This screenplay won an award at the Ann Arbor Film Festival 2003 Non-Linear Screenplay Contest. I won a Michigan Theater Gold Pass for 1 year and three books on how to write and publish screenplays. The Girl Under the Bed by Sue Blair ----------------------------- Genre: Horror/psychological terror It starts with Linda at 38 and works backward. It is fairly fragmentary and shows how events that happened when Linda was 8 are affecting her today. It is a mystery that is solved by bits and pieces as we go back in time through Linda's dreams and memories. It is semi-intense, creepy, and weird. There are several recurring themes and images that are woven into the past and present. main characters: Linda at age 38 Linda at age 8 Stan at age 13 Debbie at age 8, Stan's sister other characters: Stan's mom Linda's brother (age 6) Linda's parents Linda's friend (age 8) teacher kids in the neighborhood (7-10) moving guy neighbor pediatrician nurse blood drive nurses miscellaneous voodoo people sets: Linda's basement box fort Stan's basement classroom workplace blood drive pediatrician's office neighborhood- outside garage field with tree fort Linda's house (suburbia) Stan's house (across the street) Opening scene: (workplace blood drive) Linda at 38 is talking to a blood drive person. Linda is touchy, edgy, and a bit overreacting. Linda: I had no problem giving blood before when they would just take the test sample from my ear. Nurse: The test is more accurate from the finger. Having blood drawn from the finger doesn't hurt that much. One prick and it is all over Linda: Yeah, one prick. The nurse pricks her finger and a tear flows silently from Linda's eye as see stares off into space. The nurse says nothing. Linda notices she is zoning and wipes her tear away. She does not flinch when she lies on the couch and the nurse sticks the needle in to draw blood. Nurse: you would almost think the finger prick was worse than actually having the blood drawn. Linda: It is. Nurse looks puzzled. Linda shuts her eyes and begins drowsing. Linda begins having a dream about a past event. dream sequence (pediatrician's office) -------------- Dream: Linda at 8 is sitting on a patients's table at the pediatrician's office. The nurse pricks her finger and a tear rolls down her cheek. The nurse, like a vampire, starts to suck the blood through a thin piece of rubber TUBING into a small clear glass vial with markings on it like a thermometer. The nurse notices that Linda is silently weeping. Nurse: Oh, it can't possibly hurt _that_ much. Linda: I know, but you're standing on my foot. The nurse jumps and looks down. Linda laughs, since she is sitting up on the table with her feet at least three feet off the ground, swinging her feet in the air. Linda becomes drowsy and leans back on the pediatricians' TABLE. She sleeps and slowly transforms into Linda at 38 lying on the blood donor TABLE at the workplace. She wakes up and a nurse is leaning way over her arm into the table adjusting her blood pressure cuff. The nurse lifts her head revealing that she is actually the same nurse from the pediatrician's office, but is a vampire. She shows her fangs with Linda's blood trickling from them, smiling. She opens her mouth, hissing, and begins to pull a piece of rubber TUBING out of her mouth and acts to put it around Linda's neck like a garrote. Linda snaps out of her dream screaming on the donor table which is embarrassing. The nurses help out but look puzzled. Linda goes back to work and starts daydreaming at her desk; she is staring at the computer screen. Cut to: daydream (ineffective dream) ---------------- Linda at 38 is beating a man with her fists. The man is wearing a blue down VEST. The blows are totally ineffective and she slides down to her knees weeping as the man laughs at her. She gets up and whips a huge maglite FLASHLIGHT at the guy. It does nothing and just poofs off of the VEST. The man is laughing harder. She snaps out of it and goes to the bathroom to splash water on her face. The bathroom light is OFF when she enters. She jumps. She takes a deep breath and slowly turns the light on. She winces since the bathroom is all WHITE TILE and bright flourescent LIGHTS. She splashes some water on her face and looks at herself in the MIRROR. One of the lights makes a SPOTLIGHT on the countertop; she stares at it. Cut to: flashback (magic show) ----------------- Linda at 8 standing and staring at a SPOTLIGHT on the ground that moves up to a stage area. She takes a seat and begins watching a magic show put on by neighborhood kids in Stan and Debbie's basement. Stan and Debbie are on "stage". Stan is wearing the blue down VEST that he wears all the time. A bunch of neighborhood kids are circled around watching. It becomes apparent that the spotlight is a FLASHLIGHT being held and moved around by one of the kids. Another kid is playing creepy accordion music. Another kid does DRUMROLLS on the bongo during anticipatory moments. Some of the kids are sitting on Stan's bed since his room is in the basement. Stan: And now we feature the human pincushion! Stan sticks straight pins through all 10 of his sister, Debbie's, fingers through the tips horizontally, perpendicular to the fingers, just picking up the couple top layers of skin. Does not bleed much. Debbie is