Attic/ Attack Scene With Birds
TIMBER 2017 | Issue 7.2
Shari Caplan
Shari Caplan is the author of Advice from a Siren (Dancing Girl Press). Her work is forthcoming from Blue Lyra Review and has earned her a scholarship to The Home School in Hudson, NY as well as a grant for the Vermont Studio Center. Caplan has worked on The VIDA Count and as a reader for Sugar House Review. She received her MFA in Poetry from Lesley University.
INTERIOR – DRESSING ROOM DEDICATED TO TIPPI – WINDOWLESS, LIGHT-BLEACHED. Hitch crouches beside HIS ACTRESS on the loveseat he installed.
HITCH
Your face a diamond against dark satin.
TIPPI
I wonder - why do I go upstairs alone?
HITCH
Once was a girl taking lessons
who asked me too many questions...
TIPPI
(hands folded like sealed letters, ankles crossed)
When you said birds, I thought caress and bread,
a yellow tuft puffing the brush.
HITCH
wore my tokens
but legs wouldn’t open.
She now serves at a delicatessen.
Unrolls silver string from his claw, holds it at her neck.
HITCH
Here. Another.
TIPPI
There can be no more gifts, Hitch.
Why do I go upstairs alone?
HITCH
Don’t think. It will all be mechanical.
She stands. Space flutters between TIPPI and the loveseat, where HITCH stoops, patting the spot she warmed.
HITCH
(staring into the cushion he strokes)
Think of the screen clasping your face.
The mirror grabs at her profile.
HITCH
Now to your room, Little Girl.
INTERIOR - HALLWAY HUNG WITH ACTRESSES PAST – MOMENTS BEFORE THE ATTACK. Grace Kelly glosses a featherbed, but her mind walks in Monaco.
HITCH
(stalks down the hall, twitching glances from one shoulder to the other)
Mechanical birds. All will be over soon. Then, a drink in private.
INTERIOR – ATTIC SET DICTATED TO TIPPI
a door to two stairs to NOWHERE. CHICKEN WIRE fitted around the room.
CUT-TO:
Crows luminesce real feathers. Birds clench the cage bar. An argument. Hitch perches outside in shadow. TIPPI thrust into the room. ACTION!
TIPPI
What’s happened to the prop birds?
Trainers in leather gloves barricade the attic, armed with raven, seagull, crow.
Birds like the taunts of men spatter her gray suit, HITCH COCK HITCH COCK
Where is the knob? Ten at a time, fistfuls of wing. A great hand that bats her across the room, demands she suck its fingers. CUT CUT CUT
CLOSE-UP:
Tippi’s cheek spotted with claw.
HITCH
Like Lady Godiva,
she should shield herself with nothing
but blonde rivers on the skin.
The trainer tethers his gull to her hem. A crow sewn to her shoulder.
A wedding dress of beaks scrapes her chest.
ACTION!
TIPPI
Why do I go upstairs at all? The plot -
The screech clasping her face. Face against darts of dark wing. Here. Stroke this.
HITCH
Her expression should be of
self-sacrifice. She becomes
the virgin she hasn’t been.
ACTION!
HITCH
Stay in your room, Little Girl.
A bomb of birds goes off at her feet. ACTION! A tent of ravens collapses. Seagulls net her like a pond treasure, screeing touch me! Touch me! Where’s the air? Gone out! CUT SNIP CUT
HITCH
ACTION!
INTERIOR – DRESSING ROOM SHOWER FOR WASHING THE BLOOD
Water beats try, try again
MAKEUP GIRL
Can’t you love him a little? Can’t you?
Swoops some concealer under.
CUT-TO: INTERIOR ATTIC SET DEDICATED TO TIPPI
HITCH
(stalks his shadow)
Once was a German groom
constructed a fetish room
TIPPI
Hitch, no woman would -
HITCH
seagulls attack
a blonde front and back.
He empties like a spittoon.
TIPPI
No woman would agree to this.
Rolls his eyes down her face like a hand. She turns.
ACTION!