Branching Story — Final Version

Tier One

(Selamile)

John meets Mary, what happens next?

They have an affair. Mary has been married to Patrick for seven years, but one month before their eight-year anniversary, she cheats on him with John. She meets John at a train station and loves the way he says the word ‘necessity.’ Honestly, that’s it. That’s the only reason she cheats on Patrick. John says the word ‘necessity’ with a reverence Mary has never heard before, so she cheats on Patrick because she loves the way John says ‘necessity.’ She waits until the third date to sleep with him because she’s believes that decent women should wait until at least the third date before they open their legs and open their goodie jars. Besides, she already has enough sex with Patrick, anyway. Mary respects Patrick. She always leaves John’s apartment two hours before Patrick is due home so that her beloved Patrick will always finds her home. She makes sure to shower after she has sex with him so that Patrick doesn’t taste John in her mouth. She makes sure John wears a latex condom every time. Despite the philandering, Mary really loves Patrick. After two months, she decides to end the relationship with John. She gets bored with John and his sex. Even the word ‘necessity’ slipping gloriously from his tongue isn’t enough to sustain their relationship. She tells John that it’s over, but John has other ideas.

Option A: John follows Mary home the night after she tells him they’re through. (Alison)

Option B: Mary discovers she is pregnant. (Kyle)

Tier Two

Option A (Alison)

(John follows Mary home the night after she tells him they’re through.)

Mary descends the stairs, looking like a dream. She’s wearing the yellow dress Patrick always loved to see her in and the lingerie he bought her for Christmas. She’s always hated the set—the bra squeezes in all the wrong ways and the panties gave her a perpetual wedgie—but her breasts double in size and her ass is accentuated in all the right ways, and how can she fail to appreciate the effort Patrick puts into finding her such a beautiful, practical, and expensive present? So Mary wears the lingerie, at least regularly enough to avoid any accusations of ungratefulness.

The house smells delicious. She has made pork chops and apple pie, his favorite, and runs frantically between the various rooms lighting candles that promise scents of rainshower and warm sand before his arrival. Everything has to be perfect. It is, after all, his special day, his birthday, and everything has to be just the way he likes it- including her, which is why she rushed up the stairs to shower and change as he headed through the front door.

She is taken by surprise, though, by the sound of not one but two male voices in the living room. The effort she has put into her makeup and attire goes unnoticed. Her very presence goes unnoticed until she puts an arm over Patrick, kisses him hello with as much enthusiasm as is expected from a loving wife. His lips respond but his eyes don’t, still engaged in conversation with the man lazily sprawled on the loveseat across from the couch. Mary doesn’t recognize the man at first because she is so focused on her husband:  does he like her new earrings? Is he crinkling his nose because the candles are too strong? But then she hears the word “necessity,” spoken in that captivating way, floating across the room. He continues talking about something boring—stock options, probably—but Mary feels like she can’t breathe. She swallows hard. It can’t be. Patrick and John sitting across from each other, enjoying each other’s company and ignoring her. She imagines all the worst possible scenarios.

“Honey, I should probably introduce John,” her husband’s voice breaks her out of her reverie. “We were best friends back in high school. I didn’t even know he was in the area until he stopped by today. Isn’t it great that he got a chance to stop by for my birthday?” He chuckles to himself. Patrick was the kind of man who loved to hear himself talk. “Say, you should stay for dinner. Honey, shouldn’t he stay for dinner?”

Option A: The three sit down for a potentially disastrous dinner. (An)

Option B: Mary sneaks into the kitchen and equips herself with the necessities. (Marisa)

Option B (Kyle)

(Mary discovers she is pregnant.)

Mary gives birth to an elephant seal. This is not a metaphor. A thousand pound seal, dripping in brine, emerges in the hospital to the delight and surprise of the doctors.

“You must be so proud,” they all tell Patrick. Patrick stares at the wall stoically.

The birth arouses suspicion of infidelity in Patrick.

Nonetheless, Patrick cares for the seal like he would a human child. They name the critter Albert, and like a good father Patrick follows his son with a hose to prevent dehydration. Albert learns at a slowed pace, but Mary sits at the kitchen table with him every night with flashcards.

Patrick and Mary fight over petty issues every night, filled with the stresses of raising an elephant seal. When Albert reaches his teen years, he develops a rebellious streak, consuming marijuana, spraying graffiti on the churches, the hunting the occasional penguin that walks into town.

Albert has also faked ADD to receive a regular supply of Ritalin, and is arrested and sentenced to two years in juvenile hall when caught selling the drug to classmates. His peers in the hall do not take kindly to Albert, as they harbor deep seated prejudices against elephant seals due to unflattering media portrayals in television and literary magazines.

Option C: Patrick and Mary vow to ignore their child forever. (Ashlee)

Option D: Albert escapes, armed and angry. (Alec)

Tier Three

Option A (An)

(The three sit down for a potentially disastrous dinner.)

Mary, Patrick, and John all sit down for dinner. Tension is in the air and so thick you could cut it with a butter knife. Things start out with small talk. “How was work today, Patrick?” “Did you see the game last night, John?” The conversation proceeds smoothly as the only people aware of the full situation are Mary and John. And they hide it well.

Throughout the entire dinner, John continuously tries to play footsie with Mary. He moves his foot sensuously up and down Mary’s leg beneath her yellow sundress, and although she slaps his foot away each time, John doesn’t give up and continues flirting with her. He wants her back, and he's ready to perform whatever foot motions necessary to have her back in his arms. Annoyed, frustrated, and feeling as if she’s run out of options, Mary reaches for a pair of scissors, reaches down, and cuts off John’s big toe with one swift motion.

“FUCK!” squeals John. Pulling his foot back, he tries to stand up but loses his balance, cause he’s missing a toe.

Twisting, bleeding, and toe-less, John lies on the ground with an expression of pure agony on his face. A twisted smile slowly forms on Patrick’s mouth as he stands up. He picks up the kitchen knife. 

Option A: As Patrick approaches John with the knife, Mary backs away, shaking her head. (James)

Option B: Mary dashes in to intervene before Patrick can hurt John. (Kat)

Option B (Marisa)

(Mary sneaks into the kitchen and equips herself with the necessities.)

