An afternoon breeze twirls two sheer curtains out of a
second-story apartment window. JUNE blankly stares out of the
window, lost in her memories. She closes her eyes; a bright
vision of the ocean shore, waves breaking gently, an ideal
summer day. The sound of the waves crash, JUNE opens her eyes
and takes in the apartment: the bed is unmade, with several
half-empty glasses on the nightstand. She collects a few of the
glasses, almost spilling their contents. She lets out a
frustrated, “Shit”. A sound creaks from the living room. JUNE,
startled, slowly turns in confusion.

JUNE sets each glass back onto the nightstand and steps to the
bedroom door, pushing it open with her pointer finger, peering
into the living room. It’s empty. JUNE turns her gaze to the
floor, and with a shake of her head, walks back to collect the
glasses and totes them to the kitchen. She sets them in the
sink, and from behind her, the camera shows her shoulders slump.

The shoreline darkens with a soft wave. The shot flows up to
reveal a close up of JUNE’s toes burying into the sand. Panning
up her legs from above, the shot reveals bruises along her
thighs. A man’s strong hand reaches over from off-screen to
caress JUNE. She recoils instantly.

Cut back to the kitchen as JUNE turns from the sink. The shot is
close on her face, paralyzed, as her eyes fix on an ornate
spider on the kitchen island. She lifts an empty glass from the
sink and fearfully advances towards the spider, slowly trapping
it beneath the glass. Her hands press down on the glass,
breathing heavily. She carefully releases her grip and backs
away to the hall, snatching up a thin piece of mail from beside
the front door.

JUNE turns the corner, prepared to smash the spider, and gasps
at the now empty upturned glass. Immediately on edge, her eyes
darting anywhere the spider could be. Finding nothing, she
eventually coils onto the couch slowly. She closes her eyes as a
breeze drifts in through an open window to touch her skin.

The shot backs from the beach into JUNE’s hotel room through a
sliding glass door. There are two towels hanging over the
balcony railing. JUNE is reclined on the queen bed nearest the
window, gazing out onto an early sunset. A toilet flushes; the
bathroom door opens and DOM walks out, grumbling to himself. He
selects a T-shirt from his luggage, tugs it over his head, and
turns to JUNE, who continues to stare at the sky behind the
waves. DOM strolls to the bed, and lays behind JUNE, running his
hand over her stomach. JUNE shoots up out of bed, and runs into
the bathroom, slamming the door and locking it. She slides to
the ground against the door with silent tears flowing down her
face. DOM pounds the door and jerks the handle. The sound of
pounding ocean waves grows to drown out DOM’s hammering.

JUNE wakes with a jolt to a dark living room. She turns to the
open window, her hair swirls in the howling wind. She approaches
the window and closes its shutters. JUNE notices a woman
undressing in a lit apartment opposite hers. The woman could be
JUNE’s twin. She watches until the woman closes her own curtains
and the light goes out in the opposing apartment.
(Alternatively, a man saunters into the woman’s apartment, and
they embrace with laughter and kisses, causing JUNE to drop her
stare.)

JUNE turns and is once again face-to-face with the spider
perched on the coffee table. JUNE grabs up the mail from the
coffee table and swats at the spider. Flustered, she misses each
whack. Her last attempt sends the spider sailing across the
room. JUNE, on her knees, carefully sweeps the floor with her
eyes. She peeks around the back of the couch as if sneaking into
a dragon’s den. The spider has once again vanished.

JUNE stands up like a newborn fawn and tiptoes across the living
room back into the kitchen. This time she can’t relax, and her
eyes scour every inch of the room. She nervously grabs a kettle
from the stovetop and fills it with water. JUNE turns on the
stove’s front burner and an aerial shot floats down on the
electric coils turning red-hot, as the sound vibrates. She slams
the kettle onto the coils and the shot transitions.

JUNE is seen from above, curled up on the hotel’s bathroom
floor. She sniffles and wipes her nose, and slowly rises to
unlock the door. Immediately following the click of the lock,
DOM erupts through the door, placing his hand firmly around
JUNE’s throat. He pushes her back until she collides with the
wall tiles. The camera shows her toes dancing off the floor.
JUNE’s fingers fumble with his and she tries to catch a breath.
DOM smacks her hard across the face. Her ears ring loudly.

