Twice Upon a Time

By Lyle Weldon

A Movie Length Tale™ from Aisle Seat Books™.

An unhappy elderly woman on the verge of death is given the opportunity to go back to when she was twenty years old and live her life over again. Is she destined to make the same choices or will she wind up happier than her first time through?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aisle Seat Books
• Release date: Mar 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9781935655633

Book preview

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A Movie Length

Romantic Comedy Tale

For Readers

of All Ages.

Written by

Lyle Weldon.

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Lyme, New Hampshire

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Copyright © 2012 Lyle Weldon

All rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 978-1-935655-63-3

ISBN-10: 1-935655-63-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012931586

Published by Aisle Seat Books, an imprint of

GrayBooks LLC

1 Main Street

Lyme, New Hampshire 03768

www.Tales2Film.com

www.AisleSeatBooks.com

Electronic Edition

About Tales2Film™ and Aisle Seat Books™

Read a good movie lately?

Every good movie starts with a script, and every good script tells a riveting story. Long before the actors are chosen and the filming starts, a writer sits down, crafts that story, and submits it for consideration by the producers, directors, and other creative talents in the film industry. It can take a long time. A script may spend years making the rounds before getting the elusive Hollywood green light. If it ever does. Some of the greatest movies ever written are ones that none of us will ever see on the screen.

Tales2Film finds the best of those not-yet-produced tales and brings them to you as Movie Length Tales™ just as the writer envisaged them. Each of the tales in this series has been converted by the script’s writer from the technical shorthand of screenplay format into the familiar prose format you see here, a process called novelization.

These little books are not novels, or even novellas. Think of them as written movies. Like the screenplays they come from, each is presented in real time, written in the present tense to allow you to see the movie’s scenes in your mind’s eye as if they were unfolding on a theater’s screen before you.

So. Here’s a movie. Take your favorite aisle seat and enjoy it.

And when it’s over, take a look at out Featured Previews in the back of this book. Your next Movie Length Tale™ is already here...

Now Showing:

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Romantic Comedy

All Ages

Theater lights dim.

Fade in:

A quiet, tree-lined street. Each perfect home has an equally perfect yard. Sarah Vaughan croons Tenderly in the background. The narrator, a young woman, is cultured and self-assured:

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there lived a young girl. She was sweet and bright and had parents who loved her very much.

One house doesn’t fit the neighborhood—the paint is faded and chipped, a broken shutter swings loosely from a window and the yard is gray and overgrown.

They lived in a lovely house in a lovely town and had a very lovely life together.

For a moment, the house morphs into what it once was—pristine, lovingly-maintained. Then it returns to the eyesore it’s become.

When the girl was twelve, her mother became ill. She was sick for a very long time. And then she was gone.

Around the side of the house and in the back yard a once-proud lemon tree offers rotting fruit. More lemons rot around the base of the tree.

For a while the girl and her father lived in sadness…but eventually—after the girl’s grandmother came to live with them—she found her smile again.

Through the timeworn back door and into the kitchen.

>>

Inside the old house, dust passes through shafts of light, settling on unswept floors. Stacks of dirty dishes fill the sink.

When the girl was sixteen, a terrible war swept through the world and took her father away from her. He never came back.

Out of the kitchen and into the living room.

Threadbare furniture inhabits the musty space. Not much has changed in fifty years save for a push-button telephone and a TV in the corner. Ginger, an old cat, saunters through.

The girl mourned… but found solace in the thought that her parents were together. Like before, the day came when she found her smile again. She grew up, met a young man and, after a proper amount of time, they married.

Photographs on a wall and a nearby mantel tell a family’s story. Some of the pictures are: a wedding portrait of a young couple, circa 1940s; the woman holding an infant; the couple standing with two young boys at the precipice of the Grand Canyon; graduation photos of the two sons followed by wedding photos with young wives; and finally each young couple holding their own infant child.

The girl, who was now a woman, gave her husband two children. The years passed. The children became adults and moved away. The woman and her husband grew old… and grew apart. The woman lost her smile for the very last time. And the girl who was born to such a lovely life lived sadly ever after.

The music fades as an unseen mailman shoves mail through a slot in the front door. It spills onto the threadbare carpet.

Sylvie Rodan, 84 years old and looking every day of it, enters and painfully retrieves the mail. Wearing a plain house dress and old slippers, Sylvie shuffles into…

>>

The den. Sylvie enters to find Jack Rodan, 88 and frail, sitting in a chair smoking a cigarette and repairing a toaster. She tosses the mail onto a nearby table with a sneer. Junk mail. The mailman should take us off his route. Save the trouble.

Jack doesn’t look up as he puffs and tinkers with the toaster, What about cards from the grandkids?

Once a year? All they care about is computer games and e-mails.

The toaster is getting the better of Jack. He looks up to Sylvie through a haze of smoke and frustration. They should build these things better. Damn nichrome wire wore through. Piece of crap.

Sylvie shakes her head at him. Don’t waste your time. You were never good fixing small things like that anyway. Besides, you can buy a new one for twenty dollars.

I can fix this one for free, he says grumpily.

Do what you want. I don’t care.

I know what I’m doing. Just leave me alone.

Jack coughs. It’s a guttural hack. Sylvie turns to leave but stops, waiting for the coughing to end. After a moment, Jack can breathe more easily. I’m fine. I’m fine, he tells her.

Uh-huh. Sure you are. Without looking back, she exits the den. Jack lets the toaster drop into his lap.

Cheap piece of crap.

LATER:

Downtown Santa Rosa. Still in her housedress, carrying a bag, Sylvie walks past a bookstore – Berry Books. Inside, employees wear matching blue polo shirts. Sylvie snickers unhappily. She continues until she reaches an old one-story prefab wooden building—the town library. She enters.

>>

Sylvie shuffles to the front desk. She withdraws a book from her bag and hands it to a librarian, a man in his fifties. He scans the spine of the book. Wuthering Heights. Surprised, he looks to Sylvie over the rim of his glasses. Did you enjoy it?

She died when she was thirty, she wrote just the one book and a hundred and fifty years later she’s still famous. That’s something.

He nods in agreement. Emily Bronte. She made the most with what she had. He inspects the book and his brow furrows. I didn’t know we had this.

You don’t. Berry’s doesn’t, either. Keep it, she orders him.

Scandalized, he scans the nearby area to confirm no one’s listening. I’m not sure we have room.

Find some. You need more books in here. Sad excuse for a library.

Sylvie turns and exits. The librarian watches her leave and then regards the book in his hands.

>>

Sylvie slowly moves down the sidewalk, passing Berry’s Coffee (think Starbucks) and Berry’s Electronics (like a Best Buy) and a Subway sandwich shop, too. Every store is a chain.

An elderly, attractive, well-dressed woman approaches Sylvie on the sidewalk without noticing her. Sylvie stops, incredulous, as the woman passes her while talking on her cell phone. Sylvie calls after her: Claire? Claire Moore? Claire Sampson?

Still on her cell, Claire turns back to Sylvie. She stares at her, the look on her face unreadable. Sylvie takes a step toward her, a smile forming on her withered lips. My gosh you got old. Look at you.

Claire speaks into her phone, I’ll call you right back. She snaps