Mary decides that if disaster awaits her, she might as well be the one to usher it in. She storms into the kitchen and equips herself with the necessities.
She reminds herself in an unsettlingly uncalm mental voice: “I am calm, I am tranquil, I am serene, I am not panicked.” She recites the words like a mantra as she frantically tries to stuff the bag with necessities. What are the necessities? Ah, that word. Her skin prickles. A granola bar, a roll of toilet paper, and a bottle of Advil: the crucial items any sensible woman brings with her she’s running away from home and doesn’t know if or when she’ll return.
But she remembers the blister on her toe from her new stilettos and realizes the infeasibility of running anywhere. Rethinking her tactic, she proceeds to instead remove the anti-necessities: her clothes, save the lingerie set. She reenters the living room thus adorned and the conversation halts, as she expected it would.
“So sorry gentlemen, it was just feeling so hot in the kitchen…”
Pretending it is perfectly normal to strut around the house in nothing but seductive lace, Mary politely asks if she shall open a bottle of wine for dinner.
Ignoring her innocent question about the wine, the two men act fast, unable to keep their lust in their pants. John leaps onto Mary, and Patrick leaps onto the duo.

Option C: Patrick has the most unforgettable birthday adventure ever referenced in literature. (Peter)
Option D: The entangled pile of bodies break apart into a tooth-and-nail fight that leaves one man dead and the other unsatisfied, while Mary leaves the scene hastily with her Nature Valley bar and her toilet-paper roll. (Ashlee)

Option C (Ashlee)

(Patrick and Mary vow to ignore their child forever.)

Mary and Patrick are now a happily married couple, living young and wild and free. Mary begins to take a pole dancing class, hoping to make herself a bit more limber.  On her first day of class, she meets and falls into friendly love with Carry, the instructor. Carry and Mary sit in the park everyday after lessons, and Carry stretches Mary’s legs while they banter on philosophical and historical peculiarities. Mary feels safe with Carry when she realizes she has found a friend who says necessity just like her precious John did.

Meanwhile, Patrick joins a drinking group and makes many friends, including one very animated storyteller called John. Yes, fans, this is the same John who Mary opened that goodie jar for, and Yes, John has been trying to find Mary ever since that night when she left him. He had heard that Mary had given birth to his son, a beautiful baby elephant seal, but he has never been able to track them down.

It’s a Thursday afternoon when John finally feels the mood was right to give Patrick some advice.

“Elephant Seals need 3 fresh fishes a day and water dabbed into their fur no less than every 30 mins”, he starts.

But Patrick only looks at him as if he were crazy.

“I’m telling you this because I’ve heard that you and your wife have an elephant seal son”, John continues.

But Patrick replies “We have no such son”, and he really believes this as he and Mary had paid a psychic to completely erase the memory of their lost child.

On this very same day, Mary and Carry also have a peculiar conversation regarding the same elephant seal. It starts with Carry asking Mary what her favourite animals were.

“Elephant Seal!”, Mary replies excitedly and immediately.

“Have you ever had one?”, Carry asks.

“No”, said Mary, shaking her head solemnly.

Carry stares at her and insists “yes you have. Admit it.”

But Mary remains silent.

Carry shakes her fingers at Mary, raising her voice,  “Admit it now!”

Option E: Carry starts strangling Mary. (Maggie)

Option F: Later that night, Carry and John meet up at the very same bar. (Selamile)

Option D (Alec)

(Albert escapes, armed and angry.)

Patrick and Mary have been trying to ignore the news, avoiding calls from friends, simply desiring to continue a normal life. The news trickles to a stop in a matter of weeks. Police have no leads on the prison break. It appears that someone had flown a helicopter over the prison yard and lowered down a bathtub filled with saltwater, which Albert flopped into and then flew away. They simply wait for the excitement to die down and the healing to begin.

Nearly a year later, though, Patrick comes home from work to see Albert sitting at his old spot at the kitchen table, smoking a cigar and wearing an eyepatch. “Hello, Patrick.”

“Albert! Oh my- what are you doing here?”

“I'm here to give you and Mother the opportunity of a lifetime,” he said.

“Where have you been all this time? Albie, your mother and I– we only ever wanted you safe and happy. We made some mista-”

“This isn't the time for apologies. This is a time for action. The story deserves a more illustrious exposition but for time's sake I must condense it. I run an empire, Patrick. A vast network that I alone have been blessed with the abilities to run successfully.”

“What...what are you talking about?”

“Meth, Patrick. I'm talking about meth.”

Option G: Patrick joins Albert's crime syndicate. The life of chaos and pain drives Mary back to the arms of John, her lover. (Maggie)

Option H: A SWAT team that's been tracking Albert moves into position and takes the hit. (Will)

Tier Four

Option A (James)

(As Patrick approaches John with the knife, Mary backs away, shaking her head.)

“No, Patrick!” Mary screams as Patrick drives the 9 inch santoku into John’s ribs.  

“We talked about this Mary,” Patrick says coolly over the screams, stabbing John again and again. “You promised this wouldn't happen again. Besides, we have a business to run.” John’s last breaths bubble out of his mouth.

“I didn’t want to kill him, just hurt him a bit,” Mary wails. “Oh god! Why?!”

“Shut up and get to work,” Patrick says, handing Mary a hacksaw from the garage. “You started this, you finish it.”

Mary gets to work, sawing through skin, muscle, and bone to section the man she had once known and loved. A dark red puddle coagulates on the floor of their home. Patrick fills a beer cooler with ice, and they pack dripping cuts of John into it.  They place the cooler into the trunk of their car and drove off to the diner.

“At least we won’t have to buy meat this week,” Patrick says.

“Stop it,” Mary says.

"It’ll be so fresh,” Patrick says.

“Stop it,” Mary said.

“Just think of the margins,” Patrick continues, “Ca-ching! We can go to Dorsia this week and you can get the lobster.”

“Stop it, stop it, stop it,” Mary cries.  

Patrick looks over at her with his flat blue eyes. She sobs against the passenger window. A strange light came over her face.  He turns to find its source and is blinded by bright headlights careening towards them.

Option A: They are grazed at 20 miles per hour and the trunk pops open. (Niuniu)

Option B: They are T-boned at 45 miles an hour. Patrick remains conscious, but Mary does not. (Also Niuniu)

Option B (Katherine)

(Mary dashes in to intervene before Patrick can hurt John.)

    Patrick looms over John, serrated steak knife in hand, kicking the severed toe aside nonchalantly. John whimpers and scuttles back against the wall.

