My Preceding Heart

Yesterday I started a blog post called 'My Bleeding Heart'.

And by started, I mean I wrote the title.

I don't know what the content of the post was going to be. Probably an exploration of my increasingly liberal politics. Or perhaps a photograph.

I'm feeling quite creative. It often happens late at night when I should be going to bed. It's difficult to know what to do in these moods. Sometimes I want to do something more immediate than writing. Typing these words seems like a clumsy and inefficient means of communicating ideas. I'd be better off sculpting something, or singing a song.

But it's late. And everyone is in bed.

Maybe I'll try to draw a picture.

***

I had a go. It didn't really work.

I suppose words are my only tools. I just wish I didn't slip so often and hit my thumb.

***

My Bleeding Heart

by

Paul Fung

FADE IN:

A fly, wearing sunglasses, buzzes through time.

It dodges a dinosaur, gets caught in Abraham Lincoln's beard, sweeps through a futuristic battlefield, meets a Priest, gets drunk, looks at a waitress, cures diphtheria, marches with several armies, waxes lyrical, gets buffeted by bees, makes a sandwich, lands on a table.

INT. CAFE - DAY

The fly gets squashed by the coffee mug of BRISTOL NITRATE.

BRISTOL
Damn. I just killed a fly.

BRISTOL is twenty-something. Twenty-fifteen. Thirty-five. He's skinny, with thin hair and holes in his clothes. He moves like stop-motion animation.

Across from BRISTOL sits a woman: PELLICA DAVENPORT - 50, big nostrils, floating like smoke. They have five open newspapers on the table on front of them.

PELLICA
Your arrogance...

BRISTOL
What?

PELLICA
You killed the fly? Maybe it committed
suicide. Stop disempowering insects.

BRISTOL
My cheque came through.

PELLICA
Next thing you know, you'll be
patronising ants. "Oh you're so strong.
FOR YOUR SIZE."

BRISTOL
My cheque came through.

A waiter walks over to the table and tries to extract a saucer from under a sports section. He gives up, smiles, slips on a spillage and swears with his eyes.

PELLICA
They say pigs are intelligent. I've never met
one. An intelligent one, I mean.

BRISTOL
My cheque came through.

PELLICA
I've met pigs before. God knows I have!

BRISTOL
Pellica.

PELLICA
What are you doing with your life? More
importantly: what are you doing
with mine? I might need it one
of these days. And where's this cheque?

BRISTOL
I left it on the table.

PELLICA lifts up the lifestyle section.

PELLICA
Where?

BRISTOL
Not this table.

PELLICA
But this is the table.

BRISTOL
It wasn't this morning.

PELLICA
Yes it was.

BRISTOL
No. This morning, the table was the table in my kitchen. At home.

PELLICA
I think you'll find that's THAT table. This table
is covered in newspapers and dead flies. Not a
cheque to be seen.

BRISTOL stands up. He brushes crumbs from his shirt, even though he hasn't eaten in two days.

BRISTOL
I'm going home. The bank will be open in
sixteen hours.

PELLICA

You'll be dead in twelve.

He stops in his slacks.

BRISTOL
Is that a threat?

PELLICA
Pure speculation, my dear boy.

BRISTOL leaves, jingling the door's bell on his way out. The partially-squashed fly climbs to its feet - its sunglasses now useless.

CUT TO:

INT. OAK-PANELLED OFFICE - NIGHT

ABRAHAM LINCOLN is putting the finishing touches to a speech. A candle sits in the desk.

LINCOLN taps the end of his pen on the desk. He stands up, and blows out the candle.

Except, instead of air, flies emerge from his mouth. Thousands and thousands of files stream out of his bored mouth. They crowd, swarm, blacken the screen.

OPENING TITLES