Plays from VAULT 5 E-Book

Various

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Serie: NHB Modern Plays
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 222

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

This anthology, the fifth from Nick Hern Books, comprises five of the best plays from VAULT Festival 2020, London's biggest and most exciting arts festival. Something Awful by Tatty Hennessy is a thrilling play inspired by the true-crime story of the Slenderman. Soph and her best friend Jel love scary stories and hunt for the best online. But then new girl Ellie turns up at school with one of her own. Second Home by Charlotte Chimuanya explores the experiences of growing up mixed-race in twenty-first century Ireland. Naomi is trying to mend her broken heart. But will tackling grief and racism in a place she calls home prove to be the final betrayal? Madame Ovary by Rosa Hesmondhalgh tells the heartbreaking and hilarious true story of Rosa's own ovarian cancer. This five-star sell-out Edinburgh hit is a life-affirming monologue exploring the typical struggles of staying relevant, with the less typical struggles of staying alive.   Take Care by Zoë Templeman-Young and Sam McLaughlin follows the real-life story of Pam, a woman struggling to move her mother into a care home that's closer to her. An award-winning Edinburgh smash, it is an astonishing, tragic and uplifting verbatim play about the care system in the UK today. Heroes by Isabel Dixon is a poignant exploration of fallen idols, family secrets and the human price of forgiveness. Set across two timelines, it is the tense and sensitive story of a family torn apart by an unforgiveable act. 'A major London festival… showcasing new and rising talent'Independent on VAULT Festival.

Leseprobe

PLAYS FROM

VAULT 5

SOMETHING AWFUL

Tatty Hennessy

SECOND HOME

Charlotte Chimuanya

MADAME OVARY

Rosa Hesmondhalgh

TAKE CARE

Zoë Templeman-Young & Sam McLaughlin

HEROES

Isabel Dixon

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Welcome to VAULT Festival

Something Awful by Tatty Hennessy

Second Home by Charlotte Chimuanya

Madame Ovary by Rosa Hesmondhalgh

Take Care by Zoë Templeman-Young & Sam McLaughlin

Heroes by Isabel Dixon

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Welcome to VAULT Festival

Theatre’s a funny thing, isn’t it? Being in a dark room with a bunch of strangers, being asked to give your time and attention to this moment, here, now. And in return asking for a story, a voice, a perspective on the world. Asking to be moved. To be changed. And then we disperse. To the bar to dissect. Back home to our family or friends. Back to the everyday. But for an hour or two, we have all been a part of something. We have, artists and audience alike, been a community. Part of a story that, while it may be told again, will never exist in that exact way. It’s pretty exhilarating. And at VAULT Festival, there is the opportunity to have that experience, that immediacy, that joy and risk, hundreds of times through thousands of artists. That’s pretty fucking incredible.

Now, more than any other time I can think of, we are questioning whose stories we are being presented with. Who has been left out of the narrative? And why? VAULT Festival is one of the increasingly rare places where artists who are traditionally underrepresented on our stages, whether that be race, background, gender, class or ability, can have their voices heard. Their stories told. Can be seen.

This year, VAULT Festival is welcoming some of the best and strongest new writing in the country. The plays published in this collection represent a fraction of the incredibly varied, raw, vibrant, urgent and playful work across the 2020 Festival. The writers in this collection have delivered unique perspectives on the world and their experiences moving through it. I could not be more proud of this collection, and of all the work presented at this year’s festival. Of the risks artists are taking in this strange and scary world, and of the unfaltering belief from everyone who comes to VAULT Festival, from audiences, staff and the artists themselves in the power of art to change that world.

As always, this collection and the new writing presented in the Festival would not be possible without the ongoing support of Nick Hern Books. Their dedication and belief in writers and their willingness to platform them through the VAULT Festival has been unwavering and we are all so thankful.

So have a read. Go see these shows. Go see the rest of them. And when you’re sat in that room, willing to be moved and changed, being witness to the unique power and transience of theatre, remember we’re all in this together.

Bec Martin-Williams

Head of Theatre and Performance

VAULT Festival 2020

This ebook was created before the end of rehearsals and so the texts may differ slightly from the plays as performed.

SOMETHING AWFUL

Tatty Hennessy

TATTY HENNESSY

Tatty Hennessy is an award-winning playwright, dramaturg and director. She is a graduate of the Royal Court Young Writers Programme. Previous plays include F Off (National Youth Theatre, Udderbelly); A Hundred Words for Snow (Trafalgar Studios); The Snow Queen (Theatre N16) and All That Lives (Ovalhouse).

