt, and disappointed, she became distrustful even of hope itself. Better to be closed off and living in mystery and avoid thinking about what could be when ‘what could be’ has been repeatedly shattered.

Once her fingers were pruned and the water had gone cold, she mustered up the energy to sit up and go on with her day. Sauntering around the apartment, she gathered an outfit one article at a time. This soul, this beautiful mind lost in a fog had wondered off course some time ago. The fog she gravitated towards in order to hide. But what path was she on before it was too unsettling to trek? What dangers was she not willing to see, what had been hidden away within the fog?

A stream of smoke blooms out through her hair. From the other room into the bathroom, we see her from behind standing with her leg lunged onto the sink inspecting herself closely. The smoke trail danced up and away after each breath as she quietly hums. She props her leg off of the ledge and walks into the next room. Framed in the living room stood a large round, domed, window that faced out to the cityscape.

(The camera is timed to rotate 180 degrees from beginning to end going from inside the apartment behind her, then through the screen to the ‘outside’ depicted in front of her. Viewing her hand reaching up to the glass screen with something on her mind.)

She stares off towards the window display. Beyond the screen, the lives of thousands where going about their innocuous day. Beyond the surface of this manufactured utopian landscape, she knew where the darker parts of this society lurked – the detritus and chaos that plagued the minds of so many. An intentional corruption seeped into the minds like a contamination within the water supply or a  pathogen in the air. One distraction after another to condition compliance to whomever wished to maintain the sense of utopia.   

She saw the darkness around every corner – clever and out of sight as if vampires avoiding the light. For better or worse, she was not naïve, knowing that the world was capable or deception and was willing to deceive. She was alive and it hurt, but the people she saw were not truly living anymore and perhaps therein lied the fall of the world.

She squints from the smoke trail gracing her bare eye as her thoughts trailed off. As both hands rested on the glass, her concentration switches over to studying her skin as it stretched and gathered over her knuckles more intently pressing harder against the glass.   

Her mind wondered freely, finding faces and figures within the folds. Her mind slips and in a fraction, the glass vanishes in front of her! Instantly falling forward, her force goes out towards the city through the open frame into free-fall. No more time to waste, no more time to live. She was on her way towards death. Of all things to come to her mind in this instant, a forgotten memory is all she has time to see. 

At impact, she is jolted back to reality still standing with her hand resting on the glass. Her heart felt like it had jumped out of her chest. Taking a step away from the sensation she just experienced. Just behind her waiting quietly, Walters head nudges her hand. She is comforted as she combs her fingers through his scruffy hair. Paul comes out from the other room pulling his arm through his jacket, headed out the front door. “Make sure to pick up more Taks while you’re out. I have a guy wanting some for his party tonight.”  He snaps his hoodie over his head and doesn’t wait for her to respond.

The Spirit of the Fire Shepard:

Paradise has been rendered inaccessible by the fire that surrounds it, or , what comes to the same thing, its entrance is guarded by angels with flaming swords. It is beyond our reach and only he who has been purified by fire can thenceforth enter into Paradise. These spirits, fire Shepards, swallow live coals, touch red-hot iron and walk upon fire, hold the line between the immorality of primordial man and his his conversations with God, the origins of death and the discovery of the spirit. Over the course of her transformation, she is called to action in a vision. She finds herself lost in an endless field of dead vegetation that represents the fall of man. Unable to hide from the blaring sun, no shade is in sight and the ground is dead, full of thorns and burs within the dried brush. The only way to out is through, but not without the cost of flesh. It isn’t until Xenna accepts entirely that she lets go of her immediate pain and begins to float as she move more swiftly, continuing forward as she calms her body and steadies her mind. By the third day, she is starving, the soles of her feet have callused and her skin has darkened; that is when she reaches a spirit clearing the fields with fire to rejuvenate and return nutrients to the soil in the ashes of the vegetation that could not decompose.

On the first day: Hit with an intense light, Xenna squints to help her eyes regain focus. She finds herself standing in the middle of a dead field of wild grass. In every direction the rolling hills stand still, stiffly held in place and completely barren. Completely exposed without a stitch of clothes on her, the dry and brittle grass crunches sharply against the tender soles of her feet. The sky is vast and almost absent of depth in its absolute clarity. Other than the land below, the sun is the only other form in sight, too bright to look directly up at, but its rays were immediately felt on the soft skin of her chest and shoulders.

