FADE IN:

INT. A BEDROOM IN A SMALL HOUSE JUST OUTSIDE THE CITY LIMITS OF CHARLOTTE, NC

The brown carpeting of the room is obscured by piles of clothes, magazines, cassette tapes and lots of other junk. The wood paneling of the room is plastered with posters ripped from the pages of Metal Edge, Metallix, Blast, Rip, and countless other metal fan magazines. We see MELANIE, aged 15, lying on the mattress and boxspring set on the floor that poses as a bed, having dozed off while reading one of the magazines. She’s wearing acid washed blue jeans, ripped in all the right spots, and a black t-shirt emblazoned with some band logo. Her hair is teased and stiff with hair spray. XYZ’s self titled cassette tape plays on the stereo.

The door to the bedroom opens, and we see MEL, aged 30, step into the room and switch off the tape player. This jars MELANIE from her nap.

MELANIE (in a heavy southern drawl): Hey! Man, y’all are supposed to knock… wait, who the hell are you?

MEL (with only a trace of southern accent that pales in comparison): Chill out girly. It’s just me. I mean, you. I mean, I’m you… only, older. Like, 15 years older.

Both girls stare at each other for a few moments, MEL just smiles and waits for MELANIE to make the connection.

MELANIE: Look, I don’t take drugs, drugs are bad and evil, so you can’t be a hallucination.

MEL: Yeah, your attitude on drugs will change a bit in the next few years, but no, you’re not hallucinating. I’m here. I just thought I’d come visit you here in the past and have a little chat about what life is going to be like for you in the next 15 years.

MELANIE (reaching for the phone): How do I know you’re me? You don’t even look like me. I’m going to call the police and have you arrested if you don’t prove -

MEL: Ok, I’d figured on this, so, here’s a bit of evidence. I know what you keep wedged over there between the wall and the bed. What’s hidden there that you never, ever told anyone about.

MELANIE (puts the phone back down): Oh yeah, what is it then?

MEL moves closer to the bed, hearing a number of crunches as she wades through the mess, which makes her cringe a bit to remember all the cool things she had that were broken that way. She leans over to MELANIE.

MEL (whispering): Psss… spss… spss spss.

MELANIE: Um, yeah. That’s right. Ok freaky. You have to be who you say you are I guess. But why didn’t you just say that out loud? It’s just the two of us in here…

MEL (as she lights a cigarette): Because there are people reading this on my blog that don’t really need to know that. Besides, I need that as my identifying secret to prove myself to myself later in case I ever decide to do another future visit.

MELANIE is aghast to see her future self smoking. MEL wonders for a second what’s wrong, then remembers.

MEL: Oh yeah, you haven’t started smoking yet. I forgot about that.

MEL finds a cup sitting on the bookcase with a little liquid left in it, which was iced tea at one time, along with some moldy vegetation that’s growing there. She makes a face at the growth in the cup, but decides to use it as an ashtray anyway.

MEL: You know, this is pretty gross. You shouldn’t let things sit around like this. At least clean up the stuff that starts growing on its own.

MELANIE: Yeah well, smoking is gross. Ugh. I can’t believe I smoke! It’s a drug, and all drugs are bad. What the fuck is a “blog”? Eh, nevermind, so, like, ok, this is weird, but what’s up? I mean, hey this is kind of cool. I can find out what my life will be like when I’m old. I wasn’t sure I’d actually live to see 30. Gah, you’re so old!! At least I don’t get any fatter than I am now.

MEL: Yeah, well, you did get really big at one point, but you did start to worry about your health some and changed that. And, c’mon, I don’t really look 30, now do I?

MELANIE: Well, no, I guess. I mean not completely but you definitely are older than me - OH COOL! - I do get the guts to pierce my nose!! I didn’t think I’d ever get the nerve to do that.

MEL: That didn’t happen till just after I turned 30 though.

MELANIE: That’s pretty friggin lame. Trying to recapture me, your youth?

MEL: Maybe. A little I guess. But, as you know, it’s just something I always wanted to do. And now that I’m back in small business retail where it doesn’t matter…

MELANIE: Small retail? Ew. What have you done to me?