wearing a huge blue RING which she always wears. Stan is wearing a BLUE DOWN VEST that he always wears. Linda is horrified, but does not want to show it in front of the other kids and so remains silent. The other kids are 'oohing and aahing' and applauding. After the show, the kids come upstairs from the basement and Stan's mom is lying on the couch unconscious, plastered off herass as usual. They ignore her as usual. Cut to later in the day (box fort, diary) ----------------------- Linda at 8 is reading books in the chick fort in the basement. She has copped a stash of her dad's huge scifi/horror/playboy collection. She is reading 'Something Wicked This Way Comes'. Cut to the outside of the fort. There are two forts in the basement which are essentially two large boxes. One box says "no girls allowed"; one fort says "no guys allowed". A friend comes by and checks to see if she wants to go to Stan's to see another magic show. Linda says 'thanks' but that she is busy. Her friend leaves. Linda: By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. She writes in her DIARY that she thinks the magic show is disgusting and abhorrent and that she would rather die that see another one. cut to classroom ---------------- Linda at 8 is sitting in class. The teacher is showing a movie of various cultures around the world. People from Thailand are shown doing a cultural dance. The movie switches to a voodoo tribe doing a dance with DRUMS and FIRE. The music and the dance are powerful. Other kids in the classroom begin surreptitiously sticking pins through their finger tips and waving them in the air at Linda from across the room and snickering. Linda is tired of being singled out so puts a thin coat of Elmer's glue over some of her fingertips. It dries quickly and she can put a pin through that instead of her skin and nobody knows the difference. She puts in a few pins and waves her hands at the other kids. They get off her back and she relaxes. Linda is thinking about the voodoo dance and how she would like to be able to harness that type of power for her own aims. She drifts off into a daydream where there are voodoo people doing a tribal dance with DRUMS and a FIRE. They have big SPEARS that look like straight pins. They are CHANTING 'ooblah dooblah, ooblah dooblah', which then turns into 'by the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes'. The teacher wakes her up by rapping a ruler on the edge of her desk. Linda jumps and the other kids laugh. cut to flashback: (end of the magic show) ---------------- It is the end of the magic show and all of the kids have left. Linda is talking with Debbie and is encouraging her not to be a human pincushion and that she doesn't have to take it. She turns and begins walking up the stairs. Stan comes from behind and hits her on the back of her head with the FLASHLIGHT used in the magic show. Linda wakes up and is tied up underneath Stan's bed; each of her arms and legs are tied to each of the four posts with thin rope. It is dark and the tile floor is cold. There is dust and wads of cat hair under the bed. She is having trouble breathing since she has a piece of ducttape over her mouth and is afraid, not to mention being allergic to cats. She can see a wavering FLASHLIGHT come into view at the foot of the bed. Stan pulls down her underwear with a CROWBAR, shining the FLASHLIGHT on her and in her face. All she can see is the white LIGHT. She looks to the side and sees a CAT walking slowly by, knowing that she will not receive any help from the awful creature. At that precise moment, Stan's mom unexpectedly returns. Linda can hear the garage door opening, and the car pulling into the garage, its engine cutting off. Tears begin streaming down her face. Stan hurriedly unties Linda and pulls her out from under the bed by her feet. She pulls up her underwear and begins running up the stairs. Stan grabs her arm. Stan: If you ever say anything to anybody ever, I will cut off your brother's BALLS. Linda is prying the duct tape off her mouth as Stan's mom comes in the door with a cigarette hanging off the side of her mouth. She gives Linda a hard look as if Linda is a huge dirty slut. Linda runs back home and hides in her fort. She looks at herself in a hand MIRROR. teary-eyed, she falls asleep. She dreams of voodoo people, one who is wearing a necklace of SCROTUMS and a blue down VEST. Cut to: (the burning bed TV scene) ------- Later that evening, Linda, her parents, and her brother are sitting around watching 'The Burning Bed' starring Farrah Fawcett. Her brother is amused. Afterward, she writes in her DIARY that the movie was quite good-the best she's ever seen and that she's decided that Stan must die. Cut to: (flaming dog turd scene) ------- Later that night, Linda sneaks out of the house, grabbing some matches and a paper lunch bag out of the kitchen. She goes to the backyard and loads a fresh dog turd into the bag. She goes across the street to Stan's narrow tiny basement window and kicks it in, sets the bag on FIRE and throws it on his bed. She runs off. Stan is startled, puts out the FIRE, and sits on the floor for a while, shaken. He unwittingly smears a piece of turd along his jaw line. Cut to: (scene: piling up brush at the field) ------ After school the next day, Linda blows off