Film Camera

 

Lieutenant Columbo paper cut-out

Woman

 

 

 

Bedroom-Int 

We see books strewn. Posters on the wall. Two different screens showing Columbo episodes. 7 different mugs. (While we hear her voice.)

                          MARY

                (We begin to see her in #you#- sat on the floor) 

 

      I feel like you’ve been distant (because of his silence she hesitates) Y-you even sound kinda annoyed…

                   JOSHUA

                  (calmly)

I'm not annoyed at all, neither I think I'm being distant.

                    MARY

      When you said we should stay as friends, I thought you’d still be in my life.

                   JOSHUA

                  (calmly)

      I talk to my friends when I have the time. 

                   MARY 

          Right. Of course. 

Mary looks at phone. We see the phone. Mary Throws it against a wall.

 

 

We see Mary’s face wondering -like the scene in adaptation- and a voiceover. 

            V.O.

Had I not said that bit about wanting to build something would he stay?

 

(Cut to Mary walking from one side of the room to the other)

If I weren’t so jealous I bet he’d stick around. Now it’s all over.

 

 

(Cut to Mary wondering over and over, possibly a montage where images double and intertwine and juxtapose upon each other)

 

   He does not love anymore. It’s dead. It’s cold, blue-lipped. Laura palmer on wrapping paper. Six feet under.

 

|From Mary’s closet we hear a loud knocking|

Mary gets weirded out, gets up and goes to open the closet.

Hesitates, and then opens it.

From the closet comes out a woman that looks exactly like Mary but dressed like Lieutenant Columbo

 

          FIGMENT OF MY IMAGINATION LIEUTENANT COLUMBO 

Good evening, Miss McCool I suppose, Lieutenant Columbo from the LAPD How’d you do?

                    MARY

     Uhhh…

          FIGMENT OF MY IMAGINATION LIEUTENANT COLUMBO

     It’s ok, I understand that death creates delicate situations.

                     MARY

     Lieutenant, you must be mistaken. There was no murder here. 

               

           FIGMENT OF MY IMAGINATION LIEUTENANT COLUMBO

     Oh, is that so? Well, I’ll just ask you a few questions for the station.Just standard procedure, ma’am, nothing to worry about.

                    MARY

             (hesitant) 

     Alright.

          FIGMENT OF MY IMAGINATION LIEUTENANT COLUMBO

Do you remember where you were at on May 11^th, around 12p.m.? 

              MARY

Hm, Uh- I’d had a fight with my mom, and I hadn’t seen Joshua in a week or so, so I asked for him to show up in front of my apartment

        FIGMENT OF MY IMAGINATION LIEUTENANT COLUMBO

 Hmhum. And did you notice anything different about love at the time?

             MARY

About love? Lieutenant, frankly, I hardly remember this spirit. 

 

   FIGMENT OF MY IMAGINATION LIEUTENANT COLUMBO

But I couldn’t help but notice you were speaking of it in the past tense, a few minutes ago

            MARY

(slightly nervous) 

 Uh, well lieutenant you’ll certainly understand that- wait, for how long were you in-

 

 

 FIGMENT OF MY IMAGINATION LIEUTENANT COLUMBO 

      That’s not important now ma’am (smiles), it’s just that when things don’t add up I just get this feeling. It’s like when you can’t remember where you’ve placed the car keys. It just lingers, you see?

 

              MARY

     So I’ve heard lieutenant but there simply wasn’t a homicide. Go back to your station and I’ll look for a shrink or an exorcist

 

 

 

FIGMENT OF MY IMAGINATION LIEUTENANT COLUMBO

 

(cigar in his hand, looking around the room, puffing)

 

You see, MS. McCool, some murderers are so talented, they create this, this, narrative- that’s so good- (claps hand doing the columbo thing)- they even believe in it (smiles to mary)

 

   

 

                      MARY

 

                I’m terribly sorry, I despise your little implication that I somehow have anything to do with the death. Of this “”” Love”””, you see, I don’t even believe in such a concept, Lt. Columbo. Read any of these books and you’ll see just what I mean- we’re all just. Wretched little cruel creatures roaming this earth and there is no such thing as-

 This – Christian make-believe guilt tripping shackle you call “”love””

 

 

             

FIGMENT OF MY IMAGINATION LIEUTENANT COLUMBO

 

 

Well Ms. McCool, you said it yourself (columbo gets a remote and shows a low footage video of Mary (He does not love anymore. It’s dead.) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                        MARY

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Idea that I’d like. -Phone call scene moves to open environment where callers are looking at each other. 