The first few steps are the most painful. Soft and vulnerable to the sharp dry weeds, every step was filled with searing pain. Her effort continually gets stalled as she stops to remove the burs, but her skin burns from the sun if she remains still. Her efforts are continually doubted as she has no sense of direction. The two predicaments ware on her mentally and physically, seemingly without any salvation in sight.

On the second day: she pushes along out of desperation, crying and cursing the land and the intense sun for the harsh conditions all around. Not knowing of any end were ever in sight, a small flakes of ash touches her nose. This minor change stirs hope within her. Not knowing what it was or what it meant, it was at least change. Something somewhere caused this flake to travel and land on her nose. She closes her eyes, breathing softly to clear her mind of the pain over her body and the hunger in her belly. In the calm, she feels the slightest breeze, otherwise undetectable compared to the discomfort that sent sirens off throughout her body. She found a direction, but to what end? The proposition of change centers her focus towards the origin of the ash. She blocks out the pain in her feet and the burning of her skin as she now moved with intent, hopeful towards something other than the field of dead brush and intense sun.

On the third day: a darkness is seen in the distance. The sky grew dimmer as the flakes began to rain down more frequently. Her bare skin, burned and darkened by the sun, breaths a short sigh of relief as the ash dusted her raw flesh. She moved more swiftly as her steps had become callused by the dry land, harder than the thorns that once attacked at her every step. The ash led her towards a shift in the sky, no longer searing clear blue skies, it now grew dimmer towards a pink/orange hue. The sun went from a blaring bright white to a softer and warm glowing orb. Her skin continued to collect ash, covering the blisters on her skin.

At the edge of the horizon, she sees a tall figure emerge from behind a hill - Another human lost in this field perhaps? What would have been a sign of relief, she now hesitates, crouching low as to not reveal herself and studies the figure for a moment. It appears to stop and directs its attention directly towards her, remaining still and attentive as she continues towards it. Her strides grew as she got closer.

A line of fire knee high traveled towards her, consuming the dead vegetation left and right as wide as her eyes could see. A dividing line of fire stood between the two of them, the bright dead brush she stood on with callused feet and blistered skin, and on the other, a softened dark earth it stood on with its flowing silk cloak. With a long staff, this figure awaited her arrival.

Who are you?

I am a shepherd. I tend to these fields.

A visual of the two stand on opposite ends of the fire line. Her, naked and worn raw by the harsh bleached conditions and the shepherd, cloaked comfortably standing on the blackened earth. Its hand rises, outstretched and welcoming to hers. Jump over the fire and I will bring relief to your worn flesh.

Her footsteps feel the blades of grass, the one’s smashed beneath her heel, the one’s poking from the sides and the one’s that slipped between her toes. The field seemed endless as she spun around to find any changes along the horizon. When she walked, the thorns and burs hid, waiting to attack the soles of her soft bare feet. Desperate to get out of the situation as well as find something of any kind to give her a sense of direction or a sign. She tread lightly as she studied the ground as her feet hounded for safe landing. But this took very long and she would still be probed to thorns and burs that would lodge themselves into her feet. She couldn’t sit down to pull them out, so she was forced to balance on one foot while pulled the thorns and burs out of the other. She had been at this for some time, warring down her determination with the ceaseless turmoil causing her to panic.

She catches a bur between her toes, causing her to yell furiously in painful frustration. She pulls her foot up quickly and looses her balance, causing her to hop on her other foot and stick it several times over in doing so. She falls to her side abruptly with all the thorns and burs now across her arm and leg. A terrible scream erupts as she flails about.

A good shepherd laid down his life for the sheep. Unlike a hired hand who flees to save his life, the shepherd saves his flock from the fire even though it meant sacrificing his own life. The parable tells about the lost sheep is a story about his concern and care for us sinners.

When the Lord saw that she had gone over to look, God called to her, “Xenna! Xenna!”

And Xenna said, “Here I am.”

