MORPH
Excerpt
1.5-page scripted sequence from the story midpoint: Soren comes face-to-face with Morph for the first time.
©Alora Lynn Lafontaine
INT. SOREN AND ASH’S APARTMENT – BEDROOM – NIGHT
A hazy city glow from the window silhouettes Soren lying in bed. Soren tosses. Soren turns. Soren bolts upright and blearily checks their phone.
The air is dense and muted, yet charged. This is the hour before an earth-shattering thunderstorm as it slowly rolls overhead. Soren can’t shake the feeling that something is coming.
Soren reaches for a glass of water and jerks backwards.
Is the water an inky black or is that a trick of the light? Soren breathes deep and aims their phone screen at the glass to inspect it.
As they watch, drops of ink swirl and sink down from the water’s surface, but there are no droplets falling from above.
A nearly inaudible SCRATCHING SOUND catches Soren’s attention. It’s coming from the living room down the hall. Soren freezes, eyes wide.
Long beat. The scratching continues, magnified – sometimes creepingly slow, sometimes frenetic.
Soren snaps back, quietly reaches into the bedside table, and retrieves a heavy-duty UTILITY KNIFE.
Soren inches the blade out. It stops short. One segment is all that’s left.
Soren glares at the knife, betrayed.
SOREN
(mouthed)
Fuck.
INT. SOREN AND ASH’S APARTMENT – HALLWAY – NIGHT
Soren uses their phone’s selfie mode to look around the doorway down the hall.
Seeing nothing, they slink out, “blade” at the ready.
Soren has to pass the living room — and whatever is making the sound — to escape the apartment.
The scratching continues. Soren approaches, hugging the wall.
Soren reaches the cusp of the living room entryway and tries the phone trick again. There’s nothing there. The scratching stops.
Soren hesitates, then pokes their head around the corner.
INT. SOREN AND ASH’S APARTMENT – LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
The living room contains Soren’s makeshift work table. Art supplies and boxes of old artwork from the day before are strewn about the surface.
Ash’s insect collection is on display everywhere along with
Soren’s mostly sci-fi and Lovecraftian themed oddities.
Strange plants sit in experimental light boxes. A plasma lamp inset in a skull and colour changing LEDs cast a weird green-purple glow.
It’s never looked more like a mad scientist’s lab.
Soren’s POV: searching the room for any likely hiding places. The EERIE STRINGS MUSIC that’s been playing picks up, as if a horror movie monster will appear at any moment.
Nothing happens. Soren steps into the entryway.
The scratching returns, coming from the art table.
Soren’s POV: Lightning flashes outside. From behind a tiny cup of artist’s brushes steps MORPH.
BOOM!
Soren blinks.
The tiny doodle is alive! It’s adorable.
Morph raises its bitty arms in greeting.
Soren runs.