FADE IN:

BAM! THE LOGO FOR “EXTREME MAKEOVER” APPEARS ON SCREEN, THEN THE SUBTITLE: “RENDITION EDITION”

EXT. HOUSE – DAY

Our host, Shifty McFly, 30s, stylish, clearly gaying it up for the camera, stands in front of: A REGULAR HOUSE. White picket fence. Lawn. Windows. Everything he says is happy, and super excited!

SHIFTY MCFLY
And welcome back, everyone. Tonight on Extreme Makeover: Rendition Edition, we’re in an ordinary Muslim neighborhood, where we’re going to make the dreams come true for one great Muslim family! By the time we’re done, they’re going to have the pimpest, flyest, most-extreme torture chamber for rendered American captives in the whole Middle East! Now, let’s meet our family!

CUT TO:
INT. HOUSE – MOMENTS LATER

Shifty McFly bursts through the front door, and LIKE TOTALLY surprises the Family, made up of AHMED the father, 40s, SAHID the clearly gay son, 20s, the DAUGHTER, 20s, who doesn’t get a name, and the MOTHER in a burka who hides in a corner.
Shifty HUGS each and every one of them really enthusiastically.

SHIFTY MCFLY (V.O.)
As we all know, Muslim extremists are a great moral threat to American national security but they’re totally cool with torturing people, so let’s meet our lucky family!
Shifty’s assistant ALEX, 20s, Hollywood actor-type, distributes a thin booklet to all the family.

ALEX
Hi, I’m Alex, and these are your Department of Defense-approved Guidelines for Torture.

Ahmed flips through his. All the pages are blank.

AHMED
Sweet.

Shifty speaks with the Daughter.

SHIFTY MCFLY
Now, I don’t have a complex understanding of the enemy, so I’m gonna assume you want to kill the Infidel American because you’re Muslim.
The daughter shakes her head. Mortified. Passionately:

DAUGHTER
No, no, that’s all wrong. No where in the Koran does it encourage the violence perpetuated…

Shifty cuts her off and moves past down the hall.

SHIFTY MCFLY
That’s hilarious! She’s gonna be a comedian someday, just like Janeane Garofalo… HEY!

He waves at the MOTHER, who shrieks and runs away.

SHIFTY MCFLY
Cute. She doesn’t have civil rights. And she’s not gonna get ‘em. We need oil. Hahahaha!

CUT TO:

INT. BASEMENT – MOMENTS LATER

The camera goes down some stairs into a basement.

SHIFTY MCFLY (V.O.)
Now, let’s check out their potential torture chamber.

Ahmed and Shifty look around. The place is bright, airy, pleasant even. They inspect the bench and tub where prisoners will be waterboarded.

SHIFTY MCFLY
This is pathetic, dude.

AHMED
I know. Very, very sad. We just don’t have the money to keep our torture chamber up to par.

A tear comes to Ahmed’s eyes. He and Shifty embrace. A warm moment.

SHIFTY MCFLY
Don’t worry, big fella. We’re gonna make it right.

Shifty runs around the room, pointing and gesticulating.

SHIFTY MCFLY
We’re gonna make this place sing… It’s gonna be incredible. First you need some dank and darkness. We’ll get some iron hooks on the walls, bar up the windows, put the Iron Maiden in this corner, the rack in here, the boiling oil over here. Ever heard of Chinese water torture? It’s awesome. We’ll even decorate with a few bamboo plants here are there.

AHMED
Bamboo?

SHIFTY MCFLY
Yeah! Bamboo’s great. It grows so fast that you can tie someone up in a chair and have the bamboo plant actually grow right through them! It’s awesome and it’ll totally give the place some color.

CUT TO:

EXT. HOUSE – MOMENTS LATER
Shifty runs out the door, enthusing.

SHIFTY MCFLY
Okay. We’ve got our workers here to come help… Say hello to our audience back home!
He confronts the LABORERS. They are clearly Mexican day laborers and illegal immigrants. They cover their faces from the camera.

IMMIGRANT WORKERS
No, no, no quiero…

SHIFTY MCFLY
Hey, isn’t it great? These guys are everywhere! Is there a Home Depot Tehran or something?

