Young female brunette in her mid-to-late-teens, good-looking, dressed in all black – slim jeans, thin trench coat. It’s an early-to-mid spring morning, slightly cold, overcast. She wishes she had put on a warmer jacket. She’s new to this city, one can tell by her somewhat hesitant step, but her hesitancy is very subtle. She’s on her way to her new school. With her we walk past a museum with marble monuments, one of which is a great male statue, positioned near the entrance. A few people walk around and quietly talk to each other there. She walks past a beggar, a big man in an equally big and thick, khaki jacket. He’s wearing a hat that is typical of beggars to wear, but he doesn’t look as emaciated or dirty as one would expect a beggar to look like. He could pass as a normal citizen, except for his beggar cup that he is carrying with him. So she walks past him, trying to immediately forget him, but somehow a shadow seems to follow her, and it is him. One of her greatest fears might become true…! She quickens her step, hoping that would make him fall back, but he quickens his step too, adapting to her. She’s almost running now, and he corners her at one side of the big museum entrance, behind one of its enclosing walls. She meekly screams ”Help!“ but no one is reacting to her. It seems like suddenly, no one is here anymore. He laughs and then smiles leeringly, drawing closer to her, but somehow won’t do anything. She finally runs past him, walking across the front entrance of the museum again, and an old man with white hair and a weather-worn face puts himself in her way, smiling just as leeringly as the guy before. She is feeling an odd mixture of terror and annoyance. Thankfully he doesn’t follow or grab her, or at least doesn’t manage to do so, because she bolts past him. Several feet away from the museum she stops running, just walking hastily now. She regrets having put on so form-fitting clothing. She’s recently lost some weight and is in a good shape now, though not as good that she would have expected several men preying on her like that. She remembers she is in New York (this part of the city doesn’t truly look like New York but rather Berlin), and that beggars and the like are common here. She shouldn’t have been so naive. The streets are oddly empty except for a few cars passing by. Suddenly another guy is coming up beside her, wearing all black just like her, in a very similar style. He’s almost like the exact male version of her. Dark-brown hair, styled well. Handsome face, even better-looking than hers. He could be a model. He smiles, but it is a kind, innocuous smile. ”Can I help you?“ He asks. It becomes apparent that he has witnessed the previous encounters or at least its aftermath. Anna relaxes almost immediately. They start a casual conversation, small talk as you call it. Anna feels like he is her momentary protector. She also gets the impression he could be gay, so she represses her budding attraction towards him. At crossroads, he says he’s got to go somewhere else, and that it was nice talking to her, maybe they’ll meet again someday. The streets are rather crowded and busy now again, we are near several shops and a big shopping mall now. Anna wished he would have stayed at her side for longer, but she thanks him and they part ways.
A younger Anna, just a little child, looking like the young version of Ellen Page in Beyond Two Souls. She’s at nursing school. It’s a bleak nursing school, grey and dull and heavy. She’s fairly new and doesn’t have any close friends. Her parents died a few years ago during a time she was too young to remember anything, and her depression deep-down can be felt throughout the nursing school’s corridors, it paints the atmosphere. She doesn’t understand the feeling and doesn’t know yet what depression is or means, but she just experiences this feeling of emptiness, which she interprets as a severe kind of boredom that saps all the joy out of you. She idles through the corridors, not knowing what she is actually doing, until suddenly a trickster boy with light blonde hair sticks out his head through one of the open doorways from one of the classes, ”Hey Anna!“ does he exclaim in a dark, fake upbeat tone. Anna’s heart immediately sinks right through the ground in terrified surprise. He quickly and roughly grabs her and pulls her in, beating her up inside the empty room with us not being able to see, and only being able to hear some muffled, meek screams.
