Bedtime Story

FADE IN:

EXTERIOR. DEAD-END STREET. LATE NIGHT.

A street in an older neighbourhood. The houses are all over hundred years old. Many of the houses have large front porches. The street lights are on, casting orange light. No cars are on the road and no people are walking on the street. Only one house has an exterior light on.

A young MAN, in his mid-twenties, sits in an old ARMCHAIR on the lit PORCH. He is drinking a BEER and listening to the RADIO.

As we move closer, we see that he sits slumped in the CHAIR. He is attractive, but his face is pale and he has dark circles under his eyes. His skin glistens with sweat. He wears a faded t-shirt and shorts.

RADIO ANNOUNCER (V.O.)

Another record-breaking day on the way. The daytime high will be thirty-five degrees, but with the humidity it will feel more like 50. We’re over 30 days into this heat wave and no relief in sight. Right now, it’s 25.

MAN shuts off the RADIO and sips his BEER. We hear CRICKETS and FROGS in the background. As MAN speaks, we begin to hear birds singing.

MAN (V.O.)

I hadn’t slept in weeks. All I could get were a few restless hours of not awake, not all the way asleep.

(pause)

Life got strange. Out of focus and lacking all colour. All I could think about was sleep. The one thing I couldn’t get.

(pause)

So I spent my nights watching the street and listening to the sounds of the river at the end of the street.

MAN (V.O.) (CONT)

I learned what the sky looked like as night lightens towards day, that the birds sing loudest just before sunrise.

(pause)

I waited for sleep or sunrise. Whichever came first.

MAN looks up the street. He sees a young WOMAN, also in her mid-twenties, walking slowly down the street.

She walks very slowly, with her body held very straight, like a dancer. She is beautiful. Between the orange glow of the STREETLIGHTS, she fades out of view. She wears pyjamas in a bright printed fabric. Her feet are bare. Her face is blank and her gaze is fixed forward. The MAN watches the WOMAN walk by.

MAN stands up and walks to the bottom step of the porch. He watches the WOMAN walk to the end of the street. As he watches, we see his face change from confusion to understanding.

MAN runs out into the street and past the WOMAN. He stands in front of her and places his hands on her shoulders. She stops walking, but her face remains blank and somewhat slack.

MAN

(quietly)

Hey. Wake up.

MAN shakes WOMAN gently. Her expression changes as she wakes up. She looks around as if unsure of where she is, but she is not afraid or startled.

WOMAN

I – uh – I, where am I?

MAN

Well, you’re on Knox Street. Almost at the river, actually. You were sleepwalking, I think. You just about went for a swim in the river.

WOMAN

I do that. Sleepwalk, I mean.

She smiles at MAN. Her smile is open and friendly.

WOMAN

Thanks for stopping me. Although, you know, a swim would be kind of nice in this heat. Don’t you think?

MAN

I guess, but not in there. Smell that? That dead smell? That’s the river. It stinks a bit more every day. I think it’s drying up. You’d end up more dirty than clean in that water.

They say nothing for a few beats. They stand on the street looking at each other. It is not an awkward pause. MAN appears to be sleepwalking now.

MAN becomes alert again and takes his hands from her shoulders.

MAN

Can I give you a ride home? Where do you live?

WOMAN

I’m over on Leslie. Usually, I don’t leave the yard, but sometimes – I walk a little farther. But I think this is the farthest I’ve ever gone.

MAN

Let me take you home.

INTERIOR. CAR. EARLY MORNING.

The car is stopped. WOMAN is asleep with her head against the window. MAN watches her sleep for a few moments and then wakes her. She stretches and yawns.

We hear BIRDS singing loudly.

WOMAN

Sorry! Since the heat wave started, all I do is sleep. As soon as I sit still, I’m out.

She snaps her fingers.

WOMAN

Like that.

MAN

I wish I slept like that. Ever since it started, I’ve had the worst insomnia. Pills, booze, herbal teas, counting sheep, nothing works. Every night, I sleep less.

