The Girl Who

Walked Home All

Alone in the Dark

 

 

 

 

©2009 The Angst Guy (theangstguy@yahoo.com)

Daria and associated characters are ©2009 MTV Networks

      

 

Feedback (good, bad, indifferent, just want to bother me, whatever) is appreciated. Please write to: theangstguy@yahoo.com

 

Synopsis: Jane Lane tells a slightly twisted bedtime story to the Gupty kids, in the manner of the “Legends of the Mall” tales.

 

Author’s Notes: This story was another PPMB “Iron Chef” entry, this time for a contest set up by MMan asking for a new “Legends of the Mall” tale, this time set in the 1970s. The original version of this tale called it “Sub-Urban Legend #1,” but I couldn’t think of any more to go with it, so . . . here you are!

 

Acknowledgements: Thanks to MMan for the contest! You da MMAN!

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

INT: Interior scene

EXT: Exterior scene

VO: Voice over

 

 

 

1. INT: ONE EVENING AFTER DARK, AT THE GUPTYS’ HOUSE

 

We find Daria Morgendorffer and Jane Lane again babysitting Tad and Tricia Gupty. It’s bedtime, and the two adorable children have been tucked into their precious beds, their cute faces and perky smiles visible in the semi-darkness of a Smiley Face nightlight.

 

TAD: A story! You promised a story!

 

TRICIA: Good sitters never break their promises!

 

DARIA: Good sitters know better than to take jobs at this house.

 

TAD: Good sitters have flying umbrellas and handbags that hold everything!

 

JANE: Those handbags can hold small children, too. Maybe we should test their load capacities.

 

TAD: Tell us a story that Mommy and Daddy wouldn’t tell us!

 

DARIA: I know a good one about President Clinton. Once upon a time in the White House, there was—

 

TRICIA: Oh, I already know that one!

 

TAD: They told us about it in school. Gross!

 

JANE: Okay, I’ll tell you a story that I heard from the sister of a fellow classmate of mine. It’s true, too.

 

DARIA: Quinn told you this?

 

JANE: No, Jodie’s little sister, Rachel. She knows some good stories. This one’s a little scary, though.

 

TAD: I’m not scared of stories!

 

TRICIA: Ha! Me, neither!

 

JANE: Good. This story is called, “The Girl Who Walked Home All Alone in the Dark.”

 

A moment of silence follows.

 

TRICIA: I’ve changed my mind. I’m really sleepy!

 

TAD: Me, too! I’m going to bed now!

 

JANE: [ignores children] Once upon a time, long ago in the nineteen-seventies, there lived a popular high-school girl who had a boyfriend.

 

Tricia pretends to be asleep and makes fake snoring sounds. Tad covers his head with pillow and shivers.

 

DARIA: [eyes children, to Jane] Okay, you can stop. The kids are ready to—

 

JANE: [ignores everyone] But this boyfriend was not a very smart boyfriend. . . .

 

 

 

2. STORY: INT: SOMETIME IN THE LATE 1970S, AT A HIGH-SCHOOL DISCO DANCE

 

We see a number of teenagers, dressed in clothing that comes right out of the movie Saturday Night Fever, dancing under a huge disco mirror ball in a high-school gymnasium. Prominent among the students is a couple that looks remarkably like Brittany Taylor and Kevin Thompson. Brittany is in a disco-style pantsuit with flared bellbottoms and a mood ring on each hand, and her gold hair is in a frosted Farrah Fawcett style. Kevin wears the white disco suit that you always think of when you think of Saturday Night Fever, plus black boots and far too many gold necklaces.

 

JANE: [VO] One night, they went to a disco dance at their high school. They boogied until it got dark, and then they decided it was time to go home. First, of course, the girl had to visit the girls’ room to freshen up, because she planned to kiss her boyfriend goodnight for an hour or two on the way home. Meanwhile, her boyfriend decided to talk to a friend of his on the football team.

