by Matthew Ryan
He projects a dull scientific drawing of a magpie on the overhead projector.
Yeah. Fucking terrifying! Its blood-red eyes were as cold and dead as the myriad of small dogs it had harried and devoured. It was perpetually randy and had testicles the size of kiwifruit.
He puts a large picture of kiwifruit on the overhead projector, placing them under the magpie. The sizes don’t quite match.
Rumour has it that it had once killed an ibis and raped its dead corpse.
He puts up a picture of an ibis and makes the magpie image have sex with it.
It was sitting in its nest in its tree of doom, thinking evil bird-thoughts when the late and lost Alethea Jones rounded the corner onto Montague Road, and with a cry that could loosely be translated as ‘Die, stinking ape, die’, it leapt from its nest like a fistful of feathers and broken glass and went straight towards Alethea Jones.
He takes the transparent sheet of the magpie drawing and flicks it around in the air, creating the actual bird swooping around ALETHEA’s head.
Alethea ducked and weaved, desperately trying to remember the advice she had been given on how to avoid attacks from magpies.
A chime.
MAGPIE EXPERT: In the event of being attacked by a magpie, the best I advice I can give you is to hop off your bike and face the magpie down.
ALETHEA: What?!
NARRATOR: Against several millennia of successful survival instincts, Alethea threw down the bicycle and faced off against the magpie. The magpie landed…
He throws the transparency. It eventually lands.
… there. Alethea stood frozen. The magpie pointed its bloodstained beak at her lean olive-skinned throat. Alethea didn’t move. The magpie cooed a charming little tune in its throat.
We hear a cute and charming magpie song.
Loosely translated as, ‘You don’t know it yet but I’m going to kill you and fuck you in the ear’. Alethea didn’t dare move. The magpie leapt at her face. Fortunately at that moment a one-eyed Scottish cab driver, clutching a Bible and crucifix, got between Alethea and the bird.
SCOTTISH CABBIE: The power of Christ compels you back to hell!
A chime. The SCOTTISH CABBIE faces the audience.
One-eyed William MacCabbie. Taxi driver and lay preacher. I’m 87 years’ old. I like: soft toffees, tartan, Ronnie Corbett and Christ. [Thumbs up for Christ] I dislike: hard toffees, plaid, Ronnie Barker [spits] and the demon bird who took my eye!
The SCOTTISH CABBIE forces the magpie back to its tree. The NARRATOR puts the magpie transparency back on the overhead projector.
NARRATOR: One-Eyed William drove the Magpie back into its tree…
SCOTTISH CABBIE: I am strong with the Lord and the power is mine! I am strong with the Lord and the power is mine! Get up there, ya little fucker!
NARRATOR: … where it sat, glowering and spitting curses in what was probably Aramaic. He helped Alethea into the back of his cab. And as they drove off Alethea looked out of the back window to see her beloved bicycle Penelope receding in the distance. The magpie landed on it.
He puts up an image of the bike, Penelope. Again the size doesn’t quite match.
And stared at her, daring her to try and get it back.
5. HER PUBLISHER
NARRATOR: Seven minutes later, Alethea arrived at her breakfast meeting.
MARKO leans over ALETHEA’s chair, doing lunges at her and, not accidentally, sending his crotch repeatedly in the direction of her face.
MARKO: Althea! Hey there, little lady. Little bit late, are we? Not to worry. Isn’t this weather beautiful? I was up at four o’clock this morning. Went for a run and a swim. Did my taxes. And made love to my wife. Now I’m here. [Seemingly offering his crotch] Breakfast? It’s the most important meal of the day.
NARRATOR: Alethea was 87 percent sure he was picturing her naked.
MARKO stares at her, picturing her naked.
MARKO: So, you’ve got a reading and signing of Building Better Monsters at the State Library tomorrow. And this Friday the first draft of the new book is due. And after all of the money that I’ve put into it, I cannot wait to read it.
ALETHEA shifts in her chair, uncomfortable.
