Chimera Narcotic Script Written by Taliah Lamont (1st Draft)
Scene 1:
Int. Bedroom: Night
A mobile phone buzzes loudly on the bed side table (From ‘Jay (Work)’), we see Noelles hand pick it up. Shots of newspapers and pictures are shown over the next dialogue explaining the background of Noelle. At a young age she conducted research on dreams which lead to the invention of dream pills licenced as ‘Chimera’; a complex mix of chemicals which summon certain dreams and scenarios as the dreamer sleeps.
Noelle (irritated, tired): Hello?
Jay (awkward, afraid): Noelle? We have a problem down here.
Noelle: Is it a problem you can tell me about over the phone?
Jay: Uuuuh not really, we kind of um need you down here to see it…
Noelle groans
Noelle: Alright, alright… I’ll be down in
She checks her phone
Noelle: 20 Minutes.
Jay: Uhh, see you then.
Noelle: Yeah.
Cut to Noelle closing the phone, she drops it beside her on the bed and gets up, clearly she has not been woken up at a good time. She turns her bedroom light on.
She opens the door to the hall, we cut to her tying her hair up in the bathroom, fully dressed, then making coffee in the kitchen which she pours into a travel mug, and then we cut to her getting in her car (Ext. Drive Way: Very Early Morning), complete with travel mug full of coffee. She takes a sip, puts it in the cup holder and starts the car. It pulls out into the quiet road.
End Scene
Scene 2:
Ext. Car Park: Early Morning
We cut to it pulling into a similarly quiet car park, only a few other cars are seen. We hear the car door open and shut.
Int. Laboratory: Morning
Cut to her walking into the lab, now donning a lab coat, where we see other scientists on computers tapping away, they seem tired. She walks up to a young male scientist (Jay) with various graphs on his screen, and she places her coffee on the desk.
Noelle (Slightly Irritated) : So come on, what’s happened?
Jay (Anxious) :Um, well, we received a couple blood and, uh, urine tests from a deceased patient a couple cities away, and, well, she’s overdosed, umm chocked on her own vomit to be uh specific, but we think it might have been because of an old version of Chimera maybe?
Noelle: And?
Jay: Uhh yeah, I know, I didn’t think it was worth our time either—
Noelle: It isn’t. She overdosed. Our drug couldn’t have been the only pill in her.
Jay: That’s the thing though! According to the morticians report, Chimera WAS the only thing that could have killed her. Nothing else was present in her system at time of death.
Noelle: Nothing?
Jay shakes his head
Noelle: Had she had something to drink, or eat?
Jay: The um only other contents of what was once uh in her stomach was crackers, and her, uh, blood and urine indicates around a gram of Chimera was ingested.
Noelle (shocked): A gram?? That’s 2 pills!
Jay: Yeah, and you’re only meant to have one…
Noelle (Insulted): I know that, Jay! But two isn’t fatal!
Jay: Even in the older pills?
Noelle (Angry): Especially in the older ones! They used natural chemicals, they’re near impossible to overdose on!
Noelle pushes Jay out of his chair and clicks through the test results. Jay is very quiet and closed off and moves away quickly, still feeling the anger off Noelle’s shouting.
Noelle: The morticians must have fucked this up…were any biochemical tests conducted on the brain?
Jay: Only the basics.
We hear a computer error sound and she visibly holds back anger.
Noelle: Right. I want her body here ASAP, and I want you to find every chemical present in her brain. I’m having a nap.
She has a long drink before sighing and rubbing her forehead, this shit has gotten her stressed, and it’s too early in the fucking morning to do anything about it. She takes a deep breath; her anger is getting way too on top of her again. She gets up off her seat and grabs her drink. She turns to Jay, who is busy tapping a number into a phone.
Noelle: And I’m sorry I shouted at you Jay, I forgot you haven’t been here long; But this was a good catch, I am glad you called me in, I’m just also very tired.
Jay smiles slightly and relaxes. She sits down on a spare chair, resting her legs on another sat beside it and her head lulls back; she falls asleep with her coffee in her hand.
End Scene
Scene 3:
Noelle wakes up suddenly, still in the same position as when she went to sleep but now encased in a blanket. Her coffee is on the side and now stone cold.
Noelle (Startled): SHIT
Breathing heavily, she turns round to see Jay with a pile of papers, and files stacked beside him.
Noelle: How long have I been asleep?
Jay: A few hours now… and the tests are done too, we tried to wake you but you wouldn’t budge…sorry.