Something Awful was first performed at VAULT Festival, London, on 28 January 2020.

SOPH

Natalya Martin

JEL

Monica Anne

ELLIE

Melissa Parker

Director

Lucy Jane Atkinson

Producer

Georgie Staight

Will Adolphy for Flux Theatre

Lighting Designer

Holly Ellis

Stage Manager

Bethany Pratt

Sound Designer

Sam Glossop

Characters

JEL, female, thirteen

SOPH, female, thirteen

ELLIE, female, thirteen

/ denotes an interruption by the following character.

Prologue

SOPH and JEL are at the computer. SOPH is telling a story, JEL’s eyes are glued to the screen.

SOPH. I was walking home from a late class one evening. It was autumn, not really cold yet, a chill in the air, but not too bad. The streets were totally empty. I had my earphones in listening to my favourite song. And then I looked up and –

Ahead of me there was a woman. Standing in the pool of light from a lamp-post. She definitely hadn’t been up ahead of me when I last looked up. She must have moved to that spot very quickly, but now she was just. Standing there. But she was just a little woman, she didn’t look threatening, out for a late stroll or on her way home from work, just like me.

She had something over the lower half of her face, covering her mouth and nose. At first I couldn’t process what it was but as I drew near I could see it was a white surgical mask, white elastic tucked behind her ears.

Can I help you?

I asked.

She looked sad. Her eyes. Like maybe she’d been crying. She looked up at me. And she said something. She spoke really quietly, almost in a whisper, and her voice was muffled by the mask.

Sorry?

I leaned in a little closer to hear her.

Do you think I’m beautiful?

She asked.

Right. I figured. She’s just been dumped and she’s out here crying feeling sorry for herself and just wants cheering up.

Poor thing. So I smile and I say:

Sure, of course you’re beautiful.

And her eyes lock on to mine and she reaches up to her ear and unhooks the white elastic and pulls off the mask and

I want to throw up.

Her face is split open, two thick jagged cuts from the edges of her mouth all through her cheeks up to her ears, like a child covering their face in red lipstick. The cuts are stitched roughly together with thick black bloody twine and the scars are still wet.

How about now?

She asks.

Suddenly, a very loud horrible noise bursts from the laptop speakers. The masked woman attacks. JEL screams and slams the laptop shut.

JEL. FUCK!

SOPH laughs, JEL thumps her arm, furious.

You know I hate the jumpy ones.

1.

JEL is showing ELLIE round the school. SOPH is not helping.

JEL. Is it different to your old school? There’s lots of clubs and societies and stuff. So whatever you like I’m sure you’ll find something to do. After school and on lunch. And if you have a club on you can do early lunch and skip the queue so you have time. We don’t really do clubs though. Want one?

She offers a pack of Skittles. Beat.

ELLIE. Yeah alright.

JEL. If there’s something you like that there’s no club for you can start one. One girl started Jewish club and on Fridays they do their own assemblies in B1 and you don’t actually even have to actually be Jewish to go. And you can do extra classes and stuff. I’m doing Mandarin. My mum says Mandarin’s attractive to universities because it’s an employable skill for the future. And there’s loads of sports teams.

ELLIE. I don’t do sports.

SOPH. You look like you do sports.

ELLIE. I don’t do teams.

JEL. I do gymnastics. It’s alright. Our form tutor’s Mr Michaels. He’s alright but he’s really strict on lateness and if you’re late more than twice you get a pink slip / and you have to –

ELLIE. Is he fit?

JEL. Um. He’s sort of. Old.

ELLIE. Are any of them fit?

JEL. Um. / I don’t…

SOPH. Jel fancies Mr O’Connell.

JEL. No I don’t I just like geography.

SOPH. No one likes geography.

ELLIE. Is he fit?

SOPH. He’s a teacher. That’s disgusting.

ELLIE. My dad speaks Chinese.

JEL. Mandarin. Really?

ELLIE. He’s a pilot.

JEL. In China?

ELLIE. Everywhere. You don’t just fly one place do you that’d be pigshit. Look.

She shows JEL her phone.

JEL. He looks nice.

ELLIE. Alright, nympho.

JEL. Is it like your old school?

