Working Title: Hosed

Working Title: Hosed

Story: Frederick P Mikkelsen

EXT Street : Spring Morning

A woman, late-thirties or early forties, walks up a hill. She is the building inspector of this sleepy fishing village island on the side of a very steep hill. The island is off the coast of Maine with cold biting winds much of the time and the residual of the crashing waves of the storm is perhaps more than normal in this harbor which sees large tidal shifts daily.

The main street is basically straight, but up the hill, and there's plenty of openness around to get a view of the ocean, harbor, bobbing ships, and debris blowing around.

A serious, unexpected, freak storm had occurred, and this woman is inspecting damage. She has a staple gun and a folder full of plastic condemnation signs.

She snuck out the back of the fire station and was not seen by reporters who wouldn’t know who she was anyway. She is the building inspector. There are a few reporters there. No big crews in vans because the damage was too great. They had to come in on small boats. The town is isolated. These are national crew. International, actually with reporters from Norway and Japan that like to bring stories of bad storms back home. This is a big deal news story.

With heavy boots the building inspector is walking through all kinds of debris that consists of personal items, building parts, and creatures of the sea. She picks up a picture of herself and her child. Maybe the kid is lost. Definitely, her 10-year-old son is lost.

She’s a smart woman, a former marine scientist who settled down and became building inspector in this town because of its simplicity after her divorce.

The word is out that the mayor died, and she, as a senior member of the town council, is acting mayor.

Lovely.

A very strange slimy sea creature is found in one point, and she sees it is not completely dead. Looking around, she finds a bucket among the debris that is upright and full of water. She pours some out and puts the slimy sea creature into the bucket.

Sea creatures are scattered everywhere. Most are dead.

The town had been hit by a tsunami. Unlike many tsunamis that occur on bright beautiful days, this tsunami hit during an off-shore tornado … a water spout … spurred off by a very freak hurricane that has stalled off-shore just over the horizon. This damage is not a clean scrubbing like a tsunami where gushing water flows over the land and pulls it back to the sea. And, it’s not a clean tornado either with things toppled and blown for miles. In this storm, the tsunami crashed into the sea wall and was picked up and dumped at the top of the hill by the tornado. Then it rained and rained. Lightening. More rain. More lightning. Fear is often a major part of a disaster like this; panic, and the fears of more tornadoes, perhaps. But in this storm, the people who panic are already dead. With the storm raging, responding to the tsunami was not possible. Almost everyone left has a hard-core survival attitude, or just live in denial. The town is really not okay. It is not "just a scratch" as they'd have you feel. San Francisco 1906, only not as populated. Fukashima, only not as radio active. Maybe it's more like the flood of the Netherlands in the 1950s, but there's a tinge of Roswell 1947 in the air.

More damage was at the top of the hill than at the bottom. Fish, squid, seaweed piled up at the top of the town.

INT Makeshift Clinic

The building inspector stops by a house that is partially in ruin. Inside, there are some injured people. She consoles a few of them, and heads on.

She staples a condemnation sign on the front door. There’s discussion about whether the injured need to leave immediately, and the inspector says, “I don’t know where else you can go.”

EXT Moments Later, Main Street

Back on the street, the moans that were in the makeshift clinic can be heard in the distance. There are several clinics. A lot of people have been hurt.

INT Damaged Restaurant : Mainstreet on a Cliff

The building inspector stops to speak with a restaurant owner (Rowen) who is both irritated by the damage and delighting in the opportunity to have this stake in what will likely be a very interesting tourist destination. Rowen is also talking with a contractor. It is not lost that the town is destroyed, people are missing, and Rowen’s money is already taking all the resources for his manic project to rebuild his restaurant to capitalize on the disaster.

Rowen’s on one side bitter at the contractor because the extent of the damage and the cost will cause him to miss most of the tourist season. On the other side, upbeat selling the idea of the disaster museum to the building inspector.

The inspector begins to pull a condemnation sign out, and Rowen freaks out.

Rowen: “The local economy is crap! Nobody travels to look at fishermen! Nobody ever -- we’re getting repaired. I’ll pull the permits. We won’t open until the repairs are done.”

Man! He is manic and the building inspector reluctantly slides the sign back into the folder. She cannot get away from Rowen fast enough, and nobody’s going to be eating there today anyway.

EXT Moments Later, Main Street

Looking back at Rowen’s restaurant, we can see that it’s footings onto the land are weakened and creak a bit. Particularly the deck which is high up on the downhill side of the hill.

The building inspector yells back in that she’s going to come back and evaluate condemning the building because it is could be marginal.

Rowen is not pleased.

Walking further up the hill the building inspector finds more sea weed that makes suction noises as she walks through it. Houses with broken roofs covered with seaweed like swamp thing had occurred with other miscellaneous debris as well. It’s hot and muggy, and the seaweed is starting to smell pretty bad. Occasionally gusts.

The ominous, stalled off-shore hurricane appears to be the biggest threat to the town. Bands of water crash down from time to time, but though the skies grow dark, and light, and dark again, and though the wind and rain go quite intense, it’s always within the margins of usual survivability.

The building inspector talks with a homeowner about the seaweed, flood insurance, disaster relief, and other related topics in a somewhat dry way like disasters have happened here a lot. Five years ago. Fifteen years ago. Old timers know of storms twenty-five years ago, and though those storms toppled trees, tore roofs, and broke lots of windows, none had deposited hundreds of tons of seaweed on the town.