The workers shrug.

IMMIGRANT WORKERS
Que?

CUT TO:

INT. HOUSE – LATER

Shifty moves down the hallway and speaks to the camera.

SHIFTY MCFLY
While certain international treaties prevent me from revealing our exact location, we can give you a hint: there are no gay people here!

A hallway door opens, and Sahid is making out with Alex. Shifty doesn’t even flinch.

SHIFTY MCFLY
They’re just fasting. For man meat.

ALEX
Aren’t we in Iran?

SHIFTY MCFLY
My lips are sealed. Unlike that guy’s. Oh yeah.

SAHID
But I like man meat.

SHIFTY MCFLY
(matter of fact)
No, you don’t. You don’t exist in this country. You’re like dragons.

CUT TO:
EXT. HOUSE – LATER

Shifty addresses the camera with the family behind him.

SHIFTY MCFLY
Now don’t go anywhere! We’re gonna be right back with Extreme Makeover: Rendition Edition! We’re gonna see a total makeover of this torture pit and it’s gonna be totally rockin’!

A LOGO SLAMS ONSCREEN for Extreme Makeover: Rendition Edition appears on screen!

FADE TO BLACK.

Going on twenty minutes now, the sun still hid behind the graying clouds. They weren’t rain clouds – nothing like that this early in the fall, only October. No, they were the kind of gray clouds that just make any day slightly darker in the shadows. I stop at the stop sign, a four way intersection, a heavy forest of trees surrounding the road to the left, open fields to the right and center. I turn right.

I push the newish BMW hard into second gear, feeling the groan as I let the RPMs shoot up past five thousand, skipping third and going straight into fourth. The car’s a strange feel in my hands, the last time I drove it I was in a different continent, feeling the shock a more immediately. The whole interior’s leather, a dark black, pulled tight over the gear shift and the seats, strong and firm. Not as much give as my own car, but a nicer ride. The entire interior of this one’s so dark, it’s kind of strange, why anyone would want such a dark interior. I guess, that way you can’t tell what’s going on inside. Not from outside, I suppose, but I can look out and see the world just fine. I push into fourth gear and the gears rumple when I release the clutch too soon. That’s how I destroyed the van’s transmission but that one’s still running so what the hell. What’s in a transmission.

I push into fifth as I hit sixty five on the country road. This road isn’t always empty but at this time of day, I can travel fast. Nothing on the road but me and a couple of bird. This is one of those empty Californian roads in between fields, already cut down for their produce, sometimes wheat, sometimes tomatoes, sometimes rice. All sorts of things grow out here, all sorts of smells. First you get the peat from the ground that’s always there, a very earthy smell that just tastes thick – that’s it’s flavor. Just thick. Heavy and dense like mud, but far more alive. Like earth living. It just fills up the lungs with that heaviness of life and nearly crushes all the other smells out there.

There’s a little bit of wheat and hay mixed into the peat and the occasional waft of tomatoes, mostly resulting from the ones that’re left behind. These semis carrying truck loads of tomatoes in open cars fly down these country roads without much care in the world and quite often, they turn too fast. Tomatoes fall from the trucks and squash on the pavement, still holding their shape for only moments longer before some other car comes hurtling down the street and nails them to the ground. Squished tomatoes. That’s where the smell comes from. I don’t know where the farms are but I don’t want to know. I don’t care. I never liked tomatoes. I always hated to see these tomatoes splashed and destroyed upon the floor. Nobody ever came by to pick them up or anything; they just stayed there until they got knocked off the road, eaten by birds, or just plain faded into the pavement.

The air’s getting a little stuffy inside the car and I open the windows to let all these smells into the vacuumed car. It’s not so much fresher air outside, just more interesting. A better taste. Along the right side of the road a fence of wood and wire comes out of nowhere, cutting the field next to the road in half. Between a couple of the posts, the wire’s been stretched and looks limp, with nothing more than a foot of air keeping it from the ground. Behind these fences, reeds and weeds grow high, close enough to the fence for the farmer to ignore. From within these weeds, a great white crane opens its wings and lifts itself into the air. It’s a female crane, you can tell by the wingfeathers. I think. It glides away from the fence, away from the road, away from the intruder who interrupted the bird’s carefully planned slumber. As the bird fades away in the distance, I turn my attention back to the road. Still empty of other cars. But there’s a stop sign coming up again. The left side of the road, the field lies fallow.

