Uncanny Visions of a Kaleidoscopic Mind

By
Joel Maguire

z3460255
mrjoelguy@gmail.com

INT. HER KITCHEN - NIGHT

The kitchen is dimly lit and the tension grips the room with
a suffocating completeness akin to smothering a small child.
A woman stands there in the light, her hair is dishevelled
and a button up shirt hangs loosely off her thin body. Her
face is framed by sweat stained strands of hair and the bags
under her eyes look as if theyve been packed to travel the
globe. A dozen eggs lay in a chaotic mess on the counter and
each one has a face drawn on with permanent marker. The eggs
do not move. The only thing that moves is the slow expanding
and contracting of the womans chest. She begins to edge
slowly towards the counter and slides her hands towards one
of the eggs. Her fingers waltz slowly around the beautiful
curves and she begins to gently caress it. Softly, she
begins to hum to herself. It is an eerie sound that stirs
from the pits of her stomach, escaping as a harsh growl like
a rake through wet concrete.
(She looks up slowly and
whispers)
HER
I know youre watching...you dont
think I can feel your presence?
She continues to lightly run her fingers over one of the
eggs. The faint ticking of a clock gets louder as she keeps
caressing the egg and humming to herself. The egg rotates
slowly, revealing a face contorted in pain.
HER
(sniggering)
How many children does it take to
burn a candle?
A slight rustling can be heard in the background as the
woman smiles slyly to herself. She continues to hum but
stops playing with the egg as she pushes her hands into the
counter as if kneading dough.
There is a noticeable rise in intensity in the room and the
light seems to grow dimmer.

EXT. HER GARDEN - NIGHT

The moon floats helplessly outside behind bars of dark
clouds. There are no stars, no wind and a perceptible lack
of night-time sounds. It is as though a vacuum has sucked up
all the noise surrounding the house and thrown it in a hole
somewhere far away.

(CONTINUED)

CONTINUED:

(2)

2.

It is a dead garden. Once upon a time things may have grown

in the rock-bordered beds but now it is the scene of a
floral massacre. Flowers lay shrivelled in the dusty and
cigarette laden dirt and a bush sits somewhere between
choking and choked.
There is not much to say about the house. It is small,
covered in chipped white paint and stares with the soulless
eyes of two gated windows. If not for the garden bed out the
front it would be easy to mistake it for an accident.
Unintentionally planted on the corner of the street,
silently waiting to die.
A maddening screech pierces the night air, reminiscent of
sawing a chalkboard with a blunt saw. We follow this sound
inside.

INT. HER KITCHEN - NIGHT

The woman is holding one of the eggs in her left hand whilst
she flicks the wheel of a lighter with her right. There is a
demented look in her eyes and audible mumbling can be heard
as her bare toes curl up on the grimy wooden floorboards.
Wisps of charred egg shell float languidly into the air as
the black circle of destruction claws its way up the body slowly melting the permanent marker into dark drips that
streak down her fingers.
Her eyes begin to flit violently between the egg and a space
(eye-level) just beyond the camera. She holds the egg
towards this unseen object, taunting the subject of her
stare - but there is no reaction. All the while she begins
to cackle as specks of seared egg shell splinter and fall in
the midst of the forest of eggs still on the counter. The
egg is soft-boiled by now and dribbles of yolk and raw
egg-white latch themselves onto her hands and the lighter.
She turns again to the unseen object and shakes her head
slightly. The light begins to get a little brighter and for
the first time we can see just how messy her kitchen is.
Plates and bowls covered in food that decayed days ago line
the surrounding bench tops. There are a few empty bottles of
licquor and several print outs of Leonardo DiCaprio, Jake
Gyllenhaal and Edward Norton glued to cabinet doors and
tattooed with reams of notes and symbols.
The faucet head of the sink is sawn off and the tube of a
hose has been stuffed into this opening and tied to the
fridge door. There are two seats, in front of the counter
she stands behind, but both of these look to have been used
for wood cutting practice.
(CONTINUED)

CONTINUED:

(2)

3.

The roof looks to have been spray painted but the image is
blurry and seems to have been done whilst affected by a
substance. A crack pipe lays quietly in a fruit bowl devoid
of fruit and eleven eggs sit nervously on a kitchen counter
as a mad woman eyes them all with a murderous gaze.
Suddenly, and without sound, she swoops
and devours it whole. The crunch of the
as she again glares at the point beyond
show of swallowing the last remnants of
her lips.

