Episode 3: The Lost Highway
Ext/Int Darkness
For a viewer- a black screen. For a reader- the darkness only attainable after at least 15 minutes of blindfolded meditation. An uncomfortable silence where we are left just enough time to think about anything other than the story at hand.
A voice cuts through the silence. It is kindly, lilting, comforting. No menace. No malice. It is here to inform and orient. It is benevolence. It does not judge our ignorance. It is what we all wish our mothers could have been. As it speaks, white text spills across the stream, beating a note of percussion at every bold note. The voice plays to these beats naturally. The feminine roll of the monologue is almost musical.
MOON
(voiceover)
Once a millennium, a lone, pointless human escapes The Real, choosing to pierce the Veil of Panic by way of the Lost Highway and entering into the lost plane of a world called Arcana- a field of souls and magic. There, beings called Cards, powerful elemental essences captured and illustrated, assembled in a deck of power- wielding the strength of Earth, Air, Water and Fire, give voice to raw hopes and fear- crowning the most noble intentions and foretelling the darkest of forbearances. Together they live, fight and love within one world- Arcana.
The darkness gives way to stars, faint at first. They come into focus, yellow points twinkling, dancing, laughing against a midnight black sheet of hanging sky. THE MOON enters focus. A pale yellow saucer, her gentle craters cradle her eyes, a canyon forming a mild smile. She is serene, gentle and constantly bemused with the younger celestial beings that dance about her. Anger is not within her nature- at least, not anger as we understand it. She is an Old Thing, one of the oldest, and she fears neither contest nor threat. The Moon is immutable.
Her gaze falls to One Star at the tail end of the Crow constellation which illuminates far more brightly than the others. It comes into focus, illuminating a small stream of yellow light from its point of origin to the patch of ground directly below it. This patch of ground itself is the summit of a hill set beside a small stream of babbling water. As the light of the star brings greater illumination to this scene, we see that the running brook is steaming, bubbling and dark. At its head just beyond the hill is a drip coffee maker which fuels the current of the stream. A label on the coffee maker reads “ARCANA BLEND”.
Returning to the hill we see a silhouetted, feminine figure holding a vagobond’s napsack slung over her shoulder. A front light of yellow pours down upon the figure, revealing it to be Alice. She is locked into the dancing pose of the Tarot’s Fool, precariously positioned at the site of the boiling creek.
The light reveals more figures on either side of Alice. Now stands two more outlined figures at her left and another two at her right. At center, reclined, a fifth figure. Each figure in repose remains a black void outline, as though waiting to be colored in by the illustrator’s pen.
MOON
(vo)
One card, the Fool, holds no place within this assembly. A zero, her coming foretells change and chaos. With her arrival a party assembles- a Queen of Swords, a Knight of Cups at her left hand. At her right, the Devil and the Pale Horse of Death. And at her feet, a Hanged Woman. Castaways, sealed from their true power- they will seek the Fool like moths to a flame- praying her power will reignite their own.
The camera passes over each outlined form as the Moon delivers these lines. From left to right, light passes over each black void outline, betraying features- but not the entirety- we see the far left figure holding a massive sword, next to them, a stooped figure holding a chalice, then Alice, after her, an erect figure with outstretched hand, an eye of red flashing as we pass them over, and finally at the other end of the row, the outline of a horse. The panning image then cuts to the center, where the reclined character lies, their arms carelessly outstretched, a length of rope dangling from each wrist.
MOON
(vo)
Like all worlds, the Arcana holds its own center of power. The Tower-
Behind the assembled party, the outline of a TOWER forms. Tall, circular, it resembles Babel in its precarious design and impossible height, its tiers apparently and revolving as a Christmas Windmill, with fans jutting out from each floor, its interior teeming with tiny figures, its base lit with massive torches, the air around the strange architecture bending with the billowing heat.
MOON
(vo)
The Tower is a construct formed of magic, ruled by a fearsome Magician and an all-knowing High Priestess, who command all the cards who reside within Arcana. Those who reach the top of this tower are granted incredible power- from houses of retainers and soldiers to once impossible wishes readily granted. This is the power of The Tower, whose summit is closed to all be the precious chosen few.
The Tower then bursts into flames, its torches catching to the base and then setting the entire construct aflame. The scene is washed out in a flash of white light. A faint, smiling face erupts through the white light. Peerless white eyes, a toothy, smiley face smile. This is THE SUN.
MOON
(vo)
But magic, like all things, has an ancient foe- a rival in all things- ambition. Ambition threatens the tower's strength, and as this ambition rises to fruition, the Tower must defend itself. The defense, an intuition, is activated by summoning intuition itself- the Fool. The Alice. She is the Arcana's last hope against the monster of the Real, the World Machine.
The hooked, copper wire tendrils of The World Machine enter frame, its twisted USB cables and CAT wires and HDMI plugs conspiring like the arms of an octopus. The Sun’s face breaks into a toothy laugh, and we hear the laugh- a child’s laugh, as the tendrils grab at the corners of the lit picture and viciously pull it down.