Anna is two years older now, and on a school trip with her classmates. They are going through an art museum that has oddly low ceilings and big thick walls like the nursing school did. The walls are all dull-white. The female teacher tries to keep the kids together, talks loudly and exacting to them, trying to keep an eye on Anna especially, but her and a couple of girls decide to split up from the group, so she loses the sight of them. Giggling, the girls run through dark corridors with no lights; this is an area they are not allowed to go to, and they know it, but they want to know why, they want to discover and unearth any secret there may be, this is a mini adventure for them. Anna giggles too, she’s feeling excited, and those girls are the closest to what she would call friends, though she’ll discover to be mistaken there. Feeling extra bold, she dashes forward and leaves the other girls behind, she wants to be the first who discovers the secrets, and she wants the girls to admire her for being so brave. She is about to enter a small room with a wall in the middle of it, the girls are close behind her now, murmuring to themselves. This is the forbidden room. Anna ignores the warnings of the others, who still laugh awkwardly, but stop the moment Anna enters the room. It is dead silent in there, except for Anna’s encouraging self-talking. The other girls hesitantly follow her. ”See, it isn’t so bad!“ Anna says, but then she stops in front of one of the walls in the North that had previously been hidden from our view by the wall in the middle. It is dark grey, a muddled, murky, mysterious grey. The colors seems to move and wabble around, becoming three-dimensional, it starts to bubble like a hot lake. One of the girls screams, and Anna is pulled into the wall by several little girl arms that look just like hers. Anna is wearing a dark mint dress with no sleeves, and in the wall appear other Annas with the same outfit, their naked arms grabbing and pulling on the real Anna. Anna is too horrified and confused to scream, she tries to pull herself out of the wall, but she is not strong enough. The other Annas pull her to the middle of the wall, now the real Anna starts screaming, but the sound is dull. None of the girls help her, they are too scared and do not care about Anna enough to risk their own lives. Anna is close to being devoured by the wall, when suddenly a young teenaged-boy enters the room through the door at the side, pats on the wall with a relaxed ”Shh shh shh, it’s okay, and what are you guys doing here anyway“, his chalk-covered hand leaving handprints on the wall, which immediately flattens, while the other Annas turn into two-dimensional, cartoon-like pictures of Anna’s face. The real Anna falls off the wall. The boy picks her up, she is visibly glad and happy to see him, he gives her a kiss. The girls start exclaiming ”Huh“s of surprise, for isn’t the boy much older than her, and since when does she have a boyfriend? But Anna is a young teenager herself now, 13 y. o., and the two have actually been dating for almost a year. The two stand in the nursery school again, though it is a High School now, with other teenagers like them running past them to class. The young guy, with his messy ash-brown hair, baggy clothing and relaxed smile, puts his arm around her shoulder, and they walk casually down the corridor.
Suddenly Anna wakes up with a hastened inhale, as if the hands in the wall were still trying to pull her down into the abyss. She’s 7 years-old, just as she was when that terrible incident happened. She feels disoriented, her sense of time is out of whack. She has found herself in a cozy, messy, medium-small room, decorated with dusty, luxurious drapes, or rather, exotic, oriental carpets in deep reds and purples, and other oriental or exotic paraphernalia. The room has 3 big windows on its sides, through which you can see outside the streets of a busy little market town, the shop in front sells marzipan, it looks like this is in London or somewhere else in England, but she must be in New York after all. ”How are you? You must be exhausted.“ A short, slightly chubby woman in dark red Indian-inspired clothing enters the room from the door in the east side. She’s likely half-Chinese, half-Indian. Her mocha colored skin is shiny and plump, and wrinkly at the same time. She’s likely in her early 50s, but her attitude and vibe is more reminiscent of someone in their late 30s. She’s got yet-black, shoulder-length Cleopatra-style hair, with bangs. She seems friendly and concerned for Anna’s wellbeing, who is still confused as to where she is, why she is there, and who that woman is. She introduces herself with an exotic name Anna finds difficult to understand and remember. ”It must have been awful“ she says, and Anna realizes that the woman is hinting at the wall incident, which must have been quite recent then. Anna regains her sense of time. This must be the day right after that incident. She can feel she has slept for quite a while, probably more than 8 hours, she feels a bit droggy still. The woman lays down a small gold tray with some oriental sweets besides Anna near the red-purple divan she has slept on. Anna gets the impression that this woman is like a friendly, good witch. Despite her motherly attitude, there is something mysterious and hidden about her. Also, Anna can tell that she tries to veil a certain nervousness with her motherly attitude. She talks in a quieter, secretive tone to Anna, as if it would be bad if someone could hear them, though she tries to play-it-off. ”There is someone I would like you to meet, you may remember him from another time.“ A young man walks in. His outfit is like a crossover between the Mad Hatter and the Voodoo-guy from Disney’s Kiss A Frog movie. It looks like he was a Mad Hatter who happens to be into voodoo or who is from an exotic place. The guy is fairly tall and lanky, but not too much, with broader shoulders. He’s wearing a hat that covers his black hair. He sits down besides Anna on the couch. ”Hey there!“ He’s in a good mood and generally a light-hearted individual, extroverted, Joker archetype. What ensues next is something Anna will never understand, and which she will think must have been a dream after all. The woman introduces Anna to the two other guys, which have suddenly showed up. They are like identical twins of the Mad Hatter, including the outfit, but their personalities are different. ”What do you represent?