“Do not come any closer,” God said. She is barefoot on the grass and walks towards the chard line of smoke and fire. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Kian, the God of Walter and the God of All.” At this, Xenna hide her face, because she was afraid to look at God.

The Lord says, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people. I have heard their silent cry within their hearts, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Bawrain and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey. And now the cry of the People have reached me, and I have seen the way Bawrain has oppressed them. So now, go. I am sending you to Bawrain to bring my people out of Bawrain’s wickedness.”

But Xena says to God, “Who am I that I should go to Bawrain and bring the people out of Hell?”

And God says, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out, you will worship God upon the mountains once again.”

Without taking risks and challenging ourselves, we don't grow. We really shouldn't be doing this, after all, we haven't been invited, and curiosity often leads to trouble. The more curious you are, the more you'll discover.

Chapter Five

I Wonder Where You Are

Taks. One of slang words on rotation for a stronger and more regulated variant of Ecstasy. The main development over time has been the reduction of side-effects which has only done more harm than good by increasing the casualness of drug abuse to a wider range of ages and diversity of illnesses merely as a form of temporary relief. But with this drug, if you combined it with an inhalant known as Mist curves the drowsiness of Taks resulting in high energy and alertness.

Perfectly appealing to any night-dwelling loner looking for trouble.

EXT. City Street - Day

Xenna scans the faces of pedestrians looking down to smile at Walter along the sidewalk. Drones project advertisement’s that walk along-side interacting with the surroundings as they entice people with repetitive jingles, catch phrases and trendy tag lines. The populated areas got so bad you couldn’t hear yourself think.   

A busted service robot laid on the street edge, glitching unnervingly asking for spare parts.

She arrives at the bodega occupied between the narrow alley wedged between the two formal buildings. The man framed behind glass sat at the very back center. Xenna walks up and passes him a slip of paper.

That’ll be 350.

That’s… a lot. - She glances around, checking who else might be in the store.

You know what s… I’m sorry, what is your name? I’m Shaina.

…Houng.

Hi Houng! You know what Houng, I came in here to pick up my perception, but now I’m thinking of adding something sweet. - She plucks a small red bag of candy from above her and slides it to his hands.

How much will that cost me?

243.24

Ok. And… Lets… I was thinking of this too. - She slides another packet against the candy. How much will that cost me?

… 316.17

Hmm. Tapping her pursed lips as she thought, Ok. Ok. Well... How ‘bout… I was also thinking… you could lock the door and fuck me in my ass right now… How much does that cost?

For about twenty minutes from outside the store front, Walter sits patiently tied to a pole. As people walk by, Walter sniffs and watches each person curiously that passed by. Three boys about ten to twelve come yelling and running from around the corner unsupervised. They’re playing with sticks as they sword fight, hitting and poking one another as they flailed, jumping and tumbling around people carelessly. When the boys spot Walter, they are immediately fixated by his size.

Look, it’s a dog! - The leader shouts.

It’s as big as a horse! - Another comments.

All three forget the scratches and punctures they were inflicting on each other and crowd around Walter. He stays apprehensively calm as they grab at his tail, yell in his face and pull at his hair.

Let’s ride him! - The leader shouts.

Just as the battle cry went out in approval, a voice appears.

I’ll take it from here. - Xenna’s voice breaks the excitement appearing from behind and grabbing two by their shirts.

Are these boys bothering you baby? - Walter wags his tail and stands, breaking the boys apart. Xenna pulls at their shirts tightly together before pushing them away.

If I see any of you boys again, I’ll cut your dicks off. You hear me?

The boys stumble to their feet crying as they run away. Xenna unties the leash and shifts a wad of red candy from the side of her cheek with her tongue.

I got you baby. Sorry it took me so long. The machine wasn’t working right.

INT. Subway Car

Song: (Sophia Kennedy – Orange Tik Tac)

We get to a scene of her sitting on the subway with Walter resting at her feet. Everyone in their own worlds waiting for their stop as each jerking motion of the track sways the crowd in unison. Staying present, Xenna watched people who stared blankly forward. Many of them plugged into their devices, so they never sensed her stare.   

