by Matthew Ryan
THOM shoulder charges DOOR 1.
DOOR 1: Ow! Tell me that woke her up.
DOOR 2: Nup!
NARRATOR: Thom grabbed a chair.
THOM grabs a chair, holds it above his head, and runs at DOOR 1.
DOOR 1: That does it. I’m letting him out!
DOOR 1 opens. THOM runs through the doorway and stops, holding the chair above his head and looking around.
THOM: Morning.
THOM backs into his apartment, confused. To cover his confusion he pretends that the chair above his head was all part of a fitness plan. He catches the bus.
NARRATOR: On his way to work, Thom passed his nemesis, The Human Statue.
The NARRATOR freezes as THE HUMAN STATUE. Then continues.
MEL: Thom! Thom-boy! Thom-ato! How they hanging, buddy? So have you read the weekly report yet? Like I said, buddy, you’ve got to get in here early and read the weekly report before you start work.
NARRATOR: It occurred to Thom that reading the weekly report was in and of itself, work. Which begged the question: ‘How do I work before work?’ If I work before work I’m already in fact working and can never reach a state before work in which it was being suggested that I should work. Instead of saying any of this, Thom lied.
THOM: Yes. I read it.
MEL: Yeah, that’s right. Rec day.
THOM: What?
MEL: Rec day! You my friend, are taking a rec day on Friday. So am I and I think you’ll find the rest of the team is joining us. Friday? Ah, shit. Your meeting with Terry, the CI from CBT. Ah, look mate. I reckon we’re just going to have to cancel that meeting.
Ridiculously happy music plays. THOM dances like a madman. The music stops.
NARRATOR: Thom was suspicious. Things this good didn’t happen to him.
THOM: Why, Mel?
MEL: You my friend, are going to get some culture into you. My improv troupe are putting together a 24-hour theatre-sport extravaganza to take our show Mission Improv-ible to Edinburgh. Tickets are forty bucks a pop. And you, my friend, have got to come. How many should I put you down for?
THOM stares at MEL as sad (cheesy) emotional music plays for a long, long time.
NARRATOR: Thom weighed up his options. Twenty-four hours of amateur theatre sports or the meeting that would end his career.
THOM: Sorry, Mel. I really think I should have that meeting.
MEL: Okay-pokey. Smell you later.
MEL walks away, insulted.
ALETHEA wakes, sleepy.
NARRATOR: After her usual battle with consciousness had ended in stalemate, Alethea, depressed at the thought of spending another day staring at her computer Dave, stared at her computer Dave and got depressed. She then realised with fifteen minutes to spare that she was due at the State Library for the reading and signing of Building Better Monsters that Marko the annoying publisher had set up. She ran into the bathroom, turned on the shower, brushed her teeth, jumped into the shower, slipped, hit her head, rolled, landing in a pile of clothes, making her smell worse than she had before. She put some of it on, raced out of the door, tried to catch the bus, missed the bus and kept running. And ended up arriving fifteen minutes later at the State Library but having not eaten for the last 36 hours, passed out on the spot.
ALETHEA collapses to the floor. The exhausted NARRATOR lies there, catching his breath.
Oh, yeah. That feels good. [Beat.] When she came to, she was surrounded by children and concerned parents. Alan, the lovely, though somewhat Gothic, librarian assistant, helped her into a chair, got a cup of coffee and proceeded to dunk five Iced Vovos into it and jammed them into her mouth. Alethea was deemed too ill to perform, so the reading of Building Better Monsters was left up to Alan, the lovely, though somewhat Gothic, librarian assistant.
A chime. ALAN steps forward.
ALAN: Alan Rack. I am 37 years’ old. I’m a Librarian Assistant, mediaeval recreationist and writer of supernatural erotic fiction. I like: renaissance fencing, my band ‘Velvet Angst’ and my cat Battle Cat. I dislike: sunlight, the work of Stephenie Meyer (she is fucked!) and deodorant.
He clears his throat, looks around nervously and begins to read Building Better Monsters.
Building Better Monsters by Althea Jones.
‘There’s something under Ivy’s bed,
She knows it’s there for sure.