Noelle: There’s, uh, no need to apologise, Jay. Don’t worry.
Although she’s still pretty out of it, Noelle gets up and rolls her shoulders as she walks over to the reports and starts flicking through them, focusing on certain pages as she goes.
Noelle: Jay, are you certain these are the results?
Jay: …Yes.
Noelle: Then there’s nothing here…No allergic reactions, no toxins, only 2 pills of Chimera, and a trace amount of one stray chemical, yet she choked on her own vomit and replicated an overdose pretty much perfectly… Jay, for now I want you to keep a tab on the unidentified chemical, otherwise there’s nothing else we can do, especially with the mutual dream pill nearly finalised.
Jay: What should I do with the body and test results?
Noelle: We have all we need, send the body back to the hospital, and keep the tests, I want to look into this later.
Noelle walks into her office and she drops the files onto her desk, dissolve into the same shot but with many more files added onto the pile, 2 months have passed.
Scene 4:
Int. Lab: Morning
An exasperated and very upset Noelle walks into the lab and slams the door as Jay taps quietly at his computer.
Jay: ...Did the pitch fall flat?
Noelle: No, It went perfectly; it went exactly as I planned but the Board kept kicking me out on my ass!
Jay: Why? What have they said?
Noelle: They said even if it wasn’t commercially available and restricted to practicing professionals only; a pill that allows people to share the same dream is too big a risk for ‘today’s society’, and the dangers of the someone misusing it is too great.
Noelle slams the desk and gets up; she takes out her ponytail and walks into her office to change. Cut to Jay working as Noelle changes.
Noelle: Do they even slightly understand what this could do for psychoanalysis? The ability to literally get into patients dreams could revolutionise psychology! We could uproot the deepest issues in a patient and help them live a regular fucking life again! Do they understand how sorely they need this?!
Cut to Noelle pulling her hair out of a t-shirt and throwing on a hoodie.
Jay: So what’s the plan for it?
Noelle: Ughhh I’m putting it on hiatus until I have the energy to finish it.
Noelle slides the O.D file from underneath the stack of paperwork, and walks back into the main lab towards Jay.
Noelle: For now, I want that update on the stray chemical, what have you found?
Noelle leans over Jays computer with the files open on the desk.
Jay: Structurally, it’s incredibly simple, but after running through the autopsy database, it can be linked to over 120 fatal O.Ds in the past 2 months…And that’s only in hospitals both in this area, and in cases where in depth testing has been conducted, I’m having the search expand into the rest of the country but the deaths could be hitting the 500-600 mark right now…
Noelle: And the hospitals haven’t caught on??
Jay: Well they have, but the chemical’s in such a small amount compared to Chimera that it can’t legally be classed as a cause of death.
Noelle: That’s ridiculous. Have you at least found out how it kills?
Jay shifts in his seat
Jay: …I can’t run a simulation on an unknown chemical, and I do have the base of an experiment planned out but I don’t have any clearance to synthesize new materials and you’ve been so busy and you wanted me to figure it out and I didn’t want to let anyone down and-
As Jay babbles seemingly uncontrollably, Noelle places both hands on his shoulders, and he quietens immediately and quickly inhales as if to brace himself from being hit.
Noelle: Jay, this is fine.
Jay breathes out in one long heaving breath.
Noelle: If you send me the case, I can take over from here, you can get back to work, and we can still get this figured out. The only thing I’ll need you to do is email the biggest hospitals of each city and ask them to keep an eye out for this chimera chemical combo, okay? And send all the findings to me, Okay?
Noelle smiles and picks up the file
End Scene
Scene 5:
Cut to a montage of Noelle working on the experiment.
She plans, she leafs through paper work, and she goes through autopsies and highlights places of death and addresses and adds these to a map. We see her using tons of scientist equipment to create and inject the chemical into mice. We see variations on the tests where the chemical alone makes mice more on edge and focused, but nothing more. Then we see her combine it with chimera and feed it/inject it into the mice. She scans and tracks their brains during this. We see a large percentage of them having intense crazy dreams, and a smaller percentage of them suffering parasomnia induced deaths. But throughout these we see her receiving more autopsies and recording their location on the map each time. This forms a clear pattern with a centre circle being blatantly clear of deaths. This is determined to be the origin of the drug and Noelle gets up from her desk. This is where the montage ends.
