Killer Jules

E. S. Jones

Play for several unnamed actors (1, 2, 3) who play different versions of the same part, (male or female) and one who plays Jules. The scenes can be played in any order.

Fire

1
A story that has no ending can hardly begin at the end. So somehow I find myself in the middle. Back to the beginning for another rewrite, a new draft, each word becoming permanently etched on the page until flawless. Still lifeless.

2
Jules.

3
Not Julie or Julia or Juliette, but Jules. Plain Jules.

1
My lips form your name and spit it out with anger. And I have to write you, find a way to put this to rest at last so I will no longer be driven half mad by your face in my head, words reeling round and round my chemically altered brain.

2
I should warn you, this is not another play about love.

3
I am in a ward of two empty beds with the other two occupied. A gentleman of indeterminate age and expression whom I have never heard utter a word. They come, talk over him, at him, about him. He is in the third person. I wonder if he has come to think of himself that way, a constant stream of stage directions bordering his thoughts with critical notes in the margins. His forehead is smooth as the starched bedlinen. My other roommate is a young man with a jutting clavicle and a head like a cotton bud. He's called Bill or Billy or Wills or some such deviation from William. He is so thin you can see the nerves sending messages through his wired body, his prominent veins are wrapped tight round his scrawny forearms. I've seen him feed his lunch to the pigeons outside our window, they paddle in the leftover sandwich crumbs.

1
He has his favourites. I call him Odin- only in my head. There are two specific pigeons, the chosen ones, and Odin has tamed them with leftovers all the way to the hospital window sill. I've stuck to the Norse myth and named them appropriately- Hugin and Munin.

2
We are not meant to feed them, so he makes sure he hides the crusts from his lunch in his pillowcase till morning. Every morning he send them off after breakfast over London to spy on the city.

3
Perhaps they've even seen where she hides from me.

2
Every night they return. I listen at the window for the sky to wrinkle after dark, splintering soft, a low applause like pins and needles on the roof.

1
From here Odin no longer has to use his eyes, he talks to them about what they have found and they coo obligingly, in favour of a crust from his bony hand. He is hardly here, he sits and stares, fondly reminiscing or fervently hoping. The pigeons are his ravens.

2
I prefer the television, keep it set to Sky News where the world slides from side to side across the bottom of the screen in words that sedate crashes and crimes and scandals. Today they are following the story of a whale washed up in the Thames. It may be a hoax for all I know, so I carry on watching, fascination growing as the chance of a punchline dissipates.

1
I've had no visitors for three days.

3
I know this because I've also been awake for three days.

1
I wonder if Jules is there at all, crammed among the bodies of the crowd.

Jules
'If a flame can fell a cedar, what hope has a fish in a puddle.'

1
This irritates me for more than one reason.

2
I don't reply that a whale is not a fish as the common misconception of Jonah and the Whale would have us believe.

3
Why is it that when we look back, things acquire extra energy. Over-exposed. You were not always like this, you were not always smiling. The camera really does stop time at the moment of a snap-shot. We stand unnaturally still and give what we think is our best grin, holding it for just a minute too long. Our jaws ache as the idiot with the camera presses the wrong button and no flash goes off. You are immortalised but not as you were.

1
I hate every photo of you that I have. They are not you. I should have taken you by surprise, put you over my shoulder and run into the passport booth before they could stop and assess our best angles.

Twenties/Thirties

2
Truth be told, the first time we met was not by accident in the coffee place.

3
It was by absolute design.

1
I had first seen you in the queue at Boots trying to get your prescription from the Pharmacist who barely looked up at you and tried to make you pay for two prescriptions. You were trying to explain that they didn't make the pills in thirties so therefore it was one prescription- seven pounds. The Pharmacist puzzled over the pale green papers, called your doctor and still could not resolve the issue, reluctantly agreeing to 'just this time' let you off the extra seven pounds.

2
I noticed that we both had prescriptions for Citalopram, the anti-depressant they seem to throw at everyone with an unexplainable ailment. Mine were only in twenties so I was able to pay my seven pounds and still see you walking up the road.

3
I liked your hair, like bright feathers on your head, and you fitted my protagonist perfectly although I had not known her until then. You wandered up through seven dials and onto Monmouth street to the little coffee house next to Coco de Mer.

