Category: Dreams Come True Script

By Athena Stairs

First Drafted April 2016 / Rewrite In-Process as of February 2024

Present, Late Morning:

A tram slows to round a long curve in between the narrow channel of two raised banks of dirt formed like the inner sides of a canal.

As it straightens and passes through parts of an industrial low-income part of town, two tough-looking men are roughing up a young man along the upper edge of one side of the bank, and a woman dressed in layered robes brandishes a thick and gnarled wooden staff at him.

She seems to direct the men to push the younger man off from the top of the bank – and they grab him, knocking off his glasses, just as the tram rounds another curve, blocking the passengers’ view of the outcome.

Dusty, golden-hued sunlight filters inside the cab and a rippling of nervous tension and loud chattering breaks out as passengers call out to one another.

“Did you see that? That man on the bank above?”

“I think they pushed him off the edge!”

“No, it can’t be true!” whispers a young woman sitting next to a window with an open view to what has just happened and an expression of shock and dread upon her face.

Abruptly standing up in a state of panic, she turns and looks around frantically as a crowd surges back toward the rear-facing window, conjecturing and jockeying to see what is happening.

A few specks of glimmering dust settle briefly upon the woman’s coated shoulders as if to console her before they are whoosh-spiraled away by another passenger’s quick jogging past on his way to tell the operator to stop the tram.

Fingers white-knuckle-gripping the aisle poles in front of her, she begins pushing hard through the crowd to also catch any glimpse of the struggling young man…