    Suddenly Mary throws herself between them, arms flung out like an exquisite martyr.

    “No, Patrick! Please!!” she begs, bright red lips contorting like a bouncing rubber band. The scissors drop from her hand and clatter to the floor.

    Patrick ignores her and brings the knife closer to John’s face.

    “Please don’t, Patrick!” she blurts out.   “I…I love him!”  She gasps at the sound of her confession.  The words sound so right now that they’re spoken.

    “Love me?! You cut off my fucking toe!” John squeaks. She shoots him a look and he zips right up.

    Patrick hesitates.  “Is this true, darling? Is this really what you want?”  She nods and he drops the knife. His eyebrows knit together.

    “Yes,” Mary says. “I didn’t realize it at first--it was just a fling, a silly little affair. I liked the way he said ‘necessity’ is all--how silly! But now I know--I could never live without John!”

    She turns and throws her arms around John, who is still hunched against the wall, one hand clamped over the bleeding stub of his big toe. She kisses him, leaving a big red stain on his cheek.

    “Oh, I love you John! I love you!”

    “Alright, alright,” he moans. “Just--just get me to the hospital. I’m losing a lot of blood.”

    Patrick and Mary smile and nod, and John slumps down with relief.

    “This is…this is all fucking crazy, you know? But I bet in a few years we’ll be laughing about this, right?”

    Patrick and Mary laugh. Then they keep laughing.

    John looks up weakly. The two have matching grins on their faces. Mary’s shoulders shake, and she staggers back to stand by her husband, still chortling.

    “Oh--Oh darling, this is really too much.”

    “You outdid yourself, dear. Yessiree, this one’s an extra special one!”

    “Just a little b-day gift for my big man,” she coos, cozying up and kissing him.

    “Wait--what?” John says.

    Patrick grins down at him and holds up the steak knife again.

    “Just a little extracurricular, to toast my health I guess! Sorry, pal. I know we’re friends from way back and all—”

    “Really dear, he was screwing me.”

    “--but then you were screwing my wife, so I guess you had it coming. No hard feelings, right?”

    John looks from one to the other, confused. “You’re--you’re in this together?”

    “A match made in heaven!” Mary trills. “I’m the honey pot. I reel them in, Patrick here flays them up. Shall we have him butterflied? It is your birthday after all. Birthday boy’s choice...”

    “Oh, you spoil me. I have the ax all sharpened up, just in case we need it. John, old buddy, this is just a bit of fun. You’ll be... number nine I suppose?”

    “Twelve, sweet pea.”

    “Ah, yes. I’m no good with numbers. Yes, you’ll be number twelve. Eleven other gents, same as you, came in here for a shag with Mary and--well, I guess you could say they’re permanent residents!”

    Mary picks up the scissors and snips the air a few times, grinning demonically. “Men are so stupid. They fall for the ass and legs trick every time. They think they’re all big and clever, the ones in charge. So tiresome, really, playing into all that ego. But it’s all worth it for the party afterward! Shall you do the honors, Patrick dear?”

    “Yes, yes, I think I shall. The host carves the turkey, after all.”

Option C: Patrick and Mary start by snipping off John’s most treasured digit. (Kyle)

Option D: John flees the house. Patrick dials up a contact. "It's on," he says. (Ashlee)

Option C (Peter)

(Patrick has the most unforgettable birthday adventure ever referenced in literature.)

Shit gets weird. The granola comes into play. And the Advil, and the toilet paper.

And then the pork chops burn the house down. Mary survives, but John and Patrick both perish horribly.

She is carried out of the flaming ruin in the arms of a burly firefighter named Gary, who falls in love immediately with the soot-blackened naked woman in his arms. Mary, however, doesn't fall in love with him. She falls for the sallow forensic analyst tasked with identifying John and Patrick's remains after the fire. He doesn't say necessity so much as demonstrate it: There is no excess color in his face or personality: everything is just as it should be, and no more. 

Gary, in the meantime, subsumes his lust for Mary in his daily tasks at the station. He hoses down his fire suit and barbecues with the guys on his shift and polishes the bells on the firetruck until he can use his reflection to pick his teeth, and all the while he thinks of Mary. They would get married, and have five kids, and he could barbecue for her.

The sallow forensic analyst is a vegetarian. He works in the morgue at the hospital, and spends all of his time looking at dead bodies. He’s sallow because he never goes outside.

Mary, still bereft but looking to move on, decides to become a nurse. She also becomes a vegetarian, because meat products killed her husband. Being a nurse gives her something to do, and it brings her closer to the sallow forensic analyst at the hospital. All day, Mary fantasizes about the forensic analyst, alone in his bare apartment, steaming broccoli over medium heat.

One day, the forensic analyst keels over in his lab from a Vitamin D deficiency. Mary panics and calls 911, despite working in a hospital.

Option E: A doctor stumbles upon the scene; he looks exactly like John. (Selamile)

Option F: The call goes to the first responders, and Gary arrives on the scene. (Will)

Option D (Ashlee)

(The entangled pile of bodies break apart into a tooth-and-nail fight that leaves one man dead and the other unsatisfied, while Mary leaves the scene hastily with her Nature Valley bar and her toilet-paper roll.)

Mary leaves the house with her necessities, and races to the nearest bus station. Once there she realizes that she has nowhere to go, and no one to go to. She breaks down and begins to cry while squatted on the corner of 14^th and Ladybug.

A man driving by in a grey Camaro, slows down and shouts ‘how much?’. She is confused by this and simply continues to cry. He gets out of the car, and asks again ‘how much girl?’.

It is at this moment that she realizes that she is still decked out in lace and…more lace. She is not even wearing shoes.

‘I’m not a hooker’, she replies, between sobs.

‘So what you doing squatted on Hooker Corner then?’, he asks, while backing away from her slowly.

‘I’m running away from home, I guess’, she replies.

She looks up now, realizes that he is backing away and says too quickly, too softly ‘Please don’t leave me too’.

He stops moving backwards and asks her where she is running to, what she is running from and a bunch of other questions she really didn’t have the answer to. He was making pity conversation with her, she realized.

She found out his name was Anthony, that he was ‘in politics’, and that she was no longer squatting on a corner. She was in his car, being driven somewhere.

