Congratulations!

Dawn dies! We swear it's not a spoiler. It's kind of the impetus for the whole story. Now she's entered the posthumous bureaucracy of the Department of Mishaps and Violence. Lucky her, she won a prize! She gets one more year on earth, which she has to spend with the pill popping Reaper who took her soul.

Cast:
Narrator - Sean Turner @seanwkturner
Dawn - Emma Fuentes @og_emmakid
Kyle - Kyle Coughlin @kale_simplykale
Ricky - Violet Lantz @ultraviolet222
Rita - Brianne Leeson @brianne_leeson

Writer, Director, Assistant Editor
Brianne Leeson

Editor
James Leeson

Original Theme Music written and performed by Sean Turner
Cover art by Bryn Keenum @brynandbristles

http://www.todaysluckywinner.buzzsprout.com
http://www.instagram.com/luckywinnershow
http://www.twitter.com/luckywinnershow

Transcript

Rating Introduction:

1. (Narrator voice): Are you tired? Listless? Looking for a moment of escape from this hellish nightmare reality you inhabit? Today’s Lucky Winner from Sanguis Pharmaceuticals can help.

Independent studies, that are definitely not fictional, show that listeners reduced their boredom by up to 69%. 

Today’s Lucky Winner is not for everyone. Do not listen to Today’s Lucky Winner if you are under 18, easily offended by cussing, or a snitch who can’t listen to fictional drug use. 

Side effects may include giggling, distraction from worldly concerns, and hyper aggressive sleep punching. Ask your doctor if Today’s Lucky Winner is right for you. 

SCENE ONE: Dawn’s Apartment - Night Time

1.(MUSIC) INTRO

2. DAWN: Take WITH alcohol? That can’t be right. 

3. (SOUND) Pill bottle being turned.

4. DAWN: Do not take with water, under any circumstances. 

5. (SOUND) Pill bottle pouring

6. DAWN: What the hell. A girl’s gotta sleep. 

7. NARRATOR: Hello, cherished listener. Have you ever made a small decision that had huge consequences? Dawn Menendez just made one. Dawn  Menendez is about to die. 

Shortly after taking a dose of Sanguis Pharmaceutical’s new drug, Comaquin, one of the most common of the 47 documented side effects kicked in. 

Dawn entered a semi-psychedelic, hypnagogic state for the next 4 hours. She spent 42 minutes of that trying to open a locked steamer trunk using a tampon. She spent another hour and 38 minutes finding the perfect hiding spot for a necklace that she thought was screaming at her. She spent another 73 minutes crying, because she forgot how to flush a toilet. The last 27 minutes, killed her. 

8.(MUSIC) THEME

________________________________

SCENE TWO: DMV 

1. NARRATOR: A swirling yellow portal opened in a drop ceiling tile of an office building. Out of that portal, came a blast of confetti, balloons, and Dawn Menendez. 

2.DAWN: (Shrieks)

3. (SOUND) A butt hitting a seat from a tall height

4. KYLE: Congratulations. Welcome to the DMV. You’re today’s lucky winner

5. DAWN: The? I? The DMV? Why am I in my jammies?

6. KYLE: You’re at the Department of Mishaps and Violence. That’s the unfortunate outfit you died in. You were about to go to bed when you died. From the looks of that ice cream stained shirt, it was clearly alone. 

7.DAWN: Ha. Okay. Excuse me...I whatted in?

8. KYLE: You’re dead. 

9. DAWN: Okay. (Laughs) Is this some prank show? Ashton? Where are the cam-

10. (SOUND) footsteps walks by

11. RICKY: (WALKING PAST) Hey, Kyle!

12. DAWN: (shrieks)

13. KYLE: Hey, Ricky! How’s it going?

14. RICKY: My vacation can’t come fast enough.

15. KYLE: Where are you going?

16. RICKY: The fifth dimension!

17. KYLE: Oh! Someone’s gonna party!

18. RICKY: You know it man. Have a good one

19. DAWN: That...that guy was a...

20. KYLE: an asshole who keeps stealing my cold brew from the break room? 

21. DAWN: Bones. He...green bones? 

22. KYLE: Oh! A glowing skeleton? Yeah. Ricky is in accounting. Which makes his coffee theft even more heinous. Accounting has their own break room. He said he didn’t take my cold brew, but I see right through him. 