an egg off the table

shell can be heard
the camera, making a
the yolk and licking

A silence descends on the room once more and she begins to

shake on the spot, her hair flicks violently over her
shoulders as she waves her arms wildly in the air and
groans. She continues to do this whilst sliding along the
kitchen floor and intermittently stamping her feet.
Eventually she slows her movements and slams both hands down
on the bench top. She looks directly into the lens of the
camera - giving a wry grin as she does.
HER
(yelling crazily)
How you f@#king explain that one?!
Upon yelling at the camera, she leaps up onto the counter
and begins to pull viciously at her tracksuit pants. The
light has gone dim again and she begins to scream and yell,
narrowly avoiding crushing the eggs as she does so. She
begins to pull at her pants again and twists the loose
section below her groin into a tight bundle.
Still screaming ferociously she waves this pseudo-penis
around and begins to punch it venomously. Suddenly, she lets
go of her pants and jumps to the floor on the other side of
the counter. She begins to moan and claws at her stomach,
kicking her legs in the air as though shes riding a
multi-pedalled bike.
HER (contd)
(still clawing at her stomach)
TURN IT OFF TURN IT OFF TURN IT OFF
The woman continues to thrash exuberantly on the floor, in
her efforts she manages to knock over a table and fold the
mouldy carpet over itself. And then she stops.
She lays on the ground for what seems like an impossible
amount of time (considering her previous outbursts) and
stares vacantly at a point on the ceiling. The ground around
her is covered in the mess of her wild activity and slowly
the dust begins to settle.

(CONTINUED)

CONTINUED:

(3)

4.

Quietly, she closes her eyes and begins to cry. At first

they are soft sobs, delicate enough to perch on a blade of
grass on a dewy morning. These tears trickle down her cheek
and splash onto the floor, cleaning it slightly on impact.
But then, the crying becomes more passionate. Her body
begins to heave and rock like the hull of a boat on a stormy
sea. Her breaths become sharp and shallow, sucking more air
out of her lungs than in. The tears flow freely now,
cascading onto the floor in a shower of grief and anguish.
These tears fuse together as they fall, forming a small
above-ground lake in the middle of her house. As these tiny
collections of water grow larger they pool out and connect
with each other, creating bigger sections, until eventually
the ground around her is slick with the moisture of her
tears.
Eventually, she stops crying, her face is a wet mess of a
broken individual. Her eyes, like dark pits, lead straight
down to the centre of the earth, and keep on going, and her
hair clings unenthusiastically to her face.
Hesitantly she sits up and shifts her body to face the
bench, gazing at the eggs that perch up there. Pushing up
from the wet floor she steadies herself and walks back
inside the kitchen until she is behind the counter once
more.
Once there she picks up one of the eggs slowly and studies
the face that has been drawn there. The eyes are filled with
a terror only possible in an artwork and the mouth sits
agape, pleading for mercy.
She looks at the point beyond the camera and, smirking to
herself, hurls the egg at her living room wall. It smashes
against the wall with a sickening crunch and the yolk slides
down until it explodes on the floor. The skeleton of the
shell sits in pieces on a section of the carpet and you can
still just see half of the wide-open mouth.
Then, with a swift practiced motion, she pulls open a draw
and procures a sharp metal skewer. She holds it up in the
dim light as though presenting it to an audience and with
her other hand picks up an egg from the bench. She offers
this egg to the weak glow of the light above her and with
one barbaric thrust plunges the metal into the gooey
softness of its yellow heart. Once again raw egg white flows
out and she begins to slurp it with the hunger of a stray
dog, crudely thrashing her tongue against the delicate
broken shell.
After finishing off the egg she pulls open the drawer once
more and grabs a spoon. She then slowly lowers her face down
(CONTINUED)

CONTINUED:

(4)

5.

over the remaining eggs and stares intensely at each of

them, making sure they each feel the mania of her hot
breath. With a calculated slide of her fingers she
manoeuvres around the cluster until she decides on an egg
with a bowler hat marked onto its conical head. Then she
looks straight up at the point just beyond the camera and
flits between here and the lens as she speaks.
HER
(casually but with a wry grin)
Im going to go outside now!
4

INT. HER HALLWAY - NIGHT

The hallway is just as chaotic as the rest of the house. A
fragment of moonlight squeezes in through the front door and
lightly illuminates walls scrawled with camera angles,
three-point lighting setups and a triangle with an x
marking its top point.
The floorboards are covered in a thin layer of dust and
forgotten bits and parts of deserted objects lay quietly in
oblivion. A broken clock sits solemnly at the foot of the
door, keeping watch over the cramped entry/exit partition of
the house.
She walks through the hallway, occasionally stopping on the
spot and looking vacantly in mid-air before resuming her
slow shuffle towards the door.
Once she arrives at the door she picks up the clock with her
free hand and brings it up to her mouth, whispering softly
into its dead face. Then, she places it back on the ground
behind her and twists the weathered door knob.

