"Time to swallow, Mr. Scroop."
And they gulp down each other's labels.
She links her drivishes.
"Well, Mr. Scroop, now you know how you are going to
discomfit me. But how will that please you?" His mouth slackens. "Oh,
no, Mr. Scroop, you have to do it. Do I have to refer you to the instructions
again?"
Her aura clears. He sees a young woman sitting at a kitchen table,
waiting, listening.
A siren sounds, then ceases.
His aura clears, and she can see two older men and a younger man
sat at a table, signing a piece of paper. She can see their heads nodding.
Her aura mists over. A male voice:
"Look, I'm sorry about what happened. Just don't know what came
over me. It's just that I feel fucking trapped, with you and the kid and
everything. It's like a whole necklace of fucking millstones."
She sees a semi-bald head nodding in agreement.
She sees a razor being applied to what hair there is.
He laces her tighter, his hands encumbered, but not totally
incapacitated by, the drivishes; her eyes narrow like her waist.
She sees two opposing hands, belonging to different people,
handcuffed and chain-linked.
Then she laces him tighter as well, tighter into the chrysalis of
his chaperoon, the odour from his body mingling with the urine tang of the
treated wormcloth. And both their noses wrinkle, as they both smell it.
Her aura clears. He sees a young woman cowering in the corner of a
room.
Bird calls scratch in then ripple into song.
Close-up from above: a foot against a foot. On a mark scratched on
the ground.
She sticks her fingers into the jar of honey and applies it
below.
She sees fists applied to faces.
She hears a bell ring. They two men stop. Their handcuffs are
rearranged by other hands.
Her aura mists over. Voices. "If you ever try and get away,
I'll come after you, don't worry about that! She's my child as well."
"Well if we're such millstones, why's it bother you?" "Because I
say so. My child as well; never forget that; my child as well."
A bell rings. They start again.
Close-up: the image of a fist almost erupts out of the mirrors,
and the vision momentarily goes blurred.
A smell of fearful sweat breaks through, evicts the smell of
urine, and then spreads itself towards the corners of the room.
Close-up: a hand raised in victory.
A fall. A dragging down by a chain. Other hands banging on the
bone above a heart. Other heads shaking.
They kneel, forehead touching forehead as if their brains are
playing with each other, and they wince, as if they can feel filaments of the
other's energy, tough as protein, lance into their minds, and harden like
cement.
Close-up: banknotes being extracted from a plastic envelope
underneath some magazines, underneath a floorboard.
She removes a carved wooden box from one of her stripes on her
chaperoon, and then she removes a wormcloth condom from the box. "Well,
now, first put this on, Mr. Scroop. Its efficacy has been established, but
that's not really the point, is it? Nice and yellow, to match your ragwort
garland. And if you're wondering what those rough pieces of skin are, in the
ones on the right hand side, think of the bits of skin missing from your
back."
Long shot: a woman and a child walking. The woman's shoulders
lurch into unpredictable spasms as she tramps along.
From the second stripe, she produces two bracelets, with spikes
poking inwards. "No, Mr. Scroop, put them on me. It has to be done."
And his linked hands struggle to do so but eventually succeed.
Close-up: a hand proffering money to purchase a train ticket.
Medium shot: a woman and a child waiting at a railway station.
Close-up: the child's upstretched hand.
And she straddles him, facing away, enclosing his newly ragworted
appendage with her honeyed capaciousness, with patterned wormcloth rustling
against patterned wormcloth, in a skin-rip against skin-rip. And he brings his
drivished hands over her head and secures his position against her, forcing the
roughened skin further into her, indulging himself, causing her mischief. And
she screams, and the scream twists into a disfigured boom.
Close-up of hands unfolding a note. Close-up of the note: "Have
gone. Again. If you want to traipse after a necklace of millstones, feel free
to try." The hands fold the note again, and drop it onto a table.
And the light furrows down, and sweat-steam seems to rise from
their costumes.
Her aura mists over. A male voice: "Told you I'd fetch you
back, didn't I?"
Close-up: a scarred face. Lost teeth, cropped red hair, crooked
ears. The mouth opens. "Remember me? It's been a long time."
And they are umbilicalled, chaperoon to chaperoon by raw-pattern
cloth bindings so that stickiness clings them to each other, lacing them to
each other as tightly as they are laced into their garments.
She sees a blown kiss from a man to a man, a loud incomprehensible
remark, and an immediate melee-eruption, a blurred hooking of body blows
skilfully blocked by a sort of garrulous semaphore of constantly moving
protecting arms.
Close-up of the same face: "Knew you were scared to fight me.
It's the coward's way, getting disqualified. The trouble is though, that I
still know things about you that you don't want to get out, don't I?"
And they scrape against each other, scraping pieces of old damage
up to the dusted air like dandruff from their souls.
Close-up of the same face, slowly being strangled by ungloved
hands. The aura mists over.
And sweat- globules spray from his wig, like evaporated thoughts.
And she breathes like someone asleep, with the air screeching
through her incisors like the distant wind in the distant hills, and her
pain-wrinkled eyes start crying and don't stop.
And they finish, and their torsos are now static, as if laced to
immobility, but their limbs are entwined, like gnarling and un-gnarling
branches strewn with caterpillars.
Her aura clears. Close up: hands close over a bar of metal.
And she turns around, and their eyes meet in a mutual recognition
that is twined like two sets of drivishes.
And she wraps her finger against the condom, and pulls off a
string of his semen, tinged with her menstrual blood, and she gulps it down.
And she says, "We've beached each other, Mr. Scroop, and we've wet each
other. And that's all that has changed hands, Mr. Scroop, the exchange of our wetness.
But don't forget, Mr. Scroop, that wetter is weaker. You can take the heat, Mr.
Scroop, but can you take the wet? Time will perhaps tell, Mr. Scroop."
Medium shot: a man lies face downwards on a floor.
Medium shot: The slamming of a door in the rain, and the escape of
a woman with only a waterproof coat and a rucksack that seem to represent her
things in the world. Taking a child with her, holding on to her hand, and taking
also a thumb-sucking baby, not understanding the departure.
And she licks off his lipstick and applies it to her teeth, so
her teeth look fresh-blooded in the waxing light.
Close up: a child's face through the window of the train, and just
the glimpse of an adult hand, waving goodbye to nobody.
She looks at him and says "Well, Mr. Scroop, we now have
two deaths: one acceptable by the reprehensatives, because it is simply the law
of the lawless, but one most definitely not. And therein lies our shared
problem."
She unlinks her drivishes.
She takes him by the face with her hands and stares into his
eyes.
"Exhausted, Mr. Scroop, or do you want another go? Would
you like another little burlesque tart, and another little drink, Mr. Scroop?
Remember that if you do, and we draw the same instructions, we will do the same
thing again, and you won't remember it. I shall remember, but I shall pretend I
don't. Of course, if we make another journey, a different journey, we shall probably discover more about both
ourselves and each other. So, tell me, Mr. Scroop. I know that you know how to
move your head, so tell me with your head, Mr. Scroop: tell me with you head.
"
Choose:
Or:
He nods his head.
They return to the table, and each grabs a tart, gently picked
up with his restrained and her unrestrained hands, and each devours their own.
Easily.
She pours spirit into their glasses.
She says "Up your brain again, Mr. Scroop. Time to taste
the treewormy medicine one more time," and they down them in one, she left
handed, he two handed.
She pulls the label from her mouth and hands it to him,
pushing it into his drivished hands.
She pulls the label from his mouth and examines it.
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