Short stories=good screenplays?
She looked at him across the cafeteria, as she always did every day at 12:00pm. He always sat 4 tables across from her so it wasn't strange that she would look. He was always dressed in the same manner: dark scruffy jeans, a dirty brown overcoat, brown boots that were always caked in mud, and a white collar shirt that peeked out from his coat. That was the one item of clothing she always wondered about. Everything else was dirty except for this prestigious, very clean white collar. The woman always wondered why everything else was kept in a complete mess, but this wasn't. It bothered her. Actually, it bothered her a lot. She wanted to take that man and dump him in a giant washing machine and just clean everything that belonged to him. This thought became her obsession. The thought of this man clean always managed to creep into her mind at every chance it got. It even started to effect her work at the office. She brought the fork full of salad towards her mouth, and as she began to chew, she thought of the many evil clean ways she could do with him. The woman suddenly stood up, the perfect idea finally at hand. She was about to walk over to this man and give him a piece of her mind when, as usual, he got up and left the room. The woman fell down in her chair in defeat, another perfect opportunity gone. She miserably ate the rest of her salad and walked back to her office, thinking nothing but of the dirty man.
The woman looked around at her new surroundings. As usual, she was in her perfect place. The floors were sparkling clean marble, the walls a perfect shade of beige, the glass table in the middle shining as if you could see through it. Everything was perfect, everything was clean. The woman smiled and spun around squealing. She kept this up until something caught her attention as she spun. A small back dot. She stopped suddenly and gasped in fright. There, sitting in her perfect world, was the dirty man . He was still in his dirty overcoat, his mud caked shoes and clean white collar. He gave a little smirk, and the woman began to scream.
“ No NO NO, GET AWAY FROM THE TABLE, GET AWAY FROM EVERYTHING, YOUR RUNING IT ALL, ITS ALL SO DIRTY!”.
The woman screamed and screamed, but the man just sat there grinning.
Suddenly, the woman awoke, sweat streaming from her head. She looked around at her surroundings. She was back in her no wrinkle bed, her always vacuumed carpet, and the neatly arranged perfume bottles on her dresser. She was in her clean room. She sighed in relief and laid back down.
“A dream” she said “ It was only a dream.”
She smiled to herself and rolled over, closing her eyes. She gave a small yawn, and sleepily said “ Enough is enough, tomorrow I will walk over and tell that man to be clean or el”. She was already asleep before she finished her sentence.
The woman awoke fresh and anew. She went to take a shower, smiling the whole way. Today was the day. Everything in her life will be clean, including that man. And it was all thanks to her. She smiled bigger as she slipped into her perfectly ironed business dress suit, brushed her perfectly long hair, brushed her teeth until they smelled minty fresh, and grabbed her briefcase as she walked out the door. Her neighbors later claimed she was skipping down the stairs smiling as she went. Some ignored her, while others thought they should call the police. The woman was too much involved in her own world to notice the strange looks.
She arrived to work extra early. So early in fact that the main door wasn't even open. Yet this did not faze her. The woman went across the street and bought a coffee. She took a napkin out, cleaned the rim of the cup, and sat down on a bench smiling as she sipped her coffee. About 2 hours later, coworkers began to congregate at the door as the security man let them in.. The woman noticed the doors opening, and rushed past people, even pushing some as she ran for her office. Screams of “Watch out!” and “What the hell is your problem” could be heard in the distant, but she didn't care. Today, her dream will come true.
The woman sat at her desk, and kept fidgeting with everything. Waiting for lunch seemed like forever. She kept stacking and unstacking the papers, she sharpened every pencil in her drawer, and even checked the thousands of email she received every day. She got so bored of waiting, she was about to fall asleep when her neighbor knocked on her door and declared it was time for lunch. The woman stood up, screamed “yes”, and bolted out the door, not even realizing she had left her bag on the side of her chair.
The cleanly lady ran down the emergency stairs, not even waiting for a elevator to go down eight floors. She bolted through the door, ran to where she usually sat, and began to breath heavily due to all that running. Her hair was a mess, her outfit wrinkled from the running. Yet, this time she didn't notice it. Her eyes were fixated on the 4 tables across from her. There he was, once again sitting in his dirty outfit. He was sipping coffee and reading what looked like the sports section of the daily newspaper. The woman smiled.
“This is it” she thought. “ I am going to walk right on over there, grab his dirty arm, and yell at him that he must clean his clothes”.
She got up from her seat, and slowly walked over to him. The man was too engulfed in his newspaper to notice her advance.
She took slow breathes as she walked.
“In and out”she thought. “Just breathe in and out, this is your moment”.
She smiled as she thought about her moment finally coming true, she was finally going to tell that man off. She sat down nervously and slowly into the chair. The man still did not look up. She looked around the room, and made a small grunt sound. The man heard the sound, put his paper down, and looked at her. They were staring into each others eyes. The moment went on.....and on....and on. The man looked at her questionably, and the woman finally noticed that nothing was said.
“I can't stop looking at his eyes. They are the perfect shade of blue. And his face, its so beautiful, and his mouth, so intoxicating.” The woman thought. She now knew it wasn't a obsession with him being clean, she actually felt a attraction to him. A dirty man.
She then did something that a normal person would regret immediately. She blurted out:
“I have seen you sitting across form me every day, sipping your coffee. I think about you night and day. I don't think there is ever a time when I don't think about you. I.....I LOVE YOU”.
She practically screamed the last word. The man looked at her, and cocked his head. She continued:
“The only thing is, as you may have noticed, I am a very clean person. Everything must be clean and put in the right place. So if you clean your clothes, we can be the cleanest lovers ever” She smiled, and nodded, thinking this statement obviously made sense and no man would ever turn it down.
The man smiled and nodded his head also.
“Yes!”she thought, “He understands, he will clean his clothes” Her mind was doing somersaults until the man began to speak.
“I will never clean my clothes. I like how they look. You don't have to look good just to be smart. I want to be different. My difference seemed to have caught your attention and that is good. I stand out, don't I? You never would have noticed me if I was a clean man wearing a business suit, now would you?
The woman was flabbergasted. She couldn't believe he disagreed with her notion of be clean or we can't date. She lost. He would never be clean, she would never love him. She got up from the seat in a depressed state, mumbled a sorry, and began to walk away.
“How could he do that to me? All I want is for him to be clean, and yet he won't. My life was going to be complete, I would never have to think of him being dirty every-” She stopped her thought mid sentence. That was right, if he had agreed to be clean, these thoughts would not be in her head. What would she do without this urge to clean him? She needed that urge, she wanted that urge. This urge had taken over her life. She knew she must have this urge despite that fact that the man would have to stay dirty. She smiled, and as she turned around to tell the man this, a hand had grabbed her arm. She looked down at the strange hand. It was covered in a dirty brown overcoat, under the hand the mud stained shoes. She looked up, cringed, but managed to smile. The man smiled too, and said
“Lets ditch work today and grab some real food”.
The woman nodded in agreement, and they began to walk hand in hand towards the exit. The man, not noticing the evil smile the woman had on her lips. She had her evil clean thoughts back, and she was loving them.