EXT. HER GARDEN - NIGHT

Outside it is still silent. The garden is as lifeless as
before but the moon is free from its cloudy prison and glows
with an intensity that would send sailors to a watery grave.
A cool breeze has begun to blow and ruffles the sleeves of
her dress, causing a mesmerising effect in the bright
moonlight. As soon as she sets foot in the barren dirt she
crouches down and begins to work, scooping spoonfuls of dirt
out of the garden bed and flinging them over her shoulder.
She does this for quite some time, working herself into a
methodical routine, scooping and flinging whilst maintaining
a concentrated focus on the hole being excavated. Eventually
she needs to wipe her brow and when she does smears a ragged
stripe of dirt across her forehead. She stops and holds her
head down close to the hole, checking the depth and, feeling
(CONTINUED)

CONTINUED:

(2)

6.

satisfied, takes a seat next to the place she has placed the
egg to watch her hole digging activities.
After a moment is taken to catch her breath she again
returns to her haunches and picks up the egg with a delicate
scoop of her fingers. She brings it directly in front of her
face and looks into its wonky eyes for a time. The egg looks
back at her lovingly and she gives it a kiss on its shiny
head.
Carefully, she places the egg deep in the hole and rakes the
surrounding dirt, dead grass, weeds and flowers into the
hole with her fingers. She continues to do this until it is
about ground level and drops the spoon on top of it before
walking back inside the house.
6

INT. HER HALLWAY - NIGHT

She walks back inside and grabs the clock before hurling it
full-force at the wall covered in images. Then, she begins
to punch and kick at this wall, screaming and yelling until
she stops to catch her breath and runs back into the
kitchen.

INT. HER KITCHEN - NIGHT

When she gets to the kitchen she begins to enter another
manic episode and starts to pull pictures off of the cabinet
walls. She throws these pieces of paper on the floor and
begins to stomp on them with a ferocity great enough to
shake the house.
The floorboards creak under the pressure of her pounding
feet and she yanks the hose out of the faucet and begins to
whip the ground with it. As she whips the ground she resumes
her crazed yelling and starts to hiss at blank spaces in the
air as if something or someone is there. The clock in the
kitchen still ticks reliably in the background but there is
a fear to its time-keeping, as if it is scared to make too
much noise. Eventually, she stops whipping the floorboards
and turns her attention to the eggs on the kitchen counter.
She wipes sweaty locks of her out of her vision and surveys
the group of comically vandalised eggs before her. Some are
scared out of their wits whilst others lay there with a
confused ignorance akin to a newborn deer alone with a wolf.
She eyes these eggs individually, taking care to provide
them each with enough time to feel the energy of her gaze,
lap up the heat from her irises.
With a dramatic precision she brings her hands down on each
side of the cluster of eggs and lowers her face until it is
just above one of them. She inhales deeply through her
(CONTINUED)

CONTINUED:

(2)

7.

nostrils and then with one calculated, gravity abiding

lowering of her fist crushes it into the table top. After
she has done this she begins to punch the egg again and
again, further splitting the shell into smaller pieces as
her knuckles make the transition from red raw to crimson
blood.
Once she is satisfied that this egg has been appropriately
mashed she turns her attention towards another and begins
the same process, hammering with a repeated intensity that
rocks the other eggs in their brittle shells.
This exhibition of brutality continues until there is only
one egg left. The table is completely covered in a bloody
mess of yolk, egg-white and shell and small waterfalls of
this mixture begin to descend cautiously to the floor. Her
breathing is ragged and her shirt is struck with patches of
sweat and specks of her own blood. The skin around her
knuckles has surrendered in an almighty river of red and
pink flays of skin and her hair now sits heavy on her head.
She looks at this last egg and laughs a cruel laugh. Once
again she looks at the point beyond the camera and at the
camera itself. She gives a sly wink and returns her gaze to
the egg on the bench top. Without a hint of hesitation she
then reaches forward for the drawers once more and pulls it
open, revealing a shiny black handgun. She puts her hand
over this, stroking the trigger, and then lifts it out of
its prison, pointing it directly at the egg.
For a small time she teases the egg, lightly poking it with
the barrel of the gun and cruelly flicking it to and fro
with small extensions of her wrist.
HER
(taking a theatrical breath)
Well it looks like this is the end
of the line.
She takes a step back and holds the egg in her sights,
squinting one eye and holding her arm steady. She stands
like this for a few seconds and then chuckles to herself.
HER (contd)
(with a slow blink of her eyes
- delivered straight down the
lens)
Well this wont make sense will it?
As she says this she places the gun on the table and stares
directly at the camera. The gun lays on the cold kitchen
counter, unfired and hungry for blood.

(CONTINUED)

CONTINUED:

(3)

8.

Suddenly the lights switch off and a mass of bodies can be

heard rushing towards the kitchen. She begins to scream and
yell and there is a slight struggle before the blast of a
gunshot silences the noise. Softly, we can hear a body being
dragged away as the unmistakeable crunch of an egg rings out
against the counter.
THE END