ELLIE. My old school was this really hardcore girls’ school where everybody goes to like Cambridge and if you weren’t a genius you got totally dicked on. One girl in the year above killed herself.

JEL. Oh my god.

ELLIE. Yeah it was so bad, we all had to have counselling even if we weren’t sad. But I liked the school. It wasn’t in the middle of fucking nowhere.

SOPH. So why’d you move, then?

ELLIE. My dad got this huge promotion.

SOPH. A pilot promotion?

ELLIE. Yeah. Bought this big house in the country, moved us. It was that or boarding school and boarding schools are for lesbians and psychopaths so. There’s a pool but I hate swimming.

JEL. I love swimming.

ELLIE. You should come round and swim some time.

JEL. Do you have pool noodles?

ELLIE. Obviously. (To SOPH.) You swim?

SOPH. No.

ELLIE. What do you fucking do then?

2.

ELLIE and JEL are playing a game with paper and a pen. SOPH is on her laptop.

ELLIE. Number two.

JEL. I don’t know.

ELLIE. Like anything.

JEL. Like. Hug?

ELLIE. Okay. Boring. Number three?

JEL. I don’t know, I don’t / know what’s good.

ELLIE. Like shag on a desk or shag on a pool table / or

JEL. Okay fine. Um. Yeah, shag on a desk.

ELLIE. Oh my god. Okay. Number four.

JEL. Um. Shag. In a swimming pool?

ELLIE. Yes. Okay. Five?

JEL. Um shag in the library?

ELLIE. Okay. So. You are going to stab Ms Jamil.

JEL. No!

ELLIE. Hug Soph.

JEL. Ms Jamil’s so lovely.

ELLIE. Shag Mr O’Connell on a desk.

JEL. Gross.

ELLIE. Oh my god you’ve gone so red you love it you perv.

JEL. No.

ELLIE. Shag the Queen in a swimming pool. That’s probably treason. And shag Mr Graves in the library can you imagine?

JEL. He’s so hairy, it’s so gross.

ELLIE. Imagine it all, like, rubbing on you.

JEL. Ew.

ELLIE. Getting stuck between your teeth.

JEL. Stop.

SOPH. Have you actually ever shagged someone?

ELLIE. Almost. My boyfriend in my old school tried but his cock was too big and it hurt too much so I just had to suck it instead.

JEL. Eew.

SOPH. That never happened.

ELLIE. Um. Yes it did.

SOPH. Sure.

ELLIE. It did. Just cos no one wants to fuck you.

JEL. You put it in your mouth?

ELLIE. It’s not that bad really. And like. When you love someone it’s nice to do nice things for them.

JEL. Yeah.

SOPH. What would you know?

JEL. I can imagine.

SOPH rolls her eyes.

JEL. Were you sad to leave him?

ELLIE. Yeah but we chat all the time and I send him pics so it’s not that bad. Here, I’ll show you.

JEL. No thanks.

ELLIE. I meant I’ll show you him. Lezzer. God you two are freaks.

SOPH. Why are you hanging out with us then?

JEL. Soph, she’s just / joking.

ELLIE. Alright, take your tampon out.

SOPH. No one’s making you stay, you can go.

JEL. I want her to stay. I wanna see the photo.

SOPH returns, pointedly, to her screen. ELLIE smiles, gets out her phone.

ELLIE. This is him… Ugh, why does this shitty school block everything?

JEL. Soph can fix it for you.

ELLIE. What?

JEL. She can go on any site, even on the / school computers.

SOPH. Jel, fucksake!

JEL. What?

ELLIE. Show me.

SOPH. No.

ELLIE. Why not?

SOPH. I don’t feel like it.

ELLIE. Why not?

SOPH. Oh, I don’t know, cos I’m such a freak?

JEL. Soph go on.

SOPH. She’ll fucking tell everyone and then / school will find out and Mr Norman will.

ELLIE. Who would I tell?

SOPH. Um, Nicola, Jenny, any of / them.

ELLIE. I would / not.

SOPH. And then they’d all want me to help them post / their dumb videos.

ELLIE. I’m not gonna, okay? Swear. On my mum’s life.

JEL. Soph.

ELLIE. I’ll owe you. (She says this next as though it’s in air-quotes. Maybe she even does air-quotes.) ‘I’m sorry for calling you a freak.’

SOPH takes ELLIE’s phone.

How does it work?

SOPH. It’s a VPN. You wouldn’t understand it.

