Showing posts with label fish. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fish. Show all posts

Contagion at our Gates

BY FRANCIS CROT



Scene 1

It is a sunny week towards the end of Spring, in Cambridge, England, a cul-de-sac town for privilege, and calibre, and brooding royalty of all races but especially the rat and fish people.

We seem to see a man with a guppie for a head. The fish flutters away: we are looking through a fishtank at a man (named PREGNANT), brooding on a chair. But he does actually have a guppie for a head. The guppie gasps and the man dies, his crown clatters out of shot.

The shot pans away . . . out the window . . . a street scene . . . an observant viewer may spot CORNTROUGH wheeling his bicycle through the crowds . . . title, “Francis Crot’s Scrum in the Cum” and opening credits . . . as a suicide jumper lands on a mattress . . . several children shouting whee! come onto it after him . . . pans farther . . . another window . . . into another apartment.

A man apparently with a goldfish for a head. The fish flutters away: we are looking through a fishtank at a young man (named LEMON), brooding on a chair. He has a normal head – frankly, perhaps a shade more pensive than normal.

Lemon arises and approaches the tank.

Lemon is listening or "listening" to Xzibit's "E Lucean la Stelle."

LEMON: You don’t like think.

We see the fish eat a piece of food.

We see Lemon watching the fish.

LEMON: Don’t . . . actually . . . like, experience fish flakes, do you. Do you?

We see the fish.

LEMON: Your eyes detect it and your mouth swallows it. Isn’t that right? Like my heart . . . beats.

The man’s face suddenly comes into shot, pressed up against the glass. The fish darts. The man accuses.

LEMON: You aren’t really afraid! There’s no, there’s uh nothing . . . nothing to fear . . .

The shot changes. Lemon puts another piece of food in the water. The fish eats it. Lemon ponders.

LEMON: Little device.

Another piece.

LEMON: I’ve heard you have a memory of two seconds. What have you heard about me?

Another piece. Lemon keeps putting pieces of food in the tank, with increasing anger/excitement, as the scene wraps up.

LEMON: Is that memory like people have memories, or like my Mac has a memory? Could I see through your weird eyes? Would it thus be a pensioners’ bus tour of the Highlands, a baffling Hellish blur – relieved somewhat – continual – interesting – castle apparitions – ? – You uh see like food, you like swallow it – ? – nut in your automaton brain nothing more special than your automaton gut like you see food and you eat it and digest it and you see food and you eat