Chapter 12: Malaise
MASTER BEDROOM, BRUCE’S APARTMENT, CITY (MORNING)
Bruce listens, then eases the door back open, peering around the threshold.
HALLWAY, BRUCE’S APARTMENT (CONTINUOUS)
Clear and quiet.
Though the wreckage littering the living room defeats any chance of writing the preceding events off as fiction.
Bruce proceeds up the hallway.
MASTER BEDROOM, BRUCE’S APARTMENT (CONTINUOUS)
Valerie sits against the wall trying to control her breath. She extends and contracts her fingers, wiggles her toes. Her eyes dart from bed to closet to window, looking for something to use as a weapon.
Stupid!
She hears a sickening THWACK.
BRUCE: (calling from the kitchen) Clear!
KITCHEN, BRUCE’S APARTMENT (MORNING)
A limp body lies supine on the kitchen floor in a long black jacket, dead or unconscious, the phone next to him. His hair is long, black, and slick.
Bruce, throwing a second strap around his torso, has earned himself another gun.
BRUCE: Recognize him?
VALERIE: Just the jacket. From some guys who chased me through the park.
Valerie snatches up the phone and checks it reflexively.
VALERIE: How did he know we were here?
BRUCE: (shrugging) I frisked him. He’s got nothing. Blew his only grenade and an entire magazine redecorating the flat.
VALERIE: He was desperate.
BRUCE: If by desperate you mean stupid. Untrained.
VALERIE: Not necessarily. Maybe he knew he was going to die.
BRUCE: (gives a questioning look)
VALERIE: He threw a Hail Mary. And left you without any ammo.
ENTRYWAY, BRUCE’S APARTMENT (A MINUTE LATER)
The front door hangs open in pieces, beyond it the deflated body of the postman. Sirens blare in the distance.
VALERIE: You’re forgetting the mailman.
BRUCE: I’m not forgetting anything.
VALERIE: You think he was their bait?
BRUCE: No. I think he was our warning.
VALERIE: Then who sent him?
Bruce checks his corners and retrieves the package from beyond the threshold.
BRUCE: Maybe we can find out.
KITCHEN, BRUCE’S APARTMENT (MORNING)
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The postman’s package sits on the kitchen table. Bruce slits it open with a pocket knife and opens the flaps to reveal a CAKE BOX. He removes the CAKE BOX and unfolds it like a flower to reveal a damaged cake.
The frosting is still intact, written on it a series of alphanumeric characters.
The sirens are nearer, coming down the block now.
BRUCE: Mean anything to you?
VALERIE: (checking her phone) I’m afraid it does.
BRUCE: The wife ain’t gonna be thrilled about this mess.
VALERIE: Is she a sweet tooth?
BRUCE: (nods)
The sirens are just outside.
VALERIE: Silver linings.
A fleet of footsteps charge up the stairs.
VALERIE: I’ve engaged the app.
BRUCE: You got a lot of faith.
VALERIE: Story of my life.
A pink aura pulses out of the phone and surrounds them just as shadows appear in the fractured doorway.
POLICE: (guns drawn) FREEZE!
The kitchen is empty.
FLASHBACK: BASEMENT STUDIO, CITY (DAY)
Valerie drops her duffel on a springy twin mattress and looks around.
Naked bulbs illuminate a bare concrete floor. Thick funnels of dirty spiderweb cake narrow ground-level windowsills near the ceiling. A plywood kitchenette and mini fridge occupy one corner, the boiler another. Nothing, thankfully, skitters away on Valerie’s approach.
She unpacks her duffel into a couple of plastic bins on wheels, plugs her phone charger into a nearby receptacle.
Her phone throbs. She checks it:
YOU WILL RUN.
YOU WILL TRAIN.
YOUR BODY IS AN IMPLEMENT.
SHARPEN IT.
She sees a banking app shoot up $2,000 in her name. Her eyes widen and then narrow, acknowledging the gravity of the course she has chosen.
Valerie exhales deeply, then starts into a series of calf raises.
FOOD COURT, SHOPPING MALL, CITY (LATE MORNING)
Valerie and Bruce sit at a table beneath a cavernous skylight. Fast food shops run the perimeter of the floor. Braids of red, gold, and green tinsel spiral over the railings surrounding an open atrium ten floors down, centered on a magnificent fountain.
Flocks of shoppers flood the building with bodies and noise. Anonymity in numbers.
VALERIE: Do things feel normal to you here?
BRUCE: Something is off.
VALERIE: Bugs in the food?
BRUCE: Somethin like that.
VALERIE: For me it’s the decorations. Christmas starts earlier and earlier every year.
BRUCE: It’s cold enough for it.
Bruce mops up ketchup with his final fry while Valerie sips from a bottle of water.
VALERIE: That’s not it though, is it? The off feeling.
BRUCE: Sure ain’t.
VALERIE: Nor the fact you’ve got a felony under the table.
BRUCE: Minutiae.
VALERIE: It’s more like a weight in the air. Like a flood waiting to let loose.
Valerie looks around at the other people, carefree and ignorant: laughing among friends, immersed in conversation, delighting in the junk they’re forking into their mouths.
The color is wrong, everything suffused with a pale chartreuse film.
She looks up at the skylight. The overcast sky beyond is TOO DARK, OPPRESSING.
VALERIE: Why did we come here?
BRUCE: It was written on a cake.
VALERIE: No, I mean here. This mall.
BRUCE: You wanted to feel normal.
VALERIE: It’s not working. (pause) Quite the opposite.
Valerie glimpses a woman in a red dress slip into the ladies room along the perimeter. Blonde. Familiar.
VALERIE: I need to use the little girls’ room.
LADIES’ ROOM, SHOPPING MALL (LATE MORNING)
Valerie ignores the “CLOSED FOR CLEANING” sign and follows the red dress inside.
A stall bangs shut.
But it’s not the stall that draws Valerie’s attention--it’s the mirror across from it on which a message has been HASTILY SCRAWLED in red lipstick:
THEY FOLLOW IT
Valerie turns.
VALERIE: Hello?
Valerie knocks on the stall door; it opens into:
STALL, LADIES’ ROOM, SHOPPING MALL (CONTINUOUS)
Empty...
Except for a pill bottle on the toilet paper dispenser and lipstick scrawl on the tile:
HERE COMES THE RAIN AGAIN