"SNAKELAND MUST BE DESTROYED!": SCENE TWENTY-FIVE

* This is a fictionalized account of some shit that actually happened. All the names, locations, etc. have been changed to protect the innocent as well as the guilty. – JG *

EXTERIOR - FALLSVILLE - DAY

This is Fallsville in the 1960s, so everything should be shot through various filters to give shots a fuzzy, prismatic quality like the Woodstock film or an After-School Special about the dangers of LSD. A GIRL and BOY, both disgusting hippies, dance in a field as the boy plays a pan-pipe.

JIM (voice over)

Apparently, there was this girl who lived in Fallsville

back then and she took a lot of acid.

The Girl grins, pushes the pan-pipe Boy to the ground and falls on him.

JIM (v.o.)

And she also did the bone-dance a lot.

CUT TO:

EXTERIOR - FALLSVILLE - NIGHT

Still in the 1960s. The Girl is having a bad, bad trip.

JIM (v.o.)

The story goes that she was already pregnant when

she tried the Owsley Purple Moonbeam, this strain

of LSD that would supposedly give the tripper psychic

powers. Thing was, it didn't give you psychic powers, it

just made really bad things happen in your brain.

It gave a lot of kids birth defects whose moms took it

before they got pregnant.

CUT TO:

INTERIOR - WOMB - NIGHT

A fetus, writhing in the midst of chemical lightning.

JIM (v.o.)

And if you were unlucky enough to actually be in utero

when your mom took it, bad bad things happened to you.

And when the kids popped out…

CUT TO:

INTERIOR - HOSPITAL - DAY

The doctor holds up a hopelessly misshapen baby to the Girl, who screams and hides her face.

CUT TO:

INTERIOR - NEEDLE TRAX - NIGHT

JIM

Well, you get the picture. So the story goes that

this girl took her kid to Snakeland and…tossed him

in the water in the back.

HOOVER

Jesus.

GUERRASIO

That's fucked up.

JIM

That's the 60s for you. The most self-centered, self-congratulatory

decade in the history of decades. (shrugs) If that thing survived,

some sort of dark power kept it alive. And it must be using that

same power source to take out all your classmates. Just

the same way it took out those two workers. (pauses,

looks around) So what do you guys think you want to do?

HOOVER

(exhales) We gotta go in there, into Snakeland. We gotta

find this thing, fight this thing.

GUERRASIO

(scoffs) You guys don't know that place!

You'll fucking fall down a hole and die!

HOOVER

(pissed) Well, what do you suggest, tough guy?

GUERRASIO

(serious) We'll go into Snakeland, but

we'll all go…together.

Hoover nods gravely. Jim smiles.

JIM

Okay then. You guys better all get going

before it gets any later.

CUT TO:

"SNAKELAND MUST BE DESTROYED!": SCENE TWENTY-FOUR

* This is a fictionalized account of some shit that actually happened. All the names, locations, etc. have been changed to protect the innocent as well as the guilty. – JG *

INTERIOR – NEEDLE TRAX – DUSK

Heads and Punks are packed into Needle Trax, all pointed at Jim behind the counter. Guerrasio, Hoover, D-Man and Griffin are in the front row. Jim begins, his voice grave.

JIM

Now, I know you’ve all noticed that your

classmates have been dropping like flies

lately. There’s a temptation to think that

it’s all a coincidence, that somehow the

murders of Hannah Graeber...

Guerrasio winces.

JIM

(continues)...and the Janks family all just

coincidentally happened around the same

time as these last 3 suicides. But it’s not a

coincidence. There’s something going on.

Something that started in Snakeland a long

time ago.

CUT TO:

INTERIOR – RAND’S BEDROOM – NIGHT

Rand walks slowly to the window where the Snake is waiting.

CUT TO:

INTERIOR – NEEDLE TRAX – DUSK

GUERRASIO

(peevish) Aw, that’s bullshit. Snakeland’s

just a place we go to party. It’s not “Satanic”

or any of that other garbage.

JIM

No, it’s not Satanic, but that doesn’t mean

that it’s not evil. Does anyone here know

why Awl Grain closed up the grain elevators

back in 1974?

Everyone looks askance at each other. No takers.

JIM

Because at least two workers died in there,

also from supposedly “unrelated causes”.

Jim lets this sink in.

CUT TO:

INTERIOR – JEREMY JANKS’ BEDROOM – NIGHT

Jeremy Janks is sitting at the desk in his bedroom when his attention is aroused by a tapping at his window. It is the Snake.

CUT TO:

INTERIOR – NEEDLE TRAX – DUSK

JIM

Anyway, the whole Snakeland story begins

in the late 1960s...

FADE OUT AND INTO: