This Is What Happens Next by Daniel MacIovr Page B

you?
    WARREN
    Bike wheel spinning. Bike wheel spinning. Little boy’s face. Little boy’s face. I just want to hear you laugh. I just want to see you smile. I just want a happy ending. Why can’t I have a happy ending?
    VOICE OF WILL
    Because you’re not fucking good enough!
    Light and sound shift.
    WARREN
    Through the air the bike careening little boy his arms and legs flapping wildly trapped in flight, rebounds off the windshield, windshield shatters fast like frost, spin the wheel the car is turning deep into the soccer field, time is moving in slow motion, little boy flies high and far like sleeping dancing, meets the craggy tar. Bouncing like an empty jug. Bike wheel spinning bike wheel spinning bike wheel spinning bike wheel spinning.
    Light shift.
    WILL
    Now there’s an ending. Very dramatic. The kid dies. And Warren kills him.
    And Mike he has to be held responsible too. He’s the dad, had a few drinks, gives the kid a push.
    And good old Uncle Aaron. If Uncle Aaron hadn’t been so hot for Susan the kid wouldn’t have ended up with Mike.
    And Susan, if Susan had been a little less demanding, a little gentler, then Warren wouldn’t have ended up behind the wheel.
    So many lives destroyed.
    And for what?
    For a story.
    For you.
    What? You were expecting a happy ending. Well it’s just one kid. It could have been worse. It could have been quadruplets. That would have been four times worse! Or he could have T-boned a bus full of children. Or driven into a hospital of sick kids and blown it up. Or been manning a satellite that hits an island of infants—or imploded a planet of teenagers. You want a happy ending? What did you ever do to deserve a happy ending? You want a happy ending go home and watch TV . Or go shopping. Welcome to Walmart, maggots. I am will and I get what I want and I don’t care how. You got a problem with that?
    Through the preceding giant stomping has been growing closer. Now the stomping is upon us. WILL looks up.
    Holy shit!
    Blackout and the sound of bones snapping and flesh compressing.
    Light up.
    KEVIN
    â€œHoly shit!” are Will’s last words before the twin boy steps on him and squishes him.
    Because Will is not only teeny tiny to a giant he is a teeny tiny guy even to a kid. And the rule is that if a kid sees Will and steps on him then time goes backward and everything goes into revere and everything turns into a happy ending.
    KEVIN becomes ME .
    I just made that up.
    Light shift. As ME speaks to us he dresses in his street clothes.
    ME
    Nobody dies. No. Warren doesn’t go to the barbecue. Instead he answers his phone and ends up going out to lunch with his lawyer Susan. He does go on a nasty bender though. And Aaron the astrologer thinks about the tarot reading he did and realizes that it was less about Susan and more about his ex-girlfriend and Aaron realized he has a lot of work to do on his feelings about his ex-girlfriend. And Susan starts spending more time with her daughters. The older one does end up going to prison but just for a year and a half. While she’s in prison she learns how to sew. When she gets out she opens a dress shop and she becomes more famous than Vera Wang. And Susan and her younger daughter go on a vacation to Costa Rica and they have a pretty good time. There are even some pictures of the daughter smiling and wearing shorts which Susan thinks is a very good sign. Oh right, some people do die. Gervase and Sonja the models die. They end up dying in a fire at their old place. But at least they’re together. But the turtle survives the fire though, and she ends up living to be twenty-six. And the world doesn’t end in five years or eight years. But everything does change. And Mike’s ex-wife actually did save her fortune cookie. And Mike starts going to his meetings regularly and stops drinking all together and his ex-wife lets him move back in and this makes Kevin very happy. And one night