 

 

 

                        

 

 

Unending June

 And if we meet we shall not ’scape a brawl, For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring. 

--William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act 3, Scene 1.

 

 

A bystander could, after careless flipping through strewn multicolored pages, blame it on my supposedly macabre nature; a hypothesis enhanced by private diaries found after the fact. Or yet, the coroner, with his scrupulously scientific lungs, would breathe out his accusation – those medically prescribed substances pumping my liver purple, and spraying my nerve endings with ether, certainly closed my casket. They’ll scrimmage, whereas I, still and serene, will shiver warm under the sunshine of my hangman: a sunray so immodest it made mere machinery glint platinum.  

 

     Cautious reader, very truly I tell you, I have a hump. An abnormality carefully curated by decades of hunching. On an afternoon as burnt as the one in our story, I walked with the stride of an elderly widow, headphones on, mouthing the words to Let me Try Again, scraping the pavement, ruminating, counting my losses until a sound, drowned by Ol’ Blue Eyes himself, uttered something in the likes of my name.

 

A slant of opaque glass revealed our driver, turbid smoke ascended towards lighter altitudes and his voice -distorting this or that bent Latin language- had the potential to enrage a good-natured monk. Although he bared a familiar, rectangular-shaped face, I couldn’t precise where did bad luck strike in the past, when had I first encountered such creature? Extending himself too tall for that small a car, smiling a protruding, medley smile- it shaped itself to say, “I’ll go for a stroll, care to join me?”. Were I better equipped to bear the gleaming, cloudless sky, were I someone’s betrothed, or had I dreamed of dismemberment on my previous circadian cycle; I could’ve chosen a fit, perhaps joyous, ending: a broken lift ones grows used to, a locked bolt, a meek supper; sweet, consummated evening. 

 

     Instead, a carelessness powered by deaf-dumb relativism, pushed my wrinkly sneakers, and its dull wearer, aboard. The elongated man, surprised at my lack of reason, tried to feign astonishment by poorly formulating several statements on Israel. His pupils dilated in a beginner’s luck gaze sickened my spirit so, alas, on my following life, I was born a dog in a third world country- my enlarged cranium paralyzed my hind legs and in a fatty, enveloped, virulent embrace, I confusedly perished.  

 

The road thinned itself in a monstrous, green blurb and where once buildings and cafés bloomed, moss-covered stones, humidly towered above our ugly vessel. Try to keep on sight, dear reader, the poignant boredom of summer afternoons when the fore coming night promises no heat relief nor tenderness and you can’t hear the cicadas drowned in the depths of the serene pavement. 

 

As the scenery grew progressively dim under Maritime Pine trees, I tried to apply my paranoid tendencies to the development of a survival instinct. Similarly to trying to regrow an ancient appendix, I was left with lingering humiliation face to Mother Nature’s intricacies. We were now detached from the city, miscarried out of town, onto a smaller growth of houses and churches, stacked gardens and backyards surrounded by multiplying, ascending greenery. Pleasant can be, to a fool, a known tragedy that turns life into spectacle; a Munchhausen-prone man would rejoice in such predicament, dwell in the beauty of suffering.

 

Alas, most tax-payer citizens, much like you and I, would grow bored in the multicolored arms of forfeited desire. The absence of prospects makes disgraces neutral and average; horrors become imaginable so very quickly. To fathom is but a duty to many of us. Only on his sudden move, to brake, draw closer to my eyes, light a pipe and, in between coughing fits, lecture me on windmills and Roman emperors did I ponder apropos to safety.

 

     Loveliest of readers, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Sunny Egyptian Gods: watch for that mysterious haze, contemplate my misty prison as our perpetrator’s face becomes a smoked deformity. “Caterpillar he, so full of teeth”, I thought -a verse born of poor brain oxygenation – and a tanned forearm turned number four cracked the seal, opened the hatch, flooding the glistening pebbles underneath with fume. An unknown teletransportation phenomena stroke, and I found myself, teary-eyed, flesh-made, vertically extended toward the immaculate blue. 

 

     “Clarity causes cancerous cells to continuously cascade in our collar lined core, unless liquid lathed latex-like skin loathsomely lures away those lion-loyal rays” slithered the radio, tuned to a slightly more alliteration-focused, UV-informed dimension as we stood facing a rain-eroded, regal, perforated sediment. His pipe hit the ground and as he stooped, I recalled -oh, how obvious it was- this Quasimodo inhabited the depths of a Language School hidden in Berlin’s worst corner where I, once desperate, had taken fruitless classes. 