Last night she heard a scratching sound,
Like talons on the floor.
‘Tonight her toy bear growls with fright,
Its one eye scans the room.
Her mother says, ‘It’s nothing, dear’,
Leaving Ivy to her doom.
ALAN’s voice gets scarier, more horror-film-esque.
‘Summoning her courage,
Ivy dives beneath the bed.
And there she sees the Mirror World.
And in it, She. Is. DEAD!’
ALAN leans over the children, terrifying them. ALETHEA watches, horrified.
NARRATOR: Alethea had always held that her book was a safe scare. Like the so-called scary TV shows of her childhood. ‘Doctor Who’. ‘Trapdoor’. ‘Count Duckula’. The heroine starts off terrified but conquers her fears with the power of imagination. All of this was lost on the crowd of parents, who dragged their crying and screaming children from the building and spent the rest of the day on the phone to her publisher Marko.
MARKO is on the phone.
MARKO: Althea. Hey there, little lady. Look, we’ve run into a spot of trouble. Building Better Monsters? Parent groups want it banned from the shelves. Yeah. Not out of moves yet, though. I told them you had a new book due on Friday and they could have a read of the first draft. Contextualise things for them. So do me a favour, sweet-cheeks. Don’t fuck it up. Knock it out of the park. Call me!
10. THE SINGING UNIVERSE
NARRATOR: That night Alethea stood in her kitchen stirring her broccoli and onion soup, thinking she should have paid more attention at the greengrocer’s. She stirred and hummed the tune she hummed when she stirred.
ALETHEA hums.
Thom trudged home. He flicked off the lights. He kicked off his shoes. He stared at the inter-dimensional crack in his wall. And heard the most beautiful music coming from it. He sat down and listened, dreaming of a better place. Somewhere on the other side of the universe.
THOM sits and listens. The music hangs in the air, full of potential.
Alethea drank her broccoli and onion soup, which tasted disappointingly like broccoli and onion.
The NARRATOR peels DAVE off the back wall. He’s just cardboard, complete with a chalk-drawn Apple Mac symbol on the back.
She got her computer Dave, and sat with her back against the wall and stared at him. Now, it should be noted that all this was giving Dave a bit of a complex. Every day, a beautiful woman stared at him like he was the most useless piece of crap on earth. All of his paranoid fantasies were rapidly evolving into one major neurosis. Alethea stared at Dave.
DAVE: Argh!
NARRATOR: And hummed. Thom listened. The Wall got excited.
WALL: This was it. Contact.
NARRATOR: They both fell asleep.
WALL: Poop!
11. THE LAST STAND—PART I
A chime and the NARRATOR becomes THURSDAY.
THURSDAY: Thursday. I’m old. I’m tired. I just want it over. I like Saturday. Why can’t I be Saturday? I could be Saturday. Have a coffee, read a paper, push a mower. Fuck. I dislike… him.
FRIDAY, now extremely drunk, grabs his crotch and gives the finger.
FRIDAY: Fukkkinnn… Frii…
FRIDAY vomits on THURSDAY’s foot.
THURSDAY: Do you have any idea what it’s like spending your entire existence next to that? You don’t, do you? No. [Beat.] Fuck off.
NARRATOR: Thom woke from a surprisingly restful and dream-free sleep. This was it. Today was Thursday. Tomorrow Friday and his meeting with Terry, the CI from CBT, that would end his career. Today was his last chance to find out what the
hell it was he did for a living. On the way to work Thom punched his nemesis in the nuts.
THOM punches THE HUMAN STATUE in the nuts. THE HUMAN STATUE remains unmoved. Then, quietly moans.
When he got to work, something was odd. Mel was exercising.
MEL exercises on a (not-so-much visible) walking machine.
THOM: Hi, Mel. What are you doing?
MEL: [still annoyed] Oh. Hi, Thom. Getting my heart rate up. Tomorrow’s the big day. Not that you care.
THOM: Oh, no. I care. I’ll try and come after work. Can I ask you something?
MEL: Hang on.
MEL tries to stop the machine, making it go faster. He walks furiously.
Ooh, shit.
He stops the machine and climbs off.
