FADE IN:

INT. PREVIOUSLY, IN AFTER WE FELL...

JOSEPHINE LANGFORD

It's been a while since Mom threw you out of our lives....

ATANAS SREBREV

Drinking, shooting up, depriving you of a positive masculine influence during your formative years....

HERO FIENNES TIFFIN

If not for whatever influence I have over Stephen, he never would have given you a career-level job in Seattle. Now that you have it, I expect you to give it up....

JOSEPHINE LANGFORD

...you're going to go AWOL for a while, then I'll find out you stood next to a hot girl at the bus stop or something, then we'll have another screaming fight....

HERO FIENNES TIFFIN

...now that I've opened up to you and made an effort to be warm to others, I feel like I have a whole new outlook on life....

JOSEPHINE LANGFORD

All this drama built up to our parents and employers being entangled in a Wattpad version of Desperate Housewives.

HERO FIENNES TIFFIN

And somehow we're still more fucked up than all of them.

INT. I WANT TO DIE

HERO drunkenly marches out of his cheating mother LOUISE LOMBARD's wedding and goes to burn down her HOUSE.

JOSEPHINE LANGFORD

Look, I know you're upset that all the adults in your life have lied to you since childhood, precipitating your lifetime of alcoholism and depression and verbal abuse and mistrust of everyone, but isn't arson a bit much? Can't you stick to assault and battery like usual?

HERO FIENNES TIFFIN

NOPE. BURN IT DOWN. BURN IT ALLLLLLLL DOWN.

(pours liquor all over everything)

JOSEPHINE LANGFORD

But that's potentially punishable by life imprisonment in the UK!

HERO FIENNES TIFFIN

(still pouring)

JOSEPHINE LANGFORD

I'll break up with you again if you do this!

HERO FIENNES TIFFIN

(still pouring)

JOSEPHINE LANGFORD

It's a waste of good liquor!

HERO FIENNES TIFFIN

(drops burning wad of paper)

Oh, wait, you had a point there.

STEPHEN MOYER

(bursts in)

Hero, I'm sorry about the daddy issues. How about I take the fall for this and we call it even?

HERO FIENNES TIFFIN

Deal.

He and JOSEPHINE book it out of there.

HERO FIENNES TIFFIN

Well, Josephine, if you still needed more excuses to cut me out of your life like a tumor, I think you just got the biggest. How about I stay here for a while and you go back to the things in your life that are actually working out for you?

JOSEPHINE LANGFORD

But I love you and I'm horny. Let's have close-up, half-dressed, drowned-out-by-nondescript-indie-rock car sex before we make any big decisions.

ENTIRE CAST OF THE AFTER FRANCHISE

Here we go again!

(big comical shrugs)

INT. KILL ME

JOSEPHINE seeks advice from STEPHEN's pregnant fiancée, ARIELLE KEBBEL.

JOSEPHINE LANGFORD

So the thing is that I've been trying to save Hero from his demons over and over again. I've used sex, and it didn't work. I've used tedious literary quotes, and it didn't work. We've had more breakups than Taylor Swift and J.Lo put together, and it didn't work. But you're having a baby with a guy who's been banging his lifelong side piece this whole time, so... maybe what I'm going through is better?

ARIELLE KEBBEL

Well, he just bought you a plane ticket and went off to hang out with his old junkie friends, so you tell me.

JOSEPHINE LANGFORD

Better. Got it.

She dresses in her sexiest high-neck long-sleeved TABLECLOTH and finds HERO in a DANK PARTY DEN full of BOOZE and DRUGS and SEMI-NUDITY.

JOSEPHINE LANGFORD

Oh God, not THIS shit again. Okay. Blah blah blah betrayal blah blah blah you bastard blah blah blah please love me.

HERO FIENNES TIFFIN

Blah blah blah fun blah blah blah stop being a buzzkill blah blah blah I choose darkness.

JOSEPHINE LANGFORD

I'm done.

HERO FIENNES TIFFIN

Ditto.

He returns to the DANK PARTY DEN to MOPE and PUNCH THINGS.

INT. I LONG FOR DEATH

JOSEPHINE flies back to the STATES, where she finds her homeless father, ATANAS SREBREV, dead on the floor.

JOSEPHINE LANGFORD

Oh.

