Click here to go to next story.   HUNYA By JB Pravda     INT. BEDROOM OF A YOUNG MAN/ TOKYO JAPAN-EVE.   A young Amerasian man of 21 is asleep in his Japanese decorated flat, with rice paper window and door decor, etc.; he istalking in his sleep, and begins to react verbally to his dream figures, action. We hear muffled war-like sounds, air raid sirens, children crying/screaming.   HUNYA   No … no … father …   We see a nun rush into the room, wake him. He awakens, suddenly sits up in his bed, with cold sweat dripping; he makes his way to the dresser where a picture frame of his father sits; he holds it looking at it.   HUNYA (CONT'D)   I saw you … you were alive … you were standing, in a beautiful place, a rainbow over your head, but, the Sun, it was shining … you spoke to me: ‘Make it new,’ you said. How I miss you, and, now, mother is gone too…. He looks at the clock; it is four in the morning; he sits at his table and begins to write.     INT. OFFICES OF KATAMI CORPORATION, TOKYO JAPAN-DAY   It is several weeks later; the gifted young Amerasian copywriter for a multinational company has written a prize-winning essay for the UN's UNICEF; he has been summoned to the CEO's office.   MR. KATAMI Come, come; please sit.   HUNYA Thank you sir; they said you wanted to see me.   MR. KATAMI Yes, indeed; how long have you been with us, HunYa?   HUNYA About a year, sir; I was hired just after high school graduation.   MR. KATAMI I see; where, that is to say, how did you learn to write so well, especially your haiku verses? Our greeting card sales are way up since you began penning them.   HUNYA Well, um, sorry, I'm a bit nervous….   MR. KATAMI No need, you must put yourself at ease, just pretend you are inside one of your lovely rainbows!   HUNYA (smiling) Alright, sir … .it's my father, he read much poetry, especially by the American Ezra Pound.   MR. KATAMI Ah, yes, the Cantos … what was it, that haiku about the Paris Metro station, the people's faces … lovely….   HUNYA ‘The apparition of these faces in the crowd: petals, on a wet, black bough.’   MR. KATAMI So small, yet so big in meaning … strange, for a Westerner to appreciate that size does not always matter; your father, he was an American.   HUNYA Yes, he was a pilot, in Viet Nam; he met my mother while on leave to here. He often spoke about the rainbows he would see, high over the clouds, with no beginning, no end, as if … they were protective archways from the heavens.   MR. KATAMI Well, he has taught you well; I have some wonderful news for you: your entry in the UNICEF has so impressed them that you have been invited to the UN in New York, as a special envoy for their new campaign to enliven their personnel and their mission!   HunYa stands, beaming, with a tear in his eye, and bows gracefully.   MR. KATAMI (cont'd) Come, come, give me a hug, Japanese reserve just won't do!    They embrace warmly.   MR. KATAMI (cont'd) My boy, you have brought great honor to yourself, and the company.   HUNYA Thank you, sir. You gave me the chance, after all; it is only fitting that Katami Corporation should share in my happiness.... I must tell you, sir … (hesitates)   MR. KATAMI Yes, what is it, you look almost … dazed … would you like some green tea?   HUNYA Oh, no, sir, I'm fine … it's just that, well, not to sound immodest, but, I dreamed this!   MR. KATAMI Dreams must always be immodest, or they teach us nothing; besides, did not Pound see as in a dream: '... apparition of these faces...', ghostlike, they haunted his open yet dreaming eyes; but there is more.   HUNYA How could there be?   MR. KATAMI (hands him a paper) You are entered in the International Elvis Impersonation Competition to be held in New York next week!   HUNYA But, but … I missed the deadline....   MR. KATAMI Let's just say that I made a phone call; besides, you're competing for Japan, and the company.   HUNYA I am greatly honored.   MR. KATAMI As are we … and, your father.   HUNYA How did you know he was an Elvis fanatic?   MR. KATAMI Your mother told me; may I tell you something? (feigns gravity)   HUNYA Anything sir.   MR. KATAMI I do a pretty good impression, myself!   Mr. Katami assumes karate pose, sneers and begins to sing.   MR. KATAMI (cont'd) 'Bright light city gonna set my soul, gonna set my soul on fire ...Viva, Las Vegas!'  