Nocturne

I wrote this script in an effort to give a different kind of face to the generic alien abduction/invasion story. It was, in large part, inspired by the song "Lion Tamer" from the musical "The Magic Show" by Stephen Schwartz.

NOCTURNE
by Kyle Patrick Johnson
Represented by:
Canton Literary Management (CLM)
Contact: Eric Canton
(866) 429-3118
ECanton@Prodigy.net
www.CantonLiteraryManagement.com
SOUND FADES IN:
A carousel and crowds. Children laugh.
WOMAN’S VOICE (V.O.)
You’ve never cared about me or
anybody else. It’s just you and
those damned ca--
Loud explosion.
Running. Agonized breaths.
LEO (V.O.)
Nocturne. Nocturne!
SOUND FADES OUT.
FADE IN:
INT. BUBBLE ROOM - NIGHT
At the bottom of the dark sphere sprawls LEO (50s), in a
shredded black tuxedo and top hat. Unconscious.
The walls glow red from nearby explosions.
INT. BUBBLE ROOM - DAY
The curved walls are milky white, semi-transparent. Outside
part of the room, water laps against the bubble’s equator.
Constant rumbling explosions shake the room.
Leo, terror-eyes, scrambles up the walls, slides back down.
He punches the wall, but it bows out around his hand like
spandex, snaps back into place, jams his wrist.
He winces in pain, shakes it off.
He slumps to the floor.
Leo looks inside the hat. A photo of a woman taped inside the
flat top. She has a beard.
His shoulders shake, he weeps inside.
He subsides, lays down hammock-like on the convex floor.
He blinks his eyes dry, whistles a broken classical tune.
An intense, low, menacing growl echoes throughout the room.
Leo freezes. His eyes dart to all sides.
He whistles the tune again.
Another growl.
Leo climbs to his feet, wary. He holds the hat in one hand
like a shield, the other fist pulled back. He revolves, ready
for anything, from anywhere.
But nothing happens. He’s alone.
Constant explosions.
A splash outside.
Leo dashes to the opaque wall, peers through it.
A body of a woman surfaces, face up. She has a beard.
Leo clutches his mouth, falls on all fours, vomits.
He rips at the wall like an animal, blurry pumping arms. The
wall tears into thin strips that heal instantly, too fast for
him to put his arm through.
A back-and-forth mosaic, the woman’s body vivid then cloudy.
Leo screams, an anguished primal yowl.
A long blue finger touches his back.
Leo whips around, ready for a fight, but not ready for...
An alien queen, KEHNIKKQ, tall, slender, blue-skinned, two
large blue eyes, two green eyes where her ears should be. A
regal red robe with a myriad of sequins flows to her feet.
Kehnikkq floats in the middle of the bubble, flanked by two
smaller blue ALIENS.
Kehnikkq points a long arm at Leo, touches his cheek.
Leo swats her hand away, snatches up his hat-shield.
Kehnikkq draws back, no expression. She brings her long
finger to her side, presses a sequin on her left hip.
A hiss of gas. Leo grabs at his throat, unable to breathe. He
drops to his knees, turns as blue as Kehnikkq herself.
Kehnikkq and Aliens float placidly above his struggling form.
2.
EXT. BUBBLE ROOM - DAY
A rush of gas out through the walls, a fine mist scatters in
all directions.
The room is just one of a massive honeycomb of bubble rooms.
The giant white vessel floats in New York Harbor.
The Statue of Liberty cut off at the knees.
Distant gray explosions rock the horizon, rubble of New York.
