Serial killer meets girl, loses girl, and wins girl back again. Love can be murder on a relationship.
(Dark Comedy, with elements of flash-forward storytelling, 103 pages)
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SYNOPSIS
MILO ALLEN, 28, a lonely man, lives a quiet existence. He lives alone, shops alone, drinks alone and generally goes home alone. Even when he does meet a woman to visit with him, listen to his jokes and briefly share his bed, in the morning he finds himself ultimately alone.
On his way home one night, at his apartment door, somebody wearing a bright jacket brings an axe down over his head.
One day, Milo gets a call to attend his 10 year high school reunion. He thumbs through his high school yearbook and finds an empty square captioned by his own name with this explanation inside: PHOTO NOT AVAILABLE DUE TO ABSENCE. Milo has no true reason not to go, he did graduate after all, but he also has no real reason to go – until he sees an old photo of a girl deemed to have: BEST POSTURE – SALLY WALKER.
Sally Walker’s posture is not what it once was. She is also sad. Now she looks down at FRANK, her ex-husband of five years, and contemplates what she is going to do with the knife she holds over him as he is strapped down on his bed. He pleads for his life before she slams the knife down, just an inch from his scrotum, and rips a hole right through the mattress. She leaves Frank humiliated, but otherwise unharmed, except for the mess he has made of himself with his own feces.
Sally’s best friend, MARIE, 26, urges Sally to attend her high school reunion and show up all those women she went to school with that she turned out fine and she looks great and she still has fantastic posture even if she doesn’t feel like it. Marie also tells Sally she should take a date, and she has a guy for her because she is super matchmaking genius. No matter what happens it’s still better than meeting strangers on the internet.
Sally meets with CLINT, 30, sleazy, at a run down hotel café. He tells her, “You don’t seem at all like your online profile.”Since Clint doesn’t work out, Sally goes to the reunion with Marie and they are mistaken for lesbians. Milo finds his way into the reunion and nobody recognizes or remembers him. Sally meets up with some former classmates who, not only don’t believe Sally is straight they also revert to their cliquish high school personas and ask “Who would want you?”
Milo steps up and answers that question, confessing that when he first laid eyes on her, he knew he was out of her league and that he was heartbroken when she turned him down for the prom. In ten years he has made millions of dollars, traveled the world, and slept with more than his share of beautiful women, but still knows that a beauty like Sally Walker is completely unattainable. Even though Sally knew some of these were lies, she is charmed at how Milo has come to her rescue. While they dance, Milo confesses that he is neither rich nor a world traveler, but they do enjoy each other.
TWO MONTHS LATER – Sally meets DETECTIVE POTTER and THE BOYS, his junior detectives, DUNCAN and ANDERSON, who tell her that Milo Allen is dead. His body was found cut into pieces and stored in his own freezer. Potter suspects Sally because of her “history of violence” – her assault on Frank.
When Sally and Milo began dating, everything went great. They enjoyed time
together at amusement parks, fireworks shows, intimate dinners, and sexy sex. Milo reveals himself to Sally, how he lives, what he likes to do and even introduces her to Flamenco dancing, which, surprisingly, he excels at.
Marie, the typical girlfriend, questions everything that happened on their first date, including asking Sally to point to one of her daughter LESLIE’s dolls to show where Milo touched Sally, or where she touched him. Marie likes details. Marie also suggests that they test him out on Leslie to see how he gets along with kids.
SYNOPSIS (Continued)
Detective Potter continues his investigation with the man who found Milo’s body, his landlord, BUDDY, who finally, after not seeing the rent for two months, kicked down the door (even though he had a key) and rummaged around Milo’s freezer in hopes of “tasting some of this deadbeats frozen delights”and discovered Milo’s dead, frozen body parts (but ate his Hot Pockets anyway). Buddy: “Who doesn’t love Hot Pockets? Am I right?”
