Here are two brief scenes I wrote for my Screenwriting class. Sometimes, I even sicken myself.
Virgin Sacrifice: A Tragedy-turned-Comedy
It is the only way. She hears the elders’ voices in her head, their instructions ringing clear. The only way to stop the bloodlust that plagues our village. Envisioning the murders in her mind’s eye, her own family’s slaughtering was a recent and too palpable memory. Virgin sacrifice – it is your blood the monster wants. She remembered the way her mother’s throat was slit and how fast the blood poured. She had marveled at the vivid red color.
As she jumps from the cliff, she closes her eyes and says, “Thank goodness I never let Ken get past second base.”
The little girl drops the Barbie Doll midair, and the doll falls, bouncing up again from the thick, pink carpet. She giggles, and retrieves her dolls from the corner in which they have been banished to their “mass grave”. She happily starts wiping the erasable red marker from all of their bodies so she can play again.
The Ventriloquist: A Comedy-turned-Tragedy
Ricky had been practicing for the talent show for weeks. He is miraculously cool, calm, and collected as he climbs the stage. Ralphie, his dummy, was clean and ready to go. Taking his seat on the stool, Ricky dives right into his act. The auditorium full of middle-school children is dead silent. Ricky starts to stumble through his routine, as the audience grows tenser. From somewhere in the crowd, a boy yells, “Why don’t you stick your head up that dummy’s ass?” The audience bursts into raucous laughter.
Ricky starts to cry and the principal comes onto the stage to help Ricky off. Ricky is quickly hysterical and stammering about how hard he has worked to perfect his craft. The audience continues to laugh. The principal, unable to usher Ricky from the stage, tries to pull the dummy away from Ricky. The dummy won’t budge and the principal pulls and pulls, finally breaking the cheap, wooden doll around its middle. Revealed in the gaping hole where the top half of the dummy used to be is Ricky’s arm. It is blackened, gangrenous. The audience’s laughter stops as everyone realizes that Ricky’s arm has been stuck in the dummy for weeks.