INT. BUBBLE ROOM - DAY
Leo’s eyeballs bulge out of his head, about to burst.
Kehnikkq takes her finger off the sequin. Gas rushes in.
Leo gasps, intakes a huge amount of air. He gulps the oxygen
with alien-forgetting delight, intent on the pleasure.
Kehnikkq touches a sequin on her right shoulder.
Leo rises off the floor like a marionette, propelled to face
her.
Kehnikkq touches more sequins, forces Leo to gaze into her
mesmerizing blue eyes.
LEO
Fuck you.
Leo tries to look away. He can’t.
Kehnikkq touches a large sequin over her abdomen.
Leo’s body, racked in agony. Red and white blood cells burst
out of his skin, suspended in mid-air.
Aliens lean towards the cells, study, examine.
Faraway explosion-clouds seen through the translucent walls.
Kehnikkq touches a sequin on her right arm.
Leo drops to the ground, falls hard. He can barely move, the
pain overwhelms him.
He struggles to contort his bruised face. His cheeks puff
out, every movement a study in torment.
He whistles the classical tune.
3.
A low growl echoes in the room.
Kehnikkq and Aliens don’t seem to notice.
Leo whistles once more, exhausted by the effort.
A loud growl, an enraged snarl.
An internal white wall indents, as though a large object was
hurled at it from beyond. The wall snaps back into place.
The growl takes on a life of its own.
Leo closes his eyes.
A huge slash appears in the wall behind Kehnikkq. And heals.
Kehnikkq and Aliens are absorbed by the red blood cells,
cannot hear, do not notice the theatrics behind them.
A sharp, curved claw pierces the wall. Another next to it.
The two claws draw apart as a large black head thrusts
through the wall between them, forces the hole wider.
A huge pure black jaguar with glowing yellow eyes.
The jaguar shoves its lithe bulk through the tight hole,
little by little.
Kehnikkq presses a sequin. The red blood falls to the ground,
spatters on Leo and the white floor.
She begins to turn around.
The jaguar is almost through, just hind legs to go.
Leo, in an agonizing motion, racked with pain, waves his arm.
Distracted, Kehnikkq turns back to Leo.
LEO
Can’t you hear this?
Leo whistles a new tune, more modern, harsh.
Kehnikkq makes no sign of recognition.
LEO
For Arturo the Knifeman... Fuzzer
the Clown... Bearded Lady...
Leo whistles, harsh, gives it everything he’s got. He points
at Kehnikkq.
4.
The jaguar gets all the way through, slides down the wall,
scrabbles for a foothold.
The jaguar pushes off the curved surface, launches towards
Kehnikkq from behind and the right, sharp white teeth gleam.
An inhuman scream from the cat’s throat.
Kehnikkq sees it coming with her side green eye, the lunging
predator reflected in her shiny cornea.
But the jaguar reaches her before she can push a sequin...
And tears out her alien throat.
Kehnikkq falls, dead, onto her left side.
The Aliens collapse with her, bound to her life force.
Kehnikkq’s lifeless finger, trapped under her body weight,
presses against the sequin on her left hip.
The gas escapes from the bubble room.
The jaguar, muzzle painted with blue blood, gags in the
vacuum.
Leo gasps, turns blue.
The jaguar creeps to Leo’s side, inch by painful inch.
LEO
Good... girl... Nocturne.
The jaguar lays a massive black paw on Leo’s cheek.
They die.
The explosions cease.
FADE OUT

