a reply to:
NightSkyeB4Dawn
Yeah, it makes me wonder how a trailer for a film based on the story "Operation Clean Sweep" would look like...
It is the year two thousand and twenty.
- cut to Chinese people in a Wuhan city park practicing Tai Chi. Bamboo flutes and tinkering cymbals form a musical background to a group practicing
the graceful movements of this calming exercise.
Early morning shoppers with their carrier bags shuffle on their way to the markets. Stalls are being erected along parts of the street. Little plastic
bags of dried squid and pork crackle are hung on wooden racks enticingly at head height.
Suddenly a shopper falls to the ground without a murmur, his still empty carrier bag blown away pulled and pushed by the breeze. A stall holder gazes
at the prostrate form, his eyes still tired from his early awakening.
Across the street, a Tai Chi movement collapses in mid-motion and the practitioner, a young woman in her early twenties collapses to the ground dead.
A flock of great white bats begin to fill the sky, their wings making a kafuffling sound overhead, the winged rodents emitting an awful screech....
J.D. Schmelling handles the script reading through it, exhibiting an impatient serious expression. He adjusts his gold rimmed spectacles.
The young script writer from Queens looks apprehensive. He was given the skeleton outline of the story just yesterday, Such short notice to creatively
fill in the blanks.
J.D, breaks the ice with an “hurumph!”
"You do know that bats aint rodents don't you son?"
The young writer looks embarrassed
J.D. continues reading...
“Hmmm, okay, okay so far so good......do the bats got a name?”
“Well..err I came up with Schakaka, sir.”
“Okay son go pick up your cheque from Miss Abrams.
The young writer takes the stairs instead of the elevator. He is in a hurry to return to his apartment and tell his fiancee the good news. Perhaps an
early wedding in the Spring he thought. He hits the street and takes a corner. A black van saunters to a stop in front of him. The window winds down.
“Say, buddy, dya happen to know where the women’s refuge centre is located?”
He hears the side door being slid open too late and before he knows it a kerchief of chloroform is held over his nose and mouth and he is pulled
quickly into the van which takes off with a squeal of tires.
J.D. is on the phone
“Yeah, Tony?.....Yeah it looks good, real tasty.....yeah okay, yeah - delivered by hand. No problem.”
J.D. settles back into his leather backed swivel chair.
Thinks to himself: “Are they really gonna fall for this? ...still, what I know about the pharmaceutical industry? Dough is dough aint it?”
He takes a sip of his single malt scotch and smacks his lips.
There is a rustle from the coitons behind him and a Karate chop to the neck fells him from his chair and he slumps to the ground. A shadowy figure
gives him a hot shot into the neck. Delivered by hand.
“It’s what they call the ‘Ouchie Fauchie’ folks”, he says to himself in a low voice.