NARRATOR: Alethea hadn’t finished her new book. Alethea hadn’t started her new book. Alethea had gone to start the new book and had been puzzled by a troubling little thought. What if it was no good? What if you’re a one-hit wonder? That’s easy, she thought. I’ll just make it perfect. She hadn’t written a word since. She had a title. A promising title. A title that spoke volumes of promise of the whole enterprise. The Man With Ideas Coming Out of His Ears. Unfortunately, since putting those clever little words together, she hadn’t had a single syllable come out of her left nostril. Her work thus far consisted of two things. An empty file on her computer Dave… [draws DAVE the computer] entitled ‘Difficult Second Album’. And her beloved notebook. Full of sketches, drawings and ideas. Every day for Alethea began with a cup of coffee and a slow turning of its pages, desperately waiting for inspiration to punch her in the face. At that moment, two thoughts raced from the recesses of Alethea’s brain, elbowing each other out of the way to reach her consciousness first. The one that arrived first was that today was Tuesday and in one, two, three, four days on Friday she would have broken her contract with a major publisher, bringing her promising young career to a fatal end. The second was that her beloved notebook was still in the parcel basket of her bicycle Penelope, which was last seen in the clutches of the demon bird. Alethea excused herself to go the bathroom and ran like hell from the building.
ALETHEA looks at the projection of the magpie, high in its tree.
She kept her distance and stared up into the tree. The magpie was hopping around in a strange tangle of branches. And then she saw. They weren’t branches. It was her bicycle Penelope, hoisted up on high. Now, it is perfectly conceivable that someone in a fit of panic had grabbed the bicycle and thrown it at the magpie in a desperate attempt to escape. However, to Alethea’s terrified imagination, it was all too conceivable that the little big-balled bastard had gotten it up there himself. The notebook was safe for now, hidden in the parcel basket against the trunk of the tree. But for how long? Without her notebook, she was lost. But without her life, she’d be dead. Alethea trudged home, her cheeks stinging as she tried to hold back tears. Her only consolation was that she had in fact been right all along. Mornings are fucked. [Beat.] Girl. Tick.
6. WALL
The NARRATOR draws a wall between the two apartments.
NARRATOR: So, that’s them. Thom and Alethea. And this is the wall that separates their apartments in a quiet little apartment block in a quiet-er end of West End. They’d never met, never spoken. The briefest of ‘hellos’. They came home from their surprisingly crap Tuesdays, the weight of their oncoming Fridays hanging over their heads. They flicked on their lights and kicked off their shoes. Thom walked straight towards the adjoining wall. You see Thom loved astronomy. He had always wanted to be an astronomer. He could think of nothing better than gazing up into the heavens and staring into the past. Thom was hunting supernovae. The death of a star. An explosion equal to one hundred billion suns. Supernovae are incredibly rare, occurring in each galaxy only every one to two hundred years and then only visible to the naked eye if you happened to be in the right part of the galaxy at the right time. Not too far away or you won’t see it and not too close or the radiation will kill us all. And only visible for a month or so at the most, the faintest glimmer that shouldn’t be there. Finding one is like walking onto a beach and finding a grain of sand that that doesn’t belong. In spite of this, Thom lived in hope. He memorised star charts and covered his walls in glow-in-the-dark stars, turning his room into a fully immersive map of the visible universe.
He puts a star chart on the overhead projector, creating a field of stars on Thom’s walls.
Once a week, every week, Thom would go to the Herculean and intricate effort of moving each and every one
of those stars as it had moved in the sky above.
He holds a star in his hand, stroking it.
And so it was, on that surprisingly crap Tuesday, the weight of his oncoming Friday and his meeting with Terry, the CI from CBT, hanging over him, that Thom stood at the wall, moving the universe, millions of miles between him and Alethea.
He goes to DAVE.
Alethea came home, turned on her computer Dave, entered her password and sat staring at the blank screen for seven minutes before feeling sick to her stomach. She got her paints and walked to the adjoining wall.
He removes the star field and projects a blank light onto Alethea’s walls.
Alethea was painting a mural on the wall. She did it when she was tired or stressed. Or to be more honest, when she was trying to avoid her computer Dave, and her complete lack of new ideas. It was to be a perfect mirror image of her apartment. It wouldn’t have the slightest mistake. Not a single thing was left out of place that might ruin the mirror effect. Like Thom and his home-brew planetarium, it made her happy. So that’s who they are and where they are, when a remarkably strange thing occurred.