Sorry. Uncontrollable mime accident. So what can I do you for? No. Wait. Let’s play Alphabetical. Yeah. Get my improv on! Okey-pokey, Thom-boy.
A dramatic kung fu gong. MEL poses in a lame martial arts stance.
Ask what you came to ask.
THOM: Okay.
MEL: No, no. Alphabetical. A. B. C. D.
THOM thinks.
THOM: But… it’s a difficult question?
MEL: Can’t you get on with it?
THOM: Don’t rush me.
MEL: Easy for you to say.
THOM: For the last ten years…
MEL: Go on.
THOM: Have you ever…
MEL: I’m listening.
THOM: … just wanted to ask something but you were afraid people might…
MEL: Keep going.
THOM: … laugh at you.
MEL: [overly sympathetic] Maaate.
THOM: No.
MEL: Oh.
THOM: Perhaps this just wasn’t a good idea.
MEL: Quiet!
MEL looks around, pretending he heard something. He points out his clever contribution.
THOM: Really?
MEL: Sorry.
THOM: The truth is, Mel… I don’t know what we do at this company.
MEL: [u] You…
THOM: Very little.
MEL: What?
THOM: Xerox machines. Paper. Statistics. I have been here for ten years and I have no idea what any of it is for and before I have my meeting with Terry, the CI from CBT, I would really appreciate it if someone explained it to me.
MEL: You have no idea what we do here.
THOM: Zero.
NARRATOR: Mel didn’t say anything. He just walked away. But the laughter started in the management office, trickled down through the staffroom, into the cubicles, and by the end of the day Thom couldn’t go anywhere without hearing the laughter of his workmates echo behind his back. It did not escape his notice that the only place laughter was not coming from was Terry’s office. Thom went home.
12. The Last Stand—Part II
ALETHEA wakes with her computer DAVE, in her lap.
NARRATOR: Alethea awoke on this, the last day of her promising young career, with an Enter Key indent in her forehead, and a blank 10,000-page Word document on her computer Dave…
DAVE: … who was having a bit of a nervous breakdown!
NARRATOR: She plugged him into the wall…
DAVE: … much to his relief!
NARRATOR: And having sort of eaten and sort of slept, she knew what she had to do. She was going to kill the Magpie of Montague Road.
He puts on a helmet with dozens of plastic bird attack stems sticking out of it. He turns the overheard projector on, revealing the magpie sitting high in the tree. Dramatic battle music plays.
Alethea marched to directly under the Tree of Doom. The magpie hopped about trying to disembowel the bike. The notebook was still safe, still trapped in the parcel basket of the bicycle against the tree. At that moment the magpie spotted Alethea and with a cry like one of the Nazguls from Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien, it leapt from its nest straight towards Alethea Jones!
He steps out of the action.
Now it should be noted that Alethea has manipulated time and space once before. Her parents, believing in the nutritional value of fruit and vegetables, managed to raise Alethea without letting a single article of refined sugar or food colouring pass her lips. Later, at university and away from home, Alethea went to a party where someone was passing around a large bowl of Skittles. It’s university. You try things. Alethea took a handful, put them in her mouth, chewed sensibly 22 times and swallowed. The resulting chemical reaction caused Alethea to vibrate three seconds into the future.
He vibrates three seconds into the future. He notices, then steps back into the action.
At this moment a similar though inverse effect occurred. Adrenaline allowed Alethea to slow time down long enough to produce a can of deodorant and a lighter. She flicked the lighter and pushed the can of deodorant. A plume of flame shot forth…
He takes out an orange transparency to make fire. It looks shit.
That is shit.
He puts the orange transparency on the projector and takes out a long red satin cloth from his pocket, much more excited.
Plume of flame (fuck yeah!) shot forth, immolating the bird. The bird flew high and wide. But Alethea followed. The feathered ball of flame flew. Its flight cut out. It fell, bounced off a roof and landed on the ground. Its burnt, blackened body—dead. Alethea had killed the Magpie of Montague Road.
He looks at the tree projection, now bathed in orange light from the shit transparency.
