FADE IN:

EXT. L.A. RIVER – NIGHT

A battered Mini Cooper, headlights off but interior cabin lights on, is parked under the Fourth Street Viaduct. Water curtains both sides of the bridge as the car putters in place.

A once-in-a-decade rainstorm is hitting the city, and the L.A. River—nearly concreted out of existence during the last drought—is remembering what it once was. As the water rises under the bridge, the car continues to idle.

INT. CAR – NIGHT

Violet Caffrey, 29, an old soul trapped in a girlish body, snorts the remaining dot of her latest exclamation point, then tilts her head back to let the numbing nasal drip hit. She's wearing a little black dress and her upturned mouth moves restlessly, silently, at a loss for words as she grips the steering wheel to keep from wiping her nose.

She wants to contain her current state in a screenplay, to have an interior (INT.) vs. an exterior (EXT.), but there's no degree of separation. Her mind moves like the shadow world beyond the shelter of the Fourth Street Viaduct: swirling chaos illuminated by the occasional flash of lightning.

With the next lightning strike, she sees the dark shapes beyond her windshield as geriatric cyborgs scattered along the rising river bed, her broken creations waiting to be swept away because the world killed her darling screenplay.

No, not the world. Him.

That bald baby-faced backstabbing bastard.

That mentor, betrayer, and fur-coated father figure all rolled into one.

Jules Morgan.

Thunder rolls in, stretching on and on. Perhaps it's not thunder but cars driving over the bridge, moving ever so slowly since even the truly suicidal L.A. drivers turn squeamish at the slightest hint of rain.

Violet's Mini Cooper sways with the rolling rumble, and she imagines her character, the ever-faithful Gerald, first of the GeroMechs, giving her car a push.

But is something actually out there, pushing the car?

"Who gives a shit?" Violet regains her words at last. That's right. True invincibility is not giving a shit.

Let Jules Morgan dip his fat fingers into what should've been a promising sequel to GeroMech: The Awakening, which had been a cult classic by the way.

Let him swallow her screenplay and "produce" GeroMech: Second Coming, 90+ minutes of innuendos and straight up senior citizen soft porn.

Let him somehow still make money off tonight's disastrous screening while she struggles to pay rent because who gives a flying—

But Violet's hands are already moving, razor blade chopping and sculpting the last of her eight ball into an exclamation point, a line for her right nostril and a final bump for her left. She drops the razor in the cup holder and holds up her black coke mirror, someone else's cellphone whose battery died an hour ago.

The twenty-dollar bill is rolled and ready to go. She bows her head, ready for the lightning, ready for the exclamation point, ready for the...

!

Black fur, the hint of a face, slams against the window

The cellphone somersaults out of Violet's hand, throwing off coke contrails, then smacks the car ceiling and lands face down between her feet. No no no.

Violet's already hunched over—index finger and thumb picking white specks from the floor carpet like a chicken pecking for feed—when the afterimage of the thing at the window floods her mind.

She switches off the car's cabin light. Her deep blue eyes, which aspire to match her name in the right light, scan the darkness.

Is that furred monstrosity still out there, containing her within its gaze because she couldn't contain herself?

No, that's the coke, making monsters out of shadows. Her nose begins to leak, so she sucks on her upper lip to reclaim the bitter residue, to keep pace with her hammering heart in the cramped car cabin.

A wail splits the dry air beneath the Fourth Street Viaduct. Violet responds with a short shriek, takes the car out of park, and throws on her headlights.

She bites off another scream when she sees a pair of eyes glowing back at her.

They're low to the ground, caught at the edge of the rain. Violet thinks she can make out the black fur, ears tucked back against a sleek skull.

The creature wails again.

But there's a better word for the sound. Y'all? Yawl?

No, it's the long wail, the ultimate cry of despair.

The yowl.

With its parking brake off and the rising water licking its hubcaps, the Mini Cooper starts to roll towards the unblinking eyes.

Yowl yowl yowl.

Is it a cat?

Sure, call it a cat.

Because only a cat would make such a sound.

Violet lets out something between a sob and a laugh. She turns the car's cabin light back on and resumes picking coke out of the carpet.

She licks the end of an American Spirit blue, then dabs the damp end of the cigarette with a promising collection of white specks because smoking's cleaner than snorting at this point.

