Whew!
Just under the wire, but I made it! I have now officially reached the target on one of these internet writing marathon thingummies. While there were weeks of inactivity and times when I was forced to work on other things, I was able to put some good -- but mostly crap -- words to a page, and reach the 20,000 goal.
I'm still not satisfied, however, because the story isn't finished. No, try as I did, the words 'FADE OUT. THE END' were not in my script; in fact, there is a really long way to go.