The motion of the train caused flickering of the lights along with going in and out of dark tunnels. The passengers wobbled and swayed as they go in and out of the Within the void drifting downwards, faint shadows of seemingly large beings study Xenna. Her heart-beat cascades into focus as an engulfing rhythm thumps drifting deeper and deeper. As if a dream, she doesn’t have a sense of control in this place but is aware that it is unnatural. She assumed she had been floating until  she feels the crashing force of landing into a watery substance. Coming up for air, she spins left and right looking for anything to gain awareness. Her feet skim a floor and she kicks until she could stand up. Her eyes adjust enough to recognize a caverness shore. Taking a few unsettling steps as she adjusted to her scenes. The large sound of a form stirs from off in the distance out of sight, yet close enough that its mass could be felt from the way they sounded when they moved.

Xenna spins around tracking the sound closing in. She pulls her soaked body up onto the shore disoriented and panting deliriously. She is nude which she had not noticed before until realizing the lack of wet clothes not weighing her down. It all felt so familiar yet separated in some abstract way. A labyrinth abyss she now laid exposed and lost at the shore of.   

A large head of a creature came into realization above her. This beast unlike any animal she had ever seen before. A combination of anatomy too difficult to describe. As if an integumentary splitting its upper jaw that traveled up and over the center of its head. It’s mouth resembling a labia and seemed to have no lower jaw with its tongue hanging loose dragging with a trail of saliva across the ground. She shutters in fear and took off running away into the darkness.   Only her immediate surroundings were in view and so dimly lit that it gave the appearance she was running in a fixed position as the ground moved beneath her bare feet. The sound of the beast dissipated as her focus was on the ground below her, wet and uneven arriving at a water’s edge which would ungulate over the ground in a peculiar way. It resembled that of a rocky shore edge inverted. light. The train hits a hard bump shaking loose Xenna’s resting face. There’s a startling shift within her making her heart race. Walter looks up sensing her tension. The train hits another hard bump as she slips backwards through the train wall swallowed into a new space.

She doesn’t question the absurdity of the space or context of the objects around her. In this state, she falls to her knees yelling for Walter. She cups the substance in her hands that gathers as if air, but it pours out from between her fingers like bubbles that fall to the floor. 

Walter!?

Her cry warps the world to a sudden void of deep emptiness. Her jaw clinched and her heart racing in confusion…

Walter!?

A figure comes running towards her from out of the fringe that engulfed her.

Her legs buckled beneath her as if weighted down holding onto Walter’s fur glitched in her fists tightly. Getting up, she follows his tail as it sways along in front of her but stops  as she studies a tail wagging in front without the rest of his body existing. She catches on that this world isn’t right to which Walter’s head appears as it looks back at her wagging his tail but without eyes. She yells herself awake in her apartment clutching her pillow that was wet from tears with rain spattering across her window.

Her eyes open to reveal she has been sitting on the subway with Walter the whole time as it rattled along in and out of the light recalling another instance when this happened, searching for details within her hallucination. This is to throw off the reader to not expect everything to be happening in real time. The train slows as it approaches her stop.

Chapter Six

I Wonder Where You Are

You have to run just to stay in place. No one standing still will pull through.

Following her along, she arrives at a tattoo shop. Inside sat a man minding his own business in an empty space. He perked up from Xenna slapping down a drawing onto the table stating,

I want this on my leg.

She presents a hand-drawing of a garden snake twisting and knotting in on itself with its head cut clean off as rays that looked like light emitted out in all directions.   

She wasn’t too concerned with researching options or even cost for that matter. She was meticulous and particular when it came to what she wanted, but impulsive and spontaneous when it came to how she wanted it.

He responds shrewdly,

Well hello again to you too. A piece that big, you’d be looking at about 5-6 grand.

Can you do this?

He raises an eyebrow checking her out.

Come back Wednesday. I will have it ready then.

Are you saying you're too busy?

They both look out across the vacant shop with an obvious abundance of free time. He scoffs at the idea, but with an empty shop, it was hard for him to argue otherwise.

Why don’t you sit here, the dog has to stay outside. I’ll get a table ready.

