EVEN RATS CARRY LOVE IN THEIR SICK TAILS (unedited excerpt from a script about a clinical heart crash)
INT HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT ((place: somewhere you could consider to be the heartbreak hotel))
HAYES
I got this scratch yesterday. He scolded me.
LOU
He wasn’t here.
HAYES
Of course he was. Just down the park.
LOU
There is no park, love. Do you know where you are?
HAYES
No.
LOU
Do you know why you’re here?
HAYES
No.
LOU
When did you see him?
HAYES
Yesterday.
LOU
Where?
HAYES
Down the park.
LOU
Was it raining?
HAYES
Pouring.
LOU
Have you seen a bird flying with no wings?
HAYES
What?
LOU
Answer the question.
HAYES
No.
HAYES starts playing with the hem of her shirt. There is a lipstick stain and two clementines fall off the table.
LOU
Hayes?
HAYES
Who?
LOU
You are Hayes. You are at the (unknown name) Hotel.
HAYES
This is not–
LOU (cutting HAYES off)
You were brought here on 21st of June. Your lover threw you in two years ago. You live on the 14th floor, room 302. You always sit by the window at the diner. You barely talk to anyone but yourself. You like salmon and coffee and you never complain about it even though it’s too bitter. You fear forgetting. And loneliness. Although you seem clinically lonely. This is not your first stay. You were here when you were five – the youngest resident the hotel has ever known. You were born with sadness crippling behind your eyelids and hunger biting on your bruised limbs. They never knew what to do with you so they let you play in the diner and gave you candy. You lived here for 10 years, Hayes. They think it must have been that adolescence came with a change of heart. You converted the sadness into love and they let you out. You were fooled by your own imagination, your lonesome playtimes and scratched knees. You thought it was love, Hayes.
author’s note: I have to keep every wish concealed inside my body so no one takes it away. The downside of all this is that no matter the discipline of my tongue, it always ends up disappointing me. Even rats carry love in their sick tails.