going to her friend's house to watch cartoons and goes to the field instead. She begins piling up a bunch of dry brush underneath the tree fort. Cut to: (scene: tree fort fire) ------- Cut to the next day: Saturday. Stan goes to the tree fort on Saturday afternoons, alone, to beat off to a Playboy. Linda sneaks up on the fort and sets FIRE to the brush surrounding it. The dry brush breaks into a worthy blaze immediately. She begins doing a voodoo dance around the FIRE, CHANTING. She has a tree branch that she is using for a SPEAR. Linda (CHANTING): By the pricking of her fingers, something evil right here lingers. Stan leaps out of the fort, rolling onto the ground beyond the circle of the flames. He sees Linda laughing and runs away scared. cut to: (magazine fort scene) ------------------------------ That evening, Linda is in her fort. She has just put a layer of Elmer's glue on each of her fingertips and is reading 'Something Wicked This Way Comes' while waiting for it to dry. When it's dry, she begins cutting up a magazine and making a collage of letters. She knows that with the glue on her fingertips, she will not leave any fingerprints. She is humming the voodoo dance drum music to herself. She adjusts her feather and bead headband which resembles those of the voodoo dancers, stroking it, while she admires her handiwork. When she is done, she peels off the Elmer's glue. cut to Sunday (bicycle fire scene) ---------------------------------- Nobody is around the neighborhood. Linda steals some gasoline from her garage in an empty Crisco can and some more matches from the kitchen. She enters Stan's garage via the door on the side which has a broken lock. She takes the magazine collage and puts it in the spokes of Stan's bike's front tire. The audience cannot see what it says. She pours gasoline on the bike seat, sets it on FIRE, and leaves. Cut to Stan's family returning home in their car. They notice a pile of ash by the bike and that the cheap foam seat has been burned off. Stan's face looks pale as we see him looking at the bike. Cut down to the collage in the bike spokes which is revealed to be a psycho-magazine-cut-up letter that says 'Wish you were here'. There is a red arrow with some fake blood drips pointing to the seat. cut to: (confrontation scene) ------- Later that day, Linda is staring at Stan, smirking at him from across the street. Stan (yelling): Why don't you leave me alone?! Linda throws her head back, laughing. Stan is clearly afraid. This makes Linda laugh even harder. Stan goes into his house. cut to dream (effective dream): ------------ Later that night, Linda dreams that she is beating Stan with her fists. Same dream as before. The blows are completely ineffective. She throws the FLASHLIGHT at him and it poofs off his BLUE DOWN VEST without doing any damage. He is laughing at her. This time, she picks up a CROWBAR and begins beating him with it, the same crowbar from underneath the bed. She is emanating a RED LIGHT from her body and his blood is spraying all over her again and again as she beats him with the CROWBAR repeatedly. She is bathing in his blood and clearly likes it. Red spray is flying and feathers are bursting out of the down jacket and arraying themselves nicely on the feather headband that she is wearing. Some of the feathers fly out white and fluffy, floating around, and then get sprayed with blood and drop to the ground with a thud. One last white feather pops out and floats in the air. Linda cups her hands around it, but is reluctant to touch it since her hands are covered in BLOOD. The feather (surrounded by her hands) begins emanating a WHITE LIGHT. The white light eventually engulfs her completely and all of the blood seems to burn off in the light. Eventually, there is no more blood and she is just standing there bathing in the white light. She feels at peace and drifts off into some other better quadrant of sleep. She wakes up feeling very refreshed and goes outside. Cut to: outside (moving scene) blood and she is just standing there bathing in the white light. She feels at peace and drifts off into some other better quadrant of sleep. She wakes up feeling very refreshed and goes outside. Cut to: outside (moving scene) -------- A moving van in front of Stan's house, loading all their stuff inside. One of the nosey neighbors is querying one of the moving guys. Linda, nosey also, stops her bike and listens in. Moving guy: Yep, they are already gone; just getting the rest of the stuff here. She said she was moving south; got a better job offer. Hated the Michigan winters anyways. Linda goes to check the mail. There is an envelope with 'Linda' written on it. She opens it and there is Debbie's RING with wrapped in a piece of paper that says 'Remember me'. Cut to: (epilogue) ------ Cut to: Linda at 38 sitting at the desk in her house. There is light DRUMMING music playing in the background. She is wearing feather earrings and writing in a DIARY: Pretty much I am over it except for these few weird flashbacks every once in a while. Oh yeah, I hate CATS and have no TILE floors anywhere in the house; even the bathrooms are carpeted. The DRUMMING intensifies and she skips out into the living room in the same way as Linda at 8 did as she was skipping out of Stan's garage. Roll credits.