End Scene
Scene 6:
Int. Lab: Late Afternoon
Noelle walks back into the lab brandishing a report in her hand and pulls a chair up beside Jay.
Noelle (Relieved): Jay, we’re not to blame!
Jay: What??
Noelle: The drug has definitely got Chimera in it, but the chemical is from a variation on an ADD drug. It increases brain activity, which means our induced dreams are now way more intense; but this also intensifies parasomnias like night terrors, and sleep paralysis. Any sleep abnormality has the ability to kill.
Jay: So what’s the plan? Do we start a cure?
Noelle: It kills victims too fast for a cure to be synthesized… We’d have to stop the drug itself.
They share a look.
Jay: I’ll tell the police.
Noelle gets up, shoves the report in her bag and pulls on her jacket before exiting the lab.
Noelle: Thank you, I’ll give them the tests. I won’t be long.
End Scene
Scene 7:
Int. Police Station: Evening/Night
Noelle enters with the report in hand
Noelle: Hello? Its Noelle Sarr, my assistant Jay phoned earlier?
Chief: Hello Miss Sarr, if you don’t mind following me through here…
An officer grabs her arm and pushes her through the corridors as another grabs the test file from her hand. She’s pushed inside a small interrogation room and shown a seat behind a desk, she sits down and a shredder is heard in the background.
Noelle(Confused): Do you mind? Whats going on?!
The Chief looks beyond stressed as begins writing a note while talking to Noelle.
Chief(Slightly Panicked): Now, Miss Sarr, I’m sorry you think that your drug has led to death, it’s such an awful feeling to rest other people’s deaths on your shoulders, but that’s all it is, you’ve clearly just gotten a little carried away—
Noelle(Confused/Angry): Um- NO. If you didn’t shred the report I—
Chief(Insistent/panicked): You’ve just let your imagination get ahead of you, there’s no drug ring, or ‘HQ’, just unfortunate O.D cases. I’m very sorry but I must INSIST that you go home and just understand this is simply a case of coincidence and should NOT be dwelled on. Try getting out of your house for a few days, clear your head, I hope you have a good night and travel safe.
The Chief looks back up, folds the note, and pushes it towards her. The outside of it reads “POCKET NOW, READ OUTSIDE.” Noelle shoves it in her pocket and the Chief pushes her back through the corridors and outside.
Chief: Goodnight Miss Sarr!
Ext. Police Station: Night
She opens the note and although it’s sloppily written, it reads:
“His roots are everywhere. Authority is corrupt. My men work for him. Jay shouldn’t have called, they will stake out your house, your work, your movements as well as Jays. Keep curtains drawn, stay at work, and keep security on 24/7. You’re right but we can’t end this. Please help, people will die.
WAREHOUSE 12, CHURCH Ln.
HE GOES BY AXEL. B”
Ext. Police Station: Night
Noelle crumples the note up and puts it in her pocket. She gets back in her car and pulls out her phone.
End Scene
Scene 8:
Int. Lab: Night
Cut to Jay reading a text at work which says “Stay put. I’ll give you a lift from work, see you in an hour and stay safeJ”. Cut to a confused Jay.
Ext. Noelles House: Night
Cut back to Noelle, unlocking the door to her house.
Int. Noelles House: Night
She tips out her pockets when she’s inside, leaving the note abandoned on a table. Cut to her packing a bag full of clothes, shoes, and miscellaneous items (like her travel mug, weirdly sentimental stuff). Cut to her locking the door and then throwing her bag into her passenger side car seat but as she’s about to start the car she looks around outside, paranoid that she really is being watched. But she shakes this paranoia off and sets off.
End Scene
Scene 9:
Int. Lab: Night
Noelle walks calmly into the lab but we pan the shot down as she looks up to reveal Jays destroyed workspace.
Noelle(Angry): Crap!
Noelle rushes to Jay’s workspace and inspects it. On the desk she finds her note folded neatly amongst the wreck.
Noelle(Frustrated/Afraid): God dammit…
Noelle rubs her forehead, then stands up. She notices the blinds are open. In panic she shuts them immediately, then shuts the lab door and checks every room, lab and office adjacent to the main lab. After being confident she’s safe and alone, she picks the note back up and unfolds it. In bright red marker someone’s appeared to write over it “YOU KNOW WHERE HE IS, I’M WAITING.” The address the chief wrote down has also been circled.
Int. Noelle’s Office: Night
When Noelle goes back to check the map she worked on, she sees in the centre of the blank space, a red X.
