Web Series Rough Cut of First Couple Pages of Episode One

This is a novel idea I had but I thought it'd work good as a web series instead, and I figured I could write it inbetween working on the sequel to my YA fantasy novel.  This is just a preview though.

EPISODE ONE:  ORIGIN

“What do you love more?”  I’m not sure why she asked me that.

“What do you mean?”

She gives me a half smile and shakes her head and returns her attention to the blurred images that pass us by on our drive back into the city.  We had been gone for two weeks.   I had brought her back to that Midwest farm town I grew up in.  I had introduced her to my parents and to my surprise they took to her quite well.

            She often what do that, ask me a question and if I didn’t understand it she wouldn’t repeat herself.  So I did what I normally did.  “Between what and what?  You can’t ask me what I love more without telling me what my choices are.”   It was a logical point to make and I cast my eyes over in her direction and her head is leaned against the glass of the window and she still wore that half smile.  She’s beautiful.

            A few seconds pass before she responds to me with the briefest hint of a sigh.   “There are only two things you love in this world Clive.”  She holds up two of her fingers to illustrate the point, but she never casts her eyes at me.  Pointing at one finger she says, “Me of course.   And your job.”  

            I would argue with her but she is for all intents and purposes correct.  Letting a small chuckle escape me I tell her, “You.”  

            “Bullshit.”  She playfully responds.

            For a moment though I feel concerned.  It wasn’t so long ago that a phrase like that signaled the start of another one of her depressive states.  A crippling time where she saw no beauty in anything, a time when the blurred images outside were frightening and unwelcoming.   When the world wanted to chew her up and spit her back out.   It was in one of those states that I found her in the first place.

            “Its not.”  I defend, and I mean it.   I continue with, “In my opinion the love for a person is different than the love of a thing.    My job is like an object, like a hobby.   For instance you love painting, but you don’t lust for it, you don’t need it to hold you, or to save you.   But when you paint its another piece to the puzzle that is you.”  I pulled it out of my ass but I think it sounds decently romantic and right.

            “Well played, sir,”  She says not looking at me, but her hand finds mine and she wraps it in her fist and squeezes gently.   The feeling of her warm creamy skin soothes me and I squeeze it back.  

            The towering buildings of The City look like miniatures from our distance.   At that point I merged onto the highway having taken the backgrounds per the request of my sweetheart.   The limited forest doesn’t interest her anymore and she finds no beauty in other commuters as they fly passed us in a rainbow parade of different models.    At that point she turned her face to me, resting against the headrest of my leather seats.

            “I’d be dead without you.”  She randomly says.  I’m frightened more now, a sense of dread is looming over her and it only means a rough few weeks ahead for me.   But she isn’t lying.   One of my usual clients was running a home for hopped up coeds who unsuspectingly trusted his charming demeanor and gave into the pressures of his charisma.   It was only after he had them hooked that he used them for a side business in prostitution.   Normally I would have left the situation well enough alone but I saw her standing there and I paid him the fee to get a few moments alone with her and we talked.  Nothing else but talked.

            “Don’t say things like that.”  I beg her even though I know its true.   I wanted to kill that bastard when I heard the stories.   More so when I saw the scars.   He didn’t look out for their well being and one girl had even OD’d and he had the others carry her down six flights of stairs and lay her corpse next to the dumpsters in the alleyway behind  the building.   She would have been down their next.

            “I’m sorry.”  She tried to smile but not even a half showed.  I gave that son of a bitch the remainder of his product for free in exchange for her.   He snickered at me and gave me  a knowing glance that he assumed I’d take her home and abuse her myself, only to discard her when I had my fill.  He was animal, a rabid animal.

            I squeeze her hand as the buildings of The City are no longer miniature but towering skyscrapers that cast their shadows down upon us.   When once the sky had been cloudless and baby blue it was now all but lost.  The sunlight vanished behind the behemoth structures of steel and stone.   It frightened her this place, but it brought me peace.