Goodbye Message (for screen)

(Disclaimer: this short story contains suggestions of stalking and home invasion. It is written in screenplay format. The love story behind this encounter remains a mystery.)

INT. BEDROOM - DAY

GIRL is asleep in a double bed. She lies on her stomach. Her legs and arms sprawled out around her. The dark covers are messy. Her mouth is pushed open against the pillow. 

A fan stands on the floor by the bed. It rotates. The remnants of stains pattern the cream full-floor carpeting. Sunlight leaks through the curtains. The curtains flutter as the fan turns its gust toward them. 

On the bedside table are dusty plastic plants, hairpins, a cell phone and a lamp with no light bulb. A notification sounds and lights up the screen of the cellphone. The light of the phone reflects on GIRL’s face.

GIRL groans and turns her head away from the bedside table. She is still.  

GIRL swallows. Her eyes open.

INT. KITCHEN - LATER

GIRL stands over the toaster. Unintelligible narration sounds in the background. She watches the slices of bread. The elements glow red. The slices slowly brown on either side. 

The toast pops up. 

INT. LIVING ROOM - CONTINUOUS

GIRL walks toward the coffee table. Two slices of toast with jam rest on a plate in her open hand. 

Paintings, sketches and other artworks clutter the room. An easel stands in a corner with a large, blank canvas perched on it. 

A laptop is open on the coffee table, facing the couch. GIRL walks around the coffee table. She sits down on the couch to watch the narrated clip on the laptop. She takes a large bite of toast. Jam remains in the corner of her upper lip. Crumbs cling to the jam. 

GIRL eats. The clip continues to play. 

INT. LIVING ROOM - LATER

GIRL sits cross-legged on the daybed of the sofa. The laptop is open on her lap. A mobile wifi router dangles from the USB port. One of two green lights flash. 

GIRL’s finger briskly rap the keys on the keypad. In the search box, underneath the search engine logo, ram head design spells out. The cursor moves to the search icon. GIRL clicks on it.  

An image page loads. Different designs and images of rams cover the screen. GIRL scrolls through them. 

INT. KITCHEN - LATER

A white printer shakes. It prints out a page with two images of ram heads. The one is a black-on-white, sketch-style ram head tattoo. The other is a picture of a ram skull mounted on a wall. The page falls to the ground. Another page starts to print. An image of a nude, muscular woman pushes through the printer. A third page is fed into the printer. A collage of different-sized penises print out. The page falls to the floor. 

INT. KITCHEN - LATER

GIRL is hunched over the kitchen counter, by the boiling kettle. She shades a rough sketch of a nude woman with a B6 pencil, in a thick sketch pad. She bites her upper lip. It is pulled under her bottom lip. She frowns. 

The kettle clicks as it concludes its boiling. 

GIRL fills a flowered mug with one teaspoon of freeze dried coffee. 

GIRL carefully empties a heaped teaspoon of brown sugar into the mug. 

A steady stream of steaming water fills the cup. The black liquid swirls. 

INT. LIVING ROOM - CONTINUOUS

GIRL sits with her legs crossed on the couch. The sunlight from behind her casts a silhouette of her frame. In her ears are small white earphones. 

A ram’s head takes shape on the sketch pad.

A window in another room creaks slowly. 

GIRL looks up from her sketch and pulls out her left earphone. She listens. She turns around on the couch and looks out through the window behind her onto the backyard. 

A window creaks.

GIRL stands and places the sketch pad next to the coffee mug on the dark, wooden coffee table. 

INT. SPARE BEDROOM - CONTINUOUS

GIRL enters a room littered with folded clothes, guitars and other music equipment. The dark curtain is drawn. The window is open. The curtain flutters in the breeze and the window is caught in it. The window creaks, pressed by the breeze. 

GIRL grabs the lever of the window and pulls it shut. She stares out of the window for a moment. She smiles. She closes her eyes to the sun, pouring in through the window. She opens her eyes again and turns. 

INT. KITCHEN - LATER

The kettle boils. The lever flips. Steaming water pours into a mug. A teaspoon of brown sugar is stirred into black coffee. GIRL brings the mug to her lips. 

A cellphone rings on the kitchen counter. GIRL looks at the number on the screen. There is not caller ID. She answers the call and holds the cellphone to her ear.

GIRL

Hello, Jade speaking. 

GIRL (JADE)smiles.

JADE

Good, thank you. And yourself?

JADE nods. She frowns. She nods again.

JADE

Of course.

(a pause)

Yes, that suits me perfectly.

