An Ending… is a screenplay that I am currently working on for ScriptFrenzy.  Like NaNoWriMo, ScriptFrenzy is a writing competition that challenges writers to attempt to create 100 pages in 30 days.

While I cannot give away too much information yet… I can tell you that the story I am attempting to tell with An Ending… is something close to Sweet November meets Bloody Mary.  Yeah… a bit of a head scratcher, haha!

Look for updates on this soon and perhaps even some interesting excerpts.

© 2010, Jeremy Staffeld. All rights reserved.

Understanding the Avatar

The Sanskrit definition of “avatar” is a hint to the psychology/philosophy of an active serial killer that has been working undetected by law enforcement for years because of a very unique modus operandi.

The killer in the Avatar Murders sees himself far above the lives of the people around him. He sees himself with a godlike ability to take lives and impact the futures of other lives. However, he does not allow such “mortals” to ever see him. He attacks his victims from behind, his patsies never see him, and investigators always see the patsies as those that committed his crimes. The patsies are his avatar – a false representation that he chooses to represent him to the lives not worthy to view his true form.

A symbol that he leaves for his signature is a form of avatar as well. His arrogance does not allow him to give all credit to his “work” strictly to the patsy alone and so he “needs” to leave an actual trace of himself, though in a form that does not easily implicate him nor reveal the point of staging his crime scenes to lead to a patsy.

Kalki – (from wikipedia)The origins of the name probably lie in the Sanskrit word “kalka” which refers to dirt, filth, or foulness and hence denotes the “destroyer of foulness,” “destroyer of confusion,” “destroyer of darkness,” or “annihilator of ignorance.” Other similar and divergent interpretations based on varying etymological derivations from Sanskrit – including one simply meaning “White Horse” – have been made.

A Play on Morality

There exists a strange view of morality in the sense that the characters are surrounded by a decaying city collapsing in on itself because of sloth-like neglect from its citizens, corruption and greed from its leaders, and the vanity and overall self-serving bigotry of the working and upper-classes that have fled the city for the suburbs.

The killer, committing the worst of human acts – murder – is in some respect the hero within a troubled world. He sees himself as such and in that he finds justification for the killings. The commentary within this strange moral dissonance is that of Mankind being a flawed and doomed being.

Even the “good guys”, represented in the investigators, have significant personality flaws and in the end they inevitably lose. Clearly there is a commentary here that the good guys actually do not always win… and further, who really are “the good guys” when even those that seem to be on the side of righteousness are, themselves, certainly not pure in character.

Much like The Conqueror Worm, mankind is doomed to chase their Phantom while unknowingly being guided by the evils around them as well as within them. The only consolation in the end is always a sad and usually rather abrupt loss to the inevitability of death.

There is, however, something very cruel in the fact that the victims that actually are killed end up suffering the worst fate in the story despite being the only truly innocent characters. The killer points out within his philosophy that he believes no one to be “innocent”. This puts the idea that “man is inherently bad”. Aside from the killer, the characters within the story see more of a frustration with life – not that mankind is born bad or even predestined to turn bad. More-so, they believe that through the trials of life, it is hard to imagine how anyone could not become tarnished at some point.

© 2010, Jeremy Staffeld. All rights reserved.

An Ode to Rain

The language of a wanting mist
Finally free
To leave the sky
In want of the sea

© 2010, Jeremy Staffeld. All rights reserved.

Part I

I am a dying light
I wonder how long ill shine on in the distance
I hear nothing but such thunderous silence
I see nothing beyond a void that eats at my gaze
I want ever so to fill that void… but…
I am a dying light

I pretend not to notice, for
I feel thus i must exist, right?
I touch deep into my own heart, but
I worry so… why this heart still beats.
I cry as it slows within my grasp and i am reminded that…
I am a dying light

I understand my role, my place, my fate.
I say take me now… strike at me fast. do not stretch me out. i already feel too thin.
I dream of an answer and
I try to find one myself, somewhere deep within myself
I hope, but hope is dark… hope is so very dark… and…
I am a dying light.

Part II

I am Elpis…
I wonder if i am missed
I hear angish and heartbreak and
I see torment and misery but i
I want the saturnicity of Cronos… yet,
I am Elpis and thus i am bound.

I pretend that faith is a virtue and that i am sister to the optimists, the dancers, the artists…
I feel, for their fantasies have washed me free and yet
I touch the walls of my jar and
I worry ill never truly be set free… never again. and thus
I cry because light must die for me to know that
I am its darkness

I understand this of me but
I say what springs eternal must never be so bound
I dream this though i know it not… all just echos
I try to scratch and smash away at this prison…
I hope and that is my sin… and i remain the most evil of evils so as to prolong man’s torment… for
I am Elpis… I am hope…

© 2010, Jeremy Staffeld. All rights reserved.

A black stained tear rolls off her cheek
She dreams about the day
When she will have the strength
To hold her head up high
Is it not worth it?
Lives a life of shattered dreams and broken hope
Yet she stays strong. But for how long?
“For how long will I be the one?” she says.
Then closes her eyes and lies
And with a rage of frustration she cries
“When do I get mine?”

Downriver
She stares up at the sky
Arms stretched out wide
Dreaming of a better life
She wishes she could fly
Down inside
Forget about the world
And what it does to you
Forget about all the lies
Don’t you wish that we could fly?

Ever wonder if life is just a continuation?
Like deja vu are we all just repeating ourselves?
Maybe trying to get things right or maybe not
Because what happens when we stumble upon all the answers?
Would it all just end then?
Or would it all just begin again?
I sit and wonder about past chances and future lives
Mistakes made or were they just inevitable?
Maybe nothing but a dream I sit and dream about the end
And when it all begins again

Twenty-two, angry, confused. Looking forward to tomorrow
Am I so wrong to wonder? Is it wrong to even ask?
Is this all just the trailing end of teenage angst?
Or is there something more that I’m searching for?
So now I stare ahead
And dream of all that should have been
And then it all begins again…

So I fly…

© 2010, Jeremy Staffeld. All rights reserved.