2
A grinning guy with a big rucksack stopped my determined path.

3
I considered his face, side-stepped into view. Nope. Not the foggiest. Mind you, the west end is crawling with nobody-somebodies that I may or may not have met at some dreadful after show party.

1
His big smile is beginning to fade into a question. He thinks he's got the wrong guy. I see the camera round his neck. A pap.

3
My, what a big lens you have Grandmama... all the better to see up your skirt with my dear...

2
'Warren...' Yes. Warren. The Standard. Of course- ‘How’s life up at the Standard?'

3
Further face-droppage.

2
'It's the Metro actually.'

1
Damn. Really got to pay more attention.

3
I knew an actor once that kept files and files of people he had met, their names, physical attributes, plus one 'interesting' fact.

2
Check, Warren. Short, dark, goatee bearded Warren. Warren likes Mamma Mia and dislikes canapes.

1
Insert Long-time-no-see or Small-world type cliché as appropriate.

2
Lost her.

**Sophie **

1
When Sophie was born I held her in my arms and promised her I'd never leave her.

2
Is it worse for a daughter to grow up with an unhappy father or know that he is happier somewhere apart from her?

3
Are these the only options?

1
I have decided that sleep is merely a bad habit that must be broken. I am nowhere to be found, deep in a slumber of dreams that torture me with meanings for no apparent reason. I will not endure a night more where she visits me and then I wake to find she is nowhere. At least this way, when she comes to me I'll know it's her. For real. And if she never does then at least I can forget her, waking or sleeping every image must be tested, blanched, hung out to dry, bleached by the sun.

2
Photographs eventually fade don't they? So why not memory too? And then when I finally sleep, there will be nothing left of her to kill me with.

1
We are born in bed, spend our eight (if you are lucky) hours a night in it, and most likely end up dead in it. There are possibly 20, or 21, different positions a sleeper adopts in the night. Not exactly restful. We leap and sprawl across our mattresses, like flying squirrels launching at branches. I’ve been given various books on sleep and so far they’re all that’s keeping me awake.

2
I make sure I’m never fully on my back, as this results in the deepest possible sleep. You could really mess about with someone in this phase, play their ribs like a xylophone and they would not stir. The bald man sleeps in a ball, curled into the smallest space with the covers pulled over his head.

1
One book tells me that the very best position to be in is to lie your body along the North-South axis, your head facing North. I like the idea that bedtime requires a compass, proper feng shui.

3
They say that Charles Dickens had to have his bed moved in each hotel he stayed in.

Jules
Dickens, you old diva!

1
Jules slept facing me, and we were never cold.

Coffee

1
Monmouth Coffee house off Seven Dials. The wonderfully round dark smell of the coffee, the bare wood of the floors, tables, benches and I'm in the throes of my newest ritual. I have ways of writing that are important- call them superstitions, but they work for me. Every so often there will be a new addition, another wall moved.

2
A special writing case, a particular coffee, a properly bound leather notebook, unlined, a black ballpoint pen. If they run out of my coffee blend or there's only a school exercise book on hand to write in, of course I can still write but I'm automatically off-kilter.

3
There will never be a good blue biro though. Even a pencil is preferable as long as it's sharp and over at least half as long as its original size. I usually wait until my table is available as there's hardly any room- less chance of lots of people sharing the space.

2
Londoners generally dislike close proximity to others, and the gentleman sitting at my table finishes his coffee very abruptly, folds up his paper and leaves.

1
That's when I see her. There. The image of the woman I have been attempting to write for over six months. The image of a woman I had never seen before, yet vaguely familiar.

2
She looks around her, unabashed, drinking double espresso.

3
Intimidating in a way that makes me feel about 14 again as the lovely English teacher Miss Spence forever leans over the exercise book of my school days and I can still see every perfect covered little button on her blouse.

2
A Madonna, a saint in measured stillness and such old shadowed eyes. Her mouth is a little too full on the top as though she is biting her lower lip and her hair is a dirty straw gold. Something on a chain round her neck.

1
She does not belong to London, looking around with such interest.

2
I cannot place her anywhere.

1
I let the dense foam of my cappuccino fold over my tongue and begin to write it all down, quickly, as though any second the light might change and she will vanish completely. I flesh out the poor sketch of the character I have been killing with terrible descriptions page after hopeless page, mapping her out in this woman's clothes, her way of touching her necklace and collarbone.