23. Narrator: It was at that moment, Dawn began to take a look at her surroundings, beyond the cubicle in which she found herself. The room seemed to go on forever, cubicles lined up ad infinitum. Milling in the aisles between the cubicles were ghostly apparitions, robed reapers with scythes, and an amorphous cloud of sparkling gas making conversation with a chubby, winged child. 

23. DAWN: Shit. Everyone is...I’m really dead. I’m dead? I’m dead. (Pause) Are you an angel?

24. KYLE: Do I have four wings covered in eyeballs?

25. DAWN: Are you a demon?

26. KYLE: Gross, no. I’m Kyle.

27. DAWN: But you are a...?

28. KYLE: Kai-yull. I’m Kyle. 

29. DAWN: (ANXIOUS SIGH) I don’t know what that means!

30. KYLE: You don’t have to. You’re Today’s Lucky Winner. You are the 777th soul reaped at the DMV today.

31. DAWN: I don’t understand. What could I have possibly won if I’m dead?

32. KYLE: Due to the arbitrary nature of these deaths, there are systems in place to help rectify this cosmic imbalance. Life may not be fair, but the afterlife tries to be. Souls that are victims of violence are reincarnated, getting a second lifetime on earth. Souls making their way through Mishaps sector of the DMV, who die in increments of 777, have the opportunity to go back to earth in a different body for a single year. You may do whatever you want in that year, as long as you don’t tell anyone who you were before. You will be chaperoned for the year by the reaper who was assigned to your case. Think of it as an opportunity to check some things off of your bucket list that you may have missed.

33. DAWN: Wait? How did I die? It was a mishap? 

34. KYLE: Let me pull up your case here. Yours was a mishap. You took your new sleeping pill, and you started sleepwalking. You did some...stuff...for a few hours. You got your curling iron out, but you were directly under your smoke detector. 

35. DAWN: I don’t like where this is going.

36. KYLE: Your hair started smoking, which set off the smoke alarm. That didn’t wake you up, and the sprinklers in your apartment went off. The plug for the curling iron wasn’t grounded, and you were electrocuted. (PAUSE) Bad. Real bad. 

37. DAWN: Well, shit. 

38. KYLE: Yeah. You had a real Rube Goldberg Death Machine going on there.

39. DAWN: Okay. (Sigh) Okay. How is my year on earth supposed to go?

40. KYLE: If you’d stop interrupting me every 5 seconds, I’m sure I would have already made my way through that part of the informational pamphlet. 

How’s about we save our questions to the end, hmm? 

We’ll be giving you a body that’s similar to the one you had on earth. We have you set up in your old apartment. Your cover story is that you are one of your own cousins who came from Florida to settle some of your affairs. We have paid for the rent for the entire year. 

41. DAWN: Do I get a job?

42. KYLE: Great. More questions I was about to answer. If you want, but it’s not necessary. You’ll receive a stipend equal to your pay from when you were alive. 

43. DAWN: What happens at the end of the year? Do I just die all over again?

44. KYLE: At the end of 365 days, your temporary vessel will disappear. Your reaper will escort your soul to your final resting place.

45. DAWN: Which is?

46. KYLE: I’m glad you asked. Let’s find out and get you out of my cubicle as soon as possible. 

47. NARRATOR: Not only were the ancient Egyptians technological innovators, they were also surprisingly perceptive about how one’s life is judged after death. The ancient Egyptians believed that upon one’s demise, the soul arrived in the underworld. Upon arrival, the god Anubis would weigh the mortal’s heart on the Scales of Justice. The heart was weighed against the Feather of Ma’at. The bigger one’s mortal sins, the heavier the heart.

Most of their assumptions were correct, except the mythical underworld of Duat is actually a cubicle littered office space, and the heart is weighed by a guy named Kyle, not Anubis. With a small flash of light, a large gold scale appeared on Kyle’s desk. 

48. (SOUND) typing on keyboard.

49. KYLE: Excellent. The Scales of Justice are here. We are going to weigh your actions on earth, as well as any downstream effects they may have had for good or bad, against The Feather of Ma’at.  