She told him about Patrick and John and how she wasn’t sure what happened. She didn’t know who was left standing. She didn’t know who had pushed another to the floor. She didn’t know how or why or what had happened because of her and her body and because of that darned word necessity.

The Camaro is idling in front of her house now, behind the swirling blue and red lights of another vehicle.

Option G: The cops are outside of her house. They take her into questioning. (Alec)

Option H: She tells Anthony to drive her away. (Marisa)

Option E (Maggie)

(Carry starts strangling Mary.)

Bystanders watch with weirdly unsympathetic eyes as Cary pins Mary down to the grass, her hands around her throat. Mary aims a swift kick to Cary's stomach and scrambled away when Cary's fingers loosened to grasp her own torso in pain.

"What the hell is wrong with you!" Mary gasps.

Cary looks miserable. "Mary I'm so sorry I should've told you I'm cursed. If anyone ever lies to me I have to immediately begin strangling them. My father wanted to create a superhero in me and my brother so he put a special chip in our brains that programs us to respond violently to wrongdoing. My brother is wired to throw hand grenades when people cheat so every board game he plays is a pretty fatal affair."

Mary narrowed her eyes. "Oh yeah? Then why ask me a question if you already know the answer? Isn't that just setting me up for failure here?"

"That's the worst part. He recently updated our chips so that if he gives us a piece of information, we have to find that person involved in the matter and confront them. This whole thing has been his set up. I don't know why, but my father is looking for something with you and your elephant seal son and if I were you, I wouldn't take that lightly."

Mary grips her thighs. Could it be possible? Had she birthed a nonhuman mammal and just forgotten about it?

Option I: Programmed for extreme honesty, Cary goes back and tells her father what she has done. He prepares to confront Mary himself. (Alec)

Option J: Mary returns to Patrick and together they go searching for a son they believe they've never known. (An)

Option F (Selamile)

(Later that night, Carry and John meet up at the very same bar.)

“Hey, Carry,” John whispers huskily, “how did it go today with Mary?”

“Horribly! That woman is a piece of work, I tell you!”

You see Carry is John’s sister. (This is why they both say the word ‘necessity’ with the reverence that Mary once fell in love with). She is trying to help John find the baby elephant seal so that they can do a paternity test and determine whether he is the real father to the baby seal.

John closes his eyes, pained at the thought of losing his one and only son forever.

“Even Patrick didn’t bite – he acted like he didn’t feel affection for any baby seals.”

Carry feels horrible for her brother, she was sure the pain of losing a child was unbearable. But she has to ask, “are you sure that the baby could be yours?”

“What?” John is shocked at her question, he shouts, “of course, Carry! I always tore the condom Mary gave me during the affair!”

The crowd at the bar turns to stare at them. John is causing a racket again today and the manager has had enough of his outbursts. The police are called.

Option K: John is sent to prison, but instead his car goes to juvenile detention where he meets the baby elephant seal. (Kyle)

Option L: Patrick is the police office assigned to their case. (Marisa)

Option G (Maggie)

Patrick joins the crime syndicate, and Mary goes back to John.

Patrick has decided that it's a necessity for the meth labs to move underwater. The expansion of labs into several suburban neighborhoods in Wisconsin, Idaho, North Dakota, and Kansas have become less than subtle and Patrick, taking on a life of crime with huge gusto, feeling like he's found where he belongs, thinks that the industry has got to be taken down into the next big frontier- the ocean floor.

Patrick also sees the value in this because he can tell Albert has been acting a bit weird lately and thinks a bit of natural habitat will do him some good. When he tells Albert about the idea, Albert's face gets strangely giddy for a moment and he responds with

"Yes, yes I've been thinking that's what I have to do- we have to do. I just have to know..." he trails off, furrowing his eyebrows and stroking his chin with a flipper.

"Have to know what?" Patrick asked

Albert doesn’t seem to hear him. "Do you think mother would come with us? I just feel like if she birthed a seal she might want to understand why, and the answer could be somewhere down there under the surface." He was referring to the nearby bay where Mary had grown up as a child.

Patrick shakes his head violently. "Listen, if there's anything I know about Mary, it's that she's sworn never to go underwater again. But Albert, I don't think you're focusing on the right things here...the expansion of the industry my boy!..."

Option A: Albert decides to swim down in the bay to scope out good places for meth lab development. What he finds shocks him and he realizes he has to get answers from Mary about his birth. (James)

Option B: Patrick goes scuba diving in the bay to scope out good places for meth lab development. He doesn't return...why? (Peter)

Option H (Will)

Even the bang of the front door being kicked open couldn’t divert Patrick’s incredulous gaze from his son’s cold, black eyes. This was not the Albert he once knew, the fun-loving pup that would giggle during bath time when Patrick would loofa his not-yet gigantic nose.

“ON YOUR KNEES! HANDS ABOVE YOUR HEAD!”

Patrick’s fatherly instinct, even after all this time, resurfaces as effortlessly as a humpback. “Excuse me, sir. My son has neither knees nor hands. Let’s try to keep our language a little more inclusive, please.” They had been dealing with this kind of insensitivity as a family ever since Albert was born. Maybe that’s what drove him to a life of crime, thinks Patrick. The world’s intolerance to those that look slightly different.

“No funny stuff or we’ll shoot! ON YOUR KNEES!”

Patrick realizes the guns we’re being pointed at him, not the 7,000 pound, self-confessed drug kingpin that he is sitting across the table from.

“What the hell did I do?” The SWAT team, realizing that he was unarmed circles closed to him. He feelsa boot land on the small of his back, pushing him off the chair and onto his knees on the ground.

“We have multiple informants saying that Berto Elefante, the largest supplier of methamphetamines in the western United States would be in this house at this time. Seeing as the only other person here is this woman,” Patrick sees Mary struggling in the arms of two SWAT members in the next room. “you are coming with us to answer a few questions.”

“Whaaat?” Patrick gasps. “Do I look like a meth kingpin to you?” He gestures to his neatly tucked in flannel shirt and well-pressed slacks. Unfortunately for him, due to the incredible popularity of the AMC original series Breaking Bad he looks exactly like what every TV viewer in America assumed a meth kingpin looked like. Evidently, the rigorous training of the SWAT team members didn’t prevent them from watching TV's most popular programs.

“Come on, sir. Let’s go.”

Patrick looks pleadingly to his son. “Albert, please, help me out. Tell them the truth.”

