The Shattered Prayer

plurk.com

With Nanowrimo coming up, I’ve been thinking a lot about writing. Thinking about it. Not actually doing it.

I’ve decided to start naming my characters after senders of spam email. I mean, the spam that fills up my email at a rate of 250 mails per day really needs to be put to some use.

I do find the names entertaining. I try to create characters based on the names alone. Who is Dane Cornelius? A blonde Adonis who models for the covers of Harlequin Romances novels. Now aging, he struggles to keep his physique by resorting to fad diets and sporadic but intense training. He struggles with a cocaine habit all the while pilfering money from his wealthy wife’s bank accounts. He’s hiding a torrid love affair with the beautiful Cassandra Courtney, a Harlequin Romance model turned porn star. She’s had her director, Cyril Gipson, secretly film her encounters with Dane. She and Cyril, who is also her lover, plan to blackmail Dane by threatening to release the film to Dane’s wife, Eden Abbot, an author of Harlequin Romances.

Eden, an aging dowager, is so lost in her fantasy romances that she remains unsuspecting of Dane’s philandering and cocaine habit. She imagines him to be a knight in shining armour from one of her lurid novels, and in her eyes is nothing less than perfect.

Eden’s agent, Dudley Patrice, is secretly in love with Eden. He longs to be the knight in shining armor for whom she pines, but with his diminutive and owlish appearance, he knows he can never live up to her fantasies. So when he is not negotiating for his clients, he spends his time playing World of Warcraft and surfing for porn. One day, on the Enema Sluts site, he sees a video of Cassandra Courtney. She seems familiar to him… where has he seen her before?

Dudley’s ex-wife, Elnora Napier, recently remarried to rich hotelier Ali Salinas, is sueing Dudley for full custody of their teen son Gibbie. Gibbie, traumatized by the divorce of his parents, runs away from home and seeks solace in the arms of school-friend Lucien Hargrove - a troubled teen given to wearing black, who keeps a gun in his school locker and draws pictures of his teachers bound, gagged and mutilated. One night, during an XTC-fueled romp in the hay, Gibbie allows Lucien to tie him up.

The next day, Lucien phones Hasty Pham - a drug dealer whom Lucien has been banging on the side - to help him dispose of the body. The two young men fill Gibbie’s pockets full of rocks and toss him into the river, then they go back to Hasty’s slovenly little apartment, where they perform an orgiastic Satanic ritual and imbibe draughts of wine mixed with one another’s blood and semen. When Satan arrives, he instructs them in the fine art of the suicide pact.

The following day, their bodies are discovered by the building’s super, Jerrod Gallaway, who photographs the lurid scene before phoning the police, and sells the photos to porn director Cyril Gipson, who is so inspired by the gruesome photos, he decides his next film will be snuff porn. Starring Cassandra Courtney.

Meanwhile, back at the farm - a literal farm located downriver - Gibbie’s  body washes ashore and is found by two fishermen, Levi Vaughn and Heinz Bombeck. Just as Heinz begins to dial 911, Gibbie begins to cough and sputter. He’s not dead after all! Levi and Heinz recognize Gibbie from the back of a milk carton, and realize the kid’s mother is the wife of rich hotelier Ali Salinas. Together these two oaves hatch a plot to hold Gibbie for ransom. But Levi’s daughter Gracie falls in love with Gibbie, and she helps him escape.

They flee to a hippie commune run by cult-leader Enid English, a woman who has taken the idea of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to extremes. Gibbie and Gracie are given shelter by the cultist, and lots of pamphlets. One night Gracie offers her virginity to Gibbie, but Gibbie spurns her gently, having fallen in love with handsome lettuce-farming pamphleteer, Jules Inarra. In a fit of rage, Gracie stabs Gibbie 36 times, but not very hard. Gracie is cast out by the cult, while Gibbie is nursed back to health by Jules. When Gibbie awakens, he is told, “You’re just in time” and is handed a cup of Kool-aid.

Thinking death looks pretty good after all he’s been through, he drinks the kool-aid, but it contains only a hallucinogen. He has a vision of the cult-leader, Enid English, but she looks a lot like a porn-star he once saw in some pictures he found on his father’s computer.

That’s where I’ve seen her before, thinks Dudley Patrice, she was kissing Dane Cornelius on the cover of a Harlequin Romance. Dudley felt a hint of satisfaction, knowing that Dane’s six-pack was airbrushed in on that particular cover. Still… that kiss did look genuinely passionate. Perhaps there was something between those two. If he could prove it, Eden Abbot could be his.

Dudley hires Kasey Grack- the private detective whom Elnora had previously hired to find Gibbie - to trail Dane. Dudley doesn’t think Kasey is a very good PI, since she never did find Gibbie, but she’s the best he can afford. He wonders where Gibbie is, then realizes its been kinda nice around here without all that loud music playing.

“I’ve finished my 28th novel”, Eden Abbot says to Dane, “lets have a second honeymoon”, and Dane reluctantly agrees to accompany her to the country, where he pretends to woo her beneath a silvery moon, in the shade of a blossoming magnolia.

“Has anyone ever told you, you look just like Cassandra Courtney?” Gibbie asks Enid English, “you know… the porn star?”

Hearing this, Jules becomes angry, thinking Gibbie is coming on to the venerate cult-leader.

But Enid English goes online, and finds the Enema Sluts website. At last she has found her long-lost twin sister, from whom she was separated at birth. It must be her, thinks Enid, she likes enemas too! Excited to have found her sister, she doesn’t hear the jealous Jules sneaking up behind her with a hoe.

Jules implores Gibbie to help him dispose of the body, and together they drag her to the river and throw her in. Deja vu, thinks Gibbie.

Gracie, having made her way to the city, asks Elnora Napier, “Is there still a reward for information leading to your son?” Gracie spends all of her reward money on nail-polish and donuts. Alone and destitute, she meets a man named Cyril Gipson, who asks her, “Have you ever considered doing films?”

Meanwhile back on the farm - a literal farm, where Dane and Eden are taking a second honeymoon - a body washes up on shore, to be found by Dane who is taking an early morning walk after a night of fake passion. He kneels beside the body and howls, “Cassandraaaaaaa…. Noooooooo!”, waking his wife who witnesses his grief over the dead porn star. Enraged, she shoots him, and rolls both the bodies into the river.

Dane Cornelius and Cassandra Courtney Dead in a Riverside Suicide Pact!, the headlines scream. And at the funeral, Dudley Patrice comforts the distraught widow, Eden Abbot.

And Elnora Napier finds her son in a hippie commune, locked in a carnal embrace with a handsome lettuce farmer. “This is going to kill your father”, she says, “lets go tell him.”

“The headlines say you’re dead”, Cyril says to a bound and gagged Cassandra Courtney, “so it really doesn’t matter if I do this”, and the film begins to roll.

————————-

So here’s my challenge to you. Make a plot outline from the names in your spam folder.

Buy me a beer!

If you enjoyed this article please with your favourite bookmarking tool, or donate to assist with site maintenence and to keep tarot readings free. Thanks!

Email this post to a friend

470 Views

Recently:

• Super-Sister
• Writing Weekend
• A Coda on CoDA
• Did Plurk Kill the Shattered Prayer?
• Happy Birthday Bea!
• Lois Lane — Unpleasantly Sexy
• Hysterical Blindness
• Welcome back Mojo and Richard.
• Raining. Pouring.
• Those custom Plurk profiles.