It’s clear that Noelle is alone on this and vastly out of her depth. Although she is definitely smart, she is no way built to fight like this, she has no weapons at her disposal, and after realising this she collapses to the ground in her office with her head in her hands.
Noelle(Angry/Upset): GOD FU-
Noelle kicks her desk in rage and causes it to tilt back, and as it hits the ground, everything on the desk falls to floor and files cascade everywhere. As she finds herself covered in papers, she angrily throws them off herself, and gets on her knees to grab the papers and push them back into their folders. While tidying, Noelle reads the folder she about to shove them into. “Mutual Dreams [Rejected]”.
Show another small montage of Noelle getting the liquid form of Mutual Dream Chimera (MDC) and testing it amongst mice again with various aerosol dispersion systems, and then show her building larger versions of these systems and filling it with MDC and knockout gas (labelled as ‘MDC’ and ‘K.O’ respectively). Then she gets dressed into strong, dark clothes, attaches the devices to herself and gets in her car.
End Scene
Scene 9.5:
Noelle’s car pulls up in front of a broken down warehouse. As she pulls up her breaths gets heavier and at a stop, she begins to panic.
Noelle(Anxious): Okay Noelle this is it, you just gotta fucking go in there and get Jay back. Everythings gonna be fine, yes there is a chance of fucking death and you haven’t been in any kind of real fight, but this is the real shit so pull yourself together and woman up because you can do this.
Scene 10:
Ext: Warehouse- Night
Cut to Noelle standing outside the doors to the warehouse, everything is silent but the distant cries of Jay can be made out. She takes a heavy breath out and puts on her gas mask. She carefully slips the catch off two of her aerosol tanks(Labelled K.O), and throws them into nearby windows. She stands waiting for a moment, hearing the commotion behind the doors, then opens both doors and proceeds to walk through.
Int. Warehouse – Night
Noelle walks through the mist, guards falling unconscious as they try to reach her. She walks past tables, and work stations filled with drug making equipment and boxes full of her pills.
Show a shot of her eyes through the mask getting angrier as she approaches a heavy door. She stops before two fallen guards at the door and picks up a gun from the hand of one, releases its clip, and uses the remaining shot to blow the lock at point blank, before kicking the door open.She walks in and is greeted by Axel holding a length of rope which connects to Jay’s bound hands. Jay is also gagged at this point.
Axel: 40 of my best men, and one heavy locked door, I’m impressed Madam Sarr I thought you’d take longer.
Noelle: I prefer Noelle, I take it you’re Axel.
Axel holds up the hand holding the rope.
Axel (obnoxious): And this is Jay, he’s a nice pet, noisy though.
Noelle stays silent, but very angry.
Axel: And I’ll assume you’re here to win him back? And you know what? I’ll be a gentleman too, I’ll give you the first shot.
Noelle throws her gun to the ground, but remains silent.
Axel (Still sarcastic as fuck): Hmm… fighting an armed man without weapons? Now expected risky from you, but not suicidal.
Axel raises a hand cannon to eye level with an arrogant smile.
Axel: Oh well, it should still be interesting.
Noelle: Definitely.
In a quick move, Noelle throws a can of knockout gas at Axel, he shoots and misses and is struck in the eye by the can.
Axel: You fucking bit—
He’s partially cut off as Noelle swings her elbow backwards and into his nose, cracking it spectacularly. He falls down to the ground and Noelle immediately drops to the ground to shift Jays gag out of his mouth and put the gas mask on him instead.
Noelle: Jay, don’t take this off until you’re outside and then contact the police. Tell them everything’s been taken care of but we could use the help to get them out, okay? I won’t be long.
As she says this she unhooks the canister of MDC and lets it roll along the ground. In a few seconds she drops down to the floor unconscious and everything fades to black.
End Scene.
Scene 11:
Dream Sequence
The set is blank and white as a bloodied Axel B appears, coughing and spluttering. Noelle appears much more elegantly a few meters away.
Axel: You fucking bitch! So come on tell me where the fuck I am.
Noelle: A dream.
Axel: You’ve got to be fucking kidding.
Noelle: No. And if you don’t mind, I’ve got answers to find.
A door appears before Noelle and she walks through it to a black room, the second Axel follows her, the room is filled with images of Axel from a kid and flicking through his life. We see him bully kids and getting started in crime.
Axel: Hey! That shit’s personal! You can’t dig through my brain you bitch!
