Reading a book about computer programming, ANDRE struggles to keep his attention span on the words which begin to blur.

FADE TO BLACK

FLASHBACK

Twenty years earlier. Blackness all around

A flashlight shines on DEIRDRE and some semblance of her youth is captured in the light. Crawling between the support beams of an old, abandoned house, dust particles become airborne, like smoke, against the rays of light.

SFX: WATER GUSHING INTO BATHTUB

Deirdre begins to undress by the light of a candle left behind by Andre. She squints at the grimy texture on her clothes. Moments later, Andre returns

He lights a match to a few candles and places them at strategic points around the other room.

Andre points to a milk crate against the wall.

Andre picks up the milk crate and they both make their way cautiously through the creaking house. Once in the family room, Andre gets busy stacking logs.

The fire puts them in a romantic mood. They become intimate. Afterwards, Andre begins to snooze. While he sleeps, Deirdre goes through tbe pockets of his pants and opens his wallet which has no money. She finds an old picture of a girl she suspect to be an old girlfriend.

She picks up a pen and sneaks through the house to the bathroom. She uses the pen to write him a message on a piece of tissue paper. A book lying next to the toilet, where she sits, conveniently serves as a writing surface. She sticks the note inside the book, then makes her way out the same way they entered the house, through a gap in the floor board where the sewage pipe leads up to the toilet bowl.

Later that night, around 3:00AM, Andre wakes up and discovers a missing Deirdre. Unable to locate her, he suspects that she abandoned him and checks the bathroom. There he finds her clothes missing and the toilet removed from it's position over the hole in the floor boards. Andre picks up the book

He looks at it's title, but decides to grab the other book to take back to the fireplace and read.

END FLASHBACK

The words on the page come into focus. We are in the same room of the abandoned house twenty years later. It has a lived in look. The fire is blazing where Andre sits on a recliner chair.

SHOW INSET OF PAGE BEING READ

A finger points to the exact same paragraph that began to blur earlier, as it follows the row of words in the sentences. Half down the paragraph, the finger stalls and jumps back to the beginning of the current sentence. It flows through the words a bit sluggishly, but progresses to the next sentence. It stalls again and goes back. There are pauses between the finger's gradual movement as it skips from word to word and the words blur in and out. The literature seems complex. The words remain blurry for longer periods just before we

FADE TO BLACK

TWENTY YEARS EARLIER

Close up on Deirdre's eye. It fills with tears as we pan out and return to the night when Andre and Deirdre made love in the abandoned house. Deirdre is standing with a photo held up to the light of the dancing flames. She wonders why he carries it with him. Her eye begins to tear more as she reaches for the handkerchief protruding another pants pocket, but before wiping her eyes with it, she inspects it for the filthy dirt that her own clothes were subjected to as they dragged themselves through the dirt.

A look of disgust drapes her face as she notices that the fabric of the handkerchief is clinging to itself as she tries unfolding it. As she shakes the material, the fabric doesn't behave as though it were magnetized with static, so Deirdre tenses up as she now adjusts here fingers to handle the handkerchief with index finger and thumb. She sets it down precariously and slips out to the bathroom.

Deirdre uses a tissue for her eyes. She sees some books nearby. With the idea of leaving, she sneaks back into the room and finds the pen she'd discovered while digging through Andre's shirt and pants pockets. She uses the pen to write on a piece of tissue, using a book as her writing surface. When she finishes, she sticks the tissue between the pages of the book, strategically positioning it. She then exits the house through the hole in the floor boards.

FADE OUT

SFX: BACKGROUND MUSIC (Gasoline)

Andre surrenders the text book on computer science and walks over to a bookshelf. He sees Foucault's pendulum and scrutinizes it with some literary interest. He takes it back to the recliner and opens it up to find the note. As Andre reads it, his head flinches as spasms of ticks tremble in his cheek. The text inside the book grow in intensity, then suddenly Andre shuts the book, takes quick aim at an unfocused point in the wall and hurls the book with all his strength. An apparition of the angel of death is only alluded to for the split second before the book reaches it's full impact leaving a significant dent on the wall as the expression on Andre's face is not one of anger nor fear. His tired look is one of remission and defeat.