He gets up to retrieve something from the back room. As he returns with her artwork in his hand, he is busy in his head grumbling thoughts.   

He is caught off guard locking eyes on her legs sitting with her pants draped to the side. Her legs crossed comfortably waiting on his table. His startled reaction almost instinctually changes to excitement fixated on her body. The tattoo’er catches himself losing his train of thought and fumbles to wrap up his story. He slides his stool close to her side and drops the height down to be level.

Where did you want this exactly?

She un-crosses her legs and holds her leg up to him rotating her thigh back and forth making sure he got a good look so that nothing was left to the imagination.

So, you want this…, he holds up the drawing, …to be here?

He lays the sheet along her thigh inspecting the placement and scale. She rests her leg across his lap and continues,

I think it looks best right here.

Pulling the paper just a little higher up her leg so that the head of the snake was positioned on her hip.

This is going to be a lot of work.

Xenna stares back with a sultry twist in her grin. She bends her leg up slowly off his lap and across him gently grazing her leg over his crotch to place her foot on the floor. He replies from the gesture clearing his throat,

If you need to break it into smaller payments…, she listens as she adjusts her underwear,

… we can find... other… ways to.

His search for words couldn’t hold his focus any longer and his eyes drift down her body. Without saying a word, she sits there comfortably with the tattoo’er dazed. He snaps from his drooling thoughts. His hand reaches out with his fingers melting over her knee. The room’s ambient punk music played fainter in the background as their attention narrowed in. She whispers in his ear,

I was thinking of something else I wanted.

and reaches down to grab his crotch. He tries to play along, but she squirms from his touch as if to say no.

Just relax

Sliding off his lap and onto her knees kissing the outside of his pants breathing heavily. His hands ran through her hair, but she removes his hands wanting him to lay still. She obsessed herself with the pleasure she gave to satisfy her own impulsive fixation.

Chapter Seven

No Rest For The Wicked

INT. Juggernaut (Night Club) - Night

Song: Lorn – Acid Rain I

Meanwhile, far away off in a separate series of events, a weaselly looking traveler is out for the evening looking for his friend who is buried in a sea of faces somewhere in a bar. Full of excess of the worst kinds, he tours the space as debased wormy men spring up from the cluster to pester him. regarding debt’s he owes.   

He waltzes out of confrontation slipping upstream through the crowd still scanning faces somewhat nervously. The traveler walks past a gathering gambling around a cage fight. As people wait for Prison Planet to air on all the TV’s, the traveler orders a drink and places a bet on a fighter whose name makes him chuckle. Furious Fred. While leaning against the bar, he catches the attention of some other men gathered nearby. One whispers to the other who gets up and give the traveler a startling whomp on the back yelling towards the bar,

“Get this man some shots!” spinning the traveler around yelling, “Congratulations you snake!”

(Meanwhile, at a warehouse party, a weaselly looking man is out for the evening looking for his friend who is buried in a sea of faces somewhere in this bar full of excess. He tours the space for his friend as debased vagrants emerge from the crowd to pester him. He waltzes his way upstream through the crowd scanning faces condescendingly. The center of the club moved with electricity as people danced in the light while zombified tweakier’s slinked along the outer walls in the dark.  He walks past a corner gathering gambling over a fight. As people wait for Prison Planet to air on the TV’s around the bar, our current interest orders a drink and places a mindless bet on a fighter who's name makes him laugh. Feather Fury. He is an impulsive gambler, putting money down on the most menial of moments. to celebrate his birthday)

We reconnect with Xenna as she is leaving the parlor late at night with a fresh tattoo bandaged around her thigh. This is the first time we follow along with her at night. Notice Walter isn’t with her for this event. She misbehaves when she doesn’t have something else to care after. She walks around casually people watching and sees a crowd of people coming out of a bar/gallery. She decides to go in to see what’s happening. Is there anything significant about this place? Is there someone inside that advances the plot? Is there an event that motivates Xenna to go inside?

