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How to Bring Someone Back from the Dead

Songs that are very similar and make me Feel Things: Futile Devices (Sufjan Stevens)

Practical notes: Probably modern, to be honest. I think dealing with cell phones won’t be too
awkward. Eli will have chin-length brown hair is a bob and those shorter wispy bangs. She
should like wearing turtlenecks because a black one would look really good.

SYNOPSIS: Orpheus and Eurydice, but not a tragedy. Girl – Eli? Vaguely modern time period
(Call Me By Your Name, 80s ish?), but without phones unless I decide I want them. It opens
directly on Eli. She’s making pasta on the stovetop in a small apartment when the phone on the
wall rings. The only thing heard over the phone is a static-y “I’m sorry,” and then it’s silent. You
can only hear the sound of the water boiling and the gas stove whooshing and Eli just shuts
down. Cut to her zipping open a leather briefcase suitcase and shoving whatever in there – it
doesn’t matter. She throws in clothes and shoes and books but pauses at one. It’s a book with a
dark green cover (it’s hardback) and she opens it to a handwritten note and a pressed flower and
angrily wipes a single tear away before slamming it shut and shoving it in. She closes the
suitcase and zips it up, but not before throwing in an unopened letter – unsent, actually. It’s
meant for The Girl. She grabs a backpack, keys, etc and an atlas and slams the door shut behind
her, leaving the pasta still on the stove but with the burner off because we like her apartment not
setting on fire, okay?

Eli doesn’t know where she’s going or what she’s doing, so she gets in her car – one of the ones
like in Love, Simon that all my friend’s dads seem to have, or at least the ones that work at
UND. The like, tiny cars from the early 00s or 90s. For some reason I have this thought that it’s
green – maybe she’s color-coded green? She just drives. I think she lives in California, like Santa
Barbara? Near the butterfly place mom and I went when we were there last. In the dry brush
white blue sea area, not the ‘it’s cali and green!!’ area. She stays in a shady motel in Nevada the
first night after driving all day, but the next day she makes it to Wyoming. There’s something
particularly moving in the Jackson Pass and whatever music plays there has to be fantastic.

Or maybe the beginning is like this? It starts with her on the couch in the cabin she rents in
Wyoming, reluctant to open the hardback book with the flower. She remembers throwing it in
the suitcase and then remembers before that – the pasta on the stovetop, the call, and then—well,
it doesn’t matter anyway. She opens the book and reads the note. “Dearest Eli – When I saw this,
I thought of you. I miss you here, and I hope I get to see you again soon. Tell me what you think
of the book when you read it! I love you” with a heart. It’s too much. She’ll try again tomorrow.
The next day, she sits down and starts reading, skipping over the note. It’s still too much. She
gets decently far. She turns a page but then something falls out – a letter, not unlike the one she
took with her. It’s creamy-white, all but blank, merely labeled with her name. Eli can’t read it.
She’ll try again tomorrow. The next day, she looks at the letter and takes it with her. It’s a hiking
day today. She just has to get out of the house, to be honest. When she hikes enough, she sits
down and pulls it out shakily. She cracks open the seal and swallows. It’s nerve-wracking. When
she, with shaky hands, pulls out the letter, she nearly drops it. She reads the first line and just
sobs. It’s a love letter from her – a confession, more like. It hurts and aches, because now she’s
gone and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Except—once Eli finishes the first page, she
puts it behind the second and stares. The title of the second page is “How to Bring Someone
Back from the Dead.” And, written in her handwriting, a little note: “I thought you would enjoy
this .” Her hand tightens around the paper. The next day, Eli drives to the nearest town. (It’s
Driggs because I enjoy going to places in my childhood.) She gets a shake from corner drug and
gathers everything she needs.

Maybe it starts when she sets off? And goes in flashes or something? Yes, I think it does. Then
there’s still room for that glorious shot driving over Jackson Pass before credits.

She picks up people on the way. When she leaves from California she leaves alone, but when she
comes to Jackson Pass she picks up an elk rancher, a tourist who has nearly no idea of what’s
going on but it having a good time, and a young kid (high school?) that managed to be out there
and no one’s really sure how. It’s kind of funny, really, the people they find. They all manage to
be friends somehow and we learn more about their stories and what they’re getting from helping
some out-of-towner find her girlfriend (not really but you know what I mean).

I want to write this really bad, but I’m seriously so bad at writing. This is like, my pet project and
I want to develop the plot really well but it sucks. It’s so bad. I need to finish chapter 2 but I have
no energy to do it so I’m just like, here. And it’s miserable.

HOW TO BRING SOMEONE BACK FROM THE DEAD

Rewrite for pretentiousness

1. Start at high noon on the day after the night the moon stopped being kind. The sun will be
impressed, the moon will not. You care more about the moon than the sun. Do not anger
her.
2. Take with you:
- Enough food for two days
- Two winter coats
- A single white rose
- Nine clovers
- Something of great value to the deceased
- The smallest currency
- Water
- Steel wool
- Something that was once alive
- A flashlight
- A robin feather (will fight against the ravens)
- A stopped pocket watch (this’ll end up being an engraved (with eyes, probably)
pocket watch stopped at 11:11 because wishes or something, but once it’s used it’ll
start working again)
3. Wear good hiking boots. You’ll need them. Make sure they’re waterproof.
4. Leave in spring, if possible.
5. Walk to the edge of the forest at the base of a mountain. Walk until sundown, and then
walk until you can hear the howls of something that sounds nearly human.
6. You’ll see a glow in the distance. Keep walking.

The woman will give Eli a stoppered bottle—it’ll seem empty/maybe with dried herbs or
something? Or sea glass, or something, but it smells like lavender and childhood. It’s like
amortentia—it smells different to everyone, but it smells like home.

Another symbol will be red poppies, especially because they represent regret.

Another is cypress trees.

Fallen trees in the forest

They leave under the moonlight.

Dogwood and morning glory all around and Eli gets her a bouquet of them because they’re so
fricken sappy.

Knots

It needs to be more different but I don’t know how different or how I’m going to do that.

It was

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