Silent Screen

There are no more films.

No more stories to entertain his audience.

"Go home," Patrick yells from the projection booth into the darkened
theater.

"There’s nothing more!"

Philip sits patiently—unyieldingly—alone in the movie house.

He has paid the price of admission and wants a show.

Angered by Philip’s refusal to leave, Patrick turns on the projector so that its light fills the screen like a great blinding snowstorm.

"There, there’s your story," he yells.

Philip can hear the sound of feet on the back stairway, the sound of the exit door opening and closing—the sounds of Patrick’s departure.

He stares at the silent screen

"Scene One," he says.

He speaks in a whisper to him as he turns from the window toward the room.

They were deceiving you; you understand that now.

Philip’s face is fixed and silent.

The shadow of his head and shoulders rests timelessly on the light stained wall.

Yes. He understands.

Philip continues to write in his notebook.

"Just some useless marks on a white page," Patrick thinks—and with no word or gesture, he climbs the stairs to his bedroom.

The winter sun is giving way to a room of shadows.

Philip gathers a log and some old newspapers from a box beside the fireplace, and tosses them on the coals.

Bits of headlines, times and faces from the past darkened then burst into flame.

An ash from the fire floats out into the room and falls as gently as a snowflake on his shoulder.

Scene Two

Amber
Cobalt
Viridian
Rose

A path of colored light streams through the large stained glass window above entrance to the library.
Across the walls of books.
Across the rows of old oak tables where Philip is sleeping.

Philip is the sole visitor here.
Patrick is the sole caretaker.

Philip lifts his head from his pillow of folded arms.

Patrick disapproves of this habit of sleeping during working hours, "A waste of valuable time!" he thinks.

In front of Philip, lay two small notebooks—one brown and one blue.
He is attempting to create order in the great hall.

There seems to be no reason for the placement of anything here.
There is no map; no key; no master index from which to make sense of it all.

Each day, Patrick delivers books to Philip’s table.
The proper place for each book is written on its spine.
Philip makes careful notations of this in the brown notebook.

Each day Patrick collects the finished books in his pushcart and
continues the great work of stacking, re-shelving, stacking, and re-shelving.

Philip writes in the blue notebook:

observations
sayings
musical notations
ideas for imaginary movies
maps of all types
quotations from great men and women
gossip he has heard
news items
weather reports
the dates of things
the lengths of things
the colors he finds most beautiful

passing thoughts

Philip writes in the blue notebook:

Amber
Cobalt
Viridian
Rose

Scene Three

Philip closes his eyes.

He can feel Patrick stirring.

It is the quiet end of that late-winter day.

His eyes open and then quickly close—trying to capture one last glimpse of him.

He rises, closes the notebook, and walks to the shelves of books that line the walls on either side of the fireplace. He places the notebook on a shelf along side the other blue notebooks that are neatly arranged there.

Diaries of sorts—of the days since Patrick’s death.

The room is dark and filled with shadows from the remaining cinders in the fireplace.

"Fade to black," he says.