“Stand Down” Week 9 – Take Me Home, Country Roads

Begin shot with a close-up on Zain’s left eye, the crystal masking it seemingly having been removed. In the background, the quiet rumbling of a running car can be heard. The minute sound of a switch being flipped is heard, and a small shaft of light is placed on Zain’s face, centered on the eye. The pupil does not shrink, though Zain’s eyelids shiver in response.

The shot zooms out to the interior of the lorry’s cargo, where the group of geared individuals, numbering twelve, are sat on either the floor or metal benches situated at the front and back of the cubic space. The scene is lit with a single lantern, and neither out of the silvery metal walls or roof sport any window. On one bench Zain is sat, his head exposed with the helmet having been placed on the ground. Next to him is one of the geared fellows. They are holding his head back, facing it towards the ceiling, and looking closely at it as they shine a finger-sized torch into his left eye. The larger shot of his face, featuring both eyes, shows each of his pupils to have assumed a different size.

ENGLISH-ACCENTED GEARED MAN: We’ve got flawed dilation and Adie syndrome. This may be less a concussion and more brain damage.

The masked man, his accent heavily suggestive of Scottish origin, does not look up from his examination as he says this.

In reply, another masked person sitting on the cargo’s floor looks up towards him.

CANADIAN-ACCENTED GEARED WOMAN: We should count ourselves lucky, that one was the most volatile of the bunch. According to ‘eyes over in the blue division, he’s put quarter their force in intensive care.

The camera pans to Zain’s side for a moment, the heavy chains binding his arms and torso being the shot’s focus.

The camera then flips to Scott, sat on the opposite bench. He, unlike Zain, has three long-nosed rifles pointed at him despite his unarmed state.

Sitting to Scott’s right is the geared man that had first spoken to him.

GEARED MAN: ‘Either of your friends here start really waking up, I’ll want you to talk them down from any violent action, alright? ‘May also threaten your body, for the chance it’ll do any good.

The man presses a freshly-drawn desert eagle to Scott’s hip.

SCOTT: Alright, alright.

GEARED MAN: Good. ‘Soon as we reach I’ll be placing a bag over your head.

Another geared individual pipes up, being one of the few on the floor.

CANADIAN-ACCENTED GEARED MAN: Gah, hoss, I’ve had it with this bogun-ass equipment! We’re being forced to operate like mobsters here! Hell, I’m feeling damn anxious with these kids, in this truck!

GEARED MAN: Can it, Thirteen!

The masked man to Scott’s side gives a frustrated sigh, and makes a swift finger motion towards Scott.

Before Scott can react, a single dart hits him in the neck following the muffled pop of one of the rifles firing. A moment later, he’s slumped forward, the man catching him and propping him back up with an arm.

Reaching down, the man pulls a burlap bag from underneath the bench, shucking it over Scott’s head.

GEARED MAN: Listen, our department’s put all their resources into surveillance and suppression. What’s important is that we were able to keep this from the public. You know as well as I do that all sites are facing budget cuts as operation Sun-up’s in prep. What we’re really lucky for, ‘Jan–

He looks towards the Canadian-Accented Geared Woman.

GEARED MAN: –is that we could afford to silence and M-nest all of not just the police, the news and the neighborhood, but animal control as well, especially when we’re using selectives.

The Canadian-Accented Geared Man sighs, hanging his head for a moment.

CANADIAN-ACCENTED GEARED MAN: Guess I jes’ don’t feel all too comfortable chasing kids with beefed-up hunting equipment.

Change to a view by the Canadian-Accented Geared Man’s head as he looks towards Jordan, sat on the floor opposite him with his body limp. On his head is a similar sack to Scott’s.

The man to Scott’s side gets up, moving to the opposite side of the cargo. Sliding open a small hatch on the wall, traces of sunlight make their way into the space as he looks into a tube connected to the lorry’s front. A seemingly normal man is at the wheel, lacking any sort of gear other than a delivery-man’s vest and hat.

GEARED MAN: (shouting down the tube) Seventeen!

The man looks back towards the opened tunnel for a moment, waving his hand at it lazily.

GEARED MAN: (still shouting) I wanna be at the intersection of Signet Drive and Finch Avenue West by twenty-one hundred hours in order to catch our pickup. From there it’ll be a straight fly back to La Cloche. I want this vehicle stashed in supplementary containment space E, near the E-A-L-C afterwards. Got it?

The man at the wheel nods, not looking back.

As the hatch slaps shut, depriving the cargo of sunlight, the scene changes.

There is a slow pan onto the small church, back in Athens. It is midday, and the streets are nearly empty.

In a cramped, pew-strewn room, a man in black robes is sat, his head hung and his hands clasped in prayer.

He is interrupted by two children trotting past the pews towards him (neither are Angosin).

YOUNG BOY: Hey, Father, have you seen ‘Shel?

YOUNG GIRL: We can’t find her anywhere.

The camera focuses in on a gold, cross-bearing necklace around the priest’s neck as he turns to face them, still sitting.