WOMAN takes his face in her hands and looks into his eyes. They are very close. They look as if they are about to kiss.

WOMAN

You’re the most exhausted person I’ve ever met. I feel sleepy just breathing the same air as you.

She sits back and pats his cheek. She undoes her seatbelt and gets out of the car. She leans in the door.

WOMAN

Good morning! Thanks for saving me from the river.

MAN watches as she walks away. We only see him watching her. We do not see her. He leans his head against the steering wheel.

EXTERIOR. PORCH. DAY LIGHT.

MAN sits on porch in an armchair. He is looking at the street.

We hear CICADAS buzzing in the background. MAN is tired and sweaty.

WOMAN comes in from off frame. She moves quickly, bounding up the stairs. She carries a PILLOW. She is smiling. She is wearing different pyjamas, but these are also brightly coloured.

WOMAN

Hello, sleepy-head! Or should I say, sleepless-head?

MAN

Hi! How are you? Did you sleep OK once you got home?

(He is more energetic as he speaks to her.)

He stands up to greet her.

WOMAN

Yes. But you didn’t.

(pause)

So I’m here to sleep with you.

MAN hesitates. He looks surprised. WOMAN walks past him and into the house.

WOMAN (OFF SCREEN)

Literally, I mean! Where’s your room?

MAN is confused. He pauses to think about what she means, but he’s too tired to understand. He shrugs his shoulders and follows her inside.

INTERIOR. BEDROOM. DAY

WOMAN makes the bed. She tucks sheets in and smooths the surface. She closes blinds so the room is dim. MAN watches her. Her PILLOW is on the bed.

WOMAN

There. The bed is very important. You should feel secure when you’re sleeping. It should feel like the safest place in the world. You should be able to slide into the sheets like a letter into an envelope.

MAN

I’m not sleeping because I don’t make my bed?

WOMAN

Well, it doesn’t help.

(pause)

Now get in.

She past the bed firmly. MAN gets into the bed. WOMAN gets in beside him. She lies on her side, facing the wall. He lies on his back. His posture is stiff. He does not touch her. As she speaks, he follows her directions. She is relaxed.

WOMAN

Come closer. I want you to feel me breathing.

(pause)

That’s right.

(pause)

Now, put your arm around me. There.

(pause)

Now, close your eyes.

(pause)

Breathe in deeply.

(pause)

Exhale slowly.

(pause)

Relax your muscles. One at a time. Let it go. Feel how relaxed I am? How loose? Melt into the bed. Let it hold you up.

MAN

Now what?

WOMAN

Pay attention to how I breathe. Breathe with me.

Her voice is slowing her words are harder to hear.

WOMAN

Breathe slowly and relax.

We hear them both breathing together. Their breathing slows as they sleep. We watch them sleep for several moments.

INTERIOR. BEDROOM. EARLY EVENING.

We hear RAIN outside. LIGHTNING lights the room bright blue intermittently. THUNDER rumbles in the distance.

MAN is alone in the bed. His eyes open. He sees that she is gone. Her PILLOW is also gone. For a moment, he lies still, looking at where she was. He appears lost for a moment.

He sits up, yawns and stretches. As he gets out of bed, we see the change in his appearance. He looks relaxed, but awake. He lays his hand on the place in the bed where she was and smiles.

EXTERIOR. PORCH. EARLY EVENING.

The RAIN continues. MAN is standing on the porch looking at the street. He holds his hand to catch rain. He is smiling.

We hear the RADIO faintly:

RADIO ANNOUNCER (VOICE OVER)

As a cold front moves in, we’ll have rain and thunder for most of the evening.

Tomorrow’s high is 23 degrees. Right now, outside our studio, it’s 20 and rain.

We hear faint music on the RADIO.

MAN (VOICE OVER)

For the first time in weeks, I could sleep.

(pause)

For the first time, I was awake.