Albert looks at his father’s face and then let out a thunderous roar, a seal noise that he had always been ashamed of using in front of his parents.

Patrick hears one of the SWAT guys mutter to his comrade. “Jesus, these drug guys and their pets. Now we we’ve got to find an aquarium that will take that thing.”

It takes Patrick a moment to realize what had happened. His son had let him take the fall for his own heinous crimes. He and Mary were going to prison.

Option O: Albert tries to save his parents. (Alison)

Option P: Patrick and Mary escape, vowing revenge on their traitorous seal son. (Kat)

Tier Five

Option A (Niuniu)

A short, balding man emerges from his beat-up Subaru.

“Jesus I’m sorry guys, are you okay?”

Patrick spears him with a haughty look. “What do you think you were doing?”

Mary’s face, however, has turned ash pale. She stares at the open trunk, the open cooler, the pieces of gore splattered across the fabric and onto the street. The man hasn’t noticed yet. She tries signaling to Patrick, but he is too busy guilt-tripping the man.

Suddenly, the man catches a glimpse of the trunk. “What in the world—“ he starts, and begins to back away. Patrick realizes what is happening—he knows he can either kill this man and make a break for it, or he can just leave now. He decides to spare a life.

Patrick and Mary dump John’s body in the street, seeing no point in trying to hide it anymore. They speed across the country, cross the border into Mexico, and spend the rest of their lives as fugitives. Mary is so unhappy that she hangs herself. Patrick becomes involved in a drug cartel which ultimately results in a scuffle where he is fatally shot, seven years after Mary’s death.

THE END

Option B (Niuniu)

Patrick looks at Mary’s body, slumped across the dashboard in front of her. She still wears her yellow dress. He can see a glimpse of his favorite lingerie, peeking out from under the yellow fabric. He feels blood trickle down his forehead. Is this the end? His life flashes in front of his eyes. Far off, he hears the distant scream of sirens. His vision begins to fade. He closes his eyes. He just wants to sleep.

THE END

Option C (Kyle)

John moans in the corner, aware of his impending demise.

"Necessity!" he shouts. "Sweet necessity!" 

But his tone is more desperate than seductive. The couple begins to sharpen their knives, whittled out of balsa wood and mammoth tusk. 

"Wait, Mary," says Patrick.  “It occurs to me that this would be a great time to employ... the fantastic device." 

Mary freezes with joy. The fantastic device only emerges on special murders, the ones that fall on prime numbers. 

"Necessity! Necessity!" shouts John.  

Patrick wheels out a machine the size of an MRI and straps John into it. A flip of the switch, and John’s body is wrung through the machine and turned inside out. Quite uncomfortable now, he knows this is his last chance to save himself. He inhales sharply (actually exhaling due to his body's reorientation): 

"NECESSITY!" 

Instantly, Mary feels a cramp in her abdomen. The word is so seductive that Mary ovulates, not once, not twice, but ten thousand times. Every egg from her ovaries avalanches down her fallopian tubes in an incendiary cascade of fertility. She knows instantly that she has made a mistake. 

"John!" 

She sends John back through the machine and reattaches the toe. Patrick looks on in shock. 

"Well," he says, trying to regain his composure, "I guess...uh... I guess we'll be getting back to dinner now, huh?" 

THE END

Option D (Ashlee)

John jumps five fences and is well on his way to the main road when he notices a little boy on a bicycle. He bumps the little boy off the bicycle, then picks him off the floor and hurtles him into the bushes shouting ‘this is for your own good, son!’

Not a moment after he says so, his prophesy is proven true as two Escalades squeal to a stop in front of John and Mary’s house. 8 men jump out holding machine guns and they start to pepper shots in the direction of John. John is now riding away madly on the bicycle, dodging bullets, swinging side to side.

A tan sedan pulls up in front of him and brakes, making a half circle as it does so. John jumps through the window of the car, and the bicycle gets crushed beneath the tires.

The driver is an older woman, and she looks as glum as they come.

"So, it isn't enough that you don't pay for anything, you don't take care of little Scotty, and you don't do shit on a whole? You gotta have me picking you up from random houses, with bullets raining in the middle of the night. You're begging for a divorce, but I ain't giving you no alimony asshole."

John remains silent, looking at the floor, trying very hard not to start bawling from the unbearable pain where his toe used to be.

But his wife hears his intake of breath as they go over a speed bump, and she looks over at him. Her face contorts into disgust and pain, when she sees blood seeping from his sneakers.

"Ohh myy fuckkk, what happened to your foot?!" she moans.

John remains silent, not wanting to reveal the whole sordid affair, even though he knows that silence will only anger her further.

She punches his leg, and pain spirals into his toe, and words spiral into his mouth, revealing the truths of his affair with Mary.

His wife laughs a bit, then opens her pocket book and hands him a pocket knife.

"Cut the other one off,” she says.

He stares at her until he realizes that she is dead serious.

He refuses, calling her a crazy bitch.

"So you lose a toe for that whore, but you can't lose one for your wife,” she said braking suddenly.

"Get out or I'll chop it off myself,” she shouts at him.

John exists the car, looking back one last time at his wife, realizing that he had lost his family now too.

He stands on the side of the road alone, contemplating his next move, toe-less and family-less.

"Kill me now,” he mutters to the Gods.

Then from around the corner comes the tan sedan, it jumps the curb, and runs him over.

Mary and Patrick live happily ever after.

THE END

Option E (Selamile)

‘John?’ Mary’s heart is racing: could this be John? Could John have survived the fire that day? If John survived, could Patrick have survived, too?

‘John?’ the man who looks like John responds, ‘my name is not John, my name is Jack.’ Mary is perplexed. This must be John.

There is only one true test to determine whether the man who identifies himself as Jack, is actually her long lost John. 

‘Say the word “necessity”’ 

The man looks confused and stares at Mary. He doesn't say a word.

‘What?’ he asks, finally.

‘Just say the word necessity!’ Mary shouts.

The man says the word ‘necessity’ but it she does not say it like her beloved John did. Mary is heartbroken. She had thought that somehow, her life would be less lonely, and she would not have to pine over the forensic analyst like she has been for the past few months.

At least John would love her and he might sing the word ‘necessity’ to her every night. Maybe one day, they would even get married and buy a house on the hill.

But this Jack is no John.