He moves to the WALL between the apartments.
The wall between their apartments was a young wall. And like all young walls, it was a romantic and had decided that these two belonged together. Unfortunately, being an inanimate object meant that matchmaking was difficult. So it was going to do the only thing it could think of. It was going to fall down.
The WALL strains. He stops and catches his breath, then strains again.
CEILING: [highly strung] Hey. Hey, hey. What are you doing?
WALL: Who’s that?
CEILING: It’s me. The ceiling.
WALL: Oh. Hi, Ceiling.
CEILING: What are you doing?
WALL: Nothing.
CEILING: It doesn’t feel like nothing.
WALL: I’m going to fall down.
CEILING: What?!
WALL: No, no, no. It’s for love.
CEILING: I don’t care what it’s for! Think about me. I’ll fall.
NARRATOR: At that moment, the floor chimed in.
FLOOR: [kind of dopey] Hey, guys. What are you doing?
WALL: Nothing.
FLOOR: Oh. That’s right. I’m the floor. Walk all over me.
WALL: If you must know, I just think these two would be a lot happier if there wasn’t a wall between them.
CEILING: That’s all very well and good but have you thought about me? My structural integrity? I’ll fall.
FLOOR: Hey, Wall. What’s that?
WALL: What’s what?
FLOOR: That.
NARRATOR: And they all looked at Wall. And Wall looked at himself.
The WALL crosses his eyes.
And there, spreading across him, ten centimetres long and growing, was a crack.
CEILING: Oh, great! We’re all going to die! I hope you’re happy!
WALL: No, no, no. I can stop it. There. It’s stopped. But. I don’t think it’s going to stay stopped unless you, Ceiling, and you, Floor, and the rest of the apartments promise to help get these two together.
NARRATOR: Thom stared at the wall. The Groombridge 34 binary system of glow-in-the-dark stars trembled in his hand. There was a crack in the universe. And there was light coming from it.
Light shines from the NARRATOR’s hand, into THOM’s face.
Alethea stared at the crack in her perfect mural. She tried to paint over it. She tried to fix it. She made it worse. She moved away, afraid of ruining it any further. Thom stared at the inter-dimensional crack that was now spilling light and colour into his room for another seven and a half minutes before needing immediate salty, sour comfort, he made himself a cheese and pickled onion sandwich and went to bed.
7. AN INTERLUDE
NARRATOR: Let us now move back through space and time to a distant star called RS Ophiuchi. Two stars actually. A binary system containing a white dwarf and red giant, dancing together incredibly close but not yet touching. When they do, RS Ophiuchi will become spectacular evidence of the laws of thermodynamics in action. Entropy on an operatic scale. One of Thom’s supernovae. The light from that explosion is going to travel for the next four to five thousand light years. So we can either wait for it or get on with the show. All in favour of waiting for it?
He waits.
All in favour of getting on with the show?
He waits.
Let’s get on with the show.
He takes off a shoe and pulls off a sock, creating a sock puppet of THOM, who wakes from a dream.
In the middle of the night Thom woke in a dream to discover that he was a sock puppet.
SOCK THOM: Gah!
NARRATOR: Not only was Thom a sock puppet, but it seemed that no-one else was.
SOCK THOM: Hey.
NARRATOR: Suddenly, it was Friday and it was time for his meeting with Terry, the CI from CBT.
TERRY appears in giant shadow form.
SHADOW TERRY: So! Thom Thompson Junior! What do you contribute to our company?
SOCK THOM: I have no idea.
SHADOW TERRY laughs.
Oh, God. I’m fired, aren’t I?
SHADOW TERRY: Fired? That’s the most honest response I’ve ever had. I’m promoting you to Owner and CEO! What we do now is in your hands.
SHADOW TERRY laughs and fades as SOCK THOM screams in horror.
NARRATOR: And so, Sock Thom was being sent to Sydney to run the company. So his friends were throwing him a going-away party, the theme of which was great things from Christian Slater films. Sock Thom roamed his home dressed as the Poisoned Bible from The Name Of The Rose by Umberto Eco amidst the strains of ‘Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf)’ by the Pixies from Pump Up The Volume. He thanked all of his friends for coming, some of whom he had never met.