THE END

A Brighter Green

I heard people like stories like mine. Do you think you’ll be able to sell it? Remember what we agreed on. I get half because I’m giving you the words. You are my amanuensis; I am your muse. Sure, you’ll stretch it out. You’ll add colour. After all, you get paid by the word.

My story has an ordinary enough beginning. Once there was a little girl who was very happy. She had everything her heart desired. It is true. I only had to say, “I want that” and my doting mother and father would be sure to get it for me. My mother was a great beauty. My father was a great industrialist. They had conflicting ideas about what my fate would be. My mother wanted me to grow up to purchase them nearness to the aristocracy through a titled marriage. My father, realizing he wasn’t destined to have sons, wanted me to be equipped to take over the family business.

My father died when I was twelve years old. My mother remarried quickly, although not so quickly that it was unseemly. She was young enough and very beautiful. My father’s will had left his factories and works to me with an uncle acting in my stead until I was of age. So my mother had no access to our family’s former fortune. Did my father suspect she’d shut down his beloved industries? Very likely.

At any rate, my mother married a man who seemed to make money from air. My stepfather was not titled, but was a gentleman. He had properties from which he drew an income. He had nothing to do but go back and forth from country to city as the season required with intervals of travelling. He was not unkind to me, but he was very often not there.

He too had a daughter and no sons. My stepsister, Charlotte, was very beautiful. She was two years older than me and was well schooled in all the necessary talents for a woman of her station. She had a quick mind that had not been developed with any sort of learning, but she had not wasted it. Rather, she put her considerable intelligence into making use of the people around her. I was of no use to her, so she ignored me.

My mother saw Charlotte and realized right away that in the marriage game, she’d be better to back Charlotte than me.They shared a common view of the world.

It’s not that I am ill-looking. I know that I am not. After all, if I were ugly, your readers would have no interest in my story, would they?

My mother transferred all of her attentions, all of her affections to my stepsister. My stepfather drifted the periphery of our lives, supplying money, but little else. I was very lonely. My mother refused to send me to school. After all, why waste any resources on the ill-favoured child? If she had any plans for me, I believe it was to care for her and my stepfather once my stepsister had made her glorious match.

Yet, I kept up my studies as best I could. I corresponded with my uncle to keep informed about my business interests. I fully intended to take them over the moment I turned twenty-one.

I built a laboratory in one of the outbuildings on the property. My father’s main business had been in creating synthetic dyes. I wanted to keep up his work and see if I could develop a greater variety of colours. Only, I wanted to make ones that were not poisonous to both the wearer and the worker. One of the virtues of being unwanted and ignored is freedom.

To occupy my hands during the times I was forced to sit with my mother and stepsister, I learned to sew. After all, constructing a garment is no different than engineering. It is all about fitting pieces together.

My stepsister was enormously proud of her green eyes. She despaired of ever finding a dress that would exactly match her eyes. I saw my opportunity to reach out to my stepsister, to do something for her.

One day, while she was complaining of this, I happened to mention that I had developed a green dye that might suit her. I showed her a silk handkerchief I had dyed with it. She clapped her hands and said that was exactly what she wanted for her ball gown. For once, she was interested in my work. She followed me out to my shed to see what other colours I could create for her.

I dressed her in bright greens, vivid blues, blood reds. I designed dresses for my stepsister that put Parisian dressmakers to shame. I hired children from the village to stir my dye pots and girls to sew my creations. I wouldn’t let anyone enter our workplace. My mother, seeing how my work would set her favoured child off to advantage, permitted this work.

Everything Charlotte wore, from her stockings to her gowns to the artificial flowers in her hair and the gloves on her hands passed through my little factory.

She had so many proposals. That season, she shone like a butterfly, a tropical bird, a rare flower.

All those men who didn’t see that her beauty was only on her surface. She had no heart. She thought only of herself. And my mother thought only of her and they both thought only of the status of the sir or lord or duke they’d catch in their web.