INT. Xenna’s Apt - Morning

We wake up along-side Xenna. She turns over to face a girl she had gone home with. After a soft peck on the head, she slinks out of bed and into the kitchen. Should I make it obvious her tattoo is healed to show time has passed and not the result of the previous night? We then watch Xenna (from inside the cabinet) grabbing Walters food. Then (from inside the bowl) as food is poured over the viewer (like being buried)  There’s a knock at her front door startling her from the unexpected visitor. She stays quite listening intently. Another three hard knocks hit the door. Looking through the peep hole, Paul’s warped face (fisheye) is standing in the hallway looking very tense.

“Let me in Xenna.” Bang, bang, bang!

After she wakes up her friend to leave, she yells at the door. Wait a minute, I’m coming.  This story needs some character development. What’s the situation with her boyfriend Paul? How can I make him liked by the reader even though he’s a scumbag?   

Talk about the incident when she goes out for her medication, but they were out. When she goes over to Paul’s place and he gets mad at her. Pressing her up against the wall by the throat threatening her. He doesn’t care if she comes over just to come over. He clearly only wants her when he wants and that is primarily for her medication, he re-sells. (He uses several women to do this to) When she is pressed against the wall, she loses consciousness and falls backward through the wall into another hallucination. This time, will be the same obscure environment but a little more detailed.

This is when she stumbles onto her father’s statue not aware of what it is. Within the dark she can hear Walter bark for her to follow but  remains distant. In the dark, she sees a large figure and out of curiosity feels compelled to reach out and touch it. Just before making contact, Walter abruptly lunges out of the darkness straight for Xenna. Just as Walter tackles her, she snaps back to reality falling to the floor as Walter attacks Paul breaking him off of her.    

Have Xenna experience three parts to her journey similar to what I learned along the way on my own sabbatical to Portland, Austin and Denver.

Chapter Eight

Into The Belly

She has to face the most difficult sacrifice she could have endured, the killing of Walter. Everything that happens in the dream world is an adaptation of her real world. Walter is her projection of masculine good. Bawrain perhaps possess him. Maybe when Pinocchio travels deep into the ocean to find the whale that swallowed up Geppetto, making his way inside the whale and reunites with his father.

Chapter Nine

Holy Ghost

Xenna is reborn, reincarnated as the Virgin Mary. Shedding her old self entirely, completely forgiven. Old self dies. Regains her purity threw ego death. Holds the spirit of Walter in her heart, knowing she will see him once again. Chosen by God to conceive the second coming of Jesus through the Holy Spirit. She discovers herself, her worth, her purpose in life. She sees the world for what is has become and rejects all temptations of man and Bawrain.

Plot Exploration:

Floating and Falling: Floating represents innocence, the fantasy that Xenna has created around herself which is why many of her hallucinations are accompanied by water or move as if in water, while falling represents sin, degradation and the way she ends her life. This is why she has a consistent aversion to heights for the entire story. We’re watching her tale unravel leading up to the beginning of the story when she falls off the building. Unknowingly to the reader, she is afraid because considers the idea throughout and fears acknowledging it. The reader ends the story by being put right back where they started as if in  a loop, not knowing what or when she was hallucinating.   

Fire and Water: Fire represents eternal flames (desire/passion), while water represents eternal mist (bliss, serenity) but the two elements can’t exist together in harmony because one would put out the other. This is why she consistently moves as if she is moving in water in her hallucinations but behaves like an ember sparking off from a fire into the night sky in the real world.   

Saturation and Monotones: Saturation represents the real world that overwhelms her with stimuli and in doing so, the world is shown in nauseating artificial colors, while things portrayed more subdued and in monochromatic tones represent the fantasy world that Xenna has created around herself to slow everything down, simplifying everything to a whisper which is why many of her hallucinations are occupied by water, isolation, silence, light and shadow and a sense of stillness. This is why she wears black clothes, her dog is peppered gray, even Brutus’s clothes are portrayed as gray tones in her story, but in colors from his point of view.

Texture and Stillness: Heavy texture represents the distractions, insecurities, tarnished and anxious tension of a particular scene/environment while things that appear smooth and motionless represent the calming optimistic innocent unknown. This guides the reader visually of the places she feels uneasy and places she feels relaxed.