Noelle: Until I find answers, I’m going to.
Axel look incredibly pissed but then Noelle suddenly drops through a hole in a floor.
Axel: Ha! Fuck you bitch! Now two can play these stupid ass mind games!
Cut to Noelle falling into the middle of another pitch black room.
Noelle: Ah! Shit…
Noelle stands back up, and looks around.
Axel (Menacingly): Now lets see how you like it….fears, fears, fears…
As Noelle looks around she sees a small pair of eyes framed with crosses, as its smile emerges, it face takes the form of floating clown mask. She gasps and begins running for it in the immediate opposite direction.
Axel: Come on, they’re just clowns! They just want you to have fun!
The masks begin multiplying like crazy alongside and behind Noelle, each one creepily laughing and staring blankly into space and Noelle runs faster and her whines increase and her breathing becomes more panicked the faster she runs.
Axel: Now what’s next? Ah-
The floor drops from under her feet and Clown masks crush against the walls of the endless hole Noelle now falls through, and fall in shards around, eyes still lit and lifeless, and smiles still apparent.
Axel: Heights….How cliché.
Axel’s voice disappears as Noelle falls and her screams turn to tears as she shuts her eyes and waits for the sudden stop of hitting the floor.
Axel: Now hold up.
The noise of rushing wind past her ears immediately stops and her legs find purchase on solid ground beneath her.
Axel: Look what I found, born in 1978, raised by your single mother, normal school life--- 1983 seems awfully quiet, have you been hiding things from me? Let’s see what we have here…
The scene fades into a kitchen scene and Noelle’s mother is seen happily cooking away on a sunny afternoon. We turn back to see Noelle, who’s now a child with tears in her eyes and arms outstretched. She goes to run to her mother but the picture distorts as we hear Axel again.
Axel: Oooh but then she started to drink didn’t she,
We see Noelle’s mother, hair messy with bags under her eyes, as she throws a glass across the room.
Axel: Yes mommy wasn’t really happy was she?
Another shot of Noelle’s mother, now curled on her bed, crying into her hands
Axel: And it was all because of you….
A shot of little Noelle, distraught with these memories surfacing
Axel: Private school tuition, uniforms, exams, it all added up.
Cut to Noelle’s mother, at a desk, a bottle of whiskey on one side and piles of paperwork around her with her hands in her hair.
Axel: More work for her, weeks, and months slaving under other people’s boots
Shot of Noelle’s mother scrubbing floors
Axel: So one day her ‘precious baby girl’ could be what she never could be….happy.
Noelle gulps, she knows what’s next, and tears form.
Axel: Then you come home one to a crime scene and no one else is home….
We see the exterior of Noelle’s old home surround by police and a shot of suicide note.
Axel:You never got to see mommy, I bet all those thoughts get caught up somewhere...picturing her death...
Noelle’s burying her head in her hands to wipe away the tears
Axel: How do you think she did it?....Shot herself?
Noelle’s mother is shown putting a gun to her head and he hear the shot as Noelle clasps a hand to her mouth and more tears flow.
Axel: Drugs?
Noelle’s mother dumps pill bottle after pill bottle onto her bed, we see her scoop up a handful and we cut back to Noelle now turning her head away.
Axel: Cut herself? Drowned? Hit by a train? Jumped of a bridge? Gassed herself?
As he rattles each off, Noelle gets more upset. But Axel adds more to the list and we see flashes of each one progressively speeding up and Noelle crumble more and more, trying to avoid the sights he conjures.
(During his speech)
Noelle: Please...No...Stop....Please!...no!..
Axel: Poisoned herself? Suffocated? Hang--
Noelle(Screaming): AXEL!!
Axel is cut off by Noelle screaming in tears, as she hears choking she sees Axel hanging in her Mother’s kitchen where her mother was just moments ago. Axel coughs and splutter and as we turn back to Noelle, she stares expressionless, and completely catatonic from what she think she just caused. When his chokes stop we cut to Noelle, waking up on the floor of the warehouse. She wakes up suddenly, her eyes bolt open and she gasps, and lays there for a moment, collecting her thoughts. When she pushes her tired body up, she sees Axel dead, lifeless on the concrete. In defeat she falls back down and as sirens are heard approaching in the background, Noelle shuts her eyes and sobs quietly as the screen fades to black.
The End.
Chimera Script, Final Draft
Written By Taliah Lamont
With Assisstance By Lauren Robertshaw, Story Consultant.
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