Mary will never give up her happy ending. She is certain she can teach him to say the word ‘necessity’ with just a fraction of the reverence that John did. So she seduces him with her hazelnut hair and husky voice and spends the rest of her life teaching him how to say ‘necessity’ like John did.   

THE END

Option F (Will)

Mary hears the echoes of the firefighters’ boots as they trudge down the basement hallway that leads to the morgue. She has been able to revive the forensic analyst but only barely, he continues to slip in and out of consciousness. She doesn’t turn her head when the firefighters arrive.

            “What’s his name, Miss?” Gary’s well-worn, commanding voice falters as he realizes that the nurse bent over this small, sickly man is Mary.

            “Grant. Grant Feely.” Mary says. Gary watches the way Mary runs her hand through the man’s thin hair. Mary loves this man, Gary thinks and he feels a sharp but familiar pang of solitude and disappointment. He looks back at Grant Feeley, propped up against the leg of a shiny gurney, eyes half open. He won’t become jealous of this sick man. He won’t compromise his duty because he’s lonely. He’s needed right now.

            Gary conducts a quick but thorough examination of Grant Feely and he determines the cause: Vitamin D deficiency. They load the forensic analyst onto one of the available gurneys to be taken to the conveniently close ambulance port. As Gary turns to explain the situation to Mary, they both hear two of the other fire fighters as they pass by.

            “Jiminey Rickets! Vitamin D?” It was a bad joke, one that should only illicit a disappointed shake of the head but it was the last straw for Mary and it broke the seal that had been holding back the affair and the fire and now this. Of course, Grant is sick because he’s down here too much, she thinks. She doubted that this would change his solitary, work-obsessed ways. Through tear-soaked eyes she saw Gary, looking at her with that unmistakable mixture of desire and pity. Oh God, now this firefighter is in love with me. She stands up abruptly, wiping her eyes and shifting her scrubs into proper position.

            “Thank you very much for everything, sir. However, I don’t think any explanation is necessary.”

            Mary walks out the door, leaving a helpless Gary staring after her, mouth opening and closing purposelessly.

Option G (Alec)

“So explain to me again this whole complicated mess,” Officer Wigglesworth said in a thick midwestern accent, plopping into his chair.

“Well, I met this guy John, righ-”

“Actually never mind, I don't care,” Wigglesworth said. “Listen, I don't even know what to do here. Ya got two peoples in love with ya. I had the same problem in my younger days when I had less years and inches on my belt,” he chuckled. “I'll tell ya what I would do. SCREAM” His voice becomes demonic. The walls start to close in. She's surrounded by flames and shadows and gut-rending horror. She was plunged into the Inferno. Images of a tortured childhood surround her. The darkness grows ever nearer. Wigglesworth's face surrounds her, screaming in an infernal bellow. She's trapped. Trapped in Hell. She had led a life of misery creating misery. She was trapped. She screamed. She screams again. She screams forever. 

Option H (Marisa)

Anthony takes this to mean that Mary considers him much more than just a chauffeur home, and his lustful feelings for what lies underneath her yellow lace return.  She is still in a state of total emotional turbulence, and Anthony intends to take full advantage of this.
“Where would you like to go?”  he asks, though of course he does not plan to actually take her there.

“What about the whore house?  That’s where I seem to belong these days.”

Her sobbing, pitiful answer melts something inside of Anthony, and he changes his mind about his plan to fuck her in the closest hotel he can find.  (He had previously been congratulating himself on having the decency to take her to a hotel rather than make use of the backseat of his car at a nearby pulloff; he felt this was a reflection of the strength of character and poise expected of a politician of his stature.) 

He realizes this girl needs help. She needs a friend.  He knows just the person for the job: his wife.  She’s a psychologist.

He drives home, pulling up to his modest mansion just as the first light begins to grace the gray sky.  His wife, an early riser, has just started to make coffee.  As she measures out the scoops, she wonders where on earth her husband is.  She assumed it was another late night at work, as usual, but she is starting to get fed up with this.  He makes her worry unnecessarily.  She had had a hard day at work the day before and had been looking forward to venting with him about her psychotic patient, the one who consistently throws things at her. Today, the girl had thrown a gun.  That was too far.

When Anthony’s wife sees him pull up in the driveway and watches two figures exit the car, she immediately steps outside to investigate who he has brought home.  And when she sees what is clearly a hooker, she doesn’t wait for an explanation.  She’s had enough.

Suddenly grateful for the instrument hurled at her during yesterday’s therapy session, she retrieves it from the kitchen table, and fires twice.  It was a necessity.

Option I (Alec) (Being Rewritten)

There is a darkness in the world. A darkness far larger than the darkness that is inside of every man, that includes these smaller shadows and feeds on it. One man controls this darkness. And only one seal can stop it.

Cary reports back to his father, a creature of shadow, the utter privation of goodness. “Thank you, my son,” he growls. “There shall be actions taken.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it!” Cary and the supreme incarnation of evil turn swiftly around. It's Albert! In his years abroad he's trained in, like, ninjutsu, I guess? Tae kwon do? Some crazy seal martial art. Anyway. He crashes through the window that's in the volcano lair. I don't know why there's a window. Just. Go with it please.

“No! Go after him, my son!” The Darkness shouts. Action! Excitement! Danger! Think about how crazy this fight scene would be in a movie and not being read piecemeal by a bunch of people who want to contradict those who came before them. So, like, Alfred (is it Albert? Fuck) somehow gets the better of Cary, even though he's an elephant seal, and have you seen how crazy those dudes look? They've got noses like summer squashes. And then he's standing over the being of supreme darkness, with a katana between his flippers.

“Your nefarious meddling has seen its end, Volkazar!” Albert shouts.

“Wait! The prophecy!” Evil Incarnate shouts.

“Prophecy this, motherfucker!” Albert shouts, plunging his katana into the heart of darkness.

Patrick and Mary and John all live happy and fulfilling lives now that a goddamn elephant seal has saved the world.

Kyle does a magic trick!

THE END

Option J (An)

Going to the bay, they search for elephant seals. In the process of intensely looking for them, Mary slips on a banana and hits her head on a moving ship. When she wakes up, she remembers her son, the elephant seal Albert! It's a miracle. Incidentally, she then remembers that Albert had a large red birthmark on his tail that she could now use to identify him. Cause, elephant seals all look pretty similar.

