This Is My Suicide Letter, Part 6

EXT. IN MICAH’S CAR - DAY
The camera comes into the car from the back window He looks up to see a man staring in on him through his back window. The music starts here. Micah sits up and stretches and rubs his eyes, and straightens his clothes. He opens the door and falls out into the world. He gets up and the scene is in black and white, as he walks down the little park street to the main street. What he sees when he gets to the main street and the scene changes to color is a very busy street with a lot of commotion, of the people doing their daily business. Micah starts walking, the camera shows Cold walking right behind him. As he walks he sees all of the people going about their business with there own versions of Cold walking with them, effecting them, touching them. To the right he sees two cars in the road that had an accident. The two drivers are out of their cars arguing casually. One of the men had their own version of Cold standing behind him. He puts his hand on the driver and he is sent into rage and begins attacking the other driver. Micah looks to his right and just focuses on all of the people walking past him with all of the Colds following right behind. All doing different things. One woman is talking on the phone and crying, one man is sitting on the curb, homeless, playing guitar with his Cold sitting, facing him on the ground. Micah does not respond, he just looks back and expectantly sees Cold following him. He continues walking and sees a little boy riding his bike with a sad look on his face and his backpack strapped on. His Cold is riding on the pegs on the boys bike. They pass with no expression from Micah, Micah is a stone. Standing in the middle of the street is a drunk, homeless man staggering around in the middle of the street waiving a cane around shouting indecipherable words at no one. This man has several Colds standing with him silently. Micah passes closely by and as he does, the homeless drunk locks eyes with him. In a very faint, weary voice, the man whispers.
HOMELESS DRUNK
Help Me.
Micah passes by not sharing a moment with this man. Micah reaches his destination, and opens the door and walks in.
CUT TO:
INT. SCHOOL - DAY
Micah (age 7) walks through the double doors of the school building. He takes his time walking down the hallway, almost as if he dreads every step he is taking. He is wearing a red coat and a back pack tightly secured around his back. He wears a knitted stocking snow hat on his head and moon boots. The camera starts on him from close up and pans back until it is quite far away from him. Micah turns the corner of the hall way and the camera picks back up on him from the back, still far away, then zooms quickly on him as he walks through the door of the school office. The secretary looks at him with disgust and points at the chair in front of the desk. Micah waits a couple minutes, and during that time, he pulls out a pad of paper and a pen and begins writing. After a minute or two the camera shows the paper. Micah is taking the initiative and has begun his expected sentences. The paper reads. I will not throw snow. I will not cut in line. I will not say bad words. I will not slash tires. The principle walks into the room.
PRINCIPLE
Come on in Micah.
Micah walks with the principle through the doors that lead to his office.
PRINCIPLE
Come on in, sit down.
They both sit.
PRINCIPLE
This is the ninth time you have been late for school, Micah. Do you remember what I said we had to do if you were late again?
Micah speaks, but does not lift his head.
MICAH 7
Yes.
PRINCIPLE
I have to suspend you from the school for a week. I have told you that there is no excuse for being tardy. When you are late, you waste my time and your teachers time, and believe me, their time is far more valuable than that of a seven year old. Now I have to call your dad to pick you up. There is a very good reason that we have that little bell out there that rings when it’s time to start learning.
Micah shoots a slightly defiant look at the principle, yet he is still sad. He answers in a whisper.
MICAH 7
I don’t have a dad.
PRINCIPLE
Of course you have a dad, or you wouldn’t be here. You would do well young man to watch your mouth. I’ve been the principle here now for 20 years and I have seen kids like you, you think you know everything, you think that the adults...don’t understand your snide little remarks. But let me tell you something, we do, we all do. So in my presence you will watch that mouth of yours.
Micah looks down and puckers out his lips and stares down at them in defiance. The principle does not see because he is looking for Micah’s fathers work number in his file. He looks down and the camera goes with him to the page in front of him.He looks into the file for a moment then looks up at Micah who is sitting quietly staring at his boots. He then looks back down at the file and begins dialing.
PRINCIPLE
Ms. McBain, Ms. Maxine McBain?
MAXINE
Yeah. Hang on a second.
There is the sound of at least a thousand kids screaming in the background.
PRINCIPLE
Micah, can she come and pick you up?
MICAH 7
Nope.
PRINCIPLE
Why not?
MICAH 7
She runs a day care.
PRINCIPLE
Right.
The principle just hangs up the phone and sighs. He starts righting on a pink slip and hands it to Micah.
PRINCIPLE
Micah, you start walking home now. I will see you again, on time, in a week. You tell your mother to call me when you get home.
Micah gets up, and takes his time walking out of the office.
CUT TO:
EXT. STREET ON THE WAY HOME - DAY
Micah exits the building and starts walking to the right and stands in front of a window where he has friends looking outside at him. He smiles at the kids and turns around and gives them a full moon. He takes off.
CUT TO:
EXT. STREET ON THE WAY HOME - DAY
Micah is walking down the snow covered street with a pink slip in his hand. The streets are silent, it is the middle of the day and he has no intention of going home.
