CHANNEL 31 by KEN
ARMSTRONG
SCENE 1 Int ; A living room.
SFX: (Tentative footsteps move slowly across the hard timber floor and echo around this large under-furnished room. A huge fire crackles and spits.)
1: Emily: Cosmo?
2: Cosmo: Emily! (He gets up) How good of you to come.
3: Emily: 'Good of me?' It's my brother's funeral (She starts to cry) not a bloody house party.
4: Cosmo: No more drama, sis, no more pain. I'm overdosed on platitude as it is. Besides, you're late, we buried him this morning.
5: Emily : (Sniffs) The flight was delayed.
6: Cosmo: Don't worry, he didn't notice.
7: Emily: Are you high?
8: Cosmo: Just a little 'local anaesthetic'. Want some?
9: Emily: Later. (She walks across the room) Tell me about the funeral.
SFX: (A burst of white noise like one might hear on a radio tuned between channels. Emily moves over to investigate)
Emily (Cont'd): What's this?
10: Cosmo: The funeral, what to tell? It was wet... there were wreaths...
SFX: (The static bursts in again.)
11: Emily: It's some kind of radio isn't it? What's it for? Cosmo... what is it?
12: Cosmo: There was a terrible storm, you know, ...the night he died.
SFX: (A tremendous crash of thunder transports us to..)
SCENE 2 Int ; Felix's death bed.
SFX: (Wind crashes against the house, rattling windows. The rain falls in torrents and there's thunder... so much thunder.)
13: Felix (Agonised):Promise me, promise me. Please, promise me.
1: Cosmo (V.O.): He'd been delirious for days. Whatever Fraser pumped into him had certainly done the trick.
2: Felix: For pities sake, Cosmo, promise me!
3: Cosmo (V.O.): He'd spent his last months in the library,studying that appalling old family history . He was obsessed, you know, about Great-grandfather.
SFX: (The sudden silence takes us back to...)
SCENE 3 Int ; The living room.
4: Emily: What about him?
5: Cosmo: Great-grandfather? You weren't told? They sorted his papers out two months after He died, found an express wish that all his medals be buried with him. They exhumed the old goat on New Years Day 1889. (He giggles then coughs consumptively).
6: Emily: Cosmo?
7: Cosmo: He'd woken up, Emily. He'd woken up and couldn't get out - Oh I know how it sounds... but the silk inside the lid of his coffin was torn to shreds. He'd torn his finger nails completely off with his scratching, scratching...scratching.
8: Emily: It's just a story.
9: Cosmo: I suppose it is. Not for Felix though, Felix believed it.
SCENE 4 Int ; Felix's Death bed.
10:Felix (Terrified): You must swear this for me Cosmo. Oh...oh...
SFX: (He screams, high pitched and terrified. It is cut off leaving us with only the white noise of the radio in the background of..)
SCENE 5 Int ; The living room.
11: Cosmo: And that's why the radio
is here.
© Ken Armstrong 1996