Story Within a Story

You're a screenwriter and a filmmaker. You've written and filmed characters and the events that connect them and their story. Whether or not you subscribe to the idea, you created them and therefore they are you, and you are them, which goes without saying. The film is finished and screened for a few people, including you and the owner of the studio. PLAY is pressed, you put on your 3D goggles, and the events unfold.

Here's the synopsis.

A 17-year-old girl, just getting her life started, pretty, fresh-faced, kind to animals, allergic to balls of any kind, gets "accidentally" (like THAT's possible) irradiated by a passing UFO and is hospitalized with a terribly painful illness. She's sad and angry and hurt and betrayed, cursing at god because she was on her way home from Sunday School at the time, and her mother (her father, may he rest in peace, got drunk and fell off a corn thresher, which then ran him over) is feeling all the same emotions, though she, however, blames Satan. Satan gets all the blame, and God gets all the thanks, as usual, which unbeknownst to her pisses Satan off, leaving him feeling sad and betrayed and vengeful.

Then a mysterious stranger appears in their lives, a woman who is always wearing a powder blue nurse's getup and Nike basketball shoes with Just Undo It! stitched into the upper. There is a pendant of angel's wings on her right breast just below the collar of her crisp uniform. She carries nothing, ever, with her, and seems to have no visible mode of transportation. First she sits down with the mother and informs she is from The Department. The mother fails to ask "of what?" The nurse explains she is there to help her feel better. And the mother cries and rails, wringing her hands "Why why WHY! So young! So fresh! So much potential!"

And finally the mysterious nurse gently (and trying with everything in her power to keep from laughing out loud) says to her in soft and angelic tones, "Because you chose it, dear one."

"What?! I chose this? Are you out of your friggin' mind! Get thee behind me Satan! Leave thou mine home!" and then she launches into a hymn, "The Lord is my SHEPHERD!" while spraying Holy Water from a Windex sprayer at her with one hand and fumbling with her rosary with the other.

The nurse gathers all the nothings she always carries with her, and leaves. Once outside, she chuckles quietly to herself, shaking her head, steps onto the sidewalk and simultaneously steps onto the tiles of a sterile hospital corridor.

Entering the girl's room, she says, "And how are you feeling today, dear one?"

"Worse than ever!" she snaps. "I hate everything! And YOU! When are YOU going to start making me FEEL better?"

"But I've already told you, dear one, the only way for you to feel better is to know that you chose it."

"You're stupid. That's stupid. Nobody would choose this."

"Would. Did. Know how you can tell?"

"How?"

"That it apparently happened."

"But WHY would I choose it?"

"To punish yourself. You see, guilt asks for punishment, and the request will always be granted. There is a phase of you..." she says, pointing directly at you, sitting in the small screening theater. And you smile, feeling particularly god-like just this second, looking around at the faces of the others in on the screening, looking for approval for your brilliant art. "...there is a phase of you that falsely believes you need punishment."

"But what did I do?"

"Do you remember when you were little and you pointed that blowtorch at that little boy's feet?" the nurse angel asks angelically.

Now there's a cutaway and a quick flashback to the two children playing in the garage. Now back to the hospital room.

"I remember. I feel reeelly bad about that."

"Yes, but there's no need. You see, dear one, it didn't really happen."

"What do you mean?"

"You're in a movie right now, dear one, and although you can't see the phase of you that is the writer and director, it's still true. It's only a dream really, and in..." the nurse checks her watch "...six more of your minutes it will all be over, but it will be played over and over and over, several thousand times, mostly to intellectual snobs, and you'll therefore relive it just as many times, but you'll learn that it doesn't matter."

"But that would mean that my mother also chose this, right?"

"Yes. See? Now you're getting it. Your punishment is everyone's punishment."

Then the girl drifted off to sleep. The nurse fades from view, the last part of her to wink out of being her radiant smile, and the movie's over. It's pretty short. The lights come up in the screening theater and you ask, "So?"

The owner of the studio says to you, "It's uh...it's uh...it's quite a...thinkpiece. But I gotta tell you. I don't think anybody will get it. I didn't even get it. But we might throw a little marketing money at the beat poetry crowd, an underground tearoom or two. Do a questionnaire to see if there's something else we can do to it to...uh...make it...uh, palatable."

In a huff you leave. "How could that bastard not see my high art! Why does nobody see how GOOD I am!" In your car, still angry, nature seems to also militate against you. It rains, hard. The road becomes slick in the canyon and your car slides off the road and slams head-on into a tree. The airbag deploys but the pendant on your breast punctures it and you more or less impale on the shattered steering wheel.

With your last breath, you sigh, "Why has this happened to me? I don't deserve this..." and then your perception shifts and you're in a theater, looking at a car on the big screen wrapped around a tree, your husband in tears next to you, a piece of popcorn stuck to your chest where you might normally see a sharp angled pendant.