50. DAWN: Ma’at, isn’t that like an Egyptian goddess?

51. KYLE: Ma’at like the head of our R&D department. She invented the feather. It’s a proprietary piece of technology that measures not only the actions you did on earth, but things like intent, and being forced to live in a fundamentally unethical capitalist economy.

52. DAWN: (panicked) Wait, doesn’t the myth say you have to weigh my heart against that feather? You’re not going to weigh my heart on that thing, right? Isn’t it a heart weighed against that feather? I don’t know that I can handle seeing my own heart.

53. KYLE: The heart is metaphorical. We weigh it against a file containing your every action on earth. The weight discrepancy between the feather and your file will determine what kind of dimension you are placed in after your year. 

54. DAWN: Dimension? I go to another dimension?

55. KYLE: Yes. Whatever Heavenly or Hell dimension is assigned to you, based on the good or bad your actions have left on earth. In accordance with the First law of thermodynamics, energy cannot be created or destroyed. Your soul is just energy. The different death departments act as weigh stations between dimensions. We make sure that each should gets what they have earned in their current incarnation, as well as that the amount of energy in each known dimension stays at a constant equilibrium. We may send you to a heavenly dimension, who has sent another soul to a hell dimension for misconduct. That hell dimension may send a soul back to earth as a cockroach after they’ve served their time. It’s a constantly moving system of energy, being exchanged between dimensions. 

56. DAWN: Huh. Okay. That’s a lot to process about existence and the machinations of the universe. So, the better I left things on earth, the the better Heaven I’m assigned?

57. KYLE: Exactly. Jonas Salk is in a heavenly dimension with a button that will give him a 5 minute orgasm whenever he wants, a library with every great work that ever was and will be written, and calorie free chocolate. 

Prince is in a dimension where every meal can be made into waffle form, and he can turn things purple with his mind. They were both great people. Both were charitable and kind, but Jonas Salk’s actions had a much larger downstream effect for good, even after he died. That granted him one of the highest rated heavenly dimensions. 

58. DAWN: I’m obviously no Prince, but I probably get a decent heaven, right? I never intentionally hurt anyone, and I took care of my sick mom. 

59. (SOUND) Book being dropped on table.

60. DAWN: (startled) Shit!

61. KYLE: Here we go! Now that your file is here, we can find out. 

62. DAWN: Fingers crossed for the waffle dimension with Prince. 

63. KYLE: Don’t get your hopes up. You’re boring as hell. (Pause) And here’s the feather of Ma’at. Time to weigh.

64. (SOUND) Metal clang. 

65. DAWN: Uhhh...is it broken? What does that mean? Even is good, right?

66. KYLE: Your file has to be lighter than the feather. Even is bad. I’ve never seen even. The scale can’t make a mistake. The feather is infallible. I don’t know which of your actions weighed it down, but you’d warrant a base level hell dimension. 

67. DAWN: Not just a very boring, regular dimension? Neutral? Like, eternally stuck in the Denver airport? 

That hardly seems fair. How? I didn’t do anything?

68. (SOUND) Leafing through papers

69. KYLE: I’m as confused as you are. I don’t see that you did anything that reads as overtly bad in here.

70. DAWN: What the fuck? What?! Are you fucking kidding me? So I get to just stew on earth for a year, knowing that I’ll end up in hell?

71. KYLE: I mean, your actions during that year still count toward the afterlife. For the day’s lucky winner, we have a policy of re-weighing their souls after their year back. We had some issues with past winners making some questionable decisions with their year back on earth. You’d be surprised how many people manage to murder someone from their past life, even with a reaper chaperone. Humans suppress homicidal urges an average of  4 times a week. 

Things could change, if you play your cards right. Maybe your reaper can help you. You could spend the year working on doing some altruistic deeds together. It’s going to take some seriously hard work, but it’s not a lost cause.

72. (SOUND) Leafing through papers.

73. KYLE: Motherfucker. Ohhhhhh, that slimy little turd. You absolute shit whistle. You did it again.

74. DAWN: Okay, you’ve been rude this whole time, but I draw the line at name calling. 

75. KYLE: Sorry. It’s not you. I just saw which reaper took your soul. She’s...difficult. She’s sneaky. She’s not going to help you do good deeds. After a year with her, you may find yourself in an even worse hell than you got yourself into. 