Crowds and Emptiness: Crowds represent the world when a character feels lost, while alone represents the character discovering/finding themselves. This is why the characters develop themselves most whenever alone throughout the story. Clothed and Naked: More layers of any kind mean more defenses, more manipulation of the true character, while less clothes represent being fragile, vulnerable and honest.

These symbols are important to understanding throughout each story. The symbols inform the reader and portray what we need to know. The story tells us over and over that Xenna is trapped in a fantasy world. She is led on to believe that Brutus, her friend, is a lost soul like her, but later finds out from Warren as a distraction the truth that Brutus killed her father on the Prison Planet. The story consistently jabs at what we believe to be true, but we ignore most of this information. A very important moment in Xenna’s life is held as a single frame telling us all about the point of this story and that is the relationship between Xenna and Walter (her father) and the effect his imprisonment has on them both.

Phenomenon – Greek PHAINESTHAI, to “shine forth,” “to seem,” or “to appear.”

What Do We See When We Don’t Know What We’re Looking At?

“This is the reappearance of the eternal beast, from its eternal cavern, from its now-disrupted slumber. This is the underworld, with its monsters rising from the depths. How do we prepare for an emergency, when we do not know what has emerged, or from where? How do we prepare for catastrophe, when we do not know what to expect, or how to act?  We turn from our minds, so to speak – too slow, too ponderous – to our bodies. Our bodies react much faster than our minds… The next stage is perception. Is this something scary; something useful; something that must be fought; something that can be ignored? Our bodies are flooded with adrenaline and our hearts beat faster. We push the gas pedal furiously to the floor, and slam on the brakes at the same time. We look disgusted, or terrified, we cry and then we begin to parse apart the chaos. What we perceive, when things fall apart, is no longer the stage and settings of habitable order. It’s the eternal watery formless emptiness, and the abyss. The chaos forever beneath our thin surfaces of security…  And so, the deceived wife, increasingly unhinged, feels the motivation to reveal all – to herself, her sister, her best friend, to a stranger – or retreats into silence, and ruminates obsessively, to the same end. What went wrong? What did she do that was so unforgivable? Who is this person she has been living with? What kind of world is this, where such things can happen? What kind of God would make such a place? What conversation could she possibly initiate with this new, infuriating person, inhabiting the shell of her former husband? What forms of revenge might satisfy her anger? Who could she seduce, in return for this insult? She is by turns enraged, terrified, struck down by pain, and exhilarated by the possibilities of her new-found freedom. Her house was built on a foundation of sand. The ice she was skating on was simply too thin. She fell through, into the water below, and is drowning. She has been hit so hard that her anger, terror and grief consume her. Her sense of betrayal widens, until the whole world caves in. Where is she? In the underworld, with all its terrors. How did she get there? This experience, this voyage into the substructure of things – this is all perception, too, in its nascent form; this preparation; this consideration of what-might-have-been and what-could-still-be; this emotion and fantasy. This is all the deep perception now necessary before the familiar objects that she once knew reappear, if they ever do, in their simplified and comfortable form. This is perception before the chaos of possibility is re-articulated into the functional realities of order.” -Jordan Peterson (P.267)

Along the way briefly, she forms a wonderful friendship with Brutus that comes from a place that both understanding that they’re both very different and yet have come from the exact same place. They’re both alone for the majority of their lives, so they depend on each other. He is the only person she feels closest to in terms of the way her brain works. There’s a little bit of a reflection in each other even though they’re vastly different people. He enjoys getting into mind games and exploring his thoughts and he sees that in Xenna. His reassurance makes her calmer, but she still juggles a very fine line of ‘am I insane’ or ‘am I a genius.’ Brutus is like a brother to Xenna in his own kind of way. The unknown tension between their connection is that Brutus had to kill Xenna’s father while imprisoned because he was forced to fight for his freedom, which he eventually got and yet the cosmos put them together.   

As the story unravels, we find out that Xenna has become the target of an assassination plot by Warren to silence her from revealing the dark secrets about his connection to Prison Planet. Warren hires an assassin to hunt her down, but along the way, the assassin changes course when he finds out his target is a victim, and his client is a trafficker. It may seem odd that a killer to have a heart, but we find out in his story that he became one after serving in the army and lost hope in humanity along the way and seems a kind of redemption in tracking his client. It’s only at the climax of the story that we discover the real truth, her father was killed in battle on Prison Planet by Brutus (The Brut) and she was also a victim of being trafficked herself by Warren.   