3
Clavicle. Like a musical instrument.

2
I may have lingered a little too long on the line of silver across her throat because I let my gaze rise up and am instantly stuck like a fly. Fossilised by her strange bright yellowy eyes. I cough and shift with every ounce of strength and willpower left in me.

1
Can feel myself getting hot.

3
Breathe, for God's sakes man. You're forty-five.

Jules
I know he feels me. I touch my necklace and tell him about St. Jude. Patron saint of the lost causes.

1
I raise an eyebrow.

Jules
Nonchalant.

3
'Lost causes.'

2
Her knee faintly brushes mine under the table and I finish that thought very swiftly by picking up my pen again and changing position slightly.

1
I am very busy and important.

Jules
Is it about love?

1
I’m embarrassed by her directness and make an attempt to close the notebook.

3
It's a Moleskine. Another specification of my elaborate process. Black with thick cream pages.

2
Her hand rests lightly on the heavy pages and my scribbled words poke their arms and legs out under her curious fingers. I feel exposed and my voice is a bit clipped. Can she read my mind?

1
A book. About one who consumes another.

Jules
I won’t ask you how it ends.

1
I close the book and smile.

3
She extends her other hand towards my own paralysed paw. Her nails are short, painted on one hand.

2
Must be left-handed.

Jules
I'm so glad we've met at last.

1
Jules. I nod briefly.

2
Her wide mouth smiles and swallows up the whole of my nerve-frazzled body and as she turns with the tide I crawl up on the shore, gasping for air.

Insomnia

1
I can't sleep tonight because... They make me fill out this diary every night as I lie here staring at the ceiling hoping for the night to close its soft darkness over me, get into my airways and cosy me up into a stupor. It's like there's a light on in my head and all I can recall is a single strip light over my emptiness. My head screams AWAKE!! My body is so tired that every muscle wilts and its petals peel from the bone.

2
I’ve heard that the blind take a very long time to fall asleep. No means of shutting down the brain when you are no longer sensitive to the light.

3
My heartbeat is amplified by the sprung mattress, shudders through the coils. Like a sailor I have woken as the engine of my ship has failed.

1
I don't need to sleep. I have to finish this, finish what I started. I know I won't sleep until I'm done, though they still sedate me. I drift a couple of hours at a time but there's no real rest. And now I am not drinking, the nights are endless.

2
The pigeons on the window become blacker, sooty. Don't even look like pigeons anymore, they are Odin's ravens. The bald man and I see the thin man feeding them but we keep quiet. At least mine is a decision to keep silent. The bald man looks tormented by the whole experience. I'm envious of his ability to keep it all in his head, tightly packed down. The thin man needs nothing and no-one. I'm jealous of this too, but I'm not that strong. Hate eating these horrible sandwiches and talking to myself but what else is there to do?

3
In the morning the pigeons look cleaner, Odin has shrunk a little more, the bald man recedes. I am still awake.

1
There are others in here too. I am 'the one who does not sleep'. Him with the bald head, that's the 'one who does not speak'. Some trauma to do with a boy he accidentally killed on a motorway as he talked on his phone.

2
We sit around, charcoal mouthed and stare at the floor.

3
The saddest one I ever saw cried noiselessly as he tried to drink his medicine through a straw. The nurse thought a straw would be helpful, and he dribbled black water from the sides of his uneven lips, while two steady streams of tears continued down his cheeks. Hers too. She brushed her own away and was in trouble with the supervisor.

1
Don’t encourage us, we will only come back.

Trees

1
Sometimes I'd look at her and barely believe she was real. Sat across from me, her knee pressing lightly on mine. And never have I been aware more of one part of my body, let alone my right knee cap.

2
My daughter has a fascination with her own- as a seven year old she has discovered the delights of decorating them with biro faces and making them talk across the hem of her school skirt.

Jules
Daughter.

1
So far away when my mind is constantly on elastic to Jules. And her eyes that fix me like they understand me and suddenly I'm loved and accepted, no question or second guess.