MEL: Naw, it’s cool. I work for Marshall, someone you’ll meet in 1994, who’s my best friend. He owns two little stores in Ohio, a general sort of gift shop place and a gay and lesbian gift store.

MELANIE: OHIO???? A GAY AND LESBIAN WHAT???? UM. Dude, what happened to moving to LA, becoming a big shot… the nightclub me & Chelle are going to run? Brande’s band being famous?? The rock stars, the parties, the plans?? Holy shit. What has happened to me?? What are you? Who am I??

MEL: Ok, whoooooooa. Chill. It’s ok. You do move to LA, though not with any of your friends, and the metal scene is long dead by the time you make it there, not that you care about it anyway. You get over the metal thing shortly after high school is over. Chelle is married and owns a house just down the street from where Brande used to live, and Brande is engaged to a guy that was in that band New York that she saw a couple years ago (you know, the one that inspired her to play drums) and they travel with the Renaissance Faire selling jewelry. You will work your way up through the corporate world of Internet companies for a while, after all, you did finally move to LA to do just that, until you decide it sucks being all corporate, so you quit and you and your boyfriend move to the Cleveland area to try your hand at something a little more fun, albeit less lucrative.

MEL drops the spent cigarette into the cup, and replaces it on the bookcase.

MELANIE: Internet? What’s that? Why Cleveland? Ugh, Ohio?

MEL: The Internet is a network where all these computers all over the world can communicate with each other, in a nutshell. It’s really changed the world, for better or for worse, I don’t know. You’ll do tech support for a few years and end up being a project manager in the customer service department for one of the companies that survives the dot com bust, but you hate it there and quit to simplify your life, since you never really wanted to be corporate anyway. In that way, I guess you’re more like you thought you’d be at least. You couldn’t really do that in LA, because it’s really really expensive to live there, and Marshall was in Ohio, so it made sense to move there. Cleveland is actually pretty cool, it is home to the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame Museum now. I really like it there, but I’ll probably be ready to move somewhere else in a year or two, possibly Portland OR. Don’t like to sit still too long, and Portland is just lovely.

MELANIE: Dot what whoozit now? You know what, never mind. Yeah, corporate doesn’t sound good. I don’t want to work 9-5. A Rock N Roll Hall of Fame Museum? Neat! And I guess the moving around thing is kind of cool… I’ll get to see lots of places. At least I have a boyfriend. I was starting to wonder if that would ever happen. Tell me more about him… he’s a super hot rock god with really long hair right?

MEL: Uhhh… no. He’s a very skinny, very dorky, video game geek with short, graying hair who loves sci-fi and wears khakis a lot. You’ll meet him out in LA and he will love you enough to move to Ohio with you when you decide it’s that or insanity, and I love him very much.

MELANIE (staring blankly): um … uh … well …

MEL: Yeah, I know, not quite what you had planned for your life huh?

MELANIE (still staring blankly): No, no, not at all…

MEL: There’s lots of cool stuff in the middle. I mean, you get to write for a magazine for a while, you go to a lot of concerts, and you do get to go to the Roxy and the Troubadour while you’re in LA. And you have lots of good friends, with whom you have have lots of great adventures. You’ll have a good time overall. And you know… I’m happy now. So, it’s worth it.

MELANIE: Hmm. Ok, so I’m going to wake up from this dream in a minute, and forget all about it so that I can continue living out my teenage years thinking I’m going to be a star though right? I don’t need to face this… I guess if you’re happy, that’s not so awful. I mean, happiness is my main goal in life. Still, I’d rather not know all of this now. I’d like to have my dreams a little while longer.

MEL: I am happy, you have to know that. But, yeah, this trip was probably a bad idea. I think maybe I’ll time travel back just a few minutes before I decided to do this and stop myself from ever doing it to start with… you know though, could you try to remember to start plucking your eyebrows just a little bit earlier in life? Cause you know, they really are ok when you pluck them and you get compliments on them, but unchecked they kind of grow crazy and -

We hear a loud cracking noise and see a flash of light as MEL disappears into a rip in the space time continuum and MELANIE wakes from her dream. It is but a fuzzy memory that fades quickly, till she remembers nothing of it. Not even the part about the eyebrows.

FADE OUT