PRIEST: I’m, ah– assuming you mean Shelley.

Both the children nod.

PRIEST: She had to be– sent away, for she was very sick.

Both the children’s expressions fall grim. Seeing this, the priest takes both of them by the shoulders, and holds them close.

PRIEST: I’m sure she’ll be coming back to us soon, and in good health. By that time, you will be free to play outside all you want.

The priest releases them, and as they leave the shot we see Angosin enter the room.

Apparently not noticing him, the priest’s expression is grim as he looks towards the ground, muttering to himself.

PRIEST: As children your age should be.

Angosin nears the father’s side, sitting on a pew opposite him.

ANGOSIN: Leviticus 19:12 says you shouldn’t lie.

The priest has tears in his eyes, his voice cracking as he responds to Angosin without looking up.

PRIEST: It’s– Leviticus 19:11, actually.

Switching scenes to a time later: Angosin is in the church’s bedding room, where many bunks line the walls. He is next to his own bed as he looks out a stained window, a bible laying on its folded sheets. He is looking down onto a sunlit, nearly-empty street, where a scruffy-looking yet bulky man is harassing an old woman by the front door of her home.

The man is evidently yelling, jabbing a finger at her aggressively as he bears down on her.

The old woman recoils from him, and averting her gaze, digs through her purse to fish out a small brown envelope. 

The man takes it from her roughly, and we see him reflected in Angosin’s eyes as he trods away.

Angosin has a dead expression on his face by the time he turns from the window. He sits on the side of his bed, picking up the book that laid on it. Notable is a red-ribbon bookmark, placed in the tome just a few pages from its back.

As the book is lifted from the covers, we change scene to a quaint little cabin in the middle of a dense forest. Its walls are formed of log and its base of stone, lacking any windows but sporting a plank door with a stick-and feather reef hung on it.

In the bottom right of the screen, as the shot slowly zooms in on the house, text fades in reading “Ontario’s Boreal Forest”.

Moving to the abode’s interior, we see that the one-room home is lit by a blazing furnace centered on its back wall.

Silhouetted in its glow is the form of an old woman, recognizably of native descent, sitting in a rocking-chair. A closer look at her face reveals deeply engraved wrinkles, poorly hidden by her grayed hair. Her hazel eyes are fixed on a small wooden bead, apparently carved with the steel file in her other hand. As she picks a whole necklace of these beads from her lap, adding the newly completed one to it, she begins to speak aloud in a slow but strangely lively voice:

OOKOMISAN: Our little friend, the butterfly, has not returned. Perhaps they have been caught by the wind.

The camera pans as she says this to the room’s opposite corner, where the smaller form of a young, long-haired native girl is sat on the floor. She does not look up from the map, extended between two pages of the textbook in her lap, as she speaks:

WENJI: The butterfly is dead, just as the flies and bees are.

Ookomisan looks up from her beads, towards the girl. A type of restrained shock is evident in both the fast manner she raises her head and her expression.

WENJI: Father isn’t able to come home. 

There is a long pause. The entire time, Ookomisan has her mouth open as if to speak, but says nothing.

WENJI: I went with the birds to see him myself, and I saw three cruel boys hit him with a bunch of things, then put him in a box. That box was filled with the trapped lightning he taught me about.

The girl turns to face the old woman. Her eyes are strangely “small”, black rings obscuring the edges of her sclera, making them appear pronouncedly avian.

WENJI: That is why the butterfly, the bees and the flies aren’t coming back. That is why my father has not returned.

OOKOMISAN: Wenji, how–

WENJI: Then, the boys were put in a box of their own. Many men wearing metal drove them away in a truck carrying the box. I followed the truck as it brought the men and the boys to that awful, loud machine– it made it hard to fly and painful to hear– a helicopter, father told me.

The girl turns back down to the map, tracing a finger up to its top edge.

WENJI: They flew outside of this map; where they are is not on it. But I still followed them. They went in one straight line after they got in the machine, until they reached a large stone building, surrounded by metal wires.

We have a brief cut to a helicopter, driven by a fellow in similar gear to the people from before, approaching a range of snow-capped mountains. The angle from which we see them changes and we see, hidden between them, a large, concrete building among other structures. Put together, these structures essentially form a small industrial complex. Following the helicopter is a seagull.

The old woman, her face still betraying some shock at the girl’s words, looks back towards her lap.

WENJI: Then– one of the armored men poked a piece of metal out at me– a gun– and the bird probably died. I know where they are, now– and they took father. I will go there, and I will hurt the boys like they hurt my father, then save him.

We cut back to the scene of the building in the mountains for a moment. We see a great many seagulls approaching in the distance.

We see Wenji clench her hand into a fist. On the back of her thumb, we see a small bandage.

Ookomisan looks up, towards the house’s roof.

OOKOMISAN: (aside) Where are you, Biskawaagan? You cut our hands, giving me this strange spirit, and now your daughter as well? Then you leave, claiming you are searching for some power to help you save the world? Come care for your child.

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