Come Fly Away

A light-hearted love story between...

Well, if I tell you now, it'll ruin the story. Enjoy!

COME FLY AWAY by Kyle Patrick Johnson Represented by: Canton Literary Management (CLM) Contact: Eric Canton (866) 429-3118 ECanton@Prodigy.net www.CantonLiteraryManagement.com FADE IN: INT. COURTROOM - DAY Twelve JURY MEMBERS, a variety of races and IQs, listen to a venerable JUDGE (60) with stonefaced apathy. JUDGE ...are charged to agree upon a decision. Jury dismissed. Judge bangs the gavel. Jury Members file out a nearby door. A back row REPORTER turns to his BUDDY. REPORTER Oh, man. I’d love to be a fly on the wall in there. INT. JURY ROOM - DAY ZEEB, a full-bodied hairy black fly of Brooklyn lineage, struts his stuff on a closed door. SHAYA, a smaller Southern belle of a fruit fly, admires him from a window. The door opens. Zeeb zips away to the ceiling. Jury Members hand over their cell phone batteries to a hallway BAILIFF. Led inside by an Asian FOREMAN (40), they settle around a table, naked cell phones piled in the middle. Zeeb’s crazy compound eyes lock in on Shaya. He whistles. SHAYA Little old me? Zeeb makes a beeline for her, bounces against the windowglass with a BZZZZZ! Settles next to Shaya. ZEEB Hey. How you doin’? SHAYA I declare, you are forward. ZEEB I got ten more days to live, honey. I ain’t gonna spend ‘em in talk. Whaddya say, sugarlips? 2. SHAYA Kindly be a gentleman, then, and fetch me a snack. Foreman opens a box of doughnuts. ZEEB Look, crullers! My fav. Name’s Zeeb. SHAYA Shaya. I’d be delighted to taste your cruller. Zeeb breathes faster at the double entendre, pretends to bow. He plummets to the doughnut box, dodges reaching hands. Zeeb lands on an sticky-iced cruller. Foreman reaches for the cruller, sees Zeeb on it, makes an icky face, withdraws his hand. SHAYA Well, now. Looks like he passed with fly in crullers. Shaya looks at the camera, smiles, lets the punchline soak. She looks at her window reflection, preens. Zeeb shoots straight up, burdened with a giant crumb, eager to show his strength. He grunts. He’s never going to get to the window. Shaya snickers. SHAYA Come on, Zeeb, big boy. Show me how strong you are, show me muscles. Zeeb, spurred on by her honeysuckle voice, gives it his all. He careens into glass, drops the crumb. SHAYA Surely you don’t expect me to go all the way down there for a snack? Zeeb pants, exhausted. SHAYA You have nothing left for me, Zeeb? Shaya-ZEEB 3. BANG! Foreman karate chops a cell phone with a furious hand, snaps it into two pieces. Foreman displays eleven slips of paper with “Not Guilty” in one hand, one slip of “Guilty” in the other. SHAYA Manners, manners. These humans. Zeeb rubs his front legs together. ZEEB Down to business, eh, Shaya. Come here, babydoll. He puckers his lips. SHAYA You can’t even fetch me a morsel. You expect a reward? Gracious me. Zeeb’s blood pressure skyrockets. With a henpecked grunt, he lifts off again, heads down to the doughnuts. Foreman swats at him, his mood darker. Zeeb zooms in merry circles around Foreman’s hand, plays the matador, eyes his chance to get to the crullers. Zeeb dives in, grabs a tiny piece of icing, off again. Foreman, a mighty overhand straight-armed swat, crushes the rest of the doughnuts. SHAYA Who said the hand is quicker than the fly? Shaya looks at the camera, smirks again. She walks up the window, knows full well that Zeeb struggles to elevate to her. ZEEB Hold up, sugarlips. I’m carryin’, here. Have a heart, babe. Shaya gets to the top of the window, in shade, stops. Zeeb plunks down next to her. He smears icing onto his hairy lips. Puckers up. ZEEB Your snack’s ready, dollface. 4. Shaya, irresistible in her coyness, edges close to him. She breathes on him. He shudders in anticipation. SHAYA That’s my honeybear. She kisses him, licks icing off his lips. Wowza. ZEEB BANG! Another cell phone split in half. Foreman, boiling mad, face beet red, hand smarts from the blow. His slips of paper, now ten “Not Guilty” and two “Guilty”. Jury Members look at Foreman with sickened fright. ZEEB Oh, baby, you give me wings. SHAYA Flattery won’t get you where you want to go, big boy. Only the best are good enough for Shaya. ZEEB The best, babe? I am da best. Biggest, strongest, fastest. Fastest? SHAYA ZEEB Yeah. You wanna time me? SHAYA I don’t handle rides very well. Sometimes my little old tummy feels downright funny. ZEEB I’ll show you, really. Time me. Shaya, with a mournful head shake, flies to a large clock on the wall, lands on the second hand’s far tip. Tick, tock, tick, tock. She zooms around the clock face. SHAYA Let me see your style, Zeeb. Oop. Shaya holds in a vomitous urge. 5. Zeeb zooms across the room, bangs headfirst into the door. ZEEB (yells) How many was dat? SHAYA Four tocks. ZEEB Watch dis, lover! Zeeb zooms down towards the table, swoops under Foreman’s hand as it smashes down towards another unlucky cell. Shaya holds her breath. BANG! Zeeb flies out, unhurt. SHAYA Phew! Just my luck. Time flies when they’re halving phones. Shaya looks at the camera, simpers. Shaya flies back to the window on shaky legs. Zeeb joins her. Foreman looks down at his slips of paper, enraged. Wait a sec. He’s taken aback. He spreads the papers out on the table, one by one. Each one reads “Guilty”. Smiles all round. The Jury files out. ZEEB Come on, babe, let’s ditch this joint for a life outdoors, with kids, the whole works. I’m yours. SHAYA They gaze into each other’s eyes. Arm in arm, leg in leg, they fly into the window. They fly into the window. They fly into the window. They fly into the window. FADE OUT. 

Lightener

In response to a filmmaker's call for a horror short script featuring a monster, I sat down and wrote this little ditty. I thought five pages was just too short to set up adequate psychological suspense required for a classic type of horror monster, so I went with something somewhat grittier. Enjoy!