ELLIE. She unblock yours, too?

JEL. I don’t have a phone.

ELLIE. What?

JEL. I don’t have a / phone.

ELLIE. Actually what?

JEL. I’m not really allowed on the internet. My mum’s worried I’d get cyberbullied.

ELLIE. Right.

JEL. She doesn’t like apps. She says teenagers get, like, addicted to technology and it ruins their lives.

ELLIE. I’m addicted to not shitting in a bucket, have toilets ruined my life.

JEL She says they make apps with the same psychology they make slot machines. Like, there was this woman and she was playing Farmville and she was so into her game of Farmville that when her baby was crying she went like mental and hit the baby’s head on the table so she could keep playing Farmville and it died.

ELLIE. Farmville isn’t even that hard, what a loser.

JEL. And she hates selfies. She thinks they encourage the focus of young people’s self-worth to be entirely externalised.

SOPH. Your mum took one psychology course and thinks she’s Freud.

ELLIE. She’s probably just ugly.

SOPH. Done.

SOPH hands the phone back.

SOPH. The internet is yours.

ELLIE. Thanks. What are you on, then?

SOPH. What?

ELLIE. You’re glued to that thing, what you on all day?

JEL. Oh it’s so good.

SOPH. You won’t like it.

ELLIE. What is it, porn?

SOPH. No.

ELLIE. Like weird tentacle / porn.

SOPH. No, gross. I just don’t think you’d like it.

ELLIE. Why not?

SOPH. Because.

ELLIE. Tell me what it is and I’ll decide / if it

JEL. It’s a creepypasta board.

ELLIE. A what?

JEL. Like stories and pictures and stuff and they’re all creepy.

ELLIE. Right.

SOPH. Shut up.

JEL. What? It’s like. It’s this big messageboard basically and there’s everything and we go on the one for scary stuff.

ELLIE. Scary like how?

JEL. Well, this one time, one of / them was like

SOPH. Jel, shut the fuck up.

JEL. What?

SOPH. She doesn’t actually care she just wants / to rip the piss.

ELLIE. Fuck off.

SOPH. There’s boards to rate cam-girls, maybe that’s more your speed.

ELLIE. Well I’m flattered, but… Come on, try me. Okay. I’ve seen Blair Witch. And not even the remake, the original, and I wasn’t even scared. How scary can some shitty chatroom be.

SOPH. Okay.

She searches on the laptop for a moment. JEL watches over her shoulder.

JEL. Yeah oh my god that one.

SOPH. Okay. So. This one’s from a doctor working in the US military on top-secret CIA experiments. They wanted to see what happened if you could make men live without sleep. So. They got these prisoners and they took them to this super-secret high-level security medical facility, way out in the desert. And they made them all inhale this special gas-based stimulant to keep them awake. They stuck them in a hermetically sealed chamber with microphones in the walls and porthole windows for the scientists to look through and make their observations. The first four days everything seemed okay but by the fifth day they were all freaking out. They stopped talking to each other, started whispering to themselves, searching for the microphones in the walls. It was nine days before the screaming started. Just one man first, shrieking and running the length of the enclosure until his throat was so hoarse he could only rattle out his breaths. Then two. Then all of them. Screaming till their vocal cords tore. They ripped the pages from the books they’d been given, smeared them with their shit and stuck them to the windows till the scientists had no way of seeing in, no way of knowing what was going on inside. Then the screaming stopped. The men just went silent. For days and days. They knew they were alive because the oxygen levels were changing, but they were changing crazily, way too much, like the men were breathing double. Eventually they knew they had to go in and check so they made an announcement, like, ‘Stand back from the doors, we’re coming in. If you comply, one of you will be freed immediately.’ But a reply came back from one of the men. ‘We no longer want to be freed.’ The scientists freaked out, they called armed agents to help them. They drained all of the stimulant gas out of the chamber and opened it up and went in and… One of the subjects was dead. The others…

Their bodies were ravaged. They’d torn hunks of still-living flesh from themselves, their ribcages open and gleaming, their still-working stomachs visible, hanging in their bones, digesting their own flesh as they gorged themselves on themselves. They refused to leave the chamber. ‘We will not sleep.’ They chanted. One of the soldiers and two of the subjects were killed in the struggle. The final man was pulled, screaming and writhing, from the chamber. The doctors did not understand how he was alive. They took him for surgery but he would not let them put him under, not let them put him to sleep. He begged the doctors for more of the stimulant gas, he screamed and writhed, his heart monitor going crazy, the doctors and soldiers restrained him as he thrashed.

