Animation Script Flat Track Jack
On the tracks
A sparse line-up of people is waiting on the sidewalk for a passing freight train. The train slows to a stop. Nobody bothers much. Then, from the back of the line, a fairly solid man, Jack, in a bravado manner, weaves his way through the group of non-committal persons and proceeds to climb between two attached box-cars. Suddenly, the train jerks into motion. Jack falls to the tracks whereupon the advancing train severs his legs mid-thigh. The impact sends him bouncing on the severed stumps leaving tracks of fluid stain. He falls flat down so that the stain tracks end at the stumps of his legs, and, mostly, the stumps of his legs are visible as he lay there.
The view of stumps holds.
Slowly, in the background, the sound of an approaching siren is increasingly heard. Soon, an ambulance arrives, and two slick para-medics lift Jack onto a stretcher, then, into the back of the van. The ambulance moves out moderately with lights flashing and siren blaring. It disappears in the distance.
Outside a forbidding front of a building is the word ?Hospital?.
Through a pair of swinging doors, Jack hops out on his stumps, sporting two days growthof beard. He stops. Bewilderment shows on his face. He stands lost studying his surroundings and contemplating his predicament. Passing by in opposite directions, under Jack's gaze, are a group of boy scouts and an old lady. Once past each other, the last boy-scout notices a small wad of paper money fall out of her purse. He picks the bills up. Jack still observes. The boy-scout eyes the cash. He looks towards his scout pack moving away from him, then, towards the old lady. He pauses a moment, cash in hand. On a second thought, the boy heads towards the woman handing out the money. She is thrilled and hands the boy a bill. He accepts, gratefully. Smiles towards her and heads back to join the pack. Jack is smitten by these proceedings of honor. He glares outward with new hope. But by hopping on the stumps that have an accordion-like shape is now how he must advance forward.
Back at the tracks where it all started, a slow moving freight train allows Jack to spring upward with his stumps and land comfortably inside an open box car. The train picks up speed and passes a sign that says,
Next Town
10 Miles
Some distance off on the horizon, there is a hump in the landscape that would indicate a small town. The train continues to roll on down the tracks towards the horizon.
Close-up on Jack standing in the box-car and peering head-on towards the on-coming sights. Houses, soon, come into passing view as the train begins to slow down. Jack hops out of the box-car.
In the town
A neighbourhood street is lined with middle class homes. In the front yard of one home, a black man stands on the lawn, casually, leaning on a pitch-fork so that the curved backside of the prongs shows, outward. From down the street a few houses, hops Jack.
Between the black man and Jack, come a white woman and a white female child, into their garage. The woman gets into her car while the child climbs aboard a tricycle, with Jack getting very near. As the car begins to back-up, with robust the child begins to peddle the bike down the driveway, circling about so that she is in the path of her mother's backing-up vehicle that's picking up speed and about to strike the child. Jack goes into action. With a double whammy of stumps against the side of the car, he succeeds in displacing the vehicle, aside, enough for it to bypass the child which it does and stops.
The driver woman is aghast about the displacement of herself inside the vehicle with it shoved aside and halfway onto the lawn. She spots Jack with his beard growth. She becomes furious, oblivious to Jack's act of heroism. The child is well and still active after a near brush with death.
Red-faced angry, the woman exits her car, points accusingly; heading towards him and gestures wildly about the imprints left by Jack's stumps causing damaged door panels. Puzzled, wide-eyed and with outstretched arms Jack tries to indicate the child playing at her tricycle where she was moments before, targeted, behind the reversing vehicle.
Generalized suspicion overcomes the woman. Jack begins to hop onwards on his merry less way. The woman is beside herself with discordance. She indicates about Jack and the child to someone who entered the garage from the house. This female person appears at the edge of the garage and lays her eyes on Jack. Without a glance upward, her hands shoot up into the ceiling of the garage from where she pulls down a pitch-fork.
Baffled, Jack makes eye contact with the second woman who starts jabbing at his stumps with the points of the pitch-fork. He continues to move-on along his way on the sidewalk whereupon he approaches the black man with a pitch-fork who makes abrupt jerking towards the ground in Jack's direction and our anti-hero is further puzzled and amazed by the good citizen behaviour. He moves away dejected and sad.
Jack makes his way to and hops aboard a moving box-car onto his next destination.
Shortly, a sign posted next to the tracks reads,
City
5 Miles
He sees it and rests back comfortable. At the end of the horizon, a hump in the landscape would indicate a small city in contrast to that of the previous town. Soon, a new set of houses is approached and Jack hops out of the box-car.
Again, he finds himself stumping along a suburban street lined with middle class homes. He passes an overweight asian man who is watering his lawn. Walking onwards, he clumps along when from behind a house he hears a choking, gasping cry for help and the sound of splashing water. He pauses getting a better handle on the noise, then approaches the side of the house and peers over cedar fencing to get a glimpse. He sees an old woman flailing about in the backyard pool, drowning.
With a quick hop, he leaps over the fence. Upon the diving board with the woman in peril of death, he bounces, once, then again, gaining considerable height and is observed rising above the fence top by the neighbour with the gardening hose.
Landing stumps first in the water, a large wave erupts that splashes the old woman out of the water and gently lands her in a prone position at the pool's edge, lifeless. Jack approaches the body. Gently using a stump, he puts pressure to her back bobbing it up and down. After a few stokes, the old woman becomes conscious and coughs spewing water. Upon seeing Jack, she loses her cool again and begins having palpitations. She wimpers out for help. He implores her,
Stay calm, stay calm. I'm outta here.
He takes a moment to dry off with a nearby towel then bounds over the fence and back out to the street. He begins onward in direction first headed picking up speed while passing the asian man who drenches him with the garden hose. Down along the street new faces appear each with their own measure of attack from with water. Past the man a child sprays a water canon at him. Further, a man washing his car turns the hose on Jack. Then, a fire engine drives knocking Jack off his stumps with fire hose pressure.
Wearily, completely dishevelled, and disoriented, Jack makes his way out of the dragnet.
Back at the tracks, Jack bounds upon the first available rail car that takes him out of the city and his breathing and heaving subside. He rests. The train goes by pasture lands and onward.
Peering and leaning out the side of the box-car, he observes a sign track-side that reads,
Metropolis
Next Ahead
The sight of mega-city is on the horizon. He reels back into the car. Confounded, he speaks,
Oh, SHIT!
He is overwhelmed with worry which quickly turns into rage.
Close on Jack's beet red face and outstretched clutching hands,
I'll kill ?em!!!!
