Clear Skies

On Wednesday night I was given the task of writing a script for somebody's media piece, and I gladly took up the challeneg even though I'd only have twenty four hours to write it and I had a cold. The brief for the piece was a delusional man being followed and uses a voice over. This piece is the original, unedited monolgue I wrote at one o'clock in the morning. The piece that filmed was very cut down from what this is.


It’s the bad dreams that keep me awake, but I’m not sure who keeps putting them there. I sleep in gutters and the beds of passing acquaintances who take pity on my shoes. Sun’s too bright for my eyes it burns and turns them into matchsticks. I’m sure that if I could get myself a new face and clean pair of shoes then it sure as hell wouldn’t matter what I’d done or who I’d been and some pretty faced girl would take sympathy and I’d show sad eyes and we’d take off to the low lands.
I feel them after every step I take. As soon as my back turned there’s another one behind me, pointing, staring and watching and they say ‘That’s the boy that turned his back’ and I heard them murmur the name of Judas Iscariot like a curse that’ll go with me to the grave. But they do not know, they never could know the acts these sweet little hands have committed, the sins they have seen. I turn my back, I turn my back on them and their ideals I say ‘I shall not be apart of this revolution, it’s the wrong time of year for it’ but they do not listen and they send their agents after me. The angels of depth and perception would invade my day to day thoughts and implement kinetic nightmares designed to frighten me into submission. But I do not weaken, I do not break- my back is strong and my shoes are dirty but stubborn and I shall wipe them along the floor and make my way through the leaves that Autumn has marked the path with, and I shall follow like the plane on the runway and reach my destination and drop off my dreams so they can collect their luggage and keep their passports.
I need safety. I need a place I can put my hat on my Jack Daniel’s bottle and call it ‘home’. I need a good woman carrying Fruit Pastilles. I need to clean my teeth and eat my vegatables.
All the bright lights and peoples faces make me go a little insane, but then again aren’t we all just that bit crazy? We don’t understand other people because of the simple fact that they are not us and we can never understand as we never do understand ourselves.
They wait behind and they follow me through dark and the light. They wait until I smile then the demons emerge from the sewer grates and dig their claws into my face so I can frown again. They want to take me with them to join their cause, but dear Jesus I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go.
I haven’t eaten since Saturday. My stomach is full of the acid that it makes. It’ll poison me inside out if I don’t get a drink. They feed me drink designed to confuse me so I cannot collect the inheritance that is rightfully mine. Every time I approach money they sniff me out and wonder and wonder if I would dare if I would dare to take that sweet little hand and take the money for my own so I could buy sugar and water and be good for another day. But they do not want me to have such luxuries they want me to wallow in selfishness and unrequited desire.
I hear them say ‘we shall have you’ though I do not want to be apart of anything that would wish me as a member. I do not trust easy membership and gifts handed on plates. I no longer accept food or kindness from strangers for the fear that is was poisoned long ago. The Phantom of the Opera keeps inviting me to tea but I’d rather drink coffee with Casanova, I could learn more from him. He seems so wise in the things that I do not know. Those that are left behind from parties say to me ‘You have changed’ but I cannot tell them I say the same- it is they who are different. It’s those new glasses that make them see things like that. It wasn’t always that way because a long time ago we used to be friends, but time and change and different places have torn us apart and now we are different people, but you cannot see what you have become can you?
I’m sure they’re all spiders in human clothes. Spindly legs, jutting fangs and eyes set to ‘kill’. They watch me as their prey, another victim to devour not my flesh but my soul. They want to drag me inside out take my deepest fears and marinate them in a garlic sauce. A fun feast for all the family. Once they have my soul then I am a puppet on a string and I will dance and write and sing whence they command it of me and I will do it too their order and no longer one of my own.
I think I hear voices, coming from the people who pass me. I hear them judge me and look at me as a circus freak and I want to say ‘I am a freak but I work for no circus’ but they would not understand, the poor fools. They never did get me.