I stop. Easy decision. Going straight, I can see nothing would change. Left looks about the same. I turn right. There’s a swish as I push the car back into gear, breaking in the transmission as my father always feared I would. And I wasn’t even the worst at it; that’s an honor conferred upon my younger sister.
This road leads through a little group of houses. Nothing big enough to constitute a town but just a handful of houses with their backs to the fields and their fronts to the road, facing each other and whatever civilization they could find. These are big houses, old wood that the sun and the rain have taken a toll from over the years. Still, they’re big homes, big enough for a large family. The first one comes on the left, a two story, painted white and red shingles. You can tell the barn was there before the house cause it’s got the remainder of a different color scheme splattered around its walls. The white picket fence still existed out here, on this house and the next one. I wonder what they’re trying to keep out. Two houses on the right, the second one with a tractor in the front driveway. I had a friend who used to live around here and they had a tractor but this one’s bigger. Bigger thing on the end to till up the earth, huge circular blades. I always found those strange because they look so blunt yet they tear through the earth with such ease. I don’t really understand but there’s a reason I’m not a farmer.

I’d slowed down slightly between the houses just in case. Now I sped up again. No worry about someone trying to cross the road too quick without even looking both ways. Maybe a dog or a cat might try it but this car wasn’t that quiet; you’d hear it coming around the corner. The road gets a curvy around here, I remember, and pretty close there’s a little bridge over a ditch. You’ve really got to slow down for that one. These roads can get dangerous in the coming months, when the rain starts without much warning – people forget that you’ve got to steer yourself slowly around these curves, actually feeling the concrete catch the rubber soles of your tires.

I get to the bridge over the ditch, lined with its own weeds growing easily in the mud. I slow down, dropping the car into third and pushing down on the clutch, while pulling hard on the steering wheel clockwise. The bridge even feels the same, you know. I pull over the bridge and pass it onto the next turn, a quick one-two set of turns before the next stop sign. These’re blind turns, no way of seeing what’s coming around the corner, so you just hope and honk if you’re scared and turn if you’re willing. I turn once, holding well onto the road, and then again and one tire peels in the mud on the right side of the road. The shoulder’s not strong enough to hold the car and I feel the other tire slipping into the mud as I accelerate out of the turn.

But I know these turns. I straighten out the car, putting two tires squarely in the weak mud-covered concrete. Once the two tires have stuck, I pull away a bit, slowly, and I’m away. No problem. Up ahead I see the interstate, the I-5 freeway, cars rushing up and down its breadth from Los Angeles to Anchorage, Strange how a freeway can exist all through those states, everyone regarding it as theirs.

I pull over to the side of the road. Here, the shoulder’s bigger, leading down a mud path into a field. Clearly trucks pass through here often but not just now. There’s even water in some of the tracks. I stop the car and get out, locking the car as my father always told me to do. I stand and stare off at the interstate, people all rushing off to be somewhere. I try and lean spontaneously on the car, making it look all natural but my weight falls unevenly on the side of the hood. I’m uncomfortable, unnecessarily so. This should be easy. The freeway putters off into nothingness to both the north and the south even though I know very well what’s in both directions. Cities, people, dogs, cats, rats, snakes. There’s so many of them. Sometimes I marvel at how many people are really out there, all the time making conscious decisions, shaping their life in definite, very real ways without any influence from me.

Independent people completely unconnected with my little world. I unlock the car. I get back into the navy coupe and throw myself down into the deep bucket seats, kicking off the mud I can on the running boards, glistening already with their own collection of muddy artifacts. I’m as clean as I can get. I close the door and turn the engine on, with a slight purr. The car’s pretty quiet in the lower gears, I guess, but I don’t hear it in those too often. I turn the wheels back onto the road and hit the accelerator. Slowly picking up speed, I choose the exit onto the interstate, going south, or right, instead of going over the freeway and continuing along the country road.