JADE places the mug of coffee on the kitchen counter and walks into the living room. From a book case, she removes a notepad with a black pen clipped into the ring binder. 

JADE

Just one moment.

JADE holds the cellphone between her ear and shoulder. She removes the pen and flips to a blank page in the notebook.

JADE

Continue.

JADE writes down a cellphone number. 0608225319. Her hand hovers above the next line.

JADE

Yes?

JADE writes down a street address: 225 Winsor Avenue, Block B, Zenith Office.

JADE

And you said eleven thirty, correct?

JADE nods. She writes 11:30 am. 

JADE

Thank you. 

(a pause)

You too. Bye.

JADE ends the call and places the cell phone on the coffee table next to the notepad. 

At the top of the page, she writes Interview: Wednesday.

INT. BEDROOM - LATER

JADE sits cross-legged on the bed. The laptop is open in front of her. The sounds of an English Detective series drown out the sounds of a carton being cut. 

In her hands, JADE holds two toilet rolls, glued together to form a long cylinder. She is cutting into one end. Newspaper is spread out on the bed in front of her. Three tubes of acrylic paint - crimson, white and raw umber - a long, thin brush and a tube of super-glue lie sprawled across the newspaper. 

She pauses her work for a moment. She looks up at the screen. A shot is fired in the episode. JADE continues her work. In her hands, the cylinder takes the form of a penis. 

JADE opens the tube of superglue. She gently traces a line of glue along the cut edges that form the head of the penis. She closes the tube of glue and blows on the wet edges of the carton. 

JADE gently closes the edges together and hold them in place. She blows onto the glued area. JADE watches the screen.

On the laptop, a detective with a thick Scottish accent yells his credentials over the sound of a door being kicked in. 

JADE starts to paint the shaft of the penis in umber with hasty and uncoordinated brush strokes.

JADE is startled by something outside. She pauses, holding the brush millimetres from the carton penis replica. She looks out through the bedroom window. Her eyes dart around the garden. 

JADE gently places the painted figure on the chest of drawers beside the bed. She leans against the window and opens it. She looks into the garden. The earth is dry. Potted plants are dead and dying. 

EXT. GARDEN

JADE prunes the dead leaves and stems of a potted plant. Behind her, the garage door slowly opens to a dark slit. JADE stands back to admire the pruned bush.

JADE waters the garden. She leisurely swings the end of the chewed hose pipe in semi-circles around her. She holds the water below the branches of a plant. The water loudly hits the potting soil beneath it. 

INT. SHOWER - LATER

Sunlight illuminates the sandblasted bathroom window. The water runs in the shower.

JADE rinses her face. She opens a bottle of shower gel and squeezes some onto a small washcloth. She hurriedly scrubs her body with the foaming cloth. She rinses the cloth.

JADE turns her back to the water. She closes her eyes. 

INT. BEDROOM

JADE pulls a green pyjama dress over her head. Makeup is smudged around her eyes, creating a sunken effect. She leans closer to the mirror on the chest of drawers and wipes around her eyes. 

Behind her, the garage door opens. An intruder, dressed in all black, steps into the garden. A balaclava covers any identifying features. The black figure walks toward the porch and the open back door.

INT. BEDROOM - BEDROOM

JADE is sprawled out on the bed. She lies on her stomach. The duvet covers some of her lower body. Light from another room floods into the bedroom and over her body. The laptop stands open on a stool. The Scottish detective is interrogating a suspect. The images reflect and move across JADE’s face.

The intruder stands in the doorway, watching JADE sleep.

INTRUDER walks around the bed, to the other side and sits down on the bed, next to JADE, who faces the drawn curtains and the laptop. 

INTRUDER leans closer to JADE and smells the skin on her jawline, then her mouth. A tear drips onto JADE's face. She does not wake. INTRUDER softly sniffs.

INTRUDER opens the top drawer of the chest. From a basket of makeup, INTRUDER takes a tube of lipstick in bright fuchsia. 

JADE groans as she wakes. She pulls her feet into pointe as she stretches her body. She gets out of bed and walks into the bathroom on the opposite end of the short hallway. It is dark outside. 

JADE’s eyes are closed as she urinates. She rubs her eyes. 

On the bedside table, in the bedroom, her cellphone lights up with a notification. JADE looks toward the sound with her eyes squinting against the harsh bathroom light. 

She stands, pulling up her underwear. Her eyes widen.

On the bathroom mirror, written in large fuchsia letters: 

I CAN’T NOT [heart] YOU. GOODBYE. and below it, G. 

The tube of fuchsia lipstick lies open on the edge of the basin. 

FADE OUT.

THE END.