He shudders slightly as he reaches up, adjusting his mask. “Night is a bit nippy without it.”
“Do you think you’re done sightseeing?” I ask, also reaching up to adjust my mask. It must be getting a bit late, James is right, the temperature has dropped a bit.
He lets out a long exhale. “I suppose so, I was really hoping we could think of a different way out of this story without having to murder anyone.”
“I know it’s drastic,” I say stepping toward him. “But if you think about it our situation is really quite drastic. We have one day left.” As I say it, I silently curse myself for not writing a longer span of time into this script. I was so busy trying to make it as emotionally devastating as possible that I failed to make the timeframe longer than two days.
But boy does a lot happen in those two days.
The first day we speedrun the Little Mermaid story and Hook and Moira fall in love (hence the need for romantic lanterns and a ball to make the romantic plotline more realistic); and on the second day… Neverland and death. Since the story was already a tragedy, the insta love was all right. Like Romeo and Juliet, at least that was my reasoning, but now I’m really wishing I made it at least a week long.
Drat my inability to think up filler scenes and the time constrictions that made it so I couldn’t write a script for a three-hour movie.
James still looks hesitant, so I decide to go for a decisive final blow. “Unless you’re keen to kill me tomorrow.”
He flinches. “Okay, fine. Let’s get to the ball and get this over with.” He holds up a single finger. “But if you think about it, we’re kind of acting like villains right now.”
“Better to be branded a villain than to share a villain’s fate,” I argue.
“But won’t acting the part of the villain be what seals our fate?”
“No, that would be the plot that does that.” And the crappy screenplay I wrote after I realized happy endings were a myth and life sucks… I press my lips together as a flood of guilt washes over me and I try to redirect that feeling toward anger at the plot for sticking me in this situation in the first place.
But all the while, a tiny voice niggles in the back of my head that neither Hook nor Moira deserved their fates either, and maybe I wouldn’t be this stressed if I had just written a happy ending in the first place.
