TheElectricMonk

Episode Three-Onion Peel The screen is almost dark. JESSE and BILLY stumble along in the darkness. BILLY How much further? JESSE keeps onward looking hunted, but BILLY comes to a stop. BILLY Where am I going? JESSE sneers at BILLY’s voice but then comes to a stop and looks worried as well. BILLY Didn’t we- Wasn’t there a… guide? Or something? JESSE starts forward again, hands out in front in the darkness. JESSE Away. I’m getting away. BILLY From what? There is nothing around but blackness and old sticks. BILLY I was… someplace… Somewhere, but I didn’t want to leave. I don’t want

Episode Two-Itzcuintlan BILLY stumbles behind a black Mexican hairless DOG . The DOG is pulling off a crossing guard sash and spits it onto the ground. The ground is uneven, the DOG is in good spirits, and ahead an old sign hangs over the path as if indicating an entry way: “Welcome to Mictlan.” It CREAKS in a breeze and wobbles. BILLY stumbles on hopefully. The DOG comes to a river. BILLY stops. The DOG wades into the water and looks back over its shoulder, wagging its tale. Its eye sockets are empty. BILLY balks at the creature’s deformity but when it continues into the water, BILLY steps forward. BILLY Wait! The sightle

Episode One-Traffic Crossing Black screen. Someone is sobbing. Screeching car breaks. Crash. Silence. Ext. Street. People are gathering, looking at something on the pavement with expressions of horror. Two people stand in the foreground looking directly down at “it.” BILLY looks deeply affected but not surprised. The CROSSING GUARD looks mildly concerned. Voice OS: Hey! The sound of fists slamming glass. The CROSSING GUARD sighs and looks over at the noise. JESSE is peering into the dark window of a crumpled car lying on its roof, yelling into it. The CROSSING GUARD looks back at BILLY. CROSSING GUARD: You ready to go? BILLY

       “Abe?” he heard Peter from the other side of the door. The doorknob twisted but didn’t open. “Abe?” Peter sounded mad now.       “I’ve been thinking,” said Abe twiddling his fingers in the dark, “I don’t really want to leave my house.” The root cellar fell quiet. “I’ve never lived anywhere else, or wanted to. But I do hate being alone.” Abe tried to look through a crack in the door to see if Peter felt sorry for him.       Suddenly the door shook with a loud noise. Abe screamed and fell to the floor. Peter’s angry eye was there at the crack,

       The next time Peter showed up, about a day or two later, Abe had trouble remembering who he was. Initially he was just surprised there was another person in his house. Peter’s presence seemed more sudden, somehow, than other visitors he had had. Then he floated around doorways and the edges of rooms working up the courage to ask if he could be seen or not. He was just about to introduce himself when the boy turned around.       “Abe, there you are. I’ve been looking for you.”  Then Abe remembered, the piercing eyes, the frightening camera, all of it. Most importantly he was just glad to have his friend back.  

       He was still in the back bedroom, as a matter of fact, two months later, sobbing and sniffling so loudly that he did not hear the faint scratching at his back door when the lock was picked. Unbeknownst to the deceased in the house above, a young boy was kneeling behind the overgrown bushes, working on the old lock from the outside. The boy had tried every ground floor window, but had found them all closed and water tight. He froze when the door suddenly clicked open.       This boy was not an ordinary child. He had just passed his ninth birthday, but sometimes he didn’t look like child at all. One might have guessed that he was

       “What a lugubrious evening,” Abe Crocket sighed as he hung over the third story windowsill. He let his head slide off the crook of his elbow and lull cheek-to-ledge as the cool night air blew one smoky wisp away from him down the road. “Lu-Gubrious,” he repeated, “Lugu-BORE-ious.” He let his arms drape limply out the window. “Luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugubrious. Lugbobobobobbobobrious. Lugubre.” The big old house stood lonely and empty behind him and the desolate street passed by in front of him without so much as a backwards glance. Only the stars twinkled at him for company.

“I guess I believe in entertaining any suitor, Olive,” Osenica said as her wheel hummed before her. She was spinning very light shadow this afternoon and it was fragile, but it allowed Olivia to work in the same room. “It is a gracious and fair thing to do if it means something to them.” “In the case of the Emperor himself, certainly, but no girl would have two moments to rub together if she had to entertain every lad that came knocking. Reputation is a fine and useful thing.” “You forget that I have far fewer suitors than you, Olive,” Osenica answered with a chuckle. “Shadows are not so

As the evening shadows grew very long, Sasha took back to the road. She wore the same rough dress, the same sandals, she had the day before, washed and dried. But tonight she carried a very different burden. She wound her way slowly to the house of the Duke of Whittingham. It was a dry night tonight, the sky clear and the crickets singing. If one were not astute, had not paid attention, one would think that the adventure had begun on a beautiful night like tonight. But that was wrong. It had already started. She reached the great house and entered the grounds. This time she did not go to the service door. Almost, she wished too. The servant

This great house of Whittingham was old. When the parlor maid ushered Sasha inside the service door the widow stood in a foyer small enough to fit inside a country cottage. The wood and stones that built the bowls of the house seemed darker and rougher than those of the other grand houses of Scarborough. A doorway opened to her left, and though she lowered her eyes politely as she waited, she could sense from the heat spilling through that this was the entrance to the kitchen. There must have been a throughway, though, for the sound of the parlor maid's large soft feet weren’t lost to her, but merely muffled. The widow could even hear