INT. HALLWAY OUTSIDE COLLEGE CLASSROOM – NIGHT

Flashlights light up the pitch-black hallway outside a college classroom. CSI HILARIO HECKERT, a middle-aged, stocky geek, and CSI HOLLY OAKS, a middle-aged cougar in stilettos, walk toward the classroom with their flashlights. CAPTAIN MIKE COPPER stands outside the barricaded classroom door.

HECKERT

What have we got here, Mike?

MIKE

English composition professor, Lisa Larkin, was in the middle of class when, during a heated discussion about the merits of dangling expressions, the students became utterly incomprehensible. Supposedly became supposably, library became libarry, etcetera became excetera, and exctera, excetera. See, now I’m even doing it. She became so distressed that she called the local PD. I’m just warning you, it’s a linguistic mess in there.

HECKERT

Thanks, Mike.

CUT TO:

Classroom. Heckert and Holly lift the crime scene tape and walk in. Heckert and Holly pan their flashlights around the room. In the background, students engage in incomprehensible chattering. Mispronounced words like “supposably,” “nucular,” and “libarry,” are frequently heard. Heckert points his flashlight at a student.

HECKERT

Where’s Dr. Larkin?

STUDENT (O.S.)

Why don’t you turn on the light and see for yourself?

HECKERT

Oh. Right. We have lights.

Heckert flips on the light switch. DR. LARKIN is sitting at the front of the room. Her face is red from crying. Holly approaches the instructor.

HOLLY

Dr. Larkin? I know that you’ve been through an ordeal. But we really need to know what happened.

LARKIN

(sobbing)

Well, one minute we were having an exciting discussion about the impact of passive voice on dangling modifiers, the next minute my students are maliciously butchering the English language. Prostrate. Nucular. Exspecially. A-ight...

Larkin, looking ill, stops in mid-sentence. She runs to the garbage can and vomits.

HOLLY

Hmm. Linguistically lazy college students? Sounds a-ight to me. What do you think, Hil?

HECKERT

Looks like words of a feather flock together.

HOLLY

Huh?

CSI CASEY STUDS, a young, macho rookie, runs into the classroom with a laptop.

CASEY

Heckert. Holly. You have to see this. PD got a call in. Looks like these words just didn’t disappear on their own.

Casey opens the laptop and clicks the link that says “Shakespeare was a Hack.” Up pops a video stream of the word “supposedly” written on a piece of paper. “Ina Gadda Da Vida” plays in the background. The KIDNAPPER holds up a pair of scissors to the piece of paper. All gasp and look away in horror.

KIDNAPPER

(in a distorted voice)

Hi CSI guys...and lady. Want to see your precious supposedly again. What about nuclear and prostate? Well, think hard and think long. What do you think is wrong with the throng of the ringa-ding-ding dong?

HECKERT

What the hell is he saying?

HOLLY

I have no idea.

KIDNAPPER

You have twenty minutes.

CASEY

To do what?!

Kidnapper laughs maniacally as the video cuts out.

HOLLY

What kind of sick, twisted individual would kidnap and purposely defile innocent words?

HECKERT

The more twisted they are, the harder they fall.

HOLLY

What?

CASEY

Hey, do you remember years ago in New York when “ask” disappeared and was mysteriously replaced with “aks”? And in Chicago, where the letters “th” just, one day, fell off the face of the earth? For all intensive purposes...

HECKERT

For all intents and purposes...

CASEY

Yes, for all intensive purposes...that was nothing compared to this. This is destruction of the English language on a scale I’ve never seen before.

CSI CRAIG LANDERS, geeky lab rat, runs into the classroom.

CRAIG

Heckert, we just traced the signal. The feed is coming from this building, somewhere on this floor!

HOLLY

Can you pinpoint the location?

CRAIG

What do you think this is? A TV show? We don’t have the budget for that.

Craig walks out of the room.

HECKERT

We’re just going to have to check every room.

CUT TO:

Hallway. Heckert, Holly, and Casey frantically run down the hallway opening doors and peering inside each room. After some searching, Holly makes her way further down the hall and discovers a locked door.

HOLLY

(screaming obnoxiously)

Over here! It’s here!

Heckert and Casey run over to Holly. Casey pushes Holly out of the way.

CASEY

We’re going to have to break it down.

Casey backs up and slams his shoulder into the door. He backs up again and runs full force into the door. Holding his shoulder, he backs off and winces in pain.

CASEY

One more time...

Suddenly, Holly steps in, and in one try, kicks the door down Foxy Brown style.

CUT TO:

Professor’s Office. The kidnapper, a disheveled, pale English composition professor sits inside the dark office in front of a computer. Hundreds of rejection letters from publishers are plastered all over the walls and floor.

KIDNAPPER

Ringa-ding-dong. Didn’t take long. To find me around the crown and upside down.

Heckert charges into the office. He grabs the kidnapper by the collar and shakes him uncontrollably.

HECKERT

(screaming)

Where are they?! Where’s supposedly and prostate and etcetera?! Tell me!

KIDNAPPER

Hanging indents and hopeful suckers. Go straight to hell you motherfuckers!

HECKERT

He’s cracked. Perished under the pressure to publish. Get him out of here.

POLICE OFFICERS take him away.

KIDNAPPER (O.S.)

You’ll never find them snickety-snork. Whether you eat meat or whether you eat pork. You minions of evil! You trained monkeys of Satan! (Kidnapper laughs maniacally).

HOLLY

So, that’s it? This is our criminal mastermind? A vindictive, bitter, washed up writer? I don’t know about you, but it seems to me, as the years roll by, our cases get weirder and more anticlimactic.

A call comes in over Heckert’s radio.

MIKE (O.S.)

Heckert. We’ve got an accident at Broadway and Vine. Seems a retiree crashed his 401k into his IRA and the paperwork is scattered all over sidewalk. We need you to come clean up his assets.

HECKERT

I guess financial security doesn’t happen by accident.

HOLLY

Enough.