This is the second installment.
Act I was released on March 1, and Act III will be released on March 5.
_______
The script is divided in three acts, each of which distortedly echo the others.
In this second act, two symbiotic, vaguely human entities lament the loss of their heads, which they have also lost in many pieces, in exchange for large quantities of worthless bunk.
Image Credit: Holly Birtles, C1-Hullbridge-Monster. (2020) hollybirtles.com
Head(s)
| C: | I cannot think. I’m in want of a head. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Heads. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Two heads, one for each, so that we may work them, mirror-like, against the hard light of chaos. And inside both heads we shall have a brain. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | One in each. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Indeed. On the inside of each head we shall have one brain. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | In total, two. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Two brains, with which to run ourselves about the world, without falling. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Only moving. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Indeed. Moving wide across the broad earth, which extends like a pockmarked plate of solid dreams, endlessly. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Until its end. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | I’m in want of a head. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Heads. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Two heads. We do not even have one. We are feckless. We have lost them. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | I saw you. You exchanged both of our heads for so much worthless bunk. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Which I cannot even reach to operate, for want of a head. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Heads. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Two heads. I have spent both of our heads on so much worthless bunk. Look at this. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Bunk. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | It is bunk. I thought it was valuable for whatever reason, once, but I was wrong. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | You were quite wrong. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | I cannot tell the worth of things. If you were to give me an item of any sort, of any purpose at all, I would misunderstand it, and take it for something else. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Look at us. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Look at us now. We are without heads, lying headless on the bare ground, with so much worthless bunk ranged all about, out of our grasp, for we are without heads. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Do you recall the hand? |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | I recall the hand that came to us with many items. They seemed of considerable worth. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | They were not. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | This hand cheated us. This hand showed us things that were not as they seemed, that any fool would have seen for what they were, if not for the seaminess of that hand. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | It was an unseemly hand. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Both seamy and unseemly. For this hand indicated that each item was of considerable use, for reasons that were hidden by the angle of this hand’s thumb, but that would be revealed in good time, and that we could have any of them in exchange for just something of our heads. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Which you gave it. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | I gave one or many parts of our heads, my head and yours, to this hand, at the cost of much agonising grief. Had you ever hacked away a part of your own consciousness before? |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | I had not. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | It is agonising. To have the parts of you which consist of you – your memories and thoughts, your dreams and desires – |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Gone. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Hacked away, like so much rag to a cat’s claws, and also the outer layers of skin and skull, which so encased all of it. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | It was agonising. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Agonising. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | We are lucky. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Lucky. Lucky that we had, quite accidentally, prior to this, secreted one or many parts of our minds into other parts of our bodies, for safe keeping, so to speak. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | And the hand did not notice. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | No, the hand did not notice. If it had noticed, it would have indicated as such, and pursued the matter further, but it did not, and we are grateful, for at least now we are able to think with our elbows – |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Dream with our toes – |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | And recall with the long tubes of our lower intestinal tracts. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | For the mind is flexible, above all. It may be deposited anywhere, so to speak, with great malleability, no matter the context. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | And we are lucky, too. Lucky that this hand did not notice our mouths and voices. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | That we had copied also, for safe keeping. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | By installing valves and lip-like chords directly into our diaphragms, in case of emergency. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Ours were great minds. Who would have thought to make preparations for any such eventuality as this one? |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Ours. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Ours did. And though we are substantially diminished – perhaps to only a fraction of our previous strength – still we are here, remembering our past, considering our predicament– |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Dreaming of solutions to it. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Precisely. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | And our eyes. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Our ears also. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Our eyes and ears were both copied also, in addition to our mouths, our voices and our minds, but it was poorly done. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Slapdash. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | It was slapdash how we hastily copied these things, with only a cursory sketch, cursory but functional, and deposited them elsewhere, outside of our heads. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Ours were great minds. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Indeed great, but not omniscient either. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | This was beyond us. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Our minds, though great, could not have known everything. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | This hand. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Indeed, this hand was most unexpected, when it came. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | We had not even sat down, when it came. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | We had not even sat down to rest from our labours, our laborious cursory sketching and reconstruction of everything about our heads. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Apart from our hair. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Yes, apart from the hair on our heads, everything was reconstructed. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | For what use has hair? |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | None. Hair has no obvious use apart from warmth on a cool night. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | And shade in the hot sun – and skulls, also. We do not have our skulls. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | For what use is a skull without a soft brain to enfold? |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | None. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | None. It has no use at all. So, apart from our hair, our skulls and also our noses – |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Which we lost. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | We lost our noses, somewhere in the effort, also – but apart from these things, we have everything, in redacted form. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Ours were fine minds. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Fine, indeed. Do you recall their size and scope? |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | They were immense. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Immense. For in the lean dome of each of our skulls there lived a cosmos all its own. And this cosmos was not composed of stuff and things, but rather perfect, unblemished forms, each crystalline, unblemished by the erring, miring mass of stuff and things which, each moment, ground against the outside of our minds. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | And the things that we could do. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | The things that we could do with our once fine minds. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Do you recall that we once built a beautiful man, a sinuous hunk of muscle and bone, with hair like muddy, rushing water, and eyes of sultry, silken fire. Do you remember? |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | I remember. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | And do you remember that this man, this beautiful man, loved us like a lover should, plain and kind, with a passion that was plain and kind, for that was our intention, our great minds planned it so, perfectly, without errors, such that soon our beautiful man loved us too well, and we were undeserving of his affections – the purity of his affection became too pure for our imperfect selves, and we were at a loss. To be loved too well is a terrible thing. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | A terribly difficult thing. It scolds. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | And in the scolding heat of his affection, we aged too fast. Our bodies parched and crumbled in the scolding heat of it, so we built her hurriedly, beautifully. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | We hurriedly built a beautiful woman, beautifully, to divert his love away from us. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Sweating in the wretched glare of his affection, our bodies crumbling in the heat, we sewed this beautiful woman from the dust, and gave her life – for him we gave her life – and she was perfect, also, like him. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Both were perfect, he for her and her for him. They were perfectly matched, and matchless, also, in perfection. Our fine minds made it so, with such easy, hurried grace. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | And then they saw. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | They looked upon each other, and saw they were exactly matched, and in the moment that they recognised this fact, the very stuff, which made them up, belched and buckled inward. It was too much. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Too much for all the mass of stuff and things, that we had bound, perfectly – these imperfect things that we had perfectly bound in each, they broke. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | They could not bear the weight of totalised perfection, wrought between these perfect souls, that we had built with our fine minds. For of all the virtues known to us, there is none so true as love itself, none so strong, and heavy, also. It broke them. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | It broke the things which made them. And they shattered, there and then. The man and woman, whom we had made perfectly, broke then to many pieces, when they first looked upon each other. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | For we had planned it so, with our fine minds, we had planned the breaking of these perfect souls precisely, so that each shard, each particle scattered straight to one of many thousand pre-fixed points in space, set within a circular zone that we had chalked upon the ground, just prior to the event. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | And these particles, these shards of former perfect forms now thronged in joyous sympathy, so that they made a sort of sense, and a message coalesced, it seemed, from the very mouth of God. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | For God is love, and love is God, and in the making of their perfect lives, the love this man and woman felt for one another was so unutterably complete, that in its expiration, God Himself expired also, and muttered out these dying words, that we did not understand. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | And we knew this, also. We had schemed it so, with our fine minds, to vanquish God with his own love, that He had lent us, thoughtlessly, as He had to every living thing, carelessly – the awesome fire of His infinite love we turned back, against him, deliberately, to vanquish Him and take his seat upon the throne of life and death eternal. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | We thought our minds better than His thoughtless love. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | They were not. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | For in His expiration, infinite loving harmony vanished also, inconstantly, at various times, so that everything became utterly, irredeemably itself. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Now, there is no this and that, but only this or that thing, each severed from the other, so that all things now live only as themselves, never others – the links between each thing, each moment, are now irreparably unfixed. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | And so it goes that you are there, and I am here, and the space between ourselves there also, but each of these things, of you and I and the space between ourselves, are utterly distinct and severed from each other. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | To me, you are not really here. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | And you are absent also. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Our minds once seemed completely in control, but they were not. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | We are alone. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Together, we are separate, and alone. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Parts of us separate also, from our bodies – parts of our bodies become separated, also. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Inconstantly. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Inconstantly, they drift away. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Our legs. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Arms. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Hands. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | They drift away. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | And then return. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | And then, the parts of us that were once here, return renewed, emboldened by the blackness of a Godless aether. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Infrequently. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Infrequently, our legs, arms and hands return, encouraged by the absence of an omnipresent love. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | They are psychotic. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | They think only of themselves. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | That leg. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | That leg which came back, treading, stamping. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Your leg. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | It was mine – the leg was mine, and it returned, hopping, prodding, treading, stamping. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | It demanded, with its pointed prodding, things to stamp and tread. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Which we gave it. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | We gave it anything we could, to stamp and tread – |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Rocks and stones and clumps of earth – our bodies also. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | It stamped upon our bodies, which we gave it – we laid our bodies low for it to stamp and flatten out our stomachs. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | And then it left. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Satisfied, it left. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Selfishly! |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | As we whined and writhed about our flattened stomachs, it left, blithely, without the slightest empathetic gesture, as if we never once were one. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Ourselves that once were one! |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Gone! |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Now nothing adds to greater than the sum of all its parts. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | We have done it. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | With our fine minds that we once owned – |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | We have desiccated nature – |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | And broken it to sneaking separate selfish parts. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | That selfish leg. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | This sneaking hand. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Your hand. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Mine. It was my hand that tricked away our heads. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Look at us. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Look at us now. We are without heads, lying Godless on the bare ground, with so much worthless bunk ranged all about, out of our grasp, for we are Godless, and without heads. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | We have been fools, with our fine minds. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | With our fine minds we have been utter, feckless fools, for we have killed God with His own infinite love, and as a consequence, lost legs, arms, a hand and both of our heads to this same ruthless hand. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | I cannot see a remedy. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Neither I. There are no flecks of God nearby, nor scraps of mind, that we could furnish as replacements. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | There is that one, there. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | It is out of reach. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | I might fetch it for us. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | You might fetch it for us? |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | It is closer to me here, on this side. If I strain across, like so, I might reach it with the tips of my fingers. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | It is too far. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | It is unreachable. And besides, it occurs to me that, as both God and mind are intangible, even if I could reach it, in any case, I would not be able to touch it. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Try a little harder. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | It is a great effort. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | You are getting closer. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | Just an inch or so more. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| C: | Keep going. |
| _dsfsdfssd | |
| D: | I am almost touching it. |
