Sanctum

SANCTUM

A Screenplay

Scene: INT - The Protagonist's Bedroom - EVENING, PRE-TWILIGHT

The room fades into focus from blackness, as it undulates, the walls seemingly a moving viscous object. The camera pans slowly across the bright copper vase that shivers on the mantelpiece, littering the frame with streaks like streaming Christmas lights; strains of a song playing from a laptop tinkle to the rhythm of heavy breathing. Dancing pinpricks of light careen across the floor and ceiling, and the camera tilts downward gently to give a vertical perspective of the protagonist, face obscured in shadow, sprawled across his bed. Vapour trails from cigarette smoke hover above his face as white wisps of heat bubble and froth with his every breath, and pallid yellow beams cast speckled shadows on his quilt which partially drapes around his feet. He dares not move lest he disturb the sanctity of his sensory pirouette, a perfect balance of touch and sight and sound. The space in front of him pops as little perforations, holes in the fabric of his being, flit in and out of existence as though in a game of hide 'n seek.

Camera begins to slowly zoom in on him, capturing his silhouetted profile as he lies supine. The drugs have already taken hold.

VO: Who am I? I am an arbitrary squiggle on a blank page, stretching beyond memory, yet compressed and condensed into this one solitary moment. I am formless, looking in from without, and bent in on myself to turn myself inside out. I am everywhere you've ever been and everywhere you've never seen. I am the observed and the observer all at once. And still I am no one, for the true nature of identity can only be gauged by its pertinence to the present. NOW...

Camera cuts to a momentary flash of his eye, retina black and large. Beginning at sporadic intervals of 2-3 seconds, flashback slow-motion frames from his life with Her intersperse themselves as repeated flashes, as the camera returns to a vertical shot of him from a height, gradually zooming in. The rate of flashes begin to accelerate, as does the zoom-in, until a full close-up of his sweat-soaked face is revealed, and his eyes and mouth simultaneously spring open as he gasps for air in a desperate heave. He pauses abruptly, sharply, momentarily after inhalation:

VO: (A child's voice) Just let go...

And he does. He's falling, tunneling past walls of colour and sound that surround him. Greens and reds and neon hues rush past him in frenzied rivers, like cascading starlight trails. Shapes tango in tune with music, coalescent and fleeting, until everything gradually fades to black.

Scene: INT - The Protagonist's Bedroom – PRE-DAWN

The black silence is only punctuated by his breathing. The visual slowly begins to resolve itself, and her face swims into focus.

She: (mouthing softly) Awaken, and cast your gaze upon me.

She smiles weakly, with a glint of caution in her eye. She sits by his side on the bed, her back arched, her head bent down low over his face. They are silhouettes.

She: (whispers) And what incumbent thoughts fill your waking dreamscape tonight?

A candle on his bedside table flickers, giving pause.

He: (eyes closed shut once more) What utter savagery of reality, that all of one's life is spent trying to eke out a meagre living in lonesome mediocrity, when transcending wanton need and desire is a place of unequal beauty, dwelling within the cavernous chambers and corridors of one's own inner sanctum.

She: There are worlds underfoot and spaces in between, blackly mirrored in each other. You were always yours to create.

She rights herself, choosing to perch herself by the edge of the bed, now facing away from him. His sullen silence makes her statement self-evident.

She: (in complete earnestness) So, where are we?

He: (sighing heavily) Where we left ourselves the last time we spoke.

She: (choking slightly) I'm losing you, aren't I?

Silence hangs heavy as a pall. She twitches to one side as he sits upright. The music has picked up tempo now, rhythmically pulsing in swift motion. He looks her in eye, except that behind his pupils lies nothing but emptiness, a vacancy that she's never seen before in him. It jolts her, and she snaps back and onto her feet, turning to look past curtains out through the window. Her profile shows a lone tear coursing down her cheek, as a light gust of wind teases the hair that runs down her nape. She is the picture of beauty.

She: (wistfully) Is it the sky pushing on the sea, or is it the other way around?

She stares at the moon as it shimmers low on the horizon, throwing speckled silver flakes upon the placid ocean. He strikes a match to light a cigarette, and with a whoosh of his arm extinguishes it.

He: Sometimes, we need to let go of things in our lives, and trade them in for memory.

She: I cannot be where you are, for you have chosen a point of vantage beyond my reach. A heartbeat away from you I lie, and yet silence hangs upon our senses, lukewarm and heavy to the touch. Look, look at this part of me in you, to understand who I am. You conjure me up in thought, only to dispel me to the farthest reaches of your consciousness. What are these merry games you play in circles, like winding threads and beads, flung against the fabric of your feelings?

He: Feelings are like neonsplattered streaks of light, running and spinning and humming endlessly, restlessly in motion. We can never know where feelings lie.

She (trembling): Then our self-deceptions betray our vulnerabilities. And our feelings will be unveiled by hindsight. (pause) I can only hope that your indifference is bred in sorrow, and not in contempt.

He: (unflinchingly) Sorrow encrypts the eye with nothingness, and martyrs the mind, leaving it in desolation. I have learned to withstand these forces that crawl from beneath and beyond, boring deep into the soul.

She: (trying to conceal her anguish) Then I am truly lost to you, and our time together will be no more than a mausoleum, forever sealed.

He picks up a T-shirt that lies atop a chair, and throws it on in one swift, fluid motion. He takes a few tentative steps towards the door, and turns around.

He: (with a weary sigh) It cannot be any other way.

She (imploringly): Then I leave you with this to dwell on: that you, in all your grief and solitude, are the one person you will never meet, walking down the street.

He: (emotionless) Nor that I would want to.

He slinks out the door, leaving her sitting perched on the bed, with a glazed and remote blankness colouring her expression.

Fade out.

Scene: EXT – A street – EARLY MORNING

He strides forwards purposefully into the womb of early daylight, down a narrow street waking up to the sounds and sights of people beginning their daily businesses; his face wears a resolute mask of emptiness, except for his eyes which are narrowed, sharp and piercing. In slow motion all around him, people walk past him, heads bowed down low, their features cast in grey stone, weighed down heavy by the burden of routine. He turns his gaze toward them, surprised to find himself in communion with their sorrow.

VO: I am the sound of a fluttering heart, wearied and hollowed by its own existence. I am the silence that follows a piercing cry of pain, and the rumble of time as it listlessly drifts past the light of mo(u)rning. I am the wandering eye that seeks replenishment of the soul, and the vision of all things to come. In this bright daylight moment, I am complete unto myself.

He approaches a newspaper vendor, who sits crosslegged on the pavement with a paper stack by his feet. He picks up a copy, and flicks the pages to a section boldly titled ‘OBITUARIES’. She stares at him from the centre of the page, her lips curled into a breathtaking smile, warm, friendly and trusting. A little note, an eulogy, fills the space below the snapshot. A prolonged moment, he longingly gazes into the page; then looking around himself, he self-consciously tears her out, tosses the rest of the paper to the ground, folds and pockets the obit, and resumes his lonely stroll down the street.

Fade out.