 

As Jane speaks, we see Brittany head for the ladies’ room. Kevin walks over to another student who looks surprisingly like Mack McKenzie. Mack has a gigantic Afro, one gold neck chain, and a disco suit much like Kevin’s, except that Mack’s suit is purple with a white shirt and black boots.

 

KEVIN: Hey, bro! How’s it’s going?

 

MACK: I’m fine, and don’t call me “bro.”

 

KEVIN: Sure thing, bro! What’s happening with you tonight?

 

MACK: [groans] Oh, my girlfriend’s got to go home and write a paper on Georgia peanut farming and the Presidency, so I’m going home to watch Monday Night Football.

 

KEVIN: [startled] Whoa! I forgot all about that, bro! Hey, my parents are out of town. Come on over to my place and watch it on our set! We can listen to the Bee Gees on my new eight-track stereo!

 

MACK: [looks pained] The Bee Gees?

 

KEVIN: I got a new Charlie’s Angels poster, too!

 

MACK: [pained] You know, maybe I’d better just go home and—

 

KEVIN: And I found my dad’s entire collection of Penthouse magazines!

 

MACK: [after a moment of hesitation] Okay.

 

KEVIN: Cool, bro!

 

MACK: Don’t . . . oh, forget it. Let me talk to my girlfriend a moment, and let’s go.

 

As Jane speaks, Kevin and Mack leave the gymnasium together, heading out into the parking lot—just as Brittany comes out of the ladies’ room, looking around for Kevin.

 

JANE: [VO] When the girl came out to find her boyfriend, she saw no trace of him at all.

 

Brittany walks up to a female student who looks just like Jodie Landon, except with a gigantic Afro, a brown leather skirt, high black boots, and a black turtleneck. She wears huge gold hoop earrings and gold bracelets.

 

BRITTANY: Have you seen my boyfriend? He was supposed to drive me home so I could give him a goodnight kiss!

 

JODIE: He has to drive you home so you can kiss him?

 

BRITTANY: See, I had a really special goodnight kiss that I wanted to try out on—

 

JODIE: [holds up a hand] Stop! I have enough information now. I’m sorry, but your boyfriend just went off with my boyfriend to go watch Monday Night Football. Don’t you have another ride home?

 

BRITTANY: [getting steamed fast] Ooooo, so Howard Cosell can give him a better goodnight than I can, huh? Well, we’ll see about that! [stamps out of the gym]

 

JODIE: [calls after Brittany] Hey! Don’t you want me to drive you home? It’s the seventies, we can do that now!

 

JANE: [VO] But the girl was too angry to want to be around anyone else right then. She was determined to walk home by herself. But it was very dark out now, and the road that led to her home from the high school was unlit, and it passed through a deep, dark, haunted forest.

 

 

 

3. STORY: EXT: A SHORT WHILE LATER AT NIGHT, ALONG A ROAD IN A DEEP, DARK, HAUNTED FOREST

 

Brittany walks alone along a deserted two-lane road. She mumbles to herself as she goes, oblivious to her frightening surroundings. Strange shapes move through the trees on either side of the road, with red eyes appearing here and there to follow her progress.

 

BRITTANY: [angrily, to self] I even gave him one of my mood rings so we could kiss every time it turned green, but did he thank me? No! And I wore those pink hot pants for his birthday and I got him six glasses of Cola Blast, with two ice cubes each, but did he appreciate me for that? No! And when he had an owie after that game with Loserville, and I pretended I was a M.A.S.H. nurse to make it all better, did he—

 

Suddenly, a man wearing a white hockey mask and holding a butcher knife jumps out from behind a tree. As Michael Myers of Halloween strikes down at her with the knife, she snags his right arm with one hand, turns, and throws him flying over her head to land flat on his back with a loud WHUMP! He lies stretched out on the highway, with Brittany still gripping his right arm by the wrist.

 

MICHAEL MYERS: [in Jeffy’s voice] OOOOOWWW!!!!! Brittany, what did you do that for?

 

BRITTANY: [enraged] You big bully! You men are all alike!