She goes to her CHILDHOOD HOME to CRY some more. About HERO. ATANAS can roast in HADES, I guess.

HERO FIENNES TIFFIN

(bursts in)

Josephine, are you all right? I knew when you refused to respond to any of my messages that you just needed me to force my way into your presence again. Hope that eases the pain.

JOSEPHINE LANGFORD

It doesn't, actually. Mom, you handle this.

SELMA BLAIR MIRA SORVINO

The only real difference between you and Atanas is a trust fund. Stop invading Josephine's life and let me invade her life.

HERO FIENNES TIFFIN

Fuck you. I'm emotionally shackled to your only child, and I will storm through as many bedroom doors as I have to until she accepts it. You're as stuck with me as she is, so I suggest you give up any notions of getting rid of me and start picking our china pattern.

MIRA SORVINO

Even though she just turned down close-up, half-dressed, drowned-out-by-indie-rock greenhouse sex with you and told you to leave without screaming?

HERO FIENNES TIFFIN

(frowns)

You're right. That's very unlike her. Maybe it really is over.

MIRA SORVINO

There's 50 minutes of movie left. I'm not holding my breath.

INT. PLEASE GOD TAKE ME NOW

NOTHING appears to have changed.

HERO FIENNES TIFFIN

Did that "told me to leave" thing actually happen?

JOSEPHINE LANGFORD

Yes, but it didn't matter then. But it does now, so here goes. I'm moving to New York and you can't come with me.

HERO FIENNES TIFFIN

What? Why not?

REELS of the PAST THREE MOVIES fall from the SKY right onto his HEAD.

HERO FIENNES TIFFIN

Besides that!

JOSEPHINE LANGFORD

Because I feel like the only way we're ever going to get a grip on our lives is if we put thousands of miles between us and leave them there.

HERO FIENNES TIFFIN

But just for a while, right?

JOSEPHINE LANGFORD

No, forever. You've been an almost wholly negative force in my life except for the sex, and I can get that from a saner man.

HERO FIENNES TIFFIN

So... just for a while?

JOSEPHINE LANGFORD

...Oh, who are we kidding? Just for a while.

She goes to NEW YORK spends the next FIVE MONTHS growing AWFUL, AWFUL BANGS. Meanwhile, HERO starts going to AA MEETINGS, hitting the GYM, and wondering if ANYONE will ever bring up THE ARSON THING again.

HERO FIENNES TIFFIN

(arrives in New York)

It's been a while! And just to prove I really have changed for the better, I will refrain from close-up, half-dressed, drowned-out-by-nondescript-indie-rock couch sex with you until you burst through MY bedroom door.

JOSEPHINE LANGFORD

It's the bangs, isn't it?

HERO FIENNES TIFFIN

Seriously, you look like your own second-grade school picture.

They FUCK exactly one day later.

HERO FIENNES TIFFIN

By the way, I've written a book about our relationship. It was supposed to be just a fun thing for me, but it turns out there's a market for it, and publishers want to give me a big advance and attach a six-film deal.

JOSEPHINE LANGFORD

Too bad! You really think I want you spilling your guts about our relationship to the world? If you had even thought to ask my permission, I would have said--

(pauses)

Wait, SIX films?

HERO FIENNES TIFFIN

Yes. They're splitting the original story into four installments and a prequel, then the studio is splitting the fourth installment into a fourth and fifth.

They suddenly look up.

JOSEPHINE LANGFORD

What was that noise?

HERO FIENNES TIFFIN

Sounded like an Editing Room author screaming and running headfirst through a 25th-floor plate-glass window. Anyway, will you take me back?

JOSEPHINE LANGFORD

No!

HERO FIENNES TIFFIN

Fifth movie.

JOSEPHINE LANGFORD

Later!

CRITICS rapturously praise HERO's book as "A CLICHED, MEDIOCRE AFFAIR" (The Hollywood Reporter), "NUMBINGLY REPETITIVE" (Variety), "STUPENDOUSLY WOODEN" (The Guardian), "SUFFOCATINGLY DULL" (Decider), and "OH I CANNOT PERMIT MYSELF TO LIVE!" (me).

NOT THE END, GOD HELP US

INT. POST-CREDITS SCENE

We've just been informed that it's actually seven films.

Look, I think I've conveyed my despair strongly enough. Insert your own death wail here.