They roam the Bay Area for three years searching for that birth mark, but have no luck. Saddened and depressed, they settle for staying in and watching episodes of The Bachelor and Jersey Shore. They do eat out occasionally at their favorite restaurant, Foods of Necessity.

One day, they are served a variety dish that comes with many different sea creatures. Mary notices something strange on one of her portions - a large, rough and red mark.

Worried about the sanitation of her food, Mary asks the waiter what was in her dish.

The waiter replies, "Oh, that dish has crab, salmon, and our very own specialty . . . pinniped." 

Mary looks confused, "What's a pinniped?"

The waiter judgingly squints at Mary, pitying her ignorance.

"Well of course, pinniped is just another name for elephant seal."

THE END

Option K (Kyle)

John enters his freezing cell to see his cellmate, a pile a blubber, almost like an elephant seal ...

It is Marijuana Mike, the strongest walrus in Brine Penitentiary. Rather than say hello, Mike scoops John up in blubbery folds. John almost chokes in the sweaty corners. 

This was prison, and they played by different rules. 

In comes Albert, King of Brine and Tusken glory. 

"Let him go, Mike." 

Mike drops John out, who is now shriveled like a raisined infant. 

"What's your name?" 

"My name is John." 

John looks up in horror as Albert tramples him to death, unaware that the man is his actual father. 

"Who da' man?" 

The prison cheers. Albert waddles around the room, giving high fives and barking testosterone fueled barks. His mother, Mary enters to visit her lover, John. She sobs when she sees his trampled body on the floor and enters the cell. 

"Ma'am?" It is Albert. Mary does not remember him because she wiped her memory. Albert does not remember his mother because she looks so darn old. 

"Would you care to procreate?" he asks boldly. 

She looks up at Albert's well toned muscles. 

Both parts of the Oedipal prophecy are completed. 

THE END

Option L (Marisa) (Shorten first 2/3rds)

Patrick rolls up in his slick Victoria cruising car and strides purposefully into the bar.  He has received so many calls from Andrew, the bar manager, that he doubts this one will be serious.  When he sees that his friend John is the one in the doghouse this time, he of course doesn’t want his friend to suffer any harm.  Like a true honest policeman, he goes through all the actions of handcuffing John and marching him to the car.  As he straps the iron cuffs around John’s wrists, he whispers in his friend’s ear, “play along.”

As soon as the duo is out of sight around the street corner, Patrick pulls the car over and removes John’s handcuffs, inviting him into the front seat.  He figures the two friends will just go on a nice drive, perhaps end up at another bar. Patrick’s police shift is almost over anyway, and he doesn’t have to return the car until the morning, so he’s ready to enjoy being a free bird. Plus, adventures with John are always more interesting than his typical end-of-shift coffee-and-doughnuts run. 

This particular adventure does prove to be eventful, but not in the way Patrick was expecting.  John, more inebriated than Patrick realized, leaps onto his lap, then shoves him out of the seat and before Patrick knows what’s happening, John is behind the wheel and driving breakneck speed, siren blaring.

“Where are we going?!” Patrick, despite the gun in the holster of his uniform, feels helpless and powerless in the midst of his friend’s drunken intensity.

“Just hold on tight, ok?” John drives faster.  In truth, he has no idea where they’re going, but he has always wanted to drive a police car and decided to seize the opportunity.

They careen around corners, run red lights, zigzag between lanes.  “Thank god there aren’t many cars out this late,” Patrick thinks to himself as he sits plastered to his seat.

Suddenly, John he gets what he thinks is a brilliant idea.  He pulls a U-turn in the middle of the highway and a few minutes later, they’re pulling up to one of his favorite spots, the flashing neon sign startling him sober.

“Patrick, lose the uniform or they won’t let you in!”  Without waiting for a reply from his still-shaking-in-his-boots buddy, he yanks Patrick’s outerwear off and pulls him out of the car and into the strip club.

When Mary got the job, she didn’t tell anyone.  Not Carry, because she was worried her instructor would be jealous.  Not Patrick, because she was worried he wouldn’t like the idea of her showing so much of her goodie jar to other men.  And of course not John, because she had stopped talking to him after ending the affair.

So, both men were pretty surprised when they saw Mary, winding and grinding up on that pole.  As you already know, neither was very pleased to find her there. 

“Mary, get down from there!” Patrick shouts.

“Now!”  John adds for emphasis.

In unison, they cry, “It’s a necessity!”

THE END

Option M (James)

Albert swims along the coast, looking for a cave with sufficient structural integrity to support the industrial size meth lab he had envisioned. Behind a school of stingrays, he catches a glimpse of large cave opening. It glows soft yellow and pulsates with the currents of the ocean.

He swims towards the hole, and to his surprise the stingrays do not scatter as he approaches. He pushes through the crush of spiracles and fins, and enters the cave. It is warm, surprisingly so.

“Hello, Albert. I’ve been waiting for you.”

Albert spins around looking for the owner of the booming voice.

“I’ve been watching you, Albert. Ever since you were born. I’m proud of you, Albert, my son.”

Albert flicks his tail wildly, barreling through the cave to locate the voice.

“Over here, my son.”

"Who are you?" Albert asked. 

"I am the mother tusk."

And that’s when Albert saw an amorphous darkness rushing towards him. He was seized by panic as the darkness surrounded him, holding him tonic. His lungs began to burn and stars exploded in his vision. Then, he felt a strange calmness envelop him as the darkness swallowed him.

Six months later

Patrick sits on the soft sand of the beach, watching the red orb of the setting sun descend beneath the water. He had been coming to the beach everyday, searching. In his quest to find his missing son, his meth business had fallen to shambles, and he was now living out of a Winnebago parked by the side of the 101. As the sun drops below the horizon, he packs up his tools into a beer cooler, and walks towards the car, his feet sinking in the sand with each step.

Just then, he hears a familiar bark, and looks back. He sees something moving in the distance.

“Albert?” Patrick calls.

The shape pauses for a second before diving into the water.

THE END

Option N (Peter)

Patrick disappears underwater. Albert waits a week, as annoyed at the delay in business development as he is about the apparent drowning of his father, and then goes to Mary's house to inform his mother of Patrick's death.

"No!" Mary sobs. "How could this have happened? How could I have been such a fool?"

Albert has had enough. "What are you talking about! Who's my real father?"