 

She stamps down on Michael Myers’s chest, then kneels over him and twists his arm in a direction that nature did not intend it should go. The butcher knife flies out of Myers’s hand and bounces around on the road like the rubber knife it really is.

 

MICHAEL MYERS: [in Jeffy’s voice] AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!! Brittany! It’s me, Jeffy! AAAAAAA!!!! I’m in a costume! This is just a bedtime story! Don’t—AAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!

 

BRITTANY: [enraged] How dare you try to frighten a high-school cheerleader who’s been stood up on a date!

 

MICHAEL MYERS: [in Jeffy’s voice] Help! Joey! Jamie! Tell Quinn I love her! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!

 

At this point, two more figures rush out of the bushes by the roadside. One is Freddy from Nightmare on Elm Street. The other is Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Both appear stunned at this turn of events.

 

FREDDY: [actually Joey in costume] Brittany! Stop! That’s not in the script!

 

Brittany, crouched over the much-abused Michael Myers, turns in Freddy’s direction and bares her teeth, jaw down, eyes staring and wide. She hisses like a feral jaguar.

 

LEATHERFACE: [actually Jamie in costume, drops his chainsaw] Oh, shi—

 

Freddy and Leatherface turn and flee in panic. Brittany leaps from the prone Myers, does a handspring, bounds on her feet into the air and crosses thirty feet of space to kick both Freddy and Leatherface in the back and knock them sprawling, with her on top of them.

 

FREDDY: [prone] Help! Police!

 

LEATHERFACE: [prone] Quinn!

 

FREDDY: [prone] Save me, Quinn, not him!

 

LEATHERFACE: [prone] No, me!

 

BRITTANY: [hissing in fury] Just wait till I get that scumbag boyfriend of mine! I’m going to—

 

FREDDY AND LEATHERFACE: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!

 

We mercifully cut away to see yet another monster, the Wolfman, jump out from behind a distant telephone pole and run away at full speed.

 

WOLFMAN: [Upchuck in costume, panicked] Feisty psycho girlfriend! Feisty psycho girlfriend!

 

JANE: [VO] As she walked through that deep, dark, haunted forest, she had only one ambition, one goal that burned in her fevered brain.

 

BRITTANY: [kicking Frankenstein’s Monster in the head repeatedly while talking] Ooooo, when I find that boyfriend of mine, I’m going to make him sorry that he wished he was ever born!

 

FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER: [actually Mr. DeMartino, trying to fend off Brittany without success] Ow! Ow! Not the NOSE! Ow! [falls into a bush out of sight, VO] Ow! Damn briars. But it could be WORSE. At least I’m not KEVIN. Heh heh heh heh heh. . . .

 

 

 

4. STORY: INT: A SHORT WHILE LATER, IN A 1970S LIVING ROOM

 

We are in a 1970s-style living room with orange and brown furniture with silver trim. A color TV on a bookshelf shows ABC’s Monday Night Football, while an eight-track stereo system plays various Bee Gees songs. Kevin and Mack sit on a couch, looking through a huge pile of Penthouse magazines, eating popcorn and drinking Cola Blast.

 

HOWARD COSELL: [on TV] We’re back, and this is Howard Cosell. The two teams playing before us tonight are a disgrace to the name of football. How anyone dared let these absolutely abominable players into this stadium under the pretense of participating in an allegedly serious sports event is an incomprehensible mystery that challenges the very foundations of logic and reason. I ask you, the home audience, have you ever seen anything that defies the imagination as stupendously as the pathetic, unmitigated disaster that we are witnessing before us here tonight?

 

KEVIN: [holding up a magazine centerfold to Mack] She defies the imagination, doncha think?

 

MACK: [glances at picture, shakes head] I don’t know where they find the women to do this.

 

KEVIN: Not our high school. [finds a picture that looks remarkably—no, perfectly—like Brittany] Hey! She looks kinda familiar! [frowns] I know I’ve seen her somewhere before!