Sally introduces Milo to Marie and Leslie. They find that he does indeed get along famously with Leslie and doesn’t mind that Leslie calls him “poo-poo head” and urges him to eat boogers. Milo is approached by Byron, a little boy with a crush on Leslie and scores brownie points with both kids when he lets Byron know how much she likes boogers. At the end of the day Sally leaves him with a smile and a big kiss. Milo knows she is falling for him. Milo scrutinizes himself in the mirror to try and come to terms with their relationship. He has a revelation as he talks to himself in the mirror. “She loves me. She loves MILO.”
This is all the more torturous for her when she finds herself to be the only person besides the funeral parlor cleaning ladies at Milo’s wake. The cleaning ladies ponder too loudly why the casket is closed on Milo Allen. Sally shouts at them. “There is no head! His head is missing.” She bolts out of the discount funeral chapel and cries.
One day, when Buddy does come to collect the rent, Milo looks through the peephole at him, but doesn’t answer. Sally finally visits Milo’s apartment and notices the large freezer. “I bet you could hide a body in that freezer.” They talk about their relationship. Sally stays the night. Milo is curious about her attitude. He seems like she would be more upset with Milo if he were cheating on her than if he were hiding a body in his freezer, and warns him that if he does cheat, he may end up there. Before she leaves, she borrows a bright jacket from Milo’s closet.
This same bright jacket is later found by Potter and the Boys in Sally’s closet – and it has a blood stain on it. Milo tells Sally he has to go out of town on a business trip. Something about that doesn’t feel right to her. He’s a social worker – why would he need to go out of
town? She stalks him and follows Milo from his apartment, across town, to a bar, to another apartment, and finally, back home, all the time wearing Milo’s bright jacket.
Then she finally catches up to Milo at his apartment door way. Potter and the Boys surmise that Sally killed him, but have inconclusive evidence to prove it. They don’t even have a motive, but maybe it was a crime of passion.
Potter: “But what kind of passion would drive a woman to brutally murder a man?”
Duncan replies “I believe that kind of passion is sometimes called falling in love.”
As Sally grieves at Milo’s cemetery plot she is accosted by Frank. Sally quickly defends herself, kicks him in the gonads and threatens to cut off his head. She goes home, opens up a bottle of cheap wine and sees Milo walk in. Startled, she tells him “You’re dead.” and faints.
FLASHBACK: Milo’s apartment door. Sally stalks Milo, startles him and slaps him across the face for not really going out of town like he said. She accuses him of cheating. Milo explains that he is helping a client with a terrible problem and he is personally checking the man into rehab the next day and that he will return in a week. This turns out to be the day before Buddy decides to kick in the door and hunt down frozen snacks left behind by deadbeats. Milo explains to Sally that he is not the real Milo Allen, but the man who killed him, the man who answered his cry for help. That he helps those poor individuals who have no true meaning in their lives, who live a hollow existence and answers their cries for help by taking over, and living the lives they should have had.
Sally: “So you kill them?”
Milo: “I have to. If I’m them, who would they be?”
He explains further that he does this regularly and that Milo’s head is safely concealed in his bowling ball bag. Sally throws him out and tells him she never wants to see him again. But they pine for each other.
Sally watches romantic comedies and thinks of Milo. Milo butchers a man while he dreams of Sally. Marie leaves unanswered messages for Sally after seeing the news about Milo on TV. Sally sits at home alone and depressed.
A knock on her door opens to Frank. He barges in and attacks her. Milo comes to her rescue. He knocks Frank unconscious with the bowling ball bag. Milo and Sally talk about their relationship, why she didn’t turn him in, and what to do about Frank. She sends Milo away and tells him to leave the bowling ball bag with Milo’s head
inside. She calls the police and frames Frank for the real Milo Allen’s murder.
Potter is extremely pleased with himself for cracking the case. Marie reads a goodbye letter from Sally. She explains that she must move on and explore the world and not allow herself to be trapped any more by her own existence. She needs to become the woman she always wanted to be. Marie is left otherwise alone, happy for Sally and smiles at Leslie and Byron.
A married couple exchange contemptuous glances. They fight in a restaurant. They are followed by people in bright coats. Milo and Sally stalk them. They smile sweetly at each other. They each raise a hatchet.
Mike Rembis 