I was impressed by the Ashton Kutcher thriller The Butterfly Effect, where he uses time travel powers to change the future…but every time he does, he makes his future worse. I was surprised to find there was a sequel, albeit with a new cast and a much lower budget than the original. I saw the potential for a franchise, and it sparked an idea for how I would handle a story with that premise. I put together a treatment for a potential film or novel. I never got around to actually writing the thing, but I thought it was a good enough idea to share with you. Each attempt to change the future is based around stages of grief, and I hope that comes through when you read it. I hope you enjoy it.
BLACK BUTTERFLY
John is having an average day with his wife Sheila. Everything is pretty normal. They’ve been together for years, and everything them has become routine, without any spark. Sheila makes a note that maybe they are taking each other for granted, but John pays the comment no mind. He is called in for an emergency at work, and he has to go in. He leaves for work without even kissing Sheila goodbye or telling her he loves her. Later, while he is at work, she calls him from her cellphone. She is on the way to the grocery store to pick some food up, and she wants to know what kind of drink he wants. Before he can answer, he hears swerving, and Sheila’s scream. He finds out later that she was killed in an auto accident by a drunk driver, while she was on the phone with him. He is full of grief, and it shows even when he goes to the arraignment of the drunk driver who killed her.While he is at work, Somehow he discovers the power to go back in time and relive past events. He then decides that he will go back in time and save his wife’s life.
DENIAL
In his first trip back, he runs out from work to try to catch her before she gets on the road. He manages to catch her, and she avoids the accident. They then try to go about life as if nothing had ever happened. Problem is that he ran out from work without explanation, and was in the middle of an important deal. His firm loses the account, and he is subsequently fired. Over the next few months he struggles to find another job and his relationship with his wife deteriorates. He eventually drives her away for good, and is left alone, wondering what to do. His idea: go back and change things again.
ANGER
He goes back to before the accident, and before he goes to work. He gives himself adequate time to get to work, but decides to pay a visit to the driver’s house before the driver gets on the road. He scours phone books and google to find the guy’s house. The driver is in the middle of a big house party, and he is visibly drunk. John confronts him and tries to take his keys away. John gets into a fight with the man, and he knocks the guy out, blaming him for everything that went wrong. He is charged with assault. He gets off with a plea, but the guy he beat up also hits him with a personal lawsuit, which John loses. The judgement and the court costs beak him and he loses his job. He is walking with his girl, trying to figure out what to do next, when the plaintiff’s friends run up on him seeking retribution. During the fight, he is knocked into his girl, who falls into the path of an oncoming car. In his grief, he goes back to the most recent memory he can find – his mug shot.
BARGAINING
John relives the trial, and decides that if he does his time, then the plaintiff’s friends won’t feel he got off easy and seek revenge. He pleads guilty and gets a lenient sentence since it is his first offense. As he serves his time, Sheila is supportive of him. He tells her of the “dream” he had where the man he beat up kills her in a car accident, which prompted him to do what he did. She helps him through his time, until she suddenly stops seeing him. He is worried that she may have forgotten about him or found someone new, and his time in jail becomes harder to deal with. A month before his release date, a visitor finally tells him the truth (or he sees it on TV) his wife was killed during a home invasion while he was in jail. He is filled with regret; if he had been around to protect her, maybe he could have protected her, or at least given his life so that she could live. One of the inmates tells him of fate and destiny – that some things might just be meant to happen. He finds a picture he took with her before he went to jail and goes back to it.
DEPRESSION
During that whole time together, John racks his brain to think of a way to keep from losing her in the future. He becomes very nihilistic, and while Sheila tries to be supportive, he pushes her away, saying that he is nothing but bad news. In one last ditch attempt to save her, he runs away. Eventually he is hunted down and crippled by bounty hunters, and is devastated to find out it was Sheila who told them where he was hiding. Having lost all respect for him, Sheila leaves him, and he is depressed even more to learn that she was still killed in that home invasion. All he has left is another keepsake from the day Sheila originally died. He uses it.
ACCEPTANCE
John makes it back to the day of his wife’s death. He knows he is going to get called to work, and she is going to get on the road with the drunk driver out there. He knows he can’t talk her out of going, either. But he vows to treat her differently. He showers her with affection, never leaving her side for the whole day. He tells her repeatedly how much he loves her and appreciates her. He runs out and buys flowers for her. Basically he treats her as if this will be the last day he gets to be with her, because he knows it is exactly that.
Work calls and his heart sinks. He tells Sheila that if she wants him by her side, all she has to do is say the word, and he’ll tell his job he can’t go. She insists on him going to work, saying she’ll be okay. He reluctantly leaves, but not before giving her one last, passionate kiss and telling her he loves her and would do anything for her.
At work, he doesn’t answer the phone when she calls. He doesn’t want to hear the end when it happens. He gets work done, but he is despondent, knowing he just lost his wife. He drives to the site of the crash, and finds something different: the ambulance has taken her to the hospital, not the morgue (or wherever they take dead bodies to be autopsied).
He rushes to the hospital, and finds her in a bed, unconscious. Apparently, since she wasn’t on the phone with John at the time of the accident, she had both hands on the wheel and/or her full concentration on the road (if she was using bluetooth) when the drunk driver came. She swerved earlier than she would have had she been on the phone with john, and she still takes the brunt of the accident, but not enough to kill her instantly, like it would have. She is in critical condition, however, and it took many surgeries just to get her in the comatose state she is currently in. John asks if she’ll live. The doctor says it’s 50/50, but if John is a praying man, he needs to start.
Later on, at home, John gets a call on his phone. It’s the doctor, and he has news on Sheila’s condition. The reader/viewer doesn’t hear what the doctor has to say, but John does. The story ends with John in shock, dropping his phone.
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