Continued from previous weeks…
There are more footsteps in the forest, getting closer and closer. Branches are snapping like twigs.
Everyone, except Mona, steps back.
Wino: “I shouldn’t have screamed!”
Ritchie: “No shit!”
Gary: “Whatever that thing is, it’s huge.”
Mona smiles faintly. “Huge…”
Gary grabs Mona’s arm and pulls her back with the others.
Puzzled, Mona struggles to regain her balance. Then she smiles up at the sun, drawing a circle around it with her finger and laughing.
The rustling in the forest becomes visible, though its source is still hidden by the trees. It’s heading straight toward them.
Wino: “I think it’s…hungry.”
Mona: “Hungry…”
The wino grabs Ritchie. “But none of this is real, Ritchie! You know that! You have to believe that. I believe that! Why your house is right over…” He trails off, staring at the beeline of bent tree branches coming at them.
Gary grabs Mona, turning them both away from whatever’s closing on them. “Hey, baby…” He’s struggling to sound casual. “I want to apologize for all that infinity nonsense I was talking about before.”
Mona: “Infinity…”
Gary: “You know how I can be.” He snorts. “New York intellectual! My old lady used to debate existentialism with whoever my ‘father’ was at the time. That was before she lost the sandal shop and started shooting smack.”
The wino and Ritchie are both trying to climb up the same tree.
Gary kisses the tip of Mona’s nose. “Don’t look. No matter what. Close your eyes.”
Mona does.
Gary: “You didn’t really think I could think us somewhere else did you? You didn’t really think we were in a forest, did you? Just remember us on the porch of Ritchie’s house.”
Mona smiles.
The forest warbles, shutters. There’s a crackle like lightning.
The surf crashes on the beach.
Ritchie, who’d gotten a lot higher in the tree than the wino, falls heavily onto the sand because all the trees have disappeared. But he smiles broadly as two blondes in string bikinis walk past his house.
To be continued next week…
