INT. JONATHAN HOWARD’S HOUSE – BEDROOM – MORNING

The shot starts out with a close up of a ticking clock the voice of the NARRATOR starts up, and as he speaks the view slowly zooms outward revealing more of an immaculately tidy room.

NARRATOR
In a town that was very much like many other towns in the world, this town was on the outskirts of a large city that could have been very much any city the world had to offer. It was exactly 54 seconds until six-a-clock AM…. at least according to Jonathan Gerald Howard’s clock, and a clock owned by Jonathan Gerald Howard was never wrong. While many others in this town, which could have been like pretty much any town in the world, set their clocks to about whatever time a convenient clock around them showed the time to be, Jonathan Gerald Howard would never commit such an inconceivable sin. Instead, Jonathan Gerald Howard would always align his clock to the exact tenth of a second Greenwich Mean Time. And if one of his clocks ever seemed to deviate from the strict regime of proper timekeeping, he would promptly replace it. A clock that cannot keep proper time was no clock in his mind.

As the narrator’s present discourse has been proceeding, we have slowly been zooming away from the clock, revealing a wider and wider view of the dark room. The clock which the shot began with we can see rests upon a shelf that holds rows of books on either side of the clock. On one side of the shelf illuminating the room is a lightly curtained window through which some small amount of light is beginning to shine. Finally, once we reach the end of what the narrator is saying about Jonathan’s clock obsession we see him lying sleeping in his bed in the lower portion of the screen. It is a few moments after this we hear the clock’s alarm sound off. And Jonathan reaches up toward it and silences it.

NARRATOR (CONT’D)
It is now six-O-five and thirty

three seconds in the morning, which was the exact time that Jonathan Gerald Howard woke up every morning.

We see Jonathan get out of bed and move off screen.

Cut TO:

INT. JONATHAN HOWARD’S HOUSE – MOMENTS LATER

Jonathan is brushing his teeth before he eats breakfast with a CU shot that is centered, and from the perspective of the mirror looking at Jonathan. From behind him, you see the wall of his bathroom in still immaculate order with a single ticking clock on the wall behind him.

NARRATOR
You see, this morning for Jonathan Gerald Howard was like every other morning had been for the last 12 years, since the tragic death of his parents George Jack Howard and Elizabeth Loren Howard.

EXT. ROAD AND CAR – FLASHBACK – DAY

Cut TO:

A flashback starts depicting Jonathan’s parents driving in a convertible along a sunny road next to a pleasant park. They seem very happy. The flashback depicts his parent’s accidental death according to the narrator.

NARRATOR
What happened was this: exactly 12 years 3 months 7 days 3 hours 32 minutes and 25 seconds ago, Jonathan Gerald Howard’s two predecessors had been driving their car along the side of a quaint road not far from where Jonathan G. Howard now stood routinely brushing his teeth.

CUT TO:

2.

INT. JONATHAN HOWARD’S HOUSE – CONTINUOUS
An extremely short cut of Jonathan still brushing his teeth.

EXT. ROAD AND CAR – FLASHBACK – DAY

NARRATOR
What took place 12 years 3 months 7 days 3 hours 33 minutes and 71 seconds ago, however, was far from routine. For right when they had stopped at a stop sign an airline jet overhead accidentally lost one of its landing gear which happened to fall 12 feet and 2.5; inches exactly, away from his parent’s car.

A large plane landing gear falls with a loud THUD next to JONATHAN’S parents, startling them.

NARRATOR (CONT’D)
Just being startled like this would have not usually been lethal, at least, if it wasn’t for the fact that George Jack Howard absentmindedly let his foot off the break, and let the car roll into the busy intersection… Causing a fifteen car collision in which both Jonathan’s parents perished, as well as someone’s pet Chihuahua, but that, however, is irrelevant to the story.