LIGHTENER by Kyle Patrick Johnson Represented by: Canton Literary Management (CLM) Contact: Eric Canton (866) 429-3118 ECanton@Prodigy.net www.CantonLiteraryManagement.com FADE IN: EXT. WOODS - DAY One hairy leg, standing. Scratches against a tree. A rumble. A hairy arm rubs a hairy belly. EXT. WOODS - NIGHT One hairy leg, lying down. Far off, searchlights in the woods, sounds of SEARCHERS. EXT. WOODS - DAY One hairy leg, raises off the ground. Drops back to the ground. Raises off the ground, drops back down, rhythmic. EXT. WOODS - NIGHT One hairy leg, digs deep into soft loam, excavates a foxhole. Searchlights getting closer. EXT. WOODS - DAY One hairy leg, one foot in a high-strapped leather boot. Hops between the trees. EXT. CHAIN LINK FENCE - DAY A space of perhaps ten inches gapped between high fence and gate, padlocked shut. Barbed wire at the top. One hairy leg hops to the gap, crashes into the gap. Tries to squeeze through. No such luck. EXT. WOODS - DAY One hairy leg, raises and drops, up and down, faster rhythm than before. EXT. WOODS - NIGHT One hairy leg, lying down. An insistent belly rumble. 2. A groan of hunger. The searchlights are almost overhead. Pounding throb of helicopters brush the treetops. Voices filter through the trees, dogs, soldiers. The leg scrambles along the ground, slips into the foxhole. Grated breathing. Dirt falls over the foxhole, covers the leg, buries it. Flashlights play over the foxhole, around the woods. Dogs sniff the area, bay insistently. Several laser pointers zoom in on the foxhole. Guns click. A stomach rumble. A groan: despair. The foxhole explodes: the leg bursts out of it, vanishes OFF CAMERA. Sounds of ripping, guns firing in every direction, dogs squealing and going silent. Bullets tear into the ground. CAMERA FALLS OVER on its side, lens smashes. FADE TO BLACK. EXT. WOODS - DAY A bloody dog carcass, stripped of meat. One hairy leg, knee bent, as if a person sits on the ground. One hairy arm rubs a stomach. No longer growling. A moan, an anguished sigh. One hairy hand smashes into the ground. Sounds of sobbing and weeping. The sobs die off. A nose is wiped. An intake of breath, a decision. The leg stands up, rises off the ground, up and down, faster, faster, faster, faster, never stopping. Faster, faster, faster, pump, pump. PULL BACK SLOW TO FLASH REVEAL our MONSTER: it’s a man, dressed in a soldier’s shirt and boot. But he’s extremely hairy, and his one leg comes from his trunk dead center, as though he’d never had two legs, a monopod. 3. Monster does pull-ups on a tree branch, his back to CAMERA. EXT. CHAIN LINK FENCE - DAY Monster smashes into the gap. Tries to squeeze through. Not slim enough. He measures his waist, a few more pounds to lose. Monster punches the fence. Tries to untwist the chain-link, but it is remarkably strong, resists him. EXT. WOODS - NIGHT Monster’s stomach rumbles. He’s digging more foxholes with his foot. Monster dumps bodies of MEN and DOGS, their throats torn out, into the foxholes. Covers them with dirt. His stomach rumbles again. Monster looks hungrily at a Man’s carcass, licks his lips. He holds his stomach, quickly covers the carcass. Jumps to a branch, more pull-ups. Searchlights through the trees. Monster pulls up, faster, faster, faster, faster. Monster hops off through the trees. Two SOLDIERS burst into a small clearing just as Monster disappears. They give hand signals to each other, race off through the woods after Monster. Monster hops, deceptive speed, a zigzag pattern. The two Soldiers tail him, eyes on him, rifles to their eyes, wait for a shot. Laser pointers play through the dark woods, sweep over Monster’s back. A searchlight beams down through the trees, helicopter sounds. Monster jumps into a small ravine. Soldiers jump into the ravine. 4. Monster waits for them. Tears out their throats with his mouth as he holds them in the air. We see how massive his arms really are. This Monster is a super-killer. He hops off, climbs a tree with his strong arms, catapults up the tree like a long-limbed monkey. CAMERA remains on the ground, watches him go. Growls, screeches of metal, the searchlight goes cockeyed. Sounds of the helicopter going down. An explosion shines through the trees. A metal rotor whizzes by CAMERA. One hairy leg smashes into the ground, right next to CAMERA, Monster has jumped down. His stomach rumbles. Monster hops off through the trees. A SQUAD of ten soldiers creep through the trees behind him. Follow him. EXT. CHAIN LINK FENCE - NIGHT Monster hops up to the gate, a hopping start, turns sideways, tries to slip through the gap. Almost! His hips get stuck, somehow he slides his head and one thick arm through. He scrapes his arms, trunks, leg, terrible bleeding. He yanks, tugs, pushes himself through, regardless the cost. He’s a mess. Almost, almost, almost there, just have to get those hips... The Squad emerges from a treeline behind him. Their laser pointers zoom in on his foot. Monster wiggles his foot, tries to shake off the lasers. The Squad opens fire, aim for that foot. Bullets zing into the ground by the hundreds. Monster screams, an unintelligible, raucous shriek, no words. He wiggles his foot desperately, somehow unhit. 5. Squad inches closer, second by second, unceasing hail of fire. Now the foot is hit, pummeled by bullets. It appears indestructible, no blood. Monster’s face is contorted in massive pain. He pushes against the fence, sucks in his abdomen. One final push. As Monster leaps through, his foot gets stuck in the gap. Explosion. His foot explodes. Looks like a napalm fireburst. The Squad is thrown backwards, killed. Monster, footless, bleeds from his leg stump, weeps on the ground on the other side of the fence. Two signs on the chain-link fence are illuminated: “Military Training Facility - Keep Out” and “Your Genetic Future”. Monster drags himself across the ground, away from the fence. His stomach rumbles. FADE OUT.