I get the car into fourth by the time I’ve merged onto the main two lane highway. There’s a semi I allow to plow on ahead of me since I’m not quite caught up in speed. It passes me quickly. I can see into the rear of the truck, the door wide open, the back compartment completely empty. Nothing.

I push the car into fifth gear again and cruise along the freeway, the scenery passing even faster now as I get closer and closer to eighty. Here, the air’s different and I let it blow into my face; the freeway changes everything, even the wildlife nearby. The freeway’s lined by dead patches of field, unable to live with all the dust kicked up by the cars. No matter, because the tractors just use those dead areas as their own roads. I lean my head slightly out the window to really feel the air – it’s cooler now, smells of dust instead of peat, and there’s the faint aroma of burning petrol in the air. Which is strange. You shouldn’t be able to smell that when you’re driving. I’ve always liked that smell though, especially when you go through the gas station and there’s the full on aroma of gasoline. It smells good to me, like a candy.

But it’s still cleansing in a way after all that peat. It’s most tempting here. I can see all the coming headlights, some people still daring to drive without, but most with their lights full on. The occasional bastard with his brights. It’s getting darker outside and you can’t really tell what kind of car’s over the double yellow divide until it’s flashing right past you. Tempting, yeah, it is. There’s a couple, like the one I’m in, and a sadan, with that fake wooden siding – someone with bad taste – and that’s in the far lane, the slow lane, of the opposite side of the freeway. I can only see it for a second before it’s gone behind me, only disappearing in a glow of red in my rearview. Far away, at least half a field away, I see a blinking red light high in the sky. It’s not a plane, because it’s only a hundred feet or so off the ground. The light blinks and I remember the radio station lives round here. I forget where it sits on this freeway, but it’s around here. More civilization than we need.

Still tempting, you’ve got to admit, that’s the voice telling me. More white lights have passed by me, zooming off into the distance from where I came. A big rig, a camper – why so late in the season? Another sadan. I tenderly move the wheel anti-clockwise, to the left, the tires slightly moving over the shoulder in between the separate sides of the road. Only a little of gravel separates the two sides. At the same second, I hear and feel the gravel blowing up under the wheels and I instinctively pull back on the wheel. Pull away.

I can see the upcoming sign announcing in its distinctive wood green, Road 29, my turnoff. I could keep going on the freeway but it’d get me nowhere. Just leads straight south toward the equator. I merge right into the slow lane and a bright red truck hastens past me in the fast lane, as if worried I might change my mind. I begin to hit the brake and shift down to fourth as I exit, the road sloping up to where Road 29 travels over the freeway going east. But I’m going west.

I turn onto Road 29, just a country road like any other. The smell of peat’s back in the air, mixed with the refreshing taste of cows to come. I’ll smell them but I won’t see them; it’s too late for cows to be wandering the stars. And there are stars above now. Bright stars everywhere. Nothing like what you can see in the city. They’re brilliant and terrible and getting stronger. There’s no streetlights out here to slow their movement and the sky’s getting a deeper blue, something from the bottom of sea, mixing those blacks with the navy blue. The sun’s just finishing off it’s day in the west and I go straight for it, chasing whatever I can.

It comes faster than I can think. I can see it from far off, the wood to my left, the stop sign in front of me, and the four way intersection. It comes too fast. I know I’ve got to turn eventually, I’ll have to back through that wood, back home, to where I grew up, where I left all those people, where I lost one person. The forest looks dark from here, the road splitting it right through the middle. The place looks dangerous in the dark. I come to a stop. I turn right, to the north, putting my back to the forest once again. Yes, I’m afraid, but it’s alright. There’s no hurry. It’ll be there when I come back.

I shoot north up the country road again, enjoying the taste of peat in my mouth and I throw open the moonroof. I look up to the stars in the sky right through the top of the couple and feel the wind blowing hard in my face as I stare up instead of watching the road. No one’s coming, that I know. Not from that direction. I look back down to the road and I push the car with a groan into fifth gear, clearly not enjoying this ride as much as I am.