PUGRAHNA!

PUGRAHNA! Courtesy of Chuck Wendig's Basement Animal Experimentation Lab

Oughta just stay off Twitter. Too much weird shit happens. Like this SyFy channel flash fiction thing Chris Holm threw down. Why can’t I help myself? Why am I doing this?

One thing. Everything I know about formatting a script I learned in 60 seconds on the web before I threw this together, OK? (I’m talking to you here, Wendig, so save the snark). Now, I’ve got more of this worked out in my head. Way more. But if you want it, you’re gonna have to beg. because this is just, well, just wrong. Sick and wrong.

Somebody get Chris a job, OK? Really. The world will be a better place.

PUGRAHNA!

SCENE 1
INT. TENAMENT IN NYC – LATE AFTERNOON

Door closes, dorky looking black boy of about 13 walks in quickly but awkwardly carrying a plastic bag with a fish in it. He scurries down hall into his bedroom, closes door. Pan room. Homemade computer equipment. Jury-rigged lab with cut-down coffee pots and old hot plates heating containers of various colors made from discarded liquor bottles and plumbing parts. Bulletin board on wall festooned with printouts from web. Headlines like ADVANCES IN CANINE ONCOLOGY: ARE FISH THE ANSWER? and JOURNAL OF ICTHYOLOGY: PIRHANA DNA SHOWN EFFECTIVE COMBATTING TUMOROGENIC MUTATIONS. Boy sets bag with fish in a plastic container, turns toward far corner where a sickly looking pug dog lays in a pile of blankets.

REGGIE:
It’s ok, boy. I’m going to help you

The boy pets the dog, the dog licks his hand. The boy moves to his lab table, dumps the water and fish into the plastic dish. FADE OUT.

INT. SAME TENEMENT – NIGHT

Woman walks in wearing the uniform of a janitorial services, obviously tired. Set purse on table and walks down hall to the boy’s room, knocks and enters. Boy asleep in the pile of blankets with dog. Dog sleeping, but whimpering, weird undulations working up and down it’s body. On the table, the dissected fish is pinned to a cutting board.

GLADYS:
Damn you boy! Now the vet said that dog has the cancer and ain’t nothin’ he could do, even if I could afford it, which I sure as hell can’t. Now I told you, you take that dog down to the pound, they take care of that for free.

REGGIE, sitting up, rubbing sleep from eyes:

But Mom, I can help him. I already gave him this treatment. I read on the web about . . .

GLADYS, shouting:
Boy that is enough! You a bright boy, you gonna do great things some day, I know that sure, and I know that dog has been the only friend you got in this world for a long time. It’s a hard thing, Reggie, but the world is full of hard things. Tomorrow. You take care of this tomorrow.

REGGIE, crying now and hugging dog:
I cain’t take Otis down to get killed, Mama. I just cain’t do it.

GLADYS:
What I supposed to do, Reggie? Call in to work, maybe get my ass fired over some sick dog? You gotta grow up here, boy.

SHE STORMS FROM ROOM, SLAMS DOOR.

INT. REGGIE’S ROOM, VERY EARLY AM.

GLADYS walks in carrying an old canvas newspaper delivery bag. REGGIE is still asleep in the pile of blankets in the corner, but OTIS is pacing, the weird undulations more severe, whimpering.
GLADYS, softly:
Oh, you are a sick dog, ain’t you. And you been a good friend to my boy. Too much to ask, telling the boy to take you down. Now, they ain’t open yet, so we cain’t do this the easy way, but you don’t wanna put that on the boy, do you?

Dog pads over, GLADYS picks him up, puts him in the newspaper sack along with a large, heavy weight off the floor. The gathers the top of the bag in a bunch and ties it shut, walks from the room.

EXT. CENTRAL PARK, THE RESERVOIR, EARLY AM

GLADYS walks to the edge of the reservoir, swings the bag back and forth a few times for momentum, then hurls the bag out into the water. A splash, the bag sinks. She walks away.

Cut to an underwater shot. The dog is struggling in the bag, weakening. Just before as it appears to die, the undulations accelerate madly, gills appear behind it’s ears, it’s teeth lengthen into long, needle-like spikes. It’s brown eyes take on a yellowish, predatory look. It rips from the bag and snatches a passing fish in its jaws, shredding it. The dog swims into the murky submarine distance in a strange, half dog-paddle, half snakey fish motion.

SCENE 2
EXT. CENTRAL PARK RESERVOIR, MORNING

MARCIA SNECKER, A young, hip looking woman is walking her Pug along the edge of the reservoir. Carp are breeding in the shallows. PUGRAHNA comes in to feed, thrashing after the fish. The woman sees what looks like a dog struggling in the water, less than an arm’s length from shore.

SNECKER:
Oh! You poor thing!

She reaches out to try to assist the dog. PUGRAHNA seizes her wrist in his jaws, pulls her violently into the water. Churning, a spreading cloud of blood. We see SNECKER’s mauled body float to the surface. The Pug the woman was walking stands on the shore, whimpering. PUGRAHNA bursts from the water. The Pug tries to run, but PUGRAHNA is on it in seconds. PUGRAHNA mounts the Pug and mates it violently, the flashes back into the water and disappears.

SCENE 3
EXT. CENTRAL PARK RESERVOIR, NIGHT

A month later. The Pug is horribly distended, barely able to drag its swollen body to the edge of the water. The Pug drops, rolls on its side, panting. In a series of convulsions, dozens of miniature PUGRAHNA issue from the Pug. They immediately swarm over their mother, stripping her to a skeleton in moments. The pack of PUGRAHNA stream into the Reservoir, disappearing below the surface.