‘What are you?!’ asked one of the researchers as they tied him down and prepared the anaesthetic.

The guy suddenly goes quiet. He even smiles as best he can with what’s left of his face.

‘Have you forgotten?’ he asks. ‘We are you. We are the madness that lurks within you all, begging to be free. We are what you hide from in your beds every night. We are what you sedate into silence and paralysis. We are your animal heart.’

The doctor brings the anaesthetic gas to the man’s lips.

‘So near.’ The man says. ‘So nearly free.’

And as soon as he breathes in the gas, his heart stops and he dies.

Beat.

ELLIE. Bullshit.

SOPH. There’s video.

ELLIE. What?

JEL. I don’t like it.

ELLIE. Let’s see.

JEL. It’s really horrible.

SOPH. You really want to see it?

ELLIE. Yes.

SOPH plays the Russian Sleep Experiment video. JEL watches through her hands. The sound is truly awful. They watch in silence for a good while. Longer than is pleasant.

So is it true?

SOPH. Maybe.

JEL. I don’t think so.

SOPH. CIA stories are kind of lazy cos you can believe they’d do anything. The best ones are family ones or personal stories like family murders / or –

ELLIE. Are any of them true?

SOPH. Yeah. And you can like the story and then the stories with the most likes at the end of the month go on a leaderboard, and you can like comments too and the users with the most likes go on another leaderboard, and it’s really significant if someone from a leaderboard weighs in on a discussion of a story, like bollox2bush or catz136, cos they know their stuff.

ELLIE. You on the leaderboard?

SOPH. I don’t post.

ELLIE. Why?

SOPH. I just read them.

ELLIE. Why wouldn’t you / post?

SOPH. Nothing creepy ever happened to me.

ELLIE. Make something up.

SOPH. It’s a hardcore place. If your story isn’t good you get trashed in the comments. It’s brutal.

ELLIE. Do another one.

SOPH. Alright, kittens in a vacuum or suicide selfies?

ELLIE. Absofuckinglutely.

3.

JEL is crying, shaking, out of breath, SOPH calms her,

SOPH. It’s okay, Jel, it’s okay. We’ll fix it.

ELLIE. What happened to her?

JEL (quickly, clutching the side of her head). Nothing.

ELLIE. I heard shouting saw you running.

SOPH. She’s fine.

JEL. I hate them.

ELLIE. What happened, Jel?

SOPH. It’s none of your business.

JEL. Nicola.

SOPH. Jel.

JEL. They’re such dicks it doesn’t –

ELLIE. What did she do? Jel, show me.

SOPH. Fucking leave her alone, alright?

ELLIE. Show me.

SOPH. It has fuck-all to do with you.

JEL tentatively moves her hands from the side of her head. There is big wad of bright-pink chewing gum stuck in her hair.

JEL. I can’t get it out.

SOPH. They’re nobodies, Jel, airheads, they’re nothing.

JEL. I can’t get it out what do I tell my mum?

SOPH. We can cut it out.

JEL. What? Are you actually / out of your mind?

SOPH. I don’t think it’s that much actual hair in it Jel, / I think we can like cut around it.

JEL. Having a big / chunk out of my hair they’ll crucify me.

SOPH. We’ll be really / careful.

JEL. I’ll be so ugly, no.

SOPH. What else you gonna do, leave it? We got maths in five minutes come on.

ELLIE. I can do it if you / want.

SOPH. Stay the fuck out of it, alright?

ELLIE. I cut my own all the time, / I’m good.

She is taking out her scissors.

JEL. I don’t want to I don’t want to I don’t want to.

ELLIE. Nicola did this?

SOPH. Who the fuck else?

ELLIE. Where?

JEL. By the big bins.

SOPH. I’ll take as little as possible.

JEL. I don’t want to.

SOPH. Hold my hand. Look at me. Okay.

SOPH snips the gum out of JEL’s hair

Okay. It’s done.

ELLIE. Give me the scissors.

JEL. Does it look shit?

SOPH gives ELLIE the scissors. ELLIE leaves.

SOPH. Hey those are mine.

JEL. Does it look shit?

SOPH. It looks fine.

JEL. Show me.

SOPH. It looks fine. I hate those sluts.

