Blaze of Glory
BLAZE OF GLORY
&
The True Adventures of a Monster
Screenplay in B-Movie Wonderland
By Weston Ochse
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Copyright 2012 Weston Ochse
Copy-edited by:
Cover Design By: Weston Ochse
Cover Image By Danielle Tunstall
Cover model is Martyn Taff Dalzel
LICENSE NOTES
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
OTHER CROSSROAD PRESS PRODUCTS BY AUTHOR
Appalachian Galapagos
Butterfly Winter
Velvet Dogma
Scary Rednecks and Other Inbred Horrors
ALSO BY WESTON OCSHE
NOVELS
Scarecrow Gods, Delirium Books (Bram Stoker Award for First Novel 2005)
Recalled to Life, Delirium Books
The Golden Thread, Delirium Books
Path of the Storm, Delirium Books
Empire of Salt, Abaddon Books
Blood Ocean, Abaddon Books
SEAL Team 666, coming from Thomas Dunne Books
Ghost Heart (with Yvonne Navarro), Dark Regions Press
COLLECTIONS
Multiplex Fandango, Dark Regions Press
Scary Rednecks Omnibus*
Scary Rednecks and Other Inbred Horrors*
(* written with David Whitman)
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For
Dylan Thomas, Reggie Bannister
and the Fantastic Four
Acknowledgements
Thanks for to my wife, Yvonne, for absolutely everything. Thanks to Wayne Salle for making me think of Fred Ward naked and for recommending that I tell Bruce Campbell to make an X-rated movie titled Crisco County Junior. Thanks also to Drew Williams for pointing out that the word Fop didn't appear anywhere in this book.
Thanks to every editor, director, actor and producer who read the script and passed on it. If it hadn't been for you, this book never would have happened.
Thanks to Larry Roberts of Bloodletting Press for first publishing this as a gorgeous limited edition.
And, as always, thanks to Ishmael Reed for allowing me to be a 'Cowboy in the Boat of Ra.'
Shout out to the cabal. You know who you are. Peace out.
I was sitting in my lab late one night,
When my eyes beheld an eerie sight,
My monster from the slab began to rise,
Then suddenly to my surprise it did the mash.
It did the Monster Mash!
Bobby Picket
(Monster Mash) 1962
BLAZE OF GLORY
&
The True Adventures of a Monster
Screenplay in B-Movie Wonderland
INTRODUCTION
IN THE BEGINNING CAME THE END
Once upon the time, there was Once Upon the End, a novella written by an author of little note but great ambition. The novella was published to moderate acclaim, created a small yet consistent buzz within a small community of horror fans and authors, and made a few people notice this author who wouldn’t normally notice him. As a bonus, because the editors were asking for extras, the author provided a screenplay based on the novella. One long night at a convention, an agent asked this author a question that he’d never been asked before—have you considered selling this as a screenplay? The author remembers taking a sip from a drink before shaking his head.
Once Upon the End as a movie?
He’d written the screenplay, but only as a sophomoric afterthought. For all he knew, he’d done it all wrong. Yet images and dialogues from the novella suddenly took shape in the silver screen of his mind. His sophomoric screenplay took life. Characters were cast. A soundtrack blared the end sequence to a cacophony of applause.
Looking around the busy party, the agent spotted someone more important than this green author and made to go. But before leaving, the agent leaned down and said something that would mold events for this author over the next five years- “You really should. There’s humanity in your screenplay that’s rare. Plus, it’s very visual. Remember when dealing with Hollywood, visual is good. Visual is always good.”
So this is my story of Once Upon the End, a novella that became a screenplay that reached heights I’d never imagined. I’ll detail my successes and mistakes. I’ll list those who showed interest as well as those who blew it off. This is everyone’s tale. Many have been there before me, many will come after me, but this is the story of my journey.
But remember, “Once Upon a Time stories” don’t always have and they lived happily ever after endings. This tale might be a tragic one. There are those of you who still hope to see your name in lights. There are those of you who look at the system with wide-hopeful eyes. For you this tale may be too scary.
But I urge you to follow my main character, Once Upon the End, as it travels from nothing to an agent, to directors, producers and their assistants, and to Wesley Snipes and forest fires and beyond. Experience the highs and lows, the vulgarity and the hilarity, the happiness and the loss of hope, as Once Upon the End was promised, passed, courted, and used like a two-for-one whore at a Shriner's convention.
Beware is all I say. Let it not be said that I didn’t warn you. Consider this the small print on the prescription bottle of your Hollywood ambition.
So poll your thoughts, interrogate your dreams and decide if you want to continue reading. And if in the end you decide to learn the true story of Once Upon the End travels along the Dantean road to movie production, then we are well met.
