by Aleksandra Pejic (AB Project: Serbia participant)
PROLOGUE
Any thoughts or dreams?
The rain. Heart shaped island. Negligence. Anger. Facts versus feelings. Passion. Buzzing cellphones without owners. Rubber boots. Music from the movie ’Requiem For A Dream’ insanely pumping through the headphones in order to cover up the sounds of shooting in your own head. Obsessively repeating the same action over and over again. Madness. Ruined families which ruin their own members. Fiction which transforms into most vicious reality.
Where does the justice start?And does it ever stop?
THE ISLAND
She was lying under the bench, as if she had been buried alive. But she was still breathing, silently and heavily.
He was stomping on the bench nervously, desperately trying to find her. The only thing he was allowed to do was breathe.
She could feel his feet. His touch. His breath. But she wasn't allowed to move.
He could sense her presence. Her touch. Her breath. But he wasn't allowed to reach out for her.
Basically, everything was taken from them. Circumstantially.
And then they turned into zombies.
The zombies who would eventually overtake the world and become the Ones Of Us.
THE COURTROOM
We are all sitting in a circle, surrounded by a pile of completely meaningless stuff. Orange walls, stripped wallpapers, broken furniture, a non-functional piano. Crooked mirrors. All the wonders of the room ironically called the Magic Box. Pandora would definitely be endangered. We are witnessing the interrogation and the inconvenience it causes. Bodies twitch, voices reach their highest pitches, sweats, and, suddenly, people lack their previous confidence and attitudes. They are torn between ``yes`` and ``no`` walls that they created themselves. It is both painful and grotesque to watch them wriggle.
They are no longer people who fight.
They are drowning in their own mess.
They get out alive eventually, but senseless and incapable of getting on with their lives.
And all of a sudden, they transform into zombies.
THE ISLAND REPRISE
A girl is trying to fall back in love. The only thing she is allowed to do is to bang the piece of metal construction into the wall. The wheels roll. Pieces of the wall are falling off. She accidentally bangs her head into a metal bar and laughs. She is completely involved into her struggle. The rest of us are involuntarily involved. At a certain moment she gets turned around in a circle, while holding tightly onto a metal bar, holding onto her bare life, holding onto her returned love.
She lets herself go... and she is being saved.
She is no longer stuck between ``yes`` and ``no``.
She has embraced the `yes``. Or maybe even ``no``.
She didn't become One Of Us... zombies.
EPILOGUE
Charcoal is made of burnt wood or other organic material. It can be crushed easily underneath the fingers and that very crushing produces the most satisfying sound and sensation. Charcoal leaves quite visible trail, almost as blood. It can be transferred easily from one place to another. And the act of washing it off your hands contains something biblically arousing.
It is made of dead material, but it is still able to recreate itself and the world around it.
Zombies are afraid of charcoal.
Almost as much as they are afraid of music.