"I am." A man steps into the room, soaking wet. It is John.

"John!" Mary screams. "Where is Patrick? How could you—"

"I killed him, Mary. He dove down to my habitat, and I killed him. I've been an elephant seal all along."

John flexes and busts out of his girdle, and a wave of blubber falls to the floor.

Albert stares at John with hatred. "You killed my father!" he shouts.

"No," John says. He looks Albert square in the eye. "I am your father."

Albert collapses in utter disbelief. "No. No! That's not true! That's impossible!"

John shakes his head. He looks almost sad. "Look into your heart. You know it to be true."

Albert rises up on his haunches, his good eye filled with rage. John takes a defensive stance.

They fight. John, reared as he was in his natural habitat, with plenty of penguins to eat, was the stronger of the two. But Albert's years in the prison yard had served him well. He knows how to fight on land. The battle ends when Albert traps John's head under a roll of fat, and lays there until the kicking stops.

Mary sits crumpled and sobbing in the wreckage of her living room. "Why'd you have to kill him?" Mary asks.

Albert rolls off of John's squished body and looks off into the sunset, his destiny fulfilled, and the future of his underwater meth empire secure. He looks at Mary.

"Necessity," he says. "Necessity."

THE END

Option O (Alison)

Luckily (or unluckily, depending on who you were), their town is generally devoid of crime (aside from the graffiti and occasional hunting of penguins), and the jail is tiny and somewhat pathetic, not unlike one of those two-celled units patrolled by one sleepy man portrayed in Westerns. Patrick and Mary are placed in adjacent cells, but they reach for each other and clasp hands through the iron-wrought bars.

Mary presses her head against the cool metal, “I can’t believe this is happening to us. Baby, I’m so, so, so sorry.”

Patrick shakes his head, caresses her knuckles: “No, no. I’m sorry. I should’ve been a better father.”

Mary starts to cry. Everything comes out now. The affair with John, the beautiful way the word necessity slipped out of his mouth, the curse he placed upon Mary’s belly as she left him forever, how Albert was raised with a confused identity, not because he was an elephant seal but because he somehow knew, in the back of his mind, that he had multiple fathers.

The jail is silent but for the sound of Mary’s sobs. Patrick doesn’t know what to say- had never even questioned the origins of Albert- so he just stands there with Mary, stroking her fingers and her hair through the bars. The sound of crickets rings in his ears, and he becomes highly aware of the dripping of water, somewhere in the jail, or maybe outside.

Suddenly, the silence is ruptured by an explosion underground. The ground starts to cave in. As the sleepy sheriff jumps to his feet and bursts through the door, Mary and Patrick are dropped into a capsule and, with dirt and concrete chunks and startled worms swirling around them, they are thrust through a hyperloop. Their brains rattle inside their skulls, they feel the skin on their cheeks being pushed back on their cheekbones like a sort of twisted smile, but they are aware, according to some tiny, rational, calm voice in the back of their brains, that they have been dropped- quite literally- into an elaborate prison break plot.

They emerge on the other side of the hyperloop, covered in debris. They are temporarily blinded by the sunlight, but soon they are greeted by a smug-looking Albert and an equally smug-looking John, accompanied by the strong scent of the sea. They shake hands, like satisfied business partners, and pull Mary and Patrick out of the capsule.

A trembling Mary first speaks: “Did we really have to travel by hyperloop?”

John smiles: “But of course. It was of the utmost necessity.”

THE END

Option P (Kat)

Many years have past and Patrick and Mary are mere shadows of their former selves.

Patrick is gray and balding, with hard lines like dark parentheses around his mouth and arms flecked with prison tattoos. An infected tat left a mottled scar on his thigh last year.

Mary has changed her makeup scheme to go with the color orange, but her caked-on foundation only accentuates the smoking lines around her eyes.

Prison has turned the pair into hollow, stony people. The judge sent them down for twenty years, but they’re both getting on in eight for good behavior. Eight years rattling around in maximum security penitentiaries, breaking bread with murderers, addicts, and sneering three-strike offenders. Eight years writing haggard love letters and clichéd poems to one another from opposite ends of the state. Eight years taking the rap for a crime they did not commit, a crime they’d been framed for—framed by their elephant seal son.

Mary’s eyes go steely whenever the other inmates ask about her family. She glowers if she even hears the name Albert. She seethes and bites her lip if anyone dares to turn the channel to Animal Planet, where happy seals frolick on beaches. SHE should be the one lounging on a beach, not slumped in a chair in a baggy orange jumpsuit. Some of the inmates think the seals look cute, but Mary sees the glint of evil in their puppy-dog eyes.

At last, eight years after Albert walked and his parents went to the stocks, Patrick and Mary are free.

They meet in a shady bar exactly halfway between their respective prisons, dressed in faded jeans and oversized t-shirts. They say nothing; nothing need be said. They know what has to be done.

Albert’s latest drug lair is in San Francisco, close to the docks. He runs his newest drug empire from a grimy basement that smells like sea water and fish treats. It isn’t hard to track him down—his old contacts squawk as soon as Patrick steps into the room, sharpened toothbrush in hand. He became quite nifty with a shank during his time in prison, and they can see it in his eyes.

Patrick and Mary stake out the pad, armed with baseball bats. They pause outside the door. Eight years of planning, and now they will do it. They will take the seal pup they'd raised and loved and eject him from the world. Their eyes meet. They have no regrets—not anymore.

On the count of three, they kick down the door, brandishing weapons, mouths foaming.

“ALBERT!” Patrick snarles. “ALBERT! Daddy’s home.”

The room is empty except for a desk and a chair at one end. The chair swivels, slowly.

It is not Albert. Though this is hardly surprising since Albert could never squeeze his bloated aquatic body into a tight leather chair. And Albert never had use for desks, as he could never sign papers with his flipper-hands.

Instead, Patrick and Mary are facing a man, a human man. A slightly graying, yet oddly familiar human man.

“Well well well,” John purrs. “The darling parents have returned. What do you think, Al? You always wished we shared a hobby.”

The door slams behind them. Albert lumbers into view, barking and grunting in wet, guttural tones. The baseball bats drop from Patrick and Mary’s numb hands.

“What do you think, Mary?” John says. “Our son rather takes after your side of the family, doesn’t he? Sorry about all this but… seeing as you’re too great a threat… it IS a necessity.”

THE END