leaving a cinema on an afternoon in the summer. It’s raining. He puts on his headphones, puts up his collar and heads out onto the street. A couple leave next to him. The man has an umbrella which he puts up flamboyantly, he grabs his girl and they go off into the street like a dance routine from an old musical.
A guy sits in front of a blank cinema screen. Suddenly the screen flickers into life with thousands of images and a tremendous sound. For about 20 seconds. The screen then goes blank again. No one is in the room apart from an old cigarette vendor and the usher. He then leaves.
He looks closely at himself into a mirror in his bedroom, which is pitch black, He has a lighter in his hand which he uses to peer at his face, its as if he is trying to see into the darkness behind him. He sees something move.
While in the bath late at night, when his parents are sleeping, he hears the floorboards creek a little, ever so faintly. Then hears shuffle of material as if someone is in his room wearing a bulky jacket. He shouts out and physically feels someone stand still. It is as if someone is looking for something.
Sitting on the edge of his bed he listens to music. He is tending to his self-inflicted wounds across his chest, shoulders and stomach, with antiseptic, like a soldier. He is doing this in front of a mirror. – The viewers must wince when watching this. The guy appears not to notice the pain, and is simply listening to the music.
We see a guy staring at his face in a mirror. He picks up a knife calmly and begins to disfigure his own face, gently slashing across his cheeks and forehead. As he does this, he does not flinch, there is no sound, no sign of pain, almost like an operation. Everything in the room is spotless and clean except for the blood. The camera closes in on his eye and a single tear rolls down his cheek. This then cuts to the same guy, and same shot of the eye, but closed and asleep on a bus. He has shopping on his lap, and without scars on his face, peaceful. A teddy bear pokes out of one of the bags. He wakes gently and we realise that the scene before was what he was dreaming. As he continues to wake up, he is not disturbed by what he has dreamt, as if he is used to those images, he wants it to happen. A kid on the bus is staring at him and the teddy bear.