She landed a duke. But you know this. Your paper covered the preparations for her wedding quite extensively if I recall.

Of course I made her wedding dress and her trousseau. I laced her into her corset with my own hands, pulling the laces so tightly that Charlotte could span her waist with her tiny hands. I helped her shove her feet into her tiny silk shoes. I hung the veil over her face.

The vows were read. The groom kissed his bride, the bishop announced them as man and wife, the bells rang.

We all retired to the wedding breakfast where the guests, were shocked to see the bride, the beautiful new duchess, collapse. She was dead before she hit the ground. The bride’s lovely stepmother who treated the bride as her own daughter also collapsed and died. Her beautiful purple dress ruined when she spilled her wine down her front.

It would’ve been a medical mystery except for one particularly sharp young doctor who read the paper, saw our names and remembered treating a child who worked on our property for a nasty chemical burn. The child had made me out as some kind of witch, with boiling cauldrons of terrible poisons.

She wanted colours that didn’t exist in nature. I gave them to her. They wanted her to catch a title. She did. It’s too bad the experimental dyes I created were poisonous.

I hear your readers are angry that I’m being transported rather than hanged. But after all, I was found guilty of manslaughter.

What the papers did not report is that I married several weeks before my stepsister. I married one of my father’s former employees. My uncle transferred the company to him. He’s coming with me to Australia. A new world is full of new possibilities.

In From the Cold

Heart's desire

The coming here was hard. He said it will be worth it, Mary. Don’t fret on it. Because what was there behind us? Nothing, he said. Just rocks and land that don’t belong to us. And I would add, under my breath, nothing but home. Nothing but our families. Nothing but our hearts.

When our youngest girl died of dysentery on the way over, I learned that I’d brought pieces of my heart with me from Scotland. And I would be strewing them along my path to this new land. Like the children in the story do to mark their path to home.

The first year was hard. The lord’s big words amounted to not much. We did not come to a utopia. We got the land he promised. But what of it? What wasn’t marsh was full of trees we had to clear ourselves. Our first months were spent in tents and then shivering in log huts when the winter came. So many died. I would look to the east and think of home, all through that long winter. Perhaps it wasn’t Christian of me to sorrow so. But I did.

He said, Mary, don’t take on so. This is our home now. Our children will be free. They won’t see their labour go to fill a lord’s pockets, to be wasted on sport and women. And that was true. But it wasn’t enough for me.

He said, Mary, you should be happy with the new bairn. She is the spit of her sister, the one we lost. She was beautiful and so like her sister. So very like, indeed.

I never said much in reply. The women in our settlement thought I was a bit unfriendly, but I never turned a stranger from our door. Nor did I refuse a neighbour any help. It was just the pieces of my heart were in the way of my voice. If I spoke, my anguish threatened to come out and I would never get it back inside again.

Life got better. Everyone worked together to clear the trees, drain the marsh, plant the crops. Our house grew a little more comfortable with every harvest. My children, the ones who survived the coming and the ones born here, thought of this place as home. He said, look at these fine Canadians we’re raising. And they were so fine. They were strong and handsome and smart.

My husband brought me seeds from the city. For flowers, he said. So I could have something beautiful of my own. My daughters and I sowed the seeds so that in the summer, I would see flowers from my kitchen window. He said, they are to gladden your heart. Tell me how to gladden your heart. But I couldn’t say, take me home because that would be impossible. He loved it here as did my children.

The flowers were lovely. When another of my babies died, the flowers looked beautiful in his coffin. A piece of my heart went into this Canadian ground with him.

Still, I liked my flowers. The flowers of home mixed with the flowers of here mixed with the flowers that fine ladies would grow. The colours cheered me and the girls pressed them so that we could enjoy them through the long, dark winters.

The old woman from the cottage down the lane would come begging for a few flowers every summer. I never asked what she did with them. They were poor, her family. The boys, men, really did not work as hard as other men here. And she was a strange one, always muttering to herself. It was said she walked into the long woods to talk to the Devil.