The whistling of the kettle mixes with the ringing and brings us
back to JUNE’s kitchen. Steam pours up and out of the spout.
JUNE picks up the kettle with one hand and turns off the range
with the other. She pours the boiling water over a teabag, with
a close up of the tea distilling into the water. JUNE dunks the
teabag several times and adds her sugar and milk. Clutching the
cup in both hands, she inhales the steamy aroma and finally
loosens up, turning back to her living room.

JUNE walks her tea over to her computer desk. She wiggles the
mouse as she sits down and opens her social media. There is one
new notification: “On this day in...”. She clicks the
notification and a photo of JUNE and DOM at the beach washes
across her screen. She glares at the smile on DOM, but as JUNE
studies herself, she spots the hint of a black eye under her
sunglasses. She gulps her tea and shuts the laptop. Faint ocean
waves amplify and the memory makes her shiver. She closes her
eyes, holding back a brim of tears. She shakes her head and with
a final swig, she empties the mug.

Leaving her workstation and the empty mug, JUNE strides down the
hall. She flicks on the bedroom light and changes into
mismatched pajamas with several visual holes in her shirt. She
climbs into the unmade bed and lifts the covers up over her
head, and hears the ocean waves like pressing your ear to an
empty conch shell. JUNE closes her eyes and starts to drift with
the waves.

In the blackness, JUNE lets out a bloodcurdling scream. She
throws her legs to her chest, tossing back the comforter to find
the source of the pain. Her calf has a large purplish-yellow
bruise that spread across her skin before her eyes. JUNE
carefully prods the bruise, flinching when her finger makes
contact. Two round dots of red bubble up from the center of the
bruise. The spider is seen inching towards her from under the
blanket.

Panicking now, JUNE jumps up and hurries through the bedroom
door. The pain is astronomical; she limps through the bathroom
door and throws open a mirrored medicine cabinet. JUNE retrieves
a thin roll of gauze and slams onto the toilet, pressing the
gauze to her wound. The blood absorbs quickly, staining the
stark white gauze.

A weak JUNE looks down at her fingers. Seeing the thin layer of
red makes her woozy. She lumbers down the hall, colliding with
the wall as and she makes her way to the kitchen sink. She turns
on the faucet and rinses the red from her hands, splashing water
on her face before turning off the faucet.

JUNE tries to calm herself and as she turns, the spider is not a
foot away, on the kitchen floor to her right. JUNE falls
backward and shuffles away from the spider. Her back hits a wall
of cabinets. In a daze, JUNE looks around snatches a knife from
the butcher’s block on the counter above her. The sound of metal
on wood slashes through JUNE’s heavy breathing.

The spider advances. JUNE hesitates, then pounces like a wild
animal. She stabs at the spider with the chef’s knife like a
game of five-finger filet. She misses each attempt, but with a
final sob she thrusts the knife downwards. The knife slices the
spider right down the middle, and her arms quake with the impact
of the knife on the kitchen floor. The knife impact causes
silence as if time stops. JUNE holds her breath and stares at
the spider as its legs twitch. Carefully, she releases her grip.
A puddle of black blood pours from the spider, pooling around
her knees, staining her thin cotton pajama pants. The cloud of
blood never stops growing. JUNE stands up, watching the pool
reach for her toes. She backs up into the cabinets, staring down
in disbelief.

The camera provides a view from the living room. We see JUNE
pressed against the cabinets to the left. Behind the kitchen
island, a man’s feet are visible. The following shot shows us a
top view of the kitchen, JUNE to the left and DOM stretched
across the vinyl flooring, bleeding out. A tight pan of DOM’s
chest reveals the knife splitting an ornate spider tattoo in
half directly over his heart. DOM’s face is still, but his eyes
are open and locked with JUNE’s as the mushroom cloud of blood
pools around his head.

JUNE stares into DOM’s eyes for several moments until she breaks
his gaze and glides smoothly back to her bedroom window. The
camera follows her feet, showing the ugly bruise rapidly
dissolving. The window is still open, and a soft wind flutters
the thin curtains. The camera backs out of her window, and the
ocean waves sing once again. Her shoulders relax, her eyes
close. She inhales deeply and exhales with a smile.

JUNE opens her eyes to the crashing ocean waves in front of her,
backed by the most vivid sunset. The camera backs to reveal JUNE
wearing the same smile. JUNE falls back onto her towel and out
of frame. The shot pans down her body, showing clear skin and
her toes digging into the sand, swinging to the ocean waves
licking the sand in front of her. The screen darkens with one
final crash of the waves.