Soul ranchers

This is almost verbatim a conversation that took place during a SEAL PT course workout one fine morning between the instructor and various clients. Talking is generally discouraged, but this happened to be the "more relaxed" group that meets at 6 a.m. instead of 5:30 a.m.

DH: PARTNER UP!! 2 MINUTES OF PUSHUPS!! Hey Miss Rita, listen to my screenplay! There’s this guy, right? And he goes to have some Lasik. Then, due to some freak accident of the surgery, he’s left with the ability to see constantly moving shadows out of the corner of his eye. After a while, he learns that the shadows he is seeing are human souls being sucked up by this being… . It turns out that there an evil alien force on another plane of existence that thrives on human souls- the older the better ….they’re called “Soul Ranchers”…

RP: Oh, so the more we suffer, the older the souls get and so it’s the Soul Ranchers that are causing all the human suffering….

DH: KEEP PUSHING!! YOU ONLY GET THE BENEFIT IF YOU GO UP AND DOWN!!! Yeah, so how do we get out of this? Do you just say, oh what the hell, I’m going to just live my life, there’s nothing I can do

MC: (a young 19 yr old Catholic student in our group) so there’s no consequence to our actions, there’s no God we have to answer to…

DH:15 SECONDS!! God?!? I’m talking about Soul Ranchers. Are you saying that the only reason you do anything right is because you are afraid of GOD? PUSH PUSH PUSH! 30 SECONDS!! What about the laws of society and man? Why do you do anything right?

MC: guilt.

RP: Well, what if we flooded the market and all committed suicide so there would be a bunch of souls, not necessarily old and suffering….

DH: SWITCH IT UP!! GROUP 2 HIT THE GROUND! What the hell have you done to our protagonist? You can’t just commit suicide, anyway they’d just be happy because they’d get all those souls, it would have no resolution.

RP: So call it a French film. Anyway, the souls wouldn’t be old, then it would be over…

DH: 1 MINUTE!! UP AND DOWN! PUSH PUSH PUSH!! DON’T COUNT THAT! YOU CALL THAT A PUSHUP?!? I don’t like the mass suicide solution. And I hate subtitles. Anyway, they eat the souls whether they’re old or not, it’s just that they’re more tasty…better beef. SWITCH!!

RP: (pushing up): I GOT IT!! We could all become vampires, they don’t have any souls…

TM: (a girl that works for the Museum of Fine Arts) …or lawyers, THEY don’t have any souls

DH: ha ha ha, lawyers, I like that. STOP!! TRICEP PUSHUPS! ONE MINUTE! I think ya’lls weekend assignment is to figure out an ending for this. LISTEN UP!! THERE’S THIS GUY AND BECAUSE HE HAD A BOTCHED LASIK SURGERY HE CAN NOW SEE THESE SHADOWS THAT ARE SOULS BEING FARMED BY THIS EVIL ALIEN FORCE CALLED “SOUL RANCHERS!!” THEY EAT SOULS BECAUSE THEY’RE TASTY!!! YOUR ASSIGNMENT IS TO FIGURE OUT WHAT TO DO!!

AL: (an eye surgeon) How does he know what he’s seeing are souls?

RP: True- they could just be vitreous floaters…

DT: (resident philosopher/pool guy) What if he wakes up and its all the result of bad anesthesia?

DH: NO! That’s the oldest trick in the book, Mr. David. KEEP PUSHING! GET YOUR BUTTS DOWN!! They are souls, and he has to figure out how to fight the Soul Ranchers..

TM: Wasn’t that the theme of the Matrix?

RP: Well there only really are 4 stories in the world, they just all get retold-

AL: Why do we always talk about the botched Lasik around me?