One day, she looked at me with her one sharp eye. The other eye was white and blinded. But her sharp eye was young and like a bird’s eye, always roving, dark and glittering.

She said, I can get you what you desire most. My tattered heart stopped in my chest. But what is the cost? I asked her. Because I knew, under that dark eye, the stories were true and she did have powers and secrets.

She said, it would only cost your husband’s joy. And one of your fair daughters. I said, yes. Even though I had thought she meant to kill one of my daughters. She laughed at my firm yes and she said, I only mean for one of my sons to marry one of your daughters. She said, you were ready to give one up entirely. I replied, I have already given two. One to the sea. One to this land. What is another?

My husband’s trials began that very day. Indeed, our whole family was bedeviled.

Bullets came through the windows at all times. Yet none ever pierced a person. Still, my eldest daughter said, I cannot live here, always waiting to be killed. When the old lady’s son came and asked to marry her, my daughter said yes and was gone.

Soon after, the fires started. Little fires everywhere. He said, we need to leave this cursed place. My heart leapt. But he only meant to go to another home. My eldest son married and left us to our troubles.

The fires followed us. Tables jumped, dishes flew, animals died. But my husband had enough of moving. And he stayed. Although our barn burned. Then our house so that we were reduced to tents.

The old woman would see me on my way to prayer meetings and she would wink and tap her nose. Soon, she would whisper to me as she handed me a basket of eggs or fruit. Soon, you will have your heart’s desire.

Men, though, love to solve a problem when the best solution would be to leave, to quit. No. They want to stay. They want to win. So the men of the settlement put their brains to it. Although we were shivering in tents and only the littlest children remained with us because they could not marry or work in other households.

First came the schoolmaster. He nailed up a sign asking evil to be gone from our place. He had read it in a book, he said. The minister did not like it, nor did the law. A magistrate came down from the city and arrested the schoolmaster for taking pay to hunt witches. After several months in jail, he was set free because my son wrote to say the schoolmaster had done it on his own, for no money. The sign caught fire in the night.

The fires burned through the summer. Every time my husband attempted to rebuild, a fire would consume his work. He said, we must have done something to earn God’s wrath. I would say nothing.

Then the French sent their priest to us. He said words in Latin and wrestled mightily with something, but to no purpose. Stones still fell from the sky behind my children, bullets ripped through the tents, although there was no gun and the fires yet burned.

Be patient, the old woman said. You will get your desire.

Then a doctor said he knew of a girl who could see into the next world. My husband agreed to go with him. He said, I will be back soon. I don’t want to deal with witches, but something must be done or we will have to leave this place. I said nothing, but I smiled as he walked away.

He was gone a week. In my dreams, I saw him in the woods, beset by wolves. He was devoured by them, ripped apart. And when I woke, I said, if he doesn’t return, I will go home.

He returned.

He said, I need a silver bullet. Have you not seen the great dark bird that watches us? The children see it. I said, this is foolishness. A silver bullet. How will you get such a thing?

He took my silver cup and had the blacksmith melt it down and form it into a ball. The cup had been my mother’s and it had belonged to her mother and so on back through the years. It was to have been my oldest daughter’s.

When he left with his gun, a great fire came and took our tent and our cart and our fields. All but my flowers were devoured.

Pain ripped through my chest. I have shot it, he said. Come see, he cried. Come see the great bird I’ve shot. Right through the breast, he cried. But I stood in our neighbour’s home, bleeding onto the floor, a great red puddle spreading around my feet, soaking the hem of my dress.

Come see, he said, rushing through the door as if he were a young man again. He stopped in the doorway, his face white. He dropped the gun, little caring if it should fire by accident. What happened, he said.

I’m going home, I said to him. I laughed and laughed. I had never told the witch what I had wanted. I thought I had wanted to go home. But then I knew. I had wanted my heart to stop being ripped away piece by piece. So she made it that my heart would go all at once.