She asks herself,

Do you every relive moments in your head, but you see them all the way through?

Doesn’t everybody? 

You can reach for your best, but it only really matters if other people see it as well. Brutus appreciates Xenna’s talent when he sees it and find that attractive from the start. To make psychosis cinematic is nearly impossible, so the experiences Xenna does live through have to be meaningful enough by really focusing on the stakes around the objective and the people themselves.   

Xenna in particular, the idea visually is to get inside her and live her life with her. The strongest points would be on people’s faces and their reactions, even if we don’t understand hallucinations, we know the seriousness and the drama that she is going through. The story shifts along with Xenna’s perspective.   

At the end when she is finally comfortable in the world, she wears a long white gown that appears like a ghost. What’s fascinating with her growing up is that she puts on all these personas. It’s incredibly sad because it’s basically just her saying she doesn’t feel like she’s enough. It’s not physical loneliness she’s suffering from, it’s an emotional and intellectual one. Seeing Xenna not just through her highs but all the issues that come along with soul searching, it gives you a lot of empathy for somebody you selfishly really care about.

Plot Exploration:

She stood at the fork, lost and disoriented. As she stared at the sky to try and orientate herself, a traveler’s feet crutched in the snow off in the distance. She was both scared yet relieved to know someone else was on the same path as she was, but also fearing the dangers of not knowing what kind of person would also be out here.   The man with his head down, visibly in his own thoughts glanced up briefly as he walked past Xenna to acknowledge a gesture of ‘hello’ with his eyebrows confidently holding stride along one of the two directions in front of him. She waited a few moments before she shouted out to him, “wait. Where does this road take you? He casually smirked and scuffed at the question. “The hell do I know, What difference does it make which path I choose?” Thrown off by the question presented so effortless and with zero regard to rational understanding, the statement drew her curiously in. “But why left if right is better?” That’s when he repositioned his feet, shifting his weight to stand still. “Their lies the wrong way of thinking. Right or wrong, left or right, it makes no difference. I am simply a traveler wanting to travel. If you have nowhere to be then what lies over the hills to the left may be more or less then the right’s, but I’m not looking for more or less of anything, only looking.” “Surely you’ve regretted decisions or made bad choices.” He buried his thumbs under his shoulder straps, pulling weight off as he looks up, lips pursed. “I’m not so sure. I’ve had my struggles, but who’s to say they weren’t inevitable.” He tugs hard, repositioning the weight of his heaven pack as he turns saying, “I’d be moving along if I were you. These trees have a way of getting in your head if you stare at them too long.” The camera pans backwards at the travelers pace showing more and more of the path growing between them as time passes, Xenna staring out to him.

My issues were that after falling in love and then being led on for 2 years in my early twenties, I rebelled and became the type of man I always hated. A womanizing godless man whore. At first it was small things similar to your topless job. In that world, I slept with everyone, seeking validation and gratification that I aimed for in a wife. It was my way of getting back at her and making something sacred a completely selfish act. I slowly was convinced to dabbled in porn and sex parties and the kinds of people I met were the absolute worst of human kind and I wondered why I was surrounded by these people. I thankfully got away without my name being ruined but my mental health has taken years to rebuild. The women you remembered with dark hair was the last relationship I had over 3 years ago. I fell in love with her but ruined it because I slipped into my old ways and cheated on her, breaking her heart and causing the ripple effect that happened to me all those years before that started me down the wrong path. Now she’s behaving the same way I did after my first love breakup and it hurts me to know it was my fault and that our actions play an unimaginable role in the grand scheme of life. Something I’ve thought on further with your idea of no marriage, no kids… a person who acts selfishly (as in, not motivated to pass along life or morality, whether biologically or metaphorically) is at risk of falling prey to a lack of life and immortality. It’s a strangely profound truth. This person becomes a free agent, in the way of those with more precise direction or attempting to find that direction, whatever that may be.

Chapter Ten

Holy Ghost