Exterior. House. Day. Morning. There is but nothing. That is, nothing but the sound of birds tweeting, wings flapping and leaves rustling as they twist when they fall. It is coming up to Autumn. Soon Autumn. There is sun in the sky but not much. Enough for us to see. We see - we spy - a yellow front door. The front door of the house.
Why is this door yellow when I specifically asked for a red door? It interferes with the light. Not interferes. I mean, it doesn’t sit well with the light. I need that door to stand out. When the curtains open, after we have seen the house, I want them to see the pull of that front door. Change it. Change it to red.
Exterior. House. And the red front door is just glowing. Were it not for the brass knob, letterbox and numbers (eleven) you would think, perhaps, that there was no door but rather a fire blazing away in a doorless doorway. You would think that the house was on fire. And thus be placed into entirely the wrong mood. The tone of it would be all wrong. It is not a fire, it is the crisp glow of bright red paint. Burning almost.
And so to a green door. Exterior. House. Morning etc. The door opens and stepping out into the morning light, a shirtless man. He is, what, mid-fifties, a full head of short cropped brown to grey hair, chest hair also greying, little breasts like little deflated rugby balls rolling down, hanging over the top of his stupid fat stomach. Put a shirt on, for God’s sake.
The man, we’ll call him Bob, walks towards us, towards our point of view, looking straight ahead as if he were aware of our presence. But then, maybe he is aware of our presence on the other side of this third wall or whatever they call it. Quick, hide.
We see, for the first time - it’s odd that we hadn’t already noticed - that Bob is pushing a wheelbarrow. We can’t be sure but that sure looks like a gathering of various body parts in that wheelbarrow. We become surer the closer he gets. Maybe, we ask ourselves, they are the parts of a showroom dummy or something, something not real. But no, as he gets closer.
Bob tips the body parts into a previously unnoticed - like a ha-ha - hole. Clearly there are too many body parts to belong to just one person. And when we say body parts we mean hands, feet, arms and legs. Two things we can take from this: That more than one person has been mutilated and/or killed. That they may not even be dead. They may be on the other side of that green door, in that house, limbless but alive. We ponder this as we watch Bob begin to shovel earth and bracken into that hole, on top of the body parts.
Cut to. Interior. House. The same house. We know this because through the window, through the stained (with shit or mud) window, we can see Bob at his previously mentioned toil, i.e. burying those body parts. We pan the room. The dusty and relatively bare room that has a small wooden table in the centre of the floor, two chairs and an extra long black leather couch, long past its best days. It is extra long, that couch, in order to accommodate the row of three limbless women. They are all alive. All with long blonde hair and all with spotted handkerchief gags over their mouths. It is, honestly, like something out of a horror film. And they are all naked, of course. Do they look terrified? Most certainly they do.
Cut to. Exterior. Bob burying. We look into that hole and see that Bob is almost two-thirds done. How does he look, Bob? How does he seem? He seems somewhat panicked.
Cut to. Exterior. Country lane with trees lining it, with crows sitting in the trees, with anything that gives it the added sinister touch. A car. A 1950 Buick Roadmaster Estate Wagon (
here). In fantastic condition. Either we’re in the early nineteen-fifties or that car is extremely well-preserved.
Cut to. Interior. Car. Driven by a man in his early fifties. Attire: grey fedora, trench coat, etc. Either we’re in the early nineteen-fifties or the man likes to dress as an archetypal movie detective. We shall see.
Cut to. Exterior. The tree-lined country lane, the car travelling it. It pulls up at what appears to be some kind of junction. A few moments pass before it makes a left turn into a smaller, tighter lane. As we follow the car we see the house, Bob’s house, to which it is surely headed.
Exterior. A sweaty Bob. The last bit of dirt into his hole. He starts, slightly, at the sound and then sight of the 1950 Buick Roadmaster Estate Wagon driving down the lane, towards the house. Bob stops. He watches. The car gets closer. Bob sweats harder. The car passes. A relieved Bob.
And later, back in the house, interior, Bob has just finished dousing those torsoed women with petrol. By the door he lights, and then tosses, a match towards them. He leaves quickly, slamming the door.
Exterior. Beyond the shit or mud stained window an orangey glow. It is dusk now. Time has passed. The orangey glow glows harder and against the grey of the dusk is quite a sight indeed. It grows, that glow, soon consuming the room. Do we hear doomed, faint screams? We most certainly do. As Bob, a smile on his thin villainous lips, steps into a car - a red 2006 Chevrolet Monte Carlo (
here). A moment or two later and he drives away. Out through the gate, into the lane and then down that other lane, off towards uncertain freedom.
The detective? In fancy dress. On his way to a Buick Roadmaster Owners’ conference or something.