Light. Inhale. The snow-tipped American Spirit's good for the first four puffs, then Violet stubs the cigarette out in her overflowing ashtray and starts over.

She looks up. The cat's eyes don't move as the car drifts closer.

Could it be a mountain lion? No, L.A. has plenty of cougars, but no actual mountain lions prowling the streets that she knows of. Plus, there's no such thing as a black mountain lion.

Yowl.

A panther then? No, too small. That's got to be someone's cat. It probably pounced at her window because it knew the inside of the car was the only warm dry place around. Cats hate water and now it's stuck and now all it can do is—

Yowl yowl yowl.

Is this her new low... chicken pecking the carpet for coke to smoke while someone's beloved kitty drowns in the rising L.A. River?

What if she were gifted with the wisdom of old, outfitted with alien technology that only joins with the bodies of those aged 80 years or older?

What if she were her beloved character, the first GeroMech Gerald?

What would Gerald do?

Violet stubs out the second cigarette and pulls the parking brake back on. She opens her door and immediately stumbles in the few inches of the growing river.

She's not used to wearing heels so she takes them off and walks toward the waiting eyes, still glowing in the headlights.

Closer. Closer. Until she's only a few feet away.

When the headlights catch her silhouette, the eyes rise from the water until they're higher than Violet's own.

She leaps back, then feels the icy shock of rushing water soaking through her dress.

Violet scrambles to get off her back, but the thing's already on top of her.

It has arms, furred flailing arms.

She raises her hand to shield her face, and something sinks into her forearm. Then she's hitting back with something sparkling black. Her high heels.

Yowl.

The heels break and Violet is somehow back in the car and the thing is pounding the window again and it's not a fucking cat.

She jams her foot down on the gas pedal. The Cooper's tires spin, but the car doesn't move while the creature batters the window and the first hairline cracks form in the glass.

Oh God. She's stuck. She's hydroplaning.

Then Violet remembers to take off the parking brake.

The Cooper hits the wall of rain, and then she really is hydroplaning.

That's when Violet remembers something else.

She's going the wrong way.

Back before Jules Morgan, years ago when she and her motley crew were filming the original GeroMech: The Awakening on a shoestring budget, Violet had to go out and scout the location for her screenplay's trademark hypersonic wheelchair race all on her own.

She'd spotted a section of chain link fence along the then dry L.A. River and had gone out that same day to buy a pair of heavy-duty bolt cutters. It was the best $40 she'd ever spent because that hypersonic wheelchair race scene was what made the first film a cult classic.

And she can't believe she told Jules Morgan the chain link fence story.

She can't believe she promised to show it to him after what he did to her sequel.

That's why she had to come here tonight after witnessing that travesty known as GeroMech: Second Coming.

But that false section of chain link fence she left behind is on the other side of the Fourth Street Viaduct.

Violet stops the car. Her right arm is throbbing where that thing under the bridge attacked her.

She takes a few shuddering breaths then turns the Mini Cooper around. The car stalls, so she puts on the gas.

Lightning flashes as she nears the bridge, and she sees the creature to her left out in the rain.

It's walking on two legs.

"Fuck you Jules Morgan. Fuck you Second Coming. Fuck you werewolf!"

She swerves to hit the thing that may or may not be a werewolf, but that is most decidedly not a cat.

The thing tries to run but staggers in the water.

It lets loose one last yowl before it collides head-on with the hood of the car and gets sent flying.

The creature lands in the L.A. River with a splash and doesn't get back up. As the water rises, it will take the thing to the place that all things go once the city's had its way with them: The river will carry it to the trash heap of the past.

And what had Jules Morgan, all bedecked in black sable fur and eyeing her speedometer, said? What did he say?

"Violet baby, you failed wonderfully. Your failure is the event. That's a compliment. Trust me."

"Get out," Violet says it again, but there's no one in the passenger seat now.

And her nose is running. Her eyes are watering. There is no interior. There is no exterior. She's at one with the once-in-a-decade L.A. rainstorm.

When the rain ceases its pounding, she realizes she's parked back under the Fourth Street Viaduct.

There's something caught on the car's windshield wiper.

It looks like a black fur coat that she's seen before.