CUT TO:
EXT. SCHOOL PLAYGROUND - DAY
Micah (12) walks onto the school yard and in the distance he sees a crowd of kids yelling and screaming at the center of the pile. Micah speeds up his pace and looks closer into the pile until he can make out the figure lying bloody in the center. It is his brother Mathew. There is a kid standing over him violently taunting him holding a skateboard that he has obviously used to hit Mathew. Micah runs up and picks up an aluminum baseball bat off the ground, pushes through the pile and takes a swing at the bully. The bat is a direct hit to his head and his body crumbles to the ground, knocked out. The crowd just stands there silent and shocked as Micah helps his brother to his feet and begins walking off the playground home.
FADE OUT.
INT. MUSIC HALL - NIGHT
Micah and his band are on stage performing their set. The crowd is large and hyped up as the band plays. Micah glances into the crowd to see that pretty blonde from the grocery store again, he stares for a moment as she smiles at him, then glances away to something else. Micah is doing fine for now, he is excited and playing his heart out. He lifts his head to look into the audience, we do not get to see what he saw, but what he saw catches his eye, his gaze. The music plays on for a minute as he stares, he is becoming downcast. The music begins to blur as he has missed all of his queues. The rest of the band are looking at him in bewilderment, wondering what is going on. The music blurs more and more until it is undecipherable. Micah remains hypnotized. Micah’s face becomes pale, and sad. He drops the microphone and begins his walk off stage and out of the bar.
CUT TO:
EXT. CITY STREET - NIGHT
Micah throws the door open and walks out of the bar onto the dark streets. He is walking feverishly picking up pace quickly. The night is dark, the wind is blowing through him as he quickens his steps. His walk becomes a jog, then a run as the scene intensifies. Ellis is behind him but not chasing him.
ELLIS
Micah! Micah!
He walks back into the bar to play the rest of the set without Micah. Micah runs past some people on their way to the bar slamming into one of them as he passes. He keeps running until he reaches his back door, he opens the door and runs up the stairs leaving the door open. He runs up the stairs and through the hallway to the door of his flat. He opens the door, that is unlocked and runs to his bedroom.
DISSOLVE TO:
INT. MICAH’S BED ROOM - NIGHT
Micah is sitting on the bed that is surrounded by alcohol bottles and beer cans. Their are more paintings in the room to focus on. In the cage, the iguana is dead. He sits writing on a notebook, the final entry in his suicide journal. The camera focuses on the journal as he writes, he is writing over the entry before for a half a page to the clean paper, he is too drunk to see. He writes: “Cover me in ashes and abandon me in the cold, I’ll still be here I’ll still exist. This is it. This is my suicide letter.” Micah sets the pen and paper down on the bed and starts walking out of the flat, down the stairs, and out the door to the street.
FADE OUT.
INT. SCHOOL CHAPEL - DAY
The chapel is a quarter full of people. Micah is sitting next to Ellis in the middle of the row about halfway back from the alter. The students are in dress clothes and dresses with ties. They are listening as the preacher preaches.
CHAPEL PREACHER
When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. Jesus said, it is finished, the debt was paid, the war is over. What does that mean for us? It means that we have been offered eternal life, if we just accept it. Jesus did all of the work for us on that cross that Friday night. It means that He loved us so much that He gave us His life to save ours, a perfect life, full of laughter, full of love: He gave it for us, filthy beggars, full of hatred and stuck chained down in the dark. All we have to do is accept this gift, come to the alter and ask God into your life and to forgive you of your sins.
The church praise band begins playing softly.
CHAPEL PREACHER
Come. Come.
Most of the room begins getting up and walking down to the alter. The seats begin to thin out around Micah, but Micah isn’t moving and neither is Ellis. Ollie is going up. They sit sterile staring at all of the people, some crying walking and bowing down in front of the alter as the music plays on and on. After the alter rush has finished and the preacher is praying with the students, a teacher comes over to Micah and sits down next to him.
TEACHER
Micah, don’t you want to meet Jesus?
MICAH
No thanks.
TEACHER
I watch you everyday, come to school, act tough, get in trouble, and lead others into it. God wants you Micah. You can make a real difference for God if you would just let Him have control. You are a natural leader, so many people follow you. You have no idea the lives you could change if you would just let God have control. Do you even know what it means to let God have control of you.
MICAH
I have a pretty good idea.
TEACHER
How do you see it Micah? Do you even believe in God?
MICAH
Oh I believe in God. I see that everything that God has had control over in my life is crap. From my family to this school.
TEACHER
Micah, watch your mouth in the chapel. Could it be that everything you think God has done to you is your own fault, that maybe, just maybe you haven’t given God control?
MICAH
Sure, if being born into this world with no father, a poor mother, and no way to help the world pissing all over you is my fault.
