Freelans Filmz
Presents
Siftus, Doug Titchenal, and Coyote 3
in...
The Ministry of Dreams
Written, Produced, and Directed
by Allex Spires
Celestian closes his eyes.
Celestian's glasses fog up as he enters a building through a facility door. He takes them off and squints his hazel eyes as he opens his black and silver coat. He reaches into the breast pocket of his blue button-up and withdraws a static cloth. His blue sneakers squeak on the waxed faux marble Linoleum, and he kicks out the rumpled leg of his brown corduroys. He wipes the lenses of his glasses and puts them back on, and tucks the cloth back into his pocket. Celestian walks down the sterile hallway to a flat panel door. A plaque beside it reads, "MUGWUMP." A plaque on the door says, "No Access." He opens the door. Inside, he hangs his coat and grabs a lab coat from a hook.
"Hello?" He tugs the coat snug over his shoulders.
"Celestian! Come over here, quick! I need you!"
"Professor Parschizio?"
"Come over here, quick, I need you."
Celestian walks across the lab, past a Jacob's ladder, a laden jar, a cathode ray tube, and a plasma sphere, he sees the Professor, standing with Samina, by a far wall. Both wear lab coats. They stand beside the tesseract. The Professor holds a test tube.
Celestian asks, "What have you got?"
"Formulae I don't know. You're gonna have to come over here to where I am and have a look!"
Samina turns away from Parschizio and walks past Celestian. He smiles and nods but she neglects to acknowledge him as she makes her way out of the lab.
"Who was that?" Celestian points a thumb over his shoulder.
The Professor looks and shakes his head. "Doesn't matter." He waves Celestian hither.
Celestian takes a step, and halts. "This is just like that dream I had where I was falling."
The Professor turns to face him. He cocks his eyebrow. "But this is nothing like that."
"But there's something about it, so similar, it's haunting."
The Professor puts the test tube in a stand, and walks to the plasmasphere. He gestures for Celestian to join him. Celestian approaches and sets his hand on the plasmasphere. Professor Parschizio turns on the Jacob's ladder and the cathode ray tube. Its screen shows Celestian tumbling downward through a white lattice in a field of absolute black.
The Professor says, "This is nothing like that." He turns off the machines and gestures for Celestian to follow him. He points at the tesseract.
"Look at that," he says. "What is it?"
Celestian leans close to the tesseract. "It looks like a hole in the universe!"
"Yeah?" The Professor picks up a small cubic glass box with what looks like a rock inside. "Look at this. What is it?"
Celestian inches toward the box. "It looks like a rock."
The Professof nods. "It feels like a rock. But look." He dons a heavy-duty rubber glove, and, carefully, opens the box. He picks up an extractor tool from the lab counter and reaches it inside; and he breaks a small chunk from what looks like a rock, and closes the box.
He drops the little chunk of "rock" into a beaker, and it pulverizes. "Goes all to bits like a mud pie."
Celestian scowls. "Antimatter?"
"What else?" The Professor chuckles. He puts the beaker down on the counter and takes off his glove. He gestures toward the tesseract. "Where do you suppose it goes?"
Celestian shrugs. "Alternate plane of reality." He gazes down into the tesseract. It ripples. He nods and smiles. "No doubt."
Professor Parschizio whispers, "What if we fell in?"
"La Brea Tar Pits." Celestian shudders. "It's nobody's dream come true."
The Professor swats Celestian's shoulder, and says, "La Brea's least of all." He laughs.
Celestian scowls. "What is all this?"
"It's clearly a deep dark mystery." Parschizio points a glass rod into the tesseract.
"Yeah." Celestian leans toward the tesseract and faces the Professor. He says, "But, I mean, why'd you call me."
The Professor smiles and rolls his eyes. "Because it had to be you."
"Why?"
The Professor raises an index finger, and opens a cabinet. He removes from it a zipper sealed plastic bag of black rectangle. He opens it and pulls out the black rectangle. It is the black book. He shows the cover with the words "The Black Book" written across it in silver. Professor Parschizio says, "Because the black book says so." He hands it to Celestian.
Celestian flips it open, and screams.
END
This story was workshopped at www.zoetrope.com
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Rodin Playing in the mud puddlesby relationalmodels43 views
@japhetpr
There are three stories, all of them follow this same group of characters through these strange occurrences. I'll make a new one whenever the opportunity shows itself.
zerooskul 2 months ago
Nice job! Is this part of the The Real Rural World series? Or a different story?
japhetpr 2 months ago