Why do you think we own a string of Karoake bars all over the world?  We are opening one in New York, the very week you'll be there, good place to warm up for the competition.    They both laugh heartily; then embrace again, and HunYa begins to leave.   MR. KATAMI (cont'd) One more thing, HunYa, for me, and, especially your father: 'Make it new.'   HUNYA Brand new, sir, like every new rainbow.                                      INT. JETLINER TO NY-DAY   Hunya is aboard the plane to NY and the UN; as he sits quietly, he looks out the plane window and sees a rainless rainbow, with strange colors he's never seen.   HUNYA (audible gasp) The rainbow, rainless, as in my dreams …   Just then, a flight attendant, Oriental, approaches.   AKI Wonderful, isn't it?   HUNYA Why, yes ... the colors ...   AKI I've never seen such colors, in all my years of flying.   HUNYA My name is Hun Ya, sorry.    AKI Aki, Aki Ling, pleased to meet you. What takes you to New York?   HUNYA Oh, my company entered me in a contest for UNICEF and, well, I won.   AKI Congratulations. You must be my guest at my favorite club, it's karoake, have you ever been to one?   HUNYA What a coincidence, my company is opening one there, in a few days’ time; perhaps you could join me there.   AKI Sounds fun, but, you didn't answer my question.   HUNYA Well, I don't like to brag, but, I've spent some time doing karoake, in Tokyo, since I was old enough to go; I have a confession to make.   AKI Aha, the man of mystery, cool.   HUNYA I'm competing in an Elvis impersonation thing, that's where I got started, really, karoake.     AKI Wow, you won't believe this, but my godfather, sort of, introduced me to Elvis when I was a child and I think I know all the songs.     HUNYA Well, then, I can see what you are, young lady.     AKI Huh? I beg your pardon?     HUNYA  (mugs best Elvis) 'You ain't nuthin but a hound dog, flyin all the time....'   AKI Ha, ha, very funny; gotta go, here's my number, call me.     INT. CEREMONIAL HALL OF THE UNITED NATIONS NY-DAY   Hunya is on hand to receive his special appointment as ambassador of good will for UNICEF; the Secretary General is on hand to emcee.   SECRETARY GENERAL ANON Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to present to you a work, truly inspirational, regardless of age, and it is that quality of clear yet dream-like imagery which has caused this young man to be this year's Young Ambassador!   There is great applause, and Hunya approaches the dais, looking very much like early Elvis.   HUNYA Thank you, thank you very musssssh! I have been asked to read my call to safety, for all the children of the world, and for all of them, regardless of their circumstances or language or color, to write to me about their dream place, a safe place—their place of the rainless rainbow, created by the tears of Heaven, that place that they can go, anytime, in between its uncertain beginning and end; an old person, recalling his or her beautiful youth, speaks lovingly of its memory:   T'was there that my soul lept at the intended blending of the breeze with hum and chatter of the insect and the bird and, the faint laughter of some human voice enthroned on or near that jutting liminal space, refuge from the storms of living;   in harmonious competition of ancient marriage unspoken with its concave covering, urban paths progressed, lined with tunneling canopy of corresponding branched towers whose leaves were as dappled light in a bathing prism, their rainless rainbow with the full complement of hues;   'twas there—'Hunya'—after the sound often heard to issue from her uppermost reaches when the wind made its hearty embrace felt upon her hair-like branches; time's tallied Her trunk's demise, mirror to mine, now shrunken, singular in its abiding, sans but few poorly bark-ed limbs betraying her morphic furl from life's joining song;   I lay a once-familiar hand upon the place was carv-ed by my tremulous member a name, joyful tropism of days past falls upon my ear! … I 'awaken' to this symbol of vertical youth, new full and strong, in company of my fellows, at play in winsome waves of turbulent air, whispering a native tribe's tongue: "Welcome to Hunya … our name for Heaven…."   © Copyright, JB Pravda   Click here to read JB Pravda's Brief Bio.   Click here to go to next story.