SOCK THOM: Welcome. Thanks for coming.
Another sock puppet appears, this time one of ALETHEA. SOCK THOM stares at her.
You’re a sock.
SOCK ALETHEA: Yep.
SOCK THOM: I’m a sock.
SOCK ALETHEA: Uh-huh.
SOCK THOM: We’re both socks!
She ignores him. He walks away, dejected. She watches him, feels bad and stops him from going.
SOCK ALETHEA: Hey, wait. Cool party. Who are you dressed as?
SOCK THOM: Me? I’m the Poisoned Bible from Name of the Rose. But I keep having to explain it to people. You?
SOCK ALETHEA: Winona. From Heathers. Like every other girl here.
NARRATOR: And they laughed. And talked. And danced. All through the night. And then, as the morning came, they sat out the back by the Hills hoist and watched as the sun came up. Not saying anything. Just being there. And Thom didn’t want to leave anymore. But it was time for him to go. They kissed their goodbyes.
The puppets kiss. Then pash.
And the Sock Girl was carried away by a small black-and-white bird but didn’t seem to mind. So Sock Thom was sent to Sydney to run the company. But he couldn’t get the girl from the party out of his head. So he filled the hole in his heart with cigarettes, booze and cheap, cheap, Sydney women.
He goes down on SOCK THOM.
He had all the success his mother had ever wanted for him. And all the success he’d ever wanted for himself. But he couldn’t get the girl from the party out of his head.
SOCK THOM: Winona!
SOCK THOM collapses in drunken tears.
8. THE EXPANSION OF THE UNIVERSE
The NARRATOR moves across to a POWER BOX, already drawn in chalk in the corner.
NARRATOR: That same night, the building’s power box was having issues of its own. Here’s what was troubling it.
The NARRATOR draws a question mark over POWER BOX and sits under it.
POWER BOX: Consider the expansion of the universe. Now, this expansion is held to have started at what we know colloquially as the big bang. An expansion or inflation of unimaginable size and power. Of fire and dust and fire, spilling out. Planets and stars
spin into form and shape. And that expansion should just keep going. However, according to some theorists, that expansion will slow, stop, and then reverse. Everything coming back together. Planets, stars, light waves, radio waves, everything back coming together in one final booming collapse. And what happens then, wondered Power Box, all night every night, in his dingy little corner out by the bins. When all the pieces finally come together, what happens then?
9. WEDNESDAY
A chime.
WEDNESDAY: Wednesday! I’m a day of the week! I like motivating people! And posters of kittens hanging from trees. Hang in there, tiger. I dislike the term ‘Hump Day’. That’s a bit yucky. And I’m not overly fond of Friday.
FRIDAY, now more drunk, grabs his crotch and gives everyone the finger.
FRIDAY: Fukkinn’ Friddaay!
WEDNESDAY pumps a fist in the air with a smile to the audience.
WEDNESDAY: Excelsior!
NARRATOR: That morning Wall, Ceiling, Floor and the rest of the apartments had come up with a plan to get Alethea and Thom together. It involved the doors (not the band, the actual doors). For them, getting people together was pretty much open and shut. It was simply a matter of timing. And so Thom got up, got dressed for work, all the while musing on his long line of strange dreams probably brought on by cheese and pickled onion sandwiches before bed. He stared at the inter-dimensional crack in his wall, shook his head and went to leave his apartment.
THOM tries to open the door. It is stuck.
DOOR 1: Okay, I’ve got him. Door Number Two, where’s she?
DOOR 2: I’m not really sure about ‘Door Number Two’ business. It connotes poorly. Number Two means poo.
DOOR 1: Fine. ‘Other Door’.
DOOR 2: Other? Hmmm.
DOOR 1: ‘Door’. Where is she?
DOOR 2: She’s still in bed.
NARRATOR: Alethea was still in bed. She hadn’t slept a wink. The guy next door had been screaming ‘Winona’ in his sleep all night. Thom took a run-up.