76. (Music) Interstitial. 

__________________________________________

Scene THREE: DMV - Daytime

1. (SOUND)  Poof noise

2. NARRATOR: A poof of black smoke appeared in the laminate office chair next to Dawn. As the smoke cleared, a figure appeared in the chair. She had a black Mohawk, olive skin, and brown almond shaped eyes. A toothpick jutted out of her burgundy painted lips. She wore a white  t-shirt with ripped sleeves, and the words “CULT LEADER” were crudely scrolled in red Sharpie across the pocket on the shirt front. Her legs, in black jeans, were stretched across to Kyle’s desk, where her combat boots displaced a pile of paperwork. 

3. RITA: Motherfucker! Why am I back here?

4. KYLE: You got Today’s Lucky Winner again. 

5. RITA:  No. Noooooo. Kyle, my dude. I didn’t do anything. 

6. KYLE: Care to explain?

7. RITA: I didn’t cheat this time! Why would I risk serving more time?

8. DAWN: I’m sorry, did you say “serving time”?

9. KYLE: Rita has been in a hell dimension since her last time chaperoning a soul in 1987

10. RITA: I fucking swear. How could I have cheated again? They won’t even let me in the break room now. How would I even accomplish that?

11. KYLE: Relax. It looks like there’s a note here about upper management already investigating. Either it’s legitimate, or you’re just getting smarter about it how you cheat. Either way, I don’t care. 

12. DAWN: Can we go back to why she’s been in a hell dimension?

13. KYLE: Dawn, this is Rita. Rita enjoys chaperoning on earth so much, she has cheated her way into reaping the Lucky Winner 47 times.

14. RITA: 46. It’s only 46. That time in 1912 was legit. You really think I was counting souls as the Titanic was sinking? 

15. KYLE: Whatever. We have a ticker in the beak room that counts how many clients we have served that day. Rita would watch the ticker and swoop in on souls when they reached increments of 777. 

16. RITA: You really make it sound easier than it was. My timing had to be impeccable. 

17. DAWN: That doesn’t sound so bad. Why did they send you to a hell dimension?

18. RITA: I may have skipped out on reaping a few souls while I was watching the ticker. Like I said, it’s not as easy as he’s making it sound. 

19. KYLE: 387. You skipped on 387.

20. RITA: What? In the grand scheme of things, that’s not that many. 

21. KYLE: 66 of those became violent poltergeists, because we couldn’t get them in time. 

22. RITA: And I went back and fixed those!

23. DAWN: Why did you try to chaperone so much? Why would you want to be stuck on earth?

24. RITA: Do you know how exhausting it is to be a non-corporeal entity who experiences all time simultaneously? I need a fucking break. We don’t get regular vacations. I’ve been doing this since I was created in the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction. That’s 66 million years of work. If the reapers would unionize, maybe I wouldn’t have to cheat my way into time off. 

25. KYLE: Regardless of motives, Rita served her suspension in a hell dimension, and she’s back at work. She’s been rehabilitated. 

26. DAWN: Okay. What’s your job as my chaperone?

27. RITA: I’m supposed to make sure you don’t contact anyone from your previous life. And there are also some supernatural creatures who would love to get their hands on your temporary human vessel. Apparently, they can be used or some pretty juicy dark magic. I’m supposed to keep you out of harm’s way.

28. KYLE: Rita will be tethered to your soul for the duration of the year. She will have to stay within 100 yards of you at all times. 

29. RITA: Please don’t make me stay in that depressing apartment you died in for the ENTIRE year.

30. DAWN: It’s not that bad. 

31. RITA: Your nightstand is a cardboard box, and all of your clothes live on a chair in your room. 

32. DAWN: (sigh) Yeah, that’s fair. 

33. KYLE: You will be returned to earth exactly three days after your death. Rita, remember that you will have a physical form. You will be impervious to everything but magic, so don’t interact with any supernatural beings. 

34. (SOUND) Desk drawer opening

35. Narrator: Kyle procured a large rubber stamp from his desk drawer. He narrowed his eyes as he leafed through Dawn’s DMV file. There was a spark of recognition as he reached the page he needed. He looked up from the file at Dawn.