We are left with nothing but darkness.
ext. parking lot early morning
Alice is in the parking lot. She shrieks for a moment. Realizes where she is. Shakes her arms, feels her face, her nose and mouth and eyes. No cables, no tendrils. No everlasting darkness. Just heat. Pavement. Cars. Oil. Washer fluid. Rubber. Drying paint. Warped glass. The exports of the West gently decaying in the brutal pre-noon sun. Despite her transportative experience, this does not relieve her. A few looks over her shoulder are granted to ensure she is not to be strangled by the office she just escaped.
She looks up. The sky is without clouds. The sun is oppressive. Cicadas and other bugs can be heard. Despite being in a parking lot, no sound of cars. No running engines. No crunching roll of rubber on asphalt pebbles. No squeaky brakes. No grinding gears. Just row after row of cars- their seat fabric curdling in the boiling lunar rays.
Sweat beading on her brow, dotting her neck, Alice begins to walk. She passes several cars. One car, a minivan, has a CHILD in it wearing a DEVIL Halloween mask. Alice turns to notice it, starts. The child lifts the mask, a laughing complexion splashing across his face. He sticks his tongue out. Alice does not think to worry about if the Child should be in a hot car on a summer morning. Alice instead returns the tongued expression. The kid, noticeably sweaty, then points out the window, past her.
Alice turns to see what he's pointing at.
Several spaces down stands The Pale Horse. Alice turns back to the kid, only to see a black, enveloping smog which has filled the car- and is filling the interior of every car. A cue, perhaps, not to linger.
Alice briskly approaches the horse, stopping in front of it.
The Pale Horse’s white eyes consider her, the silver surfaces of its pupil-less saucers reflecting the Alice. There is a snort- or was that a sigh?- and the Pale Horse shakes his head, its main falling from one side to the other.
Alice reaches out to touch the horse’s mane, compelled to fix the muss. The Pale Horse violently shakes its head, and Alice retracts.
Shadows creep over the car lot. Fierce thunderheads begin to gather in the once cloudless sky. Alice looks up to see the windows of the office building directly overhead- the floor she just escaped from. A splatter sound. A thump. Two limp, bloodless faces appearing at the window- the sightless faces of the Withered Man and the Dark Haired Girl.
Alice returns her focus to the horse, breathes, regaining her courage, she again reaches, her hand touching the face of the horse, then its mane, her hand running through the threaded hair. This time, the Horse does not resist. Her hand stops at the bridle of the horse, a simple length of rope. Attached to it, a letter sealed in an ornate envelope.
Alice takes the envelope and tears it open without care for delicacy. She is not someone who has ever cared for saving the paper for next year.
ALICE
(reading)
Please.
The Pale Horse turns, presenting its back to Alice, an invitation to climb aboard. Alice makes her attempt, swinging one leg over, her thin, pointy arms clutching at the bridle with the tenacity of a prickly insect’s. The Pale Horse shifts quickly, throwing momentum in Alice’s favor and essentially tossing her upon its back. She presses her legs against the flanks of the horse, her grip on the bridle white. She is unsteady, but she remains fixed upon the beast’s back.
Behind her, the office building looms. Cicadas rise to near deafening. Black, ugly steam now pours from the windows like smoke from a dormant but unrelenting fire, a billowing, pure, Industrial Strength Sadness that only an office can produce. The smog of the cars now seeps through the sealed windows and doors and long neglected mufflers filled with holes. Cables, phone lines, USB, CAT5, HDMI, Fiber Wire- pull up from the ground, creep out the windows, wind down poles and begin to strain across the pavement, straining from the office building toward their target- the Alice. The Office, the Great World Machine that devours every being one way or another- is awake.
Alice leans forward and whispers into the horse's ear- and asks for what she needs in the way she’s been trained to ask, in the way so many of us have been taught to speak after years of policies, codes of conduct and endless forms.
ALICE
I'm having a personal emergency and I don't have my phone. I don't think it's family, but I'm not sure that it's medical either. But I need to leave the Office early today.
(pause, then defiantly)
And I'm not saying "please" again. You can't make me.
A moment of silence. A question of understanding. Does the Pale Horse speak? Can it listen? Does it care? Is it really a horse? Questions parade through the mind of Alice, a well-worn boulevard used to issuing such permits, so much so that Alice forgets where she is for a moment and nearly tumbles off the back of the horse. She catches herself and is still, her hands wrapped around the horse’s neck. A flash of light. A boom of thunder. Wind tumbles through the lot, kicking her spindly, golden air to and fro.
ALICE
(conceding)
Fine. But just once more. Please.
A moment of silence, and the horse bolts off through the parking lot. Its speed first mundane, it picks up to a gallop, its hooves cracking asphalt, cars fracturing with its momentum. By the time they exit the lot, a whirlwind of twisted metal has caught up behind them, the horse’s hooves kicking up sparks that give way to pure fire. A parking gate at the end of the lot is no match for the battering ram of muscle and sinew. Alice clenches her jaw as the Horse smashes through the painted plastic and metal of the gate.