Alethea turned to see that the whole tree was on fire. She went and stood underneath. The ashes from her beloved notebook fell on her tear-stained face. Eventually, the branches couldn’t take it anymore. And her bicycle Penelope, came crashing to the ground, its bent, broken, buckled body buggered.
He drops the handlebars to the ground.
13. THE LAST STAND—PART III
NARRATOR: The Wall was getting desperate. It got down on its knees (sort of) and prayed. ‘Okay, Wall God. It’s like this. Although I have an entire universe on one side and a very nice mural on the other, I am but a lowly wall. And I can think of nothing better than getting these two together. And I know I haven’t been altogether consistent with my Wall Godly devotions, but if it is within your Wall power to make all the pieces come together as it were, I’d really be grateful and I promise to be a better wall. Thanks. I mean Amen. Armen? Amen. Armen. I don’t know. Thanks.’
14. SUBURBAN POWER SURGE BLUES
The NARRATOR lies in Thom’s apartment.
NARRATOR: Thom lay in his room and stared up into the universe. The Doors had it right (the band, not the actual doors). This was indeed the end. Everyone knew his secret. And the only way to keep his job was to suck up to his boss by enduring 24 hours of amateur theatre sports.
THOM: Oh, God.
NARRATOR: He got dressed, practised smiling in the mirror and went to meet his fate. Four steps outside into the corridor, a group of cats brushed past his leg and he realised that, in his pit of despair, he had forgotten to put on any socks. Sockless Thom walked back indoors.
THOM turns and heads back inside.
At that moment Alethea was staring at Dave for what would be the final time. She looked into his shiny and reflective screen, saw her own face staring back at her, reached her lowest point and said…
ALETHEA: I hate you.
NARRATOR: Dave took it personally. He didn’t know she was talking to herself. He thought she was talking to him. Unable to live one moment longer with a beautiful woman thinking he was shit, Dave did the only thing he could think of. He overclocked himself by three hundred percent, loaded every program he had on offer. And thirty seconds later with a gay wheel-of-death system warning…
DAVE: I have always loved you.
NARRATOR: … Dave cooked his motherboard.
DAVE short-circuits. The lights flicker.
And that would have been it, had he not been plugged in that morning. The resulting short circuit fed back through the building, down through the wires and into the Power Box, w
ho was still contemplating meaning in a collapsing universe.
He turns the question mark over the POWER BOX into a light bulb.
That short circuit set off a metaphorical light bulb over Power Box’s head and in that moment he realised…
POWER BOX: … that if all the matter in the known universe was compressed into a single area, the only result could be an explosion, an expansion, another big bang. Life, all over again: expanding, and then eventually contracting and then expanding again. The thought surged on and in that moment Power Box realised that if you sped up the expansion and contraction of the universe sufficiently you would eventually end up with something that resembled… the beating of a human heart. Touched by the heartbeat of the cosmos and the romance of the moment, Power Box did the only thing it could think of to help Wall out. It dropped its safety switches and fed all that power back into the main unit.
The NARRATOR flicks the switches on POWER BOX. The lights snap out, plunging the place into darkness. The lights start fading up slowly throughout the following.
NARRATOR: Thom froze in the blackened corridor. Alethea searched for candles that she didn’t own. Thom put his hand onto the handle of what he thought was his door. Alethea went to check the fuse box.
A projection appears of ALETHEA and THOM kissing. It’s quite cute.
The first thing that touched were their lips. Which is quite hard to do. You should try it. But not now. The resulting kiss set off chemicals in their brains. The kind chocolate gives you. The kind sex gives you. The kind a good idea gives you. Alethea’s feelings of creativity transformed into actual ideas. Not just one—hundreds, millions. Ideas, it could be said, fell from her ears. She closed her eyes and pulled Thom closer. Thom kept his eyes wide open. And there, out of Alethea’s window, in an area of the sky he would never have seen from his own apartment, he saw RS Ophiuchi going supernova, heralding its death five thousand years ago just for him. And in that moment, Thom realised that his mistake wasn’t not liking theatre sports. And it wasn’t not knowing what he did for a living. It was settling for a job he didn’t want all those years ago. He smiled and pulled Alethea even closer.
15. FIN
The NARRATOR steps out of the embrace and looks at it, smiling.