36. KYLE: Alright. As soon as I stamp this page, your year begins. Remember, you can’t tell anyone from your previous life who you are. You didn’t seem to have much of a social circle before so...

37. DAWN: Hey! Rude.

38. KYLE: SO...That shouldn’t be much of a problem. Listen, I don’t usually give people advice, but I’m gonna do it now. There’s a very high likelihood that you’ll get shipped to a hell dimension when this year is up. I don’t know which of your actions tipped your scale that direction. 

Your file looks PAINFULLY boring. You should probably spend this year racking up some really good deeds. Go for quality and quantity. Make sure you don’t do anything to someone else that may lower your score. 

No offense, but I don’t think you could handle ANY of the hell dimensions. Not even the white collar ones where we send embezzlers and pyramid scheme creators.

39. DAWN: What am I supposed to do? Give someone a kidney?

40. KYLE: Wouldn’t hurt. You need some hardcore altruism to undo whatever tipped your scale. Getting into heaven isn’t as hard as people on earth seem to think it is. You have to seriously fuck someone over to get sent to hell. 

There’s a hell dimension where they just stuff you FULL of kidneys. Nobody wants that. You don’t even want to know how they get them in there. 

(PAUSE) And Rita? You’d better not mess around. You understand me? I’m not entirely certain you didn’t cheat your way to another 777th soul again. If you’re caught doing anything, and I mean ANYTHING, to interfere with humanity, they’re going to decommission you. 

41. RITA: Decommission me?! As in erase me? Are you fucking joking?! My crimes have been victimless. Mostly. 

42. KYLE: I’m not kidding. There’s a note about it in Dawn’s file. Upper management has had it with you. Tread lightly. 

43. RITA: (SIGH) Fine. I seriously doubt this dork is going to get me in any trouble anyway. 

44. KYLE: (chuckles) Right? Have fun watching her play RPG’s online for 12 months with and testing the body’s upper limits on energy drink consumption. (PAUSE) If you all run into any trouble, you will be able to contact me here at the DMV 3 times during your year on earth. There will be three candles waiting for you at the apartment when you get there. Light one, and you will be able to have a brief chat with me. 

45. DAWN: I have a few more quest...

46. (SOUND) Stamp sound, followed by a whooshing noise.

47. NARRATOR: Before Dawn could finish her sentence, Kyle had stamped her file. As the stamp hit the paper, a blinding light obscured her vision. She felt an intense rush of air, as though she had begun to fall from a great height. The sensory overload of the light, and the wall of sound created by the gust of air, sent her into the throes of a panic attack the likes of which she had never experienced, and Dawn had panicked enough for a few lifetimes. 

48: (MUSIC) Interstitial

______________________________________

SCENE FOUR: - Dawn’s Apartment - Day time

1. (SOUND) A thud, like a body falling onto a couch with force

2. RITA: Dude, you okay? You don’t look so great.

3. DAWN: (HYPERVENTILATING) What. Happened. I. Where? How?

4. RITA: We’re in your apartment. It’s all good. Take a sec and chill on the couch. Inter-dimensional trips are hard on non-ethereal beings who experience linear time. 

5. (SOUND) Rummaging noises. Rita is opening drawers

6. RITA: You got any weed? A year isn’t that long, and I plan on being stoned to the...Excuse me, but what in the fuck am I looking at? It looks like a Circuit City exploded over here. (PAUSE) Ooooo, what’s this lil’ guy. 

7. DAWN: (Breathing is still irregular, but settling) That’s my. It’s a. It’s a streaming service skeleton key. I built it to attach to streaming devices. It creates a fake email and credit card information so I can use any streaming service’s free trials indefinitely. 

8. RITA: Wow! What’s good, Lil’ Miss Anonymous? I didn’t realize I was spending a year with Ms. Robot. Hack the planet, sis. (Pause) Now, about that weed?

9. DAWN: I haven’t smoked since college.

10. RITA: I was afraid you’d say that. One sec.

11. (SOUND) a noise as Rita BAMFs out of the apartment, 

12. DAWN: Uh...Rita?

13. (SOUND) Rita BAMFs again.