But first, allow me to introduce what was once Once Upon the End and is now Blaze of Glory. Before you are to know what happened to the screenplay, you have to experience the end of the world as my characters did...awash in death, destruction, marijuana smoke, crack-addled grannies, giant monsters and a garbage man with heroic ambitions.
So sit back.
Grab the popcorn.
Cue the soundtrack.
And enjoy.
Weston Ochse
June 2008
Mexican Border
BLAZE OF GLORY
By Weston Ochse (c) 2006
Parts of Blaze of Glory were derived from a novella under the title "Once Upon the End" - Tooth and Claw Anthology, Lone Wolf Publishing © 2002.
"I dunno what the hell's in there, but it's weird and pissed off, whatever it is."
-The Thing, 1982, Directed by John Carpenter
CHAPTER 1
There are things that run through a person’s mind right before they murder someone. Crazy things. Insane things. Among the many thoughts that ran through Buckley Adamski’s mind were two that crouched like Chinese Lion Dogs intercepting and interrogating every intuition and postulate --
Why had God allowed this?
Was He doing anything to change it?
Maggot-shaped pixels on the screen of the old-fashioned floor model television coalesced into recognizable images as Buckley lurched to his feet. He'd been watching television for hours, staring at the devastation and willing it all to be fiction. He stepped back farther to better se
e the screen, wobbly from both the vodka and the bombardment of doom presented in Technicolor perfection by the network. Scenes of destruction flipped and flowed past computer-racked commercials and ads for shows that would never be seen. From toilet paper teddy bears to the Eiffel Tower crashing into the Paris skyline to the panic of ten-thousand Chinese rushing madly into the ocean, the scenes merged into one other until he could only believe that it was truly an End Time, perhaps even the end of the world.
Buckley fell back a step as a line of a hundred Russian tanks fired, then exploded. Airplanes slammed into the ground. Roads became collections of abandoned cars. And the more he watched, the fewer people he saw.
The gold alarm clock his father had been given for retirement for thirty years in the Public Works Department chimed the top of the hour. The screen blanked, then was replaced by a torso-shot of a blond-haired news announcer. He'd seen this look a dozen times and each time he wished it would change. Maybe if he watched the broadcast one more time it would be different.
"This morning at 8:00 AM, the President declared a national disaster and is, even as we speak, somewhere overhead in Air Force One while below him on this great planet Earth, chaos reigns supreme. Borders are being fortified. Commercial planes are grounded. Ships are being halted off the coasts. Even in Iowa, a thousand miles from danger, neighbors are shooting each other over the tall corn. From Afghanistan to Alabama the world is in a panic."
His mother's body began to quake on the couch. She'd been unconscious for about an hour, long enough for the transformation. Buckley knew what was about to happen and was powerless to stop it. He watched the television instead, praying for the man to grin and yell 'Gotcha!'
"The Governor had seemed poised to handle events until the press conference yesterday," the announcer continued. "When he spoke, his confident words carried the day, making people sit up and feel better. He’d had ideas. He’d said everything was going to be okay. He’d said the creatures could be defeated. Scientists had almost figured it all out, he’d said. Then he began to twitch and sing as if something was in his brain. All he’d said before could have been true. Everyone could have been safe. The human race might have actually made it."
Suddenly Buckley’s mother sat up. She coughed and gagged. "Help me," she begged. So, like the good boy he'd always been, he did as she begged by placing the cool barrel of the 9mm pistol against her temple and pulling the trigger. She fell back on the couch, better for it.
"But as the Governor sank into the longing strains of an old BB King song on national television,” the announcer continued, “a single creature pierced the slick cover of his pupil and a million households watched as the small maggot tasted the air and began its dance. And the song continued on as the Presidential hopeful sang The Thrill is Gone.”
The announcer sobbed once as he pulled his own pistol from where he'd had it hidden in his lap. His slightly embarrassed smile was followed by a loud report as his brain splattered the blue screen behind him. Then the television cut to commercial.
If Buckley wanted to see it again, he only had to wait an hour, because this was all that had been playing since yesterday, over and over and over.
CHAPTER 2
That’d been two days ago.
Two days of an Uber-Dantean Hell where everyone was a demon and everyone was damned. Buckley had run and killed— his flight or fight instinct working simultaneously within his spinning mind. Everyone he’d known, everyone he’d yet to meet, was a threat.
He tried not to kill. He really tried. Deep down, smothered in swathes of terror, Buckley’s humanity struggled with the necessities of his murders. Like the twenty-three year old private he’d once been in Lebanon, however, he understood as no suburban protestor ever could, that absolutely, positively, without a fucking doubt, everyone was a threat.
Everyone.
Like the shopkeeper who sold him his daily pack of menthols he’d found price-tagging the bodies of dead customers and placing them beside warm beer and hot dog relish.
Or the cat lady who lived next door, who he’d found feeding on a particularly large calico from her once prodigious collection of fifty-seven felines.