And after they pass the gatehouse, Alice laughs.
ext. lost highway morning
An impossibly empty interstate highway that you’ve only seen so empty during a storm or a 4 AM morning drive- and even then, this highway is emptier than that, longer than that, more hopeless than that. There are no off ramps. No rest stops. No billboards. No shoulders. Just stretches of impossibly dull browned earth extending as far as the eye can see for either side. The pavement of the highway itself is bare saved the dotted line at center and the occasional patching of tar to hide the evidence of a crack.
This is The Lost Highway, a transit artery accessible to only a few, the first stop and last barrier to the world of Arcana, and the Tower. For one crossing over from The Real to Arcana, there is the Lost Highway- and if one does not know their way, there is only the Lost Highway.
The Pale Horse knows its way.
The Alice does not.
Alice and the Pale horse gallop down the Lost Highway, their mad dash destroying the dense serenity of the urban pathway. The velocity of their mad dash has pulled up all manner of debris alongside them, small trees of cars and scooters and vending machines all propelling forward alongside of them like eager joyriders on the wake of some unseen but massive wave.
But beyond the joyfully propelled maelstrom of inane Real Objects is the familiar grasping tentacles of office equipment, computers, phones, copy machines, fax machines, mimeographs and headsets- the World Machine barreling down the highway, destroying pavement and hungrily engulfing road as it lets out a stammered roar behind the Alice. The roar demands Alice’s gaze, and she looks back in time to see a single straining USB cable that she quickly slaps away from her shoulder.
Alice looks back ahead of her. The infinite horizon of the highway has shifted, no longer a black curtain of forever, but with an end- at its focal point, a tower, distant, leaning, smoldering as though aflame. It is the aforementioned Tower of Arcana.
Alice turns behind her to survey the progress of The World Machine. The chaos of wires and appliances behind her now takes form, the shattered, consumed concrete of the highway morphing to a mouth at the head of the wired beast, which juts out, opening. As the mouth opens, coworkers, including the Withered Man and the Mustached Girl catapult out, bodies mangled and fused with the wired consciousness of THE WORLD MACHINE. As they catapult forward past Alice, they whip back, their controller unwilling to let loose its captives. Their pale faces leer at Alice, their puppet arms flailing at her. The bodies of the Withered Man and the Dark Haired Girl suddenly whip back within mere feet of Alice and snap forward, their teeth gnashing, arms now violently outstretched, wires and plugins straining to reach Alice.
Alice leans forward and speaks in the Horse’s ear.
ALICE
The tower. Take me to the tower. NOW!
The cables of the World Machine whip at Alice once more, their entrapment no longer inviting but murderous, and she slaps them away.
ALICE
(shouting)
FASTER!
The horse, sweating, straining, intensifies his pace yet again, as he does, his hooves turn to heated glass, the flames turning from a yellow orange to a white, concentrated burner heat, its mane turning from white to a glorious gold.
A cable snaps at Alice's arm, latching on. The hand of one of the Catapulted Coworkers grabs her shoulder, shriveled, peeling fingers grasping for her thin throat. Alice’s eyes remain fixed on the Tower. It seems closer. She can see the individual floors. The fans. The torches. The dancing lights and figures. The rotating structures giving way to the impossible summit. Four lights erupt from the summit into the boundless sky- Red, Green, Blue, and Yellow pillared lights erupting from the top of the tower like mad spotlights, coalescing into a single purpled light which launches into the sky above the tower. A muted explosion is heard, and all the sky over the tower and the highway erupted into a evocative lightning storm, bolts striking here and there, shattering concrete, scorching earth- and cutting swaths into the World Machine behind Alice.
However, just as the Tower looms but a few gallops away, one such bolt strikes in front of Alice and the Pale Horse, demolishing the path before them. The horse shrieks, a cry that stops time- bolts, fire and even the World Machine itself frozen in their tracks. The Horse, too, panting, glistening in sweat, is forced to an immediate halt, his muscles heaving with exertion. But despite the horse’s power and compulsions over time itself, no stop comes without some forward momentum, and as Alice and the Horse linger, the said momentum of their time stop strains things forward little by little, the highway beneath them shaking and quaking until the very pavement gives way beneath them as the World Machine crawls back into motion.
Alice and the Pale Horse fall through the cracks of the Lost Highway, their path having given way at last. No way forward. Only down. Utter darkness, save for the shining brilliance of the pale horse. As the pair fall into the abyss, The Tower recedes from view, as does the whipping wires of the World Machine, which shrieks after the evident escape of its query.
Alice's eyes widen, flickering orange reflected in them. As the Tower flees from view, she can see a vision of the structure she almost ascended. A vision of the impossibly tall Tower- every floor ablaze. Music, trumpets and horns can be heard, loud, long, piercing, holding an impossible not until it bends to become something beyond music- beyond beauty or ugliness- simply, otherworldly.
Alice covers her ears. She tries to scream. We cannot hear her.