14. RITA: Guy in 202 is weed man. I don’t think he’ll be missing thisssss. 

15. DAWN: Did you just steal a bag of weed from my neighbor?

16: RITA: Unless he’s just really into oregano, yes. I stole a bag of (LONG SNIFF) Durban Poison? I think it’s Durban Poison. It’s definitely a sativa. And I also stole this novelty bong. I’m pretty sure that’s a bootleg sailor scout above the stem. 

17. DAWN: Fantastic. (Pause) God, I still feel like I’m gonna barf and then pass out. 

18. RITA: Have no fear. I’ll load a bowl for you, lil buddy. Oop! I should grab a grinder. 

19 (SOUND) Rita BAMFS Out

20. DAWN: Cool. She went to go burgle my neighbor again.

21. (SOUND) Rita BAMFS in

22. RITA: Yikes, he was coming back in as I left. 

23. DAWN: So you can just teleport?

24. RITA: Yeah, but I’m tethered to you. The range is about 100 yards. And as long as I’m corporeal, I can only jump through space, not time. 

25. DAWN: You could jump through time?

26. RITA: I mean, I usually experience past, present, and future all at once. I’m used to sliding around time on a regular basis. (Pause) Alright! Bong loaded. Human ladies first.

27. DAWN: You know? What the hell. Sure. Let me at it. 

28. RITA: Please, use my lighter. I got this baby from Sid Vicious. 

29. (Sound) Bong bubbling

30 RITA: CLEAR IT, NERD!

31. SOUND) Dawn coughing

32. RITA: (DAWN STILL COUGHING) You gotta cough to get off, little buddy. Also, I don’t think this dude has changed this bong water in. A. While. 

33. DAWN: (strained from the bong rip) I feel a little better already. I should have done this more when I was alive. 

34. RITA: Well, you’re alive now. You might as well make the best of it. 

35. DAWN: Yeah, and in 365 days, barring some hugely altruist behavior, I’ll be going to a hell dimension for eternity. 

36. RITA: Can you take 5 minutes to not think about the worst case scenario?

37. DAWN: Historically, no.

38. RITA: You’re going to take the evening off from worrying. Why don’t you plug in your TV skeleton man and we watch some shitty TV.

39. DAWN: My streaming skeleton key?

40. RITA: I’m pretty sure that’s what I said. Plug in the doo-dad, let’s get stoney-baloney, and we’ll come at your whole “I’m gonna get stuffed full of kidneys in hell” dilemma in the morning. 

41. DAWN: I guess one evening won’t hurt.

42. RITA: Atta’ girl! I’ll be in the kitchen making a garbage person snack. 

43. (SOUND) fridge door opening

44. RITA: Huh. Is there anywhere you liked to order food from when you were alive? I’m good with food, but I don’t think I can make anything with only seltzer water and an expired jar of sofrito. 

45. (SOUND) Fridge closing.

46. DAWN: There are menus in the drawer by the microwave. 

47. (SOUND) Drawer opening. 

48. DAWN: You find them? There’s a really good Thai place that delivers. 

49. (SOUND) pill bottle in the distance.

50. DAWN: Rita? (Pause) You find them? You okay?

51. RITA: First of all, don’t freak out. Only magical stuff can kill me. 

52. DAWN: Saying “Don’t freak out” is probably the worst thing you could say if you don’t want me to freak out. 

53. RITA: I found the pills that you took before you died. 

54. DAWN: Yeah?

55. RITA: I took them. All of them.

56. DAWN: Why would you do that?! 

57. RITA: LISTEN, YOU’RE ABOUT TO THANK ME. 

58. DAWN: WHY WOULD I THANK YOU FOR TAKING SLEEPING PILLS?!

59. RITA: BECAUSE THEY’RE NOT SLEEPING PILLS. I don’t quite understand my fast reaper metabolism, but they’ve already kicked in.

60. DAWN: What are they, then?

61: RITA: (tasting noises) Molly. Acid. Fentanyl. It’s a fucking cocktail. I think you were murdered! We prove it, and bingo-bango, you get reincarnated! Clean slate! No hell dimension. 

62. DAWN: Seriously? That’s great! Grab the evidence and we’ll call Kyle.

63. RITA: Oh. Oh no.

64. DAWN: Oh no what?

65. RITA: Uhh...I took all of them. 

66. DAWN: There should have been 28 left. 

67. RITA: Yeah. I took all of them. All the evidence is in my tum tum.