 

     Solved the crux, yes, however, perceptive reader, church bells still glared in an amorphous, trembling, siren song unknown to laymen, and yet the giantess pine tree bled my pallor in sacred, navy-blue shadows. Quasimodo, blowing lemniscate-shaped gusts to my floating aura, pulled the outer part of his coat to show me a silvery revolver. Truly, my treasured reader, I sing to you, Prozac makes one so mellifluous – even when facing Chekov’s very gun!

 

 

Leaning on our craft as the sunrays oozed progressively more fuchsia, I pitied that afternoon, evermore poisoned by men’s design. Oh, what could I tell you, favored reader? Dare we entertain the dark implications of free will? Could we ever gorge on shallow reasoning?  I humor you to wonder either he drags me, and my body falls down the long tunnel under the old windmill, the back of my eyes filled with dirt, my mouth an abyss to beautifully scaled beetles, my hair embracing abandoned shells, becoming but a fossil myself, or perhaps, my hands, swollen of instinctual violence, bring Quasimodo to the eternal night, my feet take me home and I sleep, hot and heavy. Matters very little, strikes us as indifferently as sunbeams.

 

Realtor

 KITCHEN-INT-DAY                                          

 

 

                           PERSON 1

                                                                               

                   It’s a great apartment and in the current situation I do think it’s as good as it gets. We’d like to follow through with the contract.

                                                                                            REALTOR

                                          

             (Opening a briefcase and putting papers on a table)

                   Great. You won’t regret this. 

 

The 2 people look at each Other happily. Person 2 bends over and goes for the pen.

                           REALTOR

                  (Happy go Lucky attitude) 

 

                   Before you sign it, there’s just a detail I’d like you to be aware of.

                                                            

                     (3 seconds of silence) 

             

                         PERSON 2

                   (Laying the pen on the table                                                                                                   

                         Which would be... 

 

                         REALTOR

                                                             

                         It’s not too big of a deal, but from Midnight to 04 am there’s a boy that comes by. 

 

                        PERSON 1

                                                                 

                         A boy?

                                

                         REALTOR

                      Yeah, you know. Just a boy. Nothing out of the ordinary.

                      

                        PERSON 1

                      But does he live here? I-I’m not so sure I-

                      

                        REALTOR

                    (Dead serious. Interrupting)

                     He’s just a boy.

                                                 

                       PERSON 2 

                I’m struggling to understand what you mean by that, I’m sorry.

                    

                       REALTOR

                A boy. Just a boy. At 4 am and boom he’s gone. No worries. A boy. That’s all.

         

                      PERSON 1 

               Where does he go? How does he appear at the house?

                     

                     REALTOR

             You’re being ridiculous and wasting my time. Take it or leave it. It’s just a boy who’ll exit at four. Simple conditions. We’re talking about a boy. Just a boy.

                                   

                     PERSON 2

            Hm, c-could you consider, uh, lowering the rent because of this boy? 

        

                     REALTOR

            No.

                     (Silence. Person1 has a blank expression. Person 2 is puzzled. Realtor smiles widely)

         

 

 

BEDROOM-INT-NIGHT 

A blue light shines through a window, illuminating person’s 1 desk, she has glasses on and is working at her computer. Persons 2 sleeps in a single bed on the background. First, we hear his sound. A soft giggle. 

                                       

                                                   Mito Inuíta da Criação do Mundo

 

         Tudo era oceano, no fundo das águas habitava a baleia una que resguardava a existência. Quando a alva baleia se escondia nas profundezas, era noite e ao ascender à superfície sua imensidão branca irradiava e então era dia. 

         Por muito tempo, existiu apenas, mas após viver o tempo de mil vidas humanas, apercebeu-se que era real como as ondas e o firmamento, e padeceu da maleita do tédio. Entediada, entocava-se em gigantescas fossas abissais e hibernava- em seus sonhos, ouvia indecifráveis melodias que se sobrepunham e emaranhavam-se formando sombras que a baleia não reconhecia. 

         Presa em sonho, nas profundezas, esqueceu-se de trazer luz, a noite pintou o oceano em negro e arrefeceu o mundo, formaram-se pequenas teias geladas, endurecendo as águas. Quando todo o oceano se fez sólido, a baleia teve frio e despertou, incandesceu em seu caminho à superfície, viu o gelo e achou que aquilo era bom. Porém, a baleia, ao ver a imensidão branca e vazia foi perturbada pela memória dos crípticos sons que ouvira outrora em sonho e julgou o mundo demasiado quieto.