Or the crossing guard who was embattled with a herd of school children in an abattoir of pigtails, gnashing teeth, and freckled screams between two thin yellow lines that had once meant safety.
Buckley had known and loved them all. He was a Christian and had tried to live his life by the complicated precepts of a sometimes-confused God. He did not covet his neighbor’s wife, he did not lie, neither did he cheat or steal. Even when it hurt, Buckley had been known to turn the other cheek.
Now, however, as when he’d been in Lebanon just before the Barrack's Bombing that killed 299 Marines, Buckley understood that turning the other cheek was akin to allowing a bright-eyed, young Arab boy with an AK and no sense in the world to take pot shots at his convoy when they went out on their thrice weekly trip to the coast. And like the neighborhood paperboy who’d chased him for six blocks on a bicycle, the cards in the spokes a continuous clackity-clack warning of what could be, Buckley had tried to avoid the killing.
But just like in Lebanon, killing became necessary and Buckley had tired before the child. With resignation he’d spun, aimed and fired. When the empty bike tumbled past, he felt defeat in his victory. Buckley would have cried if he could, but he was too dried up inside.
The religious called it The Day of Doom. The environmentalists called it the inevitable effect of sunspots on the hole in the ozone layer created by greedy industrialists who’d never listened to their warnings. The conspiracy theorists called it a military experiment gone awry. The liberals called it a purposeful assault on humanity by the conservatives as if a roomful of right-wing extremists had cooked up the entire event after a round of eighteen holes at a whites-only golf club, followed by drive-by lynchings of the losing player’s caddies. The conservatives called it an attempt by California tree-huggers to hijack the news with tales to scare children at bedtime. Even the Trekkies were heard spouting “I come in peace” crap about terraforming or terracotta or whatever. When the Governor of North Carolina, presidential hopeful and the anointed savior of the Democratic Party, was eaten alive on national TV, people stopped caring who was responsible.
It was a fucking disaster, pure and simple.
And in the top floor of the Franklin Hotel where Buckley had managed to find brick and mortar safe harbor, he wallowed in the dregs of charcoal filtered salvation watching it all. As a citizen of Wilmington, he was a veteran of seven hurricanes, an earthquake and two tornadoes. He couldn’t help but wonder how FEMA would classify this. It wasn't as if no one believed, just that the event was too much. Maggies were one thing, but a sentient herd was another.
CHAPTER 3
"Close the fucking door!" Buckley shouted, rushing across the room.
Lashawna ignored him and pulled the door wide enough so that everyone got a view of Sally Struthers, her hair matted with blood, her face pock-marked by maggot holes and her skin undulating as the tiny beasts tasted the air.
"Open up and let me in or I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow the house in." Sally coughed, then gagged as a hundred maggies erupted from her throat and showered Lashawna in the face.
Both women screamed.
Buckley hit the door with his shoulder, slamming it shut. Lashawna screamed again as she raised her hands to bat the maggies from her face. But she hadn't the time. Buckley shoved the barrel of the shotgun into the girl's chest and pulled the trigger. Her eyes flew wide as her chest plastered the door behind her. She fell to the floor, a look of surprise still on her face. Buckley began to stomp on the maggies that had fallen to the ground. He had to get every one of them. To miss even one meant their deaths.
"What the fuck! What the fuck did you kill her for," Samuel screamed. "She was my girl, you son of a bitch. I'm gonna—"
“Do nothing,” Buckley said slapping the barrel of the shotgun across the boy's nose, kno
cking him to the floor. "Sissy, give me a hand. We need salt. A full bucket."
Sissy stared at the body of Lashawna, who’d been until just now, a vibrant dark-skinned girl whose only fault seemed to be a constant need to defy authority. The two of them had been friends, if only for a short while. Sissy had enjoyed the presence of someone her age. Lashawna's intelligence, masked by her inner-city façade, had shone and the girls spent most of their time talking.
"Sissy! Get the Goddamned salt. She's infected." Samuel pulled himself along the floor to Lashawna, but was sent reeling back by a shove of Buckley’s boot. "Are you deaf? Do you have a fucking death wish? She's infected."
Buckley had his back to the door to not only hold it shut, but to keep the others from making the same mistake Lashawna had made. If he went to get the salt, one of the others would open it for sure and then all their planning and defenses would be for not.
"Open up and let me in," cackled Sally in a man's voice from the hallway, "or I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow the house in."
"Not by the hair on our chinny chin chins," Grandma Riggs cried from her wheelchair in the center of the living room.
Sally Struthers started to scream, as if a small part of her mind remembered that she was human and realized the irrevocable damage that had been done to her body.
"Will somebody get me a fucking bucket of salt!"
"Here you go, Mr. Adamski," came a small, knee-high voice.