Biting Down/Synopsis

## Biting Down

Joe Gomez stands in a clearing in an anonymous wooded area, head down, eyes closed, trying to focus on … something. He mutters words of encouragement to himself while clenching his fists. Early morning sunlight shines down on him through the foliage above.

One eye pops open, and he asks someone off-camera if he did whatever it was that he was supposed to be doing; the old man gives him a disappointed "no". Frustrated, Joe snaps at the old man, and he replies that Joe is not trying, that he's doing a lot of talking, but he's just not trying. Joe snarls that he'd got up at the buttcrack of dawn to go to the clearing with the old man, and that this is what trying looks like. The old man tells Joe this is what *failing* looks like, and he wonders if he needs to remind Joe of why he needs to learn how to control his gifts. Joe assures him he really doesn't. He does anyway.

One, Joe is a target for forces he can't stop and can scarcely understand. Two, Joe's powers are going to manifest whether Joe likes it or not. And three, friends and family. Bitter and disgusted, Joe says he gets it.

The old man tries goading Joe, telling Joe maybe he doesn't care, that maybe he wants them to get hurt. He is perhaps too successful when he angers Joe to the point he starts transforming into a dinosaur. Startled by the sudden change, the old man barely dodges Joe's clawed swipe at his abdomen when Joe screams at him. Joe stops in surprise, looking at his shifted hands with talons. The old man laughs and says there we go. He tells Joe there are easier ways to do that, but for now he should remember that feeling. And that next time he needs to focus on what he wants to be.

The old man suddenly turns his head and scents the wind. He looks back at Joe with a smirk and a wink and tells him not to let her see. He quickly shifts into a swarm of rats and scatters. The dumbfounded Joe can only ask the old man to wait, but he's already gone. Joe's head reforms, and he looks back to the woods towards the approaching trail and calls out. He realizes his right hand is still transformed just as he sees Phoebe clearing the bend with a backpack on one shoulder and her portfolio bag at her side. She spies Joe and calls back hello.

Joe tucks his hand behind his back and asks her what she's doing there. She gives back that she likes that the guy who's screaming in the woods is asking *her* why she's there. Joe admits how that's fair. She tells him she was going to school, but the screams got her attention. The bemused Joe questions that she hears someone screaming in the woods, and she goes *towards* it. She flippantly replies that a girl has to have a hobby. Not distracted, she tells Joe he still hasn't said why he was screaming in the woods. Clenching his reptilian hand behind him, he tosses off it was a primal scream, which she doesn't seem to buy into. He asks if she's enjoying this, then asks if that's *his bookbag* she has. She calmly answer "yep", then she tries to hand it to him. She holds it extended out for a couple awkward moments, then asks if he wants it.

Taking the chance, Joe reaches out with his right hand, thanking God it had become human again. Giving him a quizzical look, Phoebe tells Joe he's a weird dude. Sudden suspicion crosses his face, and he asks if she'd gone through his stuff. She turns away telling him that would be a tremendous violation of his personal privacy. Hiding a sly grin, she teases him answering yes, she went through his stuff. Joe answers that with a baffled thank you. Riffling through his bag, he tells himself he's supposed to understand girls,     but he does not understand girls. Not that one, anyway.
Joe walks down the trail in the woods towards the barely visible high school with his bookbag slung over his shoulder. A large black bird lands on a dead branch hanging above the trail, just over Joe's head. The arrival of the bird coincides with Joe's sudden feeling that something has approached, something that makes Joe think that the man he suddenly knows is Corkindale is close by. Seeing nothing behind him, Joe goes to step forward and runs into Evans. Startled, Joe steps back, annoyed by the football player's sudden appearance. The possessed Evans gives Joe an odd glassy stare and says hello. Sitting on a retaining wall, Joe tells Evans to leave it, but the creature simply says "No" and sucker punches him.

On his hands and knees, the angry and shifting Joe tells Evans he doesn't want to do this. The creature tells Joe he has to do this, but wants to as well. Saying he asked for it, a more fully transformed and very angry Joe rises up and attacks the possessed Evans. It doesn't go as planned when the creature simply intercepts Joe's fist in flight and holds him there. With bright blues eyes, he leans down and says that yes, he did.