         A baleia então, cuspiu um dos seus pontudos dentes e com ele moldou de suas volumosas fezes pequenas criaturas que posicionou no monólito e pediu-as que cantassem. As criaturas, homens e mulheres, entoaram acordes dissonantes, nada parecidos com os que a baleia havia sonhado e por isso odiou sua criação. 

         A terceira geração de criaturas passou a também odiar a baleia, sua vasta brancura e seus sonhos perfeitos. Com os ossos dos primeiros homens, construíram lanças e esperaram. Quando a baleia trouxe o dia, cravaram-na de lanças, comeram sua carne e lamberam seus grandes olhos brilhantes.

         A baleia, que vivia em luz dentro dos olhos, teve pena e fez com que as criaturas tomassem conhecimento de que eram reais como o gelo, o oceano, o dia, a noite e a baleia; tiveram tédio, jogaram a imensa carcaça às águas, que se desvaneceu em peixes e sonhos.

 

The Donkey Kingdom

Like wingless perennial starlings, they laid on violence-carved runes reminiscing of diaphanous silk and delirious empires as cavalcading chariots surrounded their peninsula. Ëo, hidden in dust, watched while the young donkeys despaired. The enemy cavalry had travelled oceans and grew so tiresome they began to hate like men and ached to ruin all ever built on that refuge.

Their sacred refuge, where a long line of donkeys would shy away from darkness in an underground chamber to indulge in a balsam fountain that granted eternity’s delight. Covered by cyan shadows, every inhabitant would stain their blood with gulps of immortality. All but one, his ordinary-colored wool and roughened gray hooves distracting us from the obliviated truth glaring in his dark eyes. Ëo stopped drinking the preparation to become less than a god, which brought solitude.

The days fell through Ëo and what was left of him yearned for Layla. In a softer spring, she came looking for shelter. Her presence dulcified his every waking hour, turning his existence molten gold. Each sphinx-created mystery in his soul deciphered and translated on the black lines covering her white fur. After her departure, what was once a vast world revealed itself in Ëo’s own disarranged image. Such absence of tenderness could’ve made an old donkey go mad but instead, he waited. As beauty proved itself a chimera, he waited. 

Ëo waited as the decades went by for he knew the next rapture would rot their teal and tear arteries hidden deep undersea. The years calcified the outlines of tragedy and out of habit he no longer feared. Under the dark veil of the night, Ëo’s tongue burned acerbic with remorse and when facing sunlight his four legs would tremble under the phantom pain of an inexistent freight.

When they knew the horses were coming, the donkeys could no longer sleep, a galloping in the distance would waver the very substructure of the cave, resounding on humid chamber walls and in the pulpous inside of their marrows. Ëo would sit and picture their enemies’ teeth shining on the battlefield. This sleepless vigil lasted a century. 

When the horses flooded the chamber, faster than light, covering the floor in viscera and bone, Ëo, hidden in shadows, heard the smashing skulls, the falling bodies, the carnage, the ground giving in to the cavalry’s weight. Because the old donkey knew of a buried recess in the cave, he slipped into the night. Ëo knew he would die. Yet, purely by instinct, drowned in moonbeams, the donkey ran, and ran, until he saw the contour of a mountain.

Atop, Ëo saw a creature showing the way, leading the horses, shining through. An ordinary-colored animal, ripped in dark lines, with eyes much like his own. A fruitless being, a sterile mongrel born from forsaken tenderness, the decisiveness in its strut much like Layla’s. The donkey, old as the world, stood still as it approached. The wind sang silvery, the sky lit up with memory. 

Ëo waited, as the zebroid prince, that abnormal being, born of love, came closer. A final bellow. Since a truer part of him wholly destroyed the remaining, all was forgiven. The primordial donkey, his heavy carcass trampled by the cavalry, conjoined to a cold earth, his harsh wool made velvety, soaked in blood. The body stayed intact for the vermin hesitated to eat his flesh.

Came the dawn, came the years, its army conquered the land and lived in excess until they dried up the holy fountain. Ëo’s son was a king, then a consul, then an emperor. It had many names, served every god, and as the flames rose to its striped fur, during its final moments, trapped in the depths of Alexandria, it remembered the hollow sound of its father’s heavy spirit hitting the ground.