“ The woman asks loudly. One of the guys is more of the rowdy, rebellious kind, reminiscent of Rum Tum Tugger in Cats. The other guy is like a more neutral, friendly, extroverted version, the guy we have encountered in the beginning. The third guy is more introverted, shy, doesn’t talk as much, withdrawn, and probably 9w8-like. He says ”The Heart!“ The others snort or roll their eyes, but Anna likes him. All of those guys have got the face of Johnny Depp. The 9w8-like guy sits right besides her on the divan at a very close distance, they look into each other’s eyes, his are almost-black and intensified with guyliner and black face paint similar to Heath Ledger’s Joker, but way more subtle. Anna feels attracted to him like a young woman would, it’s almost the identical kind of attraction she had for the guy who protected her in the beginning of this story, and Anna realizes that this must indeed be the same guy. They have met again after all. And he recognizes Anna, too. There is a knowing smile in his eyes, and in the eyes of the two other guys, too. Eventually the guys jump up and leave the room as if they were needed somewhere else. ”You would probably like to meet your parents, right?“ The friendly witch says to Anna, whose ears perk up at those words in a heartbeat. Of course would she like to see her parents! The witch says something implying that it won’t be easy to meet them. Anna is excited. An exotic beauty enters the room. Brunette, late twenties to early thirties, luscious long hair in big curls, red lips, in a slinky but tasteful red dress, with a purple-grey feather boa around her shoulders. Anna is confused. That’s supposed to be her mother? That can’t be her! She knows her mother looks quite different. The woman leaves the room again. Without too many other words, the witch shortly follows her. Anna is alone again. Minutes pass, then what feels like hours. Somehow Anna feels like the witch must have died, there is suddenly an odd feeling of emptiness in the room, and Anna knows that the witch will never return again. Perhaps she has died trying to bring her parents back…
Anna is a young woman, in her early to mid twenties, dressed similarly as she was in the beginning of the story. It’s in the late afternoon, it has already become rather dark. She is walking through a neighborhood in the city with two other women, one of which is her foster-parent, the woman she was thinking of when she compared the looks of her with the beauty. Her foster-parent looks like a younger and thinner version of Angela Merkel, not a beauty at all. It becomes apparent that the woman earlier might have been Anna’s real mother, or like an idealized version of her; Anna wouldn’t know, she cannot remember what her parents looked like before they died (Were they killed? Who knows!). The other woman is a friend of the foster-parent. The two middle-aged women talk about the engagement and upcoming wedding of one of their friends. Anna doesn’t really listen, she’s lost in her thoughts. The three women are on their way to the bride’s bachelor party. The party starts out very low-key with teas and snacks in the kitchen, but then escalates to a merry, super-excited party with half-naked people dancing and walking around. It’s as if Anna was in the museum again, just that this time the museum was not silent but flooded with dance music, featured bright-white walls, and was crowded with adults. Anna is single, and her foster-parent nudges her in the middle of the party, asking her whether one of the guys might be of interest to her. Anna hesitates, she doesn’t think so. She happens to walk to a corner where one muscular guy lies naked and drunk on the floor, doggedly looking up to her under heavy eyelids, he is entirely motionless and looks as if he was sleeping. He’s only wearing a green bow-tie, and objectively quite attractive. Anna is surprise-shocked, for a second staring at his bared crotch, and then leaving that place as soon as possible. No, she is not interested in any of those guys! There are way too much for her, way too irresponsible, crazy. She wants someone who has more depth to him and is not that superficial and concerned with partying and looking like a f*ckboy.
An overcast afternoon in Spring, after the bachelor party. A similar vibe as to the first scene of the story. Anna enters a café. It’s a bit old-fashioned. Dark-wood. Almost looks like a pub, but more sophisticated than that, and without the booze. Anna walks towards the last room, the one that is open towards the streets. Through the windows, you can see another busy market street reminiscent of some place in England, perhaps even Oxford. The room is dimly lit, only by the natural light coming through the windows. In the middle of it, at a table for two, sits a guy who is dressed in casual clothing – jeans, dark green plaid shirt. He’s writing on something by hand. Anna immediately knows this is the guy she is meant to meet and who she’s been looking for all her life. ”Hey“ she says, as she sits down in front of him. He looks up, pleasantly surprised. He looks like Ryan Gosling. He’s a bit nervous. Anna looks down on his writing. It seems to be like a mix of English with some other language. She can roughly tell what the words mean, because they are mostly English words, but with some random letters added in between. ”Where are you from?“ She asks, assuming he’s a foreigner. ”I’m from here.” He says. ”From here?” He seems confused by her question. ”From New York City." He says, simply. Now Anna is confused. ”Where are you really from?“ He specifies where exactly in NYC he is from and then just keeps writing. Anna looks down at it again. When he writes, his hand subtly trembles. It dawns on Anna that John is disabled to some extent, most likely has a learning disability. Another person could have been turned off by that, but Anna’s heart grows even fonder of him, and her romantic interest doesn’t fade at all. Some day later, on a date, he brings her to the hospital for disabled people he has grown up in when he was younger, introducing her to other patients. The two are emotionally very close already by that point, the tender feelings they have for each other can be seen on their faces when they look at each other. It is clear they’ll end up together, getting married. Anna has found her peace after all.
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