Near the top of the hill, seaweed is basically everywhere in waist-high piles. We see a tangled bit of a very long hose and rope. The hose is the thickness of a hose used on a fire truck. It’s clearly a hose not to be mistaken for anything natural. The building inspector has never seen this before. It came from the sea.

INT CAR Later That Day

building inspector is on the phone talking to disaster officials in her car. Due to the tsunami, boat traffic cannot really make it to the island. “How did all these reporters get here”? Due to the tornado, the bridge is out. Blah blah blah … they’re on their own for a while like Vermont was during hurricane Irene. However, officials do say a helicopter could come in, if there were a clear place to land.

EXT Top of Hill

The building inspector has decided this is the place where the helicopter could come in, but the quantity of seaweed and debris is a problem. But, this seems the only place a helicopter could land in town on a good day. They’ve landed there before, five years ago, fifteen years ago, and twenty-five years ago. The pile of seaweed and the hose have got to go.

EXT Top of Hill - Continuing

People have gathered to clear the landing space. The helicopter has a name now, Epic Mainland. It will bring in some medical supplies for the injured, and water.

The clearing is going along. A person becomes injured on sea urchin spines that are in the seaweed. Another nearly loses a finger from a crab. The morale for moving this pile of waste is growing thinner.

A dead person is found in the seaweed, and night is starting to settle in. There is a gentle rain starting that grows heavier.

EXT Next Day, Cloudy and Dreary

Clearly, some people have been working through the night, but not that much more has been done. There are about a dozen tired people working.

Townies and tourists working side-by-side talking the smack tourists and townies talk when they’re being frank.

Protesters are playing to the media with signs about Global Warming and Gaia seeking revenge on mankind for destroying the world. They’re pretty typical protesters, and slightly blind to the actual needs of people who are hurt preferring instead the sensational opportunity to have international media exposure.

Someone decides to try to cut the hose, to cut it up into smaller pieces, all they have is a simple knife, and a hissing sound starts. Gurgling. Hissing. Blup! Blup! The pile moves a bit as the hose readjusts, and it starts to slide down the hill. It had been precariously balanced at the top of the hill, now, water and goo in the hose is flowing into the lower portions, the balance has shifted, and loops of the hose are moving down the hill.

We begin to see how the hose is much bigger than we might have thought, and someone’s leg becomes entangled and begins to pull him, Victim, very slowly down hill. Meanwhile, the rain picks up a bit.

Seaweed is slippery and wet seaweed is very slippery. It is gross. It stinks. And people are running around trying to figure out how to rescue Victim. People are falling and getting hurt.

There’s something about the tools. Nobody has anything really effective to manage this. The tool sheds were swept into the ocean. Small knives and shovels and other impractical tools are all that are available to deal with the clean-up. Even things like landscaping tools nobody has because services like this are outsourced to the mainland.

EXT - Still Raining

It’s progressing slowly down the hill. Victim is still entangled. People cannot really get close because it is so slippery and cannot walk or crawl on the seaweed on the steep street. The hose makes its way towards Rowen’s Restaurant and he is taking pictures.

Rowen: “We must document this disaster!”

Victim: “Jesus Christ! Doesn’t anybody have an axe?”

Slowly, it passes Rowen’s and a loop gets caught in the deck footing and becomes attached with other debris. The weight of the hose and wet seaweed pushes against the footing. The rest of the hose continues to slide down the hill.

As the hose spreads out, the hose and rope are entangled in a few different places including the makeshift clinic. Man there’s a lot of hose.

The threat of the hose and rope is not yet understood. It’s more of a joke than anything. Victim is going with it and nobody is panicking.

The rain picks up, and the hose slides down the hill more quickly. It hits Rowen’s and begins to fall down the cliff loosening the footing though nobody really notices, and with the water, pulls a large portion of hose and seaweed mass, about as much as a truck, into Rowen’s footings, and the restaurant begins to fall off the cliff.

Victim gets his foot out from the hose. There is a moment of triumph because nobody is aware of the problems at Rowen’s restaurant.

Things begin moving quickly now. The restaurant starts sliding down the hill with the extra weight of hose, rope, and seaweed. Lots of seaweed. Hose that is wrapped around different structures gets pulled taut, and buildings start snapping. People are running trying to get away from the sea weed, hose, and rope. A lot of damage occurs as Rowen’s restaurant pulls the clinic, Victim, who gets caught again, and various other people, pets, animals, and things over the cliff.

EXT Months Later

building inspector opens the Rowen’s Disaster Museum in the location where the restaurant used to be. She is standing with her son and looking around at the booming local economy as vendors sell pictures, tell stories, and sell pieces of the hose and rope.

Vendor: “Guaranteed. This is a piece of the actual hose.”

Author’s Note

This story comes from my dream of June 26, 2017. The overview of the dream is this inexplicable hose and rope twisted between each other randomly and with no visible ends on the top of a hill, and any attempts to untwist it cause the hose to slide down the hill more and more until it ensnares the people untying it and all get pulled off the cliff with a building’s deck on high pilings that gets wrapped in the hose. In thinking about the hose more, it is clear that it is a mass of hose, rope and seaweed. I conclude further that it must be a fishing village, and that the ironic vengeance is on the building owner.