Week 9: A Christmas Present

(Source: YouTube)

INT. DINING ROOM - EVENING

Everyone sat around the table eating dinner and conversing. There was a total of three young men, three young women, an older woman and four children of various ages. They were all enjoying themselves as they celebrated Christmas.

JAMES (V.O.)

Let me introduce you to all these people. This is my family, there are my two brothers, Isaac and Daniel.The older woman is our mother, River Price. The three young women are my wife and two sister-in-laws, Isabel, Audrey and Lucy, respectively. And finally, there is my son, two nephews and a niece.

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door that startled everyone. All the adults looked around the table, silently asking each other if they knew who it might be. Nobody appeared to know.

JAMES (V.O.)

And this is where the holiday dinner  took an unexpected turn.

One of the brothers, Daniel, got up from his chair and headed towards the door.

JAMES (V.O.)

Now you might be confused as to where this is going, so let me take you back and tell you about some things, that’ll make this next part make sense.

BEGIN FLASHBACK:

INT. ORPHANAGE - MORNING

Three boys are sitting on a bed playing UNO. Soon enough, a woman enters and escorts them out of the room into a small office. In the office, there is an older gentleman and a woman waiting for them. As soon as the boys saw the other woman, they crowded her and began to form a group hug.

JAMES (V.O)

This was the moment River adopted us. It was hard in the orphanage, not because it was a bad place or anything. But because when people wanted to adopt, they didn’t plan on adopting three kids and we were set as a package deal as triplets. Then, River came along and she loved us as if we were her own children. I would like to say that she did a great job raising us. I mean, we graduated high school and went on to get degrees. I’m an architect, Isaac has his art gallery and Daniel is a chemical engineer. We had a great life and continue to do so with our happy marriages and kids.

The three boys are seen to be crying tears of joy after being told that they were officially adopted. River had tears coming out of the corner of her eyes, but the big smile on her face never faded.

END FLASHBACK.

INT. DINING ROOM/FOYER - EVENING

JAMES (V.O.)

I don’t think I realized how happy I am with my life until I saw what was behind that door. I wasn’t prepared for it.

Daniel opens the door and as soon as he does everyone looks. There were two gasps from the dining room and two more by the door.

DANIEL/ISAAC/JAMES (UNISON)

Mama?!

FADE OUT: TO BLACK SCREEN

(Triplet Boys, Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Author's Note: This story is based off of the story of the Three Brothers. A woman gives birth to triplets and does not know what to do, so she abandons them. They are later helped by a river god and form a town on their own. Their biological father finds them and then their mother finds them. They planned on killing her because she was an intruder but were then told to take care of her by the river god. Overall, I wanted to keep the main plot of this story, which was the re-connection. I decided to try a different format, screenplay, I'm not sure how I feel about it. But when I first read the story, all I could picture was this Hallmark type of movie trailer and I wanted to somehow incorporate that into my storytelling. I decided that the brother would be able to recognize their biological mother because they were abandoned at an older age, somewhere around eight years old. Hopefully, others can see what I was going for in this story. (I put the audio to kind of give it a movie trailer feel.)

Bibliography:
"Three Brothers" from Notes on the Folklore of the Fjort by Richard Edward Dennett (1898). Web Source.