Euphoria: season 1

Prologue

RUE (V.O.): I was once happy. Content. Sloshing around in my own private, primordial pool. Then one day, for reasons beyond my control, I was repeatedly crushed, over and over, by the cruel cervix of my mother, Leslie.

we see and feel each contraction as it bears down on sweet baby rue. Each time she's squeezed, her body shudders as if shot with a taser gun. Over and over and over, until something gives way and...

This is a sordid journey, as Baby Rue makes her bone crushing descent through the dark labyrinth of her mother. Crunching, faint echoes, sloshing waters, suction, a faint scream from outside, bizarre radio waves a pin of light as we go rushing toward it, like a subway train out of hell.

RUE (V.O.): I put up a good fight, but I lost. For the first time, but not the last.

The growing sound of a rumbling, ground shaking wave as the light grows bigger, whiter, brighter we watch the plume of smoke, fire, and debris rain down the side of the building.

RUE (V.O.): I was born three days after 9/11.

baby rue , seconds old, her body covered in blood and birth slime, is lifted towards camera. Her lungs fill with air, and her eyes blink open. thru the foggy eyes of rue, a TV set, mounted on the wall: with George W. Bush, standing atop Ground Zero, bullhorn in hand.

GEORGE W. BUSH: I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.

As the rescue workers begin to chant:

RESCUE WORKERS: USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!

Baby Rue is transfixed by the speech and the patriotic chants. a beat. She begins to wail with terror.

Suddenly, a nipple is shoved in her mouth. She sucks. And in an instant her eyes roll back in a drug-like haze.

RUE (V.O.): My mother and father spent two days in the hospital, holding me under the soft glow of the television, watching those towers fall over, and over, and over again. Until the feelings of grief gave way to numbness.

The television then clicks off and fades to black then a slide show of different suburban houses begins to play

RUE (V.O.): And then, without warning, a middle class childhood in an American suburb.

a younger rue looks up at the lights above the dinner table counting the panels.

YOUNG RUE: 13, 14, 15, 16

LESLIE: what are you looking at rue?

YOUNG RUE: 17

LESLIE: rue look at me.

rue then looks at her mom for a split second then looks back up at the lights and starts counting again

YOUNG RUE: 1, 2, 3

LESLIE: what are you ding rue?

young rue then begins to cry and a look of confusion and worry begin to form on her parents face's. we then cut to a therapist's office talking to rue's parents with rue in the middle with a stuff animal in her arms and her mother looking a few months pregnant as rue listens to the conversation.

THERAPIST: I'd say she's suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder

RUE (V.O.) : I wasn't physically abused.

THERAPIST: Attention Deficit Disorder.

RUE (V.O.): Never had a shortage of clean water...

THERAPIST: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.