TEACHER
I know you are suffering Micah. But there is no suffering that Jesus couldn’t heal. No holes He couldn’t fill. I can see an emptiness in you, I think you can feel it to, but it doesn’t have to be this way, you don’t have to feel this way. There is another way to live, to feel, to act that doesn’t require you feeling as though everyone is trying to take something out of you.
MICAH
What do you know about suffering? What do you know about my life or what it is to be me everyday, to walk in skin that isn’t your own, to think with a brain that has no direction, to make decisions based on things that you cannot see, but I do. Do you know what it means to be alone? I don’t think you do because you are never alone as long as you hold on the your belief that God actually cares about you, and in that I envy you, but it’s not the same for me. I don’t belong to anyone, not even myself, I am dust, I am forgotten, I am alone, and there is no faith that can heal that, no God that will feel that, No part of me that isn’t ugly, but that is not my fault.
Micah glances up to the alter as the students are crying as is Ollie and the preacher is laying his hands on the students and they are hugging each other and praying.
MICAH
I want nothing to do with that.
TEACHER
Do you know the consequences of your decision if it were to last until your death? Fire.
MICAH
Hell.
TEACHER
You don’t care? I am speaking to you about eternity, which is a lot longer than what you have seen here. You can sit here and tell me you don’t care, I don’t believe that.
MICAH
Just another day. I was born into it. The absence of God. I am more comfortable without Him anyway. Look at what He has done, the murder, the blood, that isn’t heaven, or happiness, it’s foolish.
TEACHER
The pain?
MICAH
I am numb.
TEACHER
Looks like you have made up your mind then. After chapel, I want you to go to the principles office, we are going to have to suspend you for a couple of days for your language in the chapel and talk about whether or not your presence in this school is good for the school.
Micah nods and the teacher gets up and walks up to the alter to pray for some of the students.
CUT TO:
INT. ELLIS’S ROOM - NIGHT
The scene starts with Micah’s hand writing in his suicide letter and fades through to Ellis’ Room. Micah (19), Ellis, and Ollie are sitting on the floor in Ellis’s room covered in toilet paper, and paper towel. They are building rockets made out of household items. As Ellis and Ollie work silently on their rockets,
MICAH
What you see isn’t always what is there.
The camera flashes cold in the back of the room and he instantly vanishes without Ellis and Ollie knowing.
MICAH
Your never really alone, even if it feels that way. I remember when I was young, lying in bed wrapped up in a sleeping bag, making shapes and faces out of the sponge painted walls in front of me. I had drifted off to sleep while my mother and some friends were in the living room talking.
DISSOLVE TO:
INT. MICAH’S CHILDHOOD ROOM - NIGHT
Micah (age 5-7) is lying on the bed facing the wall wearing Superman pajamas, tracing out the faces on the sponge paint with his finger, slowly running his finger up and down, feeling the texture of the paint. His eyes begin to feel heavy as they slowly close. As he falls asleep a man comes walking down the hallway toward the bathroom. As he passes he looks into Micah’s bedroom, looks back at the living room, where they are still talking, and walks into Micah’s room toward him. His face flashes from Cold’s to his own several times like lightning. He walks over to Micah’s bed and zips up the sleeping bag over Micah’s head and holds him down with his hand over where Micah’s mouth would be if he could see his mouth. Micah struggles and moans as he is trying to get free. The man’s face changes again over and over as Micah struggles. The camera shows Micah struggling in hysterics inside the sleeping bag, trying to get free. The tension breaks from Micah and the bag becomes loose. Micah puts his hand through a small hole in the zipper and tears his way free. He throws the bag off of him and looks around in the dark, trying to focus his eyes to see Cold standing at the door for a moment, then he walks out. Micah jumps down from his bunk bed and hurries to the wall across the room and turns the night light on. He looks around the room and sees nothing, so he peaks his head around the corner, to the right is the living room with the lights on and commotion from dialogue coming from it, and to the left is a dark hallway with Cold standing there, then vanishes. Micah turns left toward the dark hallway to the back door, that is standing wide open.
CUT TO:
EXT. MICAH’S BACK YARD - NIGHT
Micah walks through the door to the back yard and walks across the grass to the gate where a cloud of yellow vapor rises to his face, Micah steps back from the stench, then moves forward out the front gate to the sidewalk. He hears a voice but sees no one to his right.
COLD
You can fly Micah. Everything you have ever known is wrong.
CUT TO:
EXT. OVERPASS BRIDGE - NIGHT
Micah is standing on the overpass hanging over the freeway.
COLD
Fly away Micah.
Micah grabs on to the railing and looks over, he sees cars flying around under him in the night. He looks reserved about jumping.
COLD
You will be alright. You aren’t like other kids, you are special. You can fly. You really can. Trust me.
Micah climbs up onto the railing of the over pass and looks down again. He steps back down to the ground and is shaking with fear.
MICAH 7
I can’t.
COLD
Oh, but you can. Your just like me.
Micah stands there shaking, and begins to cry, then weep and crumbles to the ground in fear. He looks up after a moment and sees Cold in a Superman suit walking backwards away from him chuckling.
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