JEL. Soph shut up and show me, oh my god it’s so bristly, it feels so horrible.

SOPH holds up her phone so JEL can see her reflection.

SOPH. There.

JEL. Oh my god.

SOPH. It’ll grow.

JEL. It’ll grow? It’ll fucking / grow?

SOPH. It’s just hair don’t be so shallow.

JEL. Don’t call me shallow / I’m traumatised.

ELLIE comes back in, scissors in one hand, the other a clenched fist. They stare at her. She opens her fist and unfurls a severed ponytail.

ELLIE. Now you’re even.

She throws the scissors onto the floor by SOPH.

4.

SOPH. Girl goes psycho during make-up tutorial?

ELLIE. Even I’ve seen that one.

SOPH. Deadbaby.com?

ELLIE. What?

SOPH. It’s not like how it sounds, its just jokes, you know, why do you put a baby in the blender feet first? So you can see the look on its face. How do you fit a hundred dead babies in a Mini? With a blender. What’s the best thing about fucking twenty-two-year-olds? There’s twenty of them blah blah. It’s kind of boring, they’re all reposts.

ELLIE. Right.

SOPH. I feel fantastic?

ELLIE. ?

JEL. It’s this creepy sex robot singing a song.

SOPH. A serial killer made her so he could have a girlfriend he wouldn’t be tempted to kill.

ELLIE. Go on.

The video, I Feel Fantastic, plays.

I love it.

SOPH. Or the cursed toothpaste advert?

ELLIE. No?

SOPH. If you watch it in the daytime or with other people it’s just this weird Korean ad for toothpaste but if you watch it alone at midnight there’s a demon in it that possesses you.

ELLIE. You ever done it?

SOPH. No.

ELLIE. Why?

SOPH. I don’t want to get possessed.

ELLIE. Coward. What’s that one?

She leans over to touch the screen.

SOPH. Hey.

ELLIE. There. ‘The Whistling Woodsman’.

SOPH. It’s not got many upvotes, looks a bit shit.

ELLIE. Just read it.

SOPH. Okay. Uh. Last month I went for a walk in the woods near the town I live in. It’s really beautiful countryside, thick trees, really untouched. You can walk for hours without seeing another soul. This time of year when the trees are all bare and the leaves are thick orange on the ground it’s really eerily beautiful, it’s my favourite time to go, by myself, to be with my thoughts. This is dumb.

ELLIE. Shut up, keep going

SOPH. After walking for around an hour I heard something in the distance, like a rhythmic thudding chopping sound. I paused to listen closer. The thudding stopped, but then I heard this sound so creepy my blood froze. It was a whistle. But not like a whistled tune, like a long, high, two-note whistle, more like a hunting call.

SOPH whistles.

I spun around to see where the noise was coming from.

And there was a man standing around fifty feet away, in amongst the trees. Really still. Holding an axe. Just standing, staring. He whistled again, this really high-pitched wailing sound

SOPH whistles.

And really slowly, like he had all the time in the world, he lifted the axe up onto his shoulder and started to walk towards me, staring straight ahead even though the ground underfoot was all rooted and uneven. He never lowered his eyes once, he just walked, slowly, right for me, staring dead ahead.

And that was enough for me, I ran for it and didn’t look back.

At first I didn’t tell anyone, I guess I felt embarrassed that I’d got so scared and he was probably just a woodsman or something but then a week later I saw on the news they’d found a body in those woods. Of a young woman. Mutilated. Investigators were still determining cause of death but said it looked like the marks to her body had been made with a heavy blade. Like an axe.

I can’t stop thinking about those whistles, and that maybe I made a lucky escape.

Beat.

Yeah that one’s shit.

ELLIE. I saw him.

JEL. What?

SOPH. Fuck off.

ELLIE. I’m telling / you.

SOPH. That’s impossible.

ELLIE. Fuck. The whistles, I heard that, exactly like that, the long two-note whistle. Shit.

JEL. When? Shit, Ellie, you’ve gone pale.

ELLIE. First weekend we moved here. My dad made me go on a walk in the woods with him. It was super creepy in there, like, really dark in the middle of the afternoon and we got totally lost and then we heard this weird noise and like, at the time I thought it was footsteps but there was no one else around and it didn’t really sound like footsteps it sounded much more like –

JEL. An axe.

SOPH. Sure.

ELLIE. I swear on my mum’s life. Soph this is really freaky.

JEL. But you didn’t see him?