2
It's the most real I've ever felt, yet one step away and reality crashes across my marriage like a felled tree.

Jules
I saw a time lapse movie of a fox decaying. It looked like it was breathing and unravelling into maggots, wet fur then dried up into dust around the skeleton and half-submerged in the earth. I remembered one I walked past every day to work in the ditch under the hedge. No one removed it or covered the poor thing over.

1
Another tree across my bed this morning. I parted the leaves and crawled from under the trunk with a heavy ache in my chest to the bathroom. I held onto the sink and stuck out my dry tongue, cleaned my teeth and wiped my darkening eyes with a flannel. The drugs are giving me the strangest dreams and the fact that every night seems to sink into alcohol as I drink up more than all the fishes in Sophie's tank can't be helping.

2
I plugged into Jules, her hair more fiery than in reality as she opened a glass door into a library with books and ladders to the ceiling. She brought me a book, drew me to each line written in it about us and then disappeared. The words started to slide off the last pages though I tried to pick them up they disintegrated in my hands. I ran after her, saw her ascend behind the trellis of an elevator, the shelves becoming lit and dark around the books as she moved behind them, always just out of reach. Will I never reach the end?

3
I woke, sweating. Laura reached out her hand and touched my arm, and I let it lie there limply, a dead animal.

1
What will I do with all these trees? No more will fit under the bed and surely Laura will eventually object to living in this forest.

Jules
Burn it all up in one big bonfire, and I will sit up on top of the heap.

4’o’clock

1
The nurse brings me tea. It's four o'clock and later than I would usually have liked. He closes the curtains and swings the tray over the bed, despite the fact I am sitting at the window.

2
Don't tell me. Ham sandwiches, ski yogurt, small KitKat.

3
The nurse says 'There you are Sir'. Young. Ish.

2
It is always a KitKat. I never eat them and the nurse knows I'll leave it. And everyday it reappears, two-fingered insult, probably the same one brought out again. I should put a little mark on the back of it so I'd know. Just to humour myself, but I'm not trusted with stationary in the categories above a humble pencil. Sure I could do some sort of damage to myself with this plastic spoon if I really wanted to.

3
'Been watching those pigeons again have we?' He knows there's nothing else to look at. The pigeons have been pecking feverishly at the tiles. Bill must have dropped a whole load of crumbs out there this morning. Huginn and Muninn are definitely getting fatter.

1
I dislike birds with their unpredictable wings and cruel beaks. Truth be told their blank eyes make me nervous. But they keep Bill happy and until they start bashing their unbearably light bodies against the window or start eyeing up my sandwiches, they don't really bother me.

2
If I saw you I would run away in the hope that I had lingered just long enough for you to see me. Am I crazy? You've driven me to distraction with your lunatic tides.

3
Are you in his arms right now or has he finally rejected you? You were too kind to him and I wanted to scream at you; 'Leave him! Pick me!' He was bad for you, killing your spirit ever slowly, methodically.

1
But I let you think I didn't care because I knew I could never leave Sophie. I simply wanted you all to myself with half the guilt. I could handle mine, you could not handle yours. I should destroy him as I systematically destroyed you. I am not that way inclined but I could have made an exception.

2
I'm going out of my head with thoughts of you. I want you, can't have you. The strength of the feeling is threatening to blow the lid off. And nothing helps, nothing at all. Can't compartmentalise this any longer. Either I'm with you or you're completely dead to me. I'm not strong enough, God help me. You showed me love and then you made it disappear. You are a cruel magician.

Jules
The little grey-eyed girl looked up from her drawing and I knew it was his Sophie. That the woman sitting next to her with the far reaching sad eyes was Laura. I looked away and tried to catch my breath. Every finger electrified unpleasant. I tried to feel the pages of the Grazia magazine, turn over distractedly. Sophie smiled into my stare, unafraid and I automatically gave a half-smile back. The crocodile smiles. Every article in this ridiculous magazine suddenly becomes fascinating to me. Truth be told I hardly saw a single page. Sometimes I think my head is like a hospital, every sick or forbidden thought is safely tucked up in its own bed. I look after them like Florence fucking Nightingale, take their temperatures, keep them under observation. There are orderlies and drips, but enough about my ex-boyfriends. Where's my next fix of you? One day I'll unlock all the doors and let them run riot. I am not your Jane Eyre, I am mad Bertha in the attic driven half-crazy with desire. I'll burn down this house and take you with it. Reader, I murdered him.