Imagine

The witching hour had been and gone. It was now entering that part of the night where the pretenders had gone safely to their beds, but the hedonists had not totally taken over the club, their drug-addled eyes moving fitfully as their passions empowered them. Or as my mate Dave would have it, late enough that you weren’t a pussy but not so late that you’d be walking home, not a taxi in sight. Or, as Steve put it, Pick-Up Hour. The flirting had to end one way or another. My mind had been on that particular idea for the last few minutes, actually. You see, there was this girl I’d been eyeing off for quite some part of the night, and sure enough, I’d seen her eyeing me too. The occasional glimpse had our eyes locking, before her eyes would dip demurely as she smiled and returned to her own conversations. We’d eyed each other on the fringes of the dance floor, passing on our way through the masses of late night humanity, eyeing up and down at the bar - all over the place. In short, it’d been a night where little was said, but plenty was understood. Now that the crowd had thinned somewhat, I got a decent look at her. She was tall, closer to six foot than five, though ably assisted by a killer pair of heels. Her legs entirely did justice to the heels, and those in turn were shown off to a greater extent by the is-it-a-shirt-is-it-a-dress number she had on, which I swore and hoped would ride too high at any moment. Deep brown hair framed her tanned face perfectly, and a seemingly too-serious mouth broke into an easy grin at the slightest word from one of her friends. This time, she leaned forward on the bar, patiently awaiting the swamped bartender. Her gaze slowly wandered the club until our eyes locked, and this time she held it. She smiled again, nodded and mouthed something. My guess was “I’ll be over in a minute.” Hello. The night was just about to pay off. It’s at this point, as a guy being approached by a girl, you get two conflicting feelings. The first, primary one is simple: fuck yes, I am the shit tonight. King Dingaling, got ’em coming right over. Doesn’t matter if she’s not perfect, it’s her coming to you, not the other way around. This is the way these things should happen, you think. And that’s rapidly followed by the second thought. Fuck, shit, what am I going to say? You’re used to approaching and seeing your lines get shot down, brave soldiers in the conversation war go to a thousand needless deaths. Now that she is coming to you, you’ve only got one job: don’t cock it up. If you can get away with it, don’t say anything: your body’s obviously done the job already, why mess with the formula? But, shit, what if she gets closer and then changes her mind? Do women go through this every time? It must be excruciating! ...

“What’s this?” “What’s what?” “This little scar here.” “That… that there is from skateboarding.” “No!” “No what?” “You never skateboarded!” “After cracking my head and getting 6 stiches, no.” “I still don’t believe you.” “I was 6 at the time.” “Oh… well, what’s this one?” “That one is from impaling myself on my bike when I was about 10.” “You don’t do things by halves, do you?” “Pure accident. Stacked it while mucking around and the bear-traps took a chunk out of my thigh…” ...

You notice more when you just shut up. The line of the eyebrows, carefully maintained, just under the line of the fringe. The waves in her dark hair, untied now. On the left, tucked behind ears too ordinary, stereotypical even, as one might find on a mannequin. Fingers playing with a loose lock, nails with a clear varnish. A small half-smile arrows into her cheek, eyes distant in thought. A foot kicking air absently, setting the skirt’s pleated hemline swaying. Careful black heels, enough to be fashionable, but not over the top, inoffensive for work. ...

Bang, Bang Gunshots have a way of being capital B bangs. They might even be in all capitals, but that never looks right. Two gunshots, and the silence that followed was so absolute, pin-dropping would have constituted a racket. It was the kind of silence where you could hear the reverb rattling around in people’s heads as their brain scrambled to shift gears, the right gear for this new situation thrust upon them unasked for. Scientists chase an elementary quantam particle called, ridiculously enough, the Higgs Boson, whose existence is so short the mayfly considers it rushed. If watches measured time so minutely, you can bet solicitors would bill by the boson-second. Scientists don’t ever actually see a Higgs Boson, they just sort of assume it’s there because that’s how you explain what’s left behind afterwards. Even light considers a boson to be snappy about its business. The silence which followed the gunshots lasted about three quarters of a boson-second. And yet it stretched out in every human mind, ballooned to such proportions as thoughts queued up to Be Thought, orders issued for the body. A lot of which involved screaming for no reason in particular, mostly because that was the Done Thing. Colin was no woman, so it would be somewhat undignified to join in the screaming. It wasn’t the Done Thing for a man. A man… was supposed to step in, protect the women and the weak, fight, not flight. On the other hand, Colin was no hero. You can’t be a hero with a name like Colin. It doesn’t even work as a secret identity name. Bruce Wayne, Peter Parker, Clark Kent - those were hero names. Even if Clark Kent always sounded a bit like a shoe brand, and Peter Parker like a special type of expensive pen. Not to mention how daft naming your kid Bruce would be. Imagine calling your 4 year old Bruce. “Bruce, don’t you dare stuff that crayon up your nose!” See? You’d just think of an old man going senile. ...

_ TWO PEOPLE, one MALE, one FEMALE, lying on a DOUBLE BED. It is A SUMMER NIGHT, and no lights are on inside THE APARTMENT, though LIGHT filters through the BILLOWING CURTAINS from the STREET OUTSIDE. The CAMERA zooms in from the door, taking in the scene. They are TALKING, IN SOFT WHISPERS. There is a note of AMUSEMENT in the banter, with OCCASIONAL QUIET LAUGHTER, more often feminine. The camera switches to OVERHEAD, CLOSE-IN, as they CONTINUE TO TALK. ...