 

MACK: [not looking at picture, flips through his own magazine] Yeah, sure, right.

 

DIFFERENT ANNOUNCER: [on TV] We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin! We take you live to Long Dark Road, where our television action team is standing by!

 

Both Kevin and Mack look up at the TV with interest. A female news reporter (who looks amazingly like Ms. Barch, the Lawndale science teacher) is on the screen in floodlights, with flashing police lights behind her in the darkness.

 

REPORTER: [on TV] I’m here on Long Dark Road, where police have set up a roadblock to stop a crazed monster from reaching the city limits! Wait—

 

Ms. Barch turns and looks in the darkness down the road. A nearby row of high-tension power-line towers suddenly explodes and falls over. Police shout at each other, and gunshots can be heard.

 

VARIOUS POLICE: [on TV] Pull back! Pull back! She’s coming through the roadblock! Get everyone out of here! Nothing can stop her!

 

REPORTER: [on TV, smirking] It’s a she, eh? Sounds like a cheerleader who’s been stood up on a date! Boy, I know how that feels! Men! They’re all alike! You think they’ll remember your name in the morning, but nooo—

 

VARIOUS POLICE: [on TV] Here she comes! Run for it! Evacuate this area! Abandon your cars! Call the mayor! Get the governor! Red alert!

 

The camera suddenly focuses in on a single female figure stomping along the road, silhouetted by police floodlights. The figure is clearly a furious Brittany.

 

REPORTER: [on TV, VO] Go get ‘em, honey! Go get ‘em! Yaaaa-hoooo!

 

The TV picture suddenly is filled with static. Both Kevin and Mack stare at the screen in shock.

 

MACK: Uh-oh.

 

KEVIN: Hey, bro! Did you see that?

 

MACK: Yeah, and stop calling me “bro.”

KEVIN: That was the same girl that’s in this month’s Penthouse! Look! [holds up magazine]

 

MACK: That was your girlfriend, man! Did you forget and leave her back at the school gymnasium?

 

KEVIN: What? Did I . . . [face changes, suddenly seems to remember something] . . . Oh. [weak laugh] Ha, ha! You know, bro, I think maybe I did.

 

MACK: [panicked] Man, I am hauling my ass out of here! [jumps up, runs for sliding glass door in living room, opens it, then runs out into the darkness—and screams, VO] AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! Not me! Not me! He’s in there! Please don’t—AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!

 

KEVIN: [startled, looks at open glass door] Hey, bro—you’re letting in a draft!

 

Kevin gets up to close the sliding glass door. As he does, he looks out into the backyard and sees someone approaching. He blinks, startled, and his mouth falls open.

 

KEVIN: [waves weakly] Uh . . . hey, babe! Did you forget to give me my goodnight kiss?

 

Kevin’s face is suddenly filled with unspeakable horror.

 

KEVIN: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA—

 

 

 

5. INT: AFTER THE STORY, BACK IN THE GUPTY CHILDREN’S BEDROOM

 

The children are not visible, buried deeply under their covers. Daria stares at Jane with one eyebrow raised.

 

JANE: And that’s the story of the girl who walked home all alone in the dark.

 

Both Gupty children reappear from under their covers. They are smiling and look excited.

 

TAD: That was cool!

 

TRICIA: Tell it to us again! But in slow motion!

 

DARIA: Slow motion?

 

TRICIA: When she tears her stupid boyfriend in half! Tell that part in slow motion!

 

JANE: Nah, it’s time for bed. Maybe another night.

 

TAD AND TRICIA: [disappointed] Awww!

 

DARIA: Go to sleep now, and the next time we come over, we’ll tell you about the teenage artist who starved to death because no one would hire her as a babysitter anymore, and she was forced to eat all her paint and canvases before she died.

 

TRICIA: Neat!

 

TAD: Excellent!

 

JANE: [to Daria, mild glare] Were you planning to tell that one, by any chance?

 

 

 

 

Original: 05/18/03; modified 09/04/06, 10/06/06, 07/11/09

 

FINIS