On Abbott Avenue

Part Two

EXT. HIGHWAY - MIDDAY

AERIAL SHOT: The Foresters' minivan drives down the highway with the sun directly above.

DAISY (V.O.)

And then there was the satisfaction that I would get from my fantasy coming true.

CUT TO:

INT. BACK SEAT - FORESTERS' MINIVAN - HIGHWAY - MIDDAY

Daisy sits in the back seat of the minivan with the side of her head resting against her window, watching the scenery beyond the glass.

DAISY (V.O.)

The fantasy of my family, friends, and teachers pretending to be sad and to care, when they never really cared while I was alive.

(A beat)

That was some cruel irony right there.

CUT TO:

EXT. AMUSEMENT PARK ENTRANCE - AFTERNOON

Roland, Kelly, Daisy, Alden, Bowie, and his friend Harris, who is very pale and rather skinny with curly orange hair, approach the line at the entrance to an old-timey amusement park. The peeling wooden sign reads "ENTERTAINING SINCE 1930!"

Amelia kisses Alden goodbye as he climbs back into his car. Dawn waves goodbye to her father.

DAISY

I can remember the speech my fucktard principal had given after our high school's twelfth suicide of the year. All he could do, of course, was praise himself, the teachers, and the other students when they were the ones responsible. They were all killers that flew under the radar. Day after day they tore down the moral being of everyone in their path. It was the nature of humans. It was in everyone's nature. We are all ruthless savages. I won't deny that I am as well. Humans have evolved far past what they were meant to. Maybe this war was the universe's way of saying 'enough is enough' and wiping the earth clean to start over. Perhaps we would get our well-deserved extinction just as the dinosaurs had so long ago...

CUT TO:

EXT. AMUSEMENT PARK - MIDDAY

The group walks past a dilapidated old roller coaster. It's rusted and clearly long out of business. It has become overgrown with moss and vegetation. Though it might take some time, the metal ride is decomposing and becoming one with the earth.

The entire park has a very eerie and abandoned feeling overall, which is only heightened by the fact that the country has become a wasteland itself.

DAISY (V.O.)

People like my principal would blame it on social media or on the war when really, each of these was just a fraction of the problem.

They walk on past the roller coaster. The mountains of West Virginia make up the skyline in the distance.

Old animatronics and broken-up sidewalks are the only intrusions in the overgrown grass.

DAISY (V.O.)

The world was a cruel place. Since the war, it's only gotten worse, and quite frankly, death is a hell of a lot easier than life.