The Box is back!

It’s been far too long! I am gleeful to report that I’ve been writing again (I had to build some life foundations – money, you know – that kind of thing) – and now I’m writing with a passion that’s colouring life all yellow!

There’s two things bubbling on the go. The first is ‘FFS’, the last script I wrote here about, which emerged from the murk like an old-fashioned photo in a dark-room’s developing tray. And the other is “the novel” which has even deeper roots in my life – like those disturbing children’s molar-roots that make me think of rabbit ears (just me? I’d add you some pictures, but you might get nightmares).

“The novel” – oh, the novel…. I love this thing. Not just the story (which we’ll come to in a minute), but the language of it all, which has felt since the start like something from outside myself. In many ways, it won’t matter what comes of it, because it will always make me smile, tickle my fancy, and give me a hug. Neurologically, the language of this beastie (and a beastie it really is!) just makes me happy. It’s like a poem for my self. (How w*nky can I get?!) But that has to be what creativity’s about – healing, right? First, your self. Then, hopefully, others.

The story? Some of this page’s patient subscribers might recognise it: a tale of two people who both do and don’t meet as children, then unwittingly have all kinds of strange adventures with a quantum suicide rifle and a cuddly toy cat, in parallel universes …. Yes, I’ve mentioned it a few times over the last ten years; it’s BOX. Here’s a sliver of film history from 2013’s play script crowdfunder, before the Old Vic, Brighton Uni and many others added their wonderful weights to the project: click for the vid… (I may regret this…)

So now it’s a novel? Well, it wouldn’t let me go, and you know I like a challenge. What could be more difficult for someone who’s never written a novel to turn a spiral-structured play (thankfully, tested on real audiences who genuinely understood and relished this!) into a linear prose thing? Amusingly, the thing’s made me go round and round and in and out, as I’ve explored different ways to tickle a reader, instead of a live audience. But I think I’m nearly there. And soon, I’ll send it out.

For anyone who’s interested, I’ll pop in an excerpt (what to choose?!). Here we go…

Excerpt: The Box by Gill Kirk

“Time of death, twelve twenty-three.” 

He looks again at the head wound. Why can’t he make it make sense? He did not – he could not – he still cannot find that bloody bullet. Entry wound, but no exit. Now she’s finally dead, it’s tempting to get stuck in. But he’s been here before and the pen-pushers really dislike a messy body. But it’s got to be there. Sod it. The woman is dead. He peers in tighter, pulls in the light and the magnifying glass. 

Now, this is just taking the piss. Yes, of course he works too hard. Yes, obviously, there are issues. Five-year old twins and frazzled mothers are always exhausting. But this woman, here, now, trumps all definitions of “stress”. He’s breaking the number one rule, for pity’s sake: do not hallucinate in theatre.

He looks around. There’s no-one here. What are you worried about? Just look until you have no doubt! So he bends over her corpse, sneaky, like he’s got the filthiest offer to whisper. First, he winces; the persistent winter sun’s too bright through those blinds. Closer. Got to get closer. Into the smell and the colour and the shine of an open skull. He brushes one of her hairs out his way. Yes! There – is that it? The murd’rous metal millimeters? His hand reaches unseeing for his tweezers, his eyes moving closer to his prey. Hand now fully equipped, he slowly leans right in. 

Gotcha! 

With a grip on only the slippiest corner, he doggedly squeezes it out. All jaggedly mis-shapen, what evil bullet design is this? It’s not properly seeable, under all that blood and all this tissue, stuff that used to be part of this woman, who’s now just a corpse. You can’t really make it out when it’s still all smeared with her bodily matter, the flesh of a busy person who needed it this morning, to run her life as a- what ? A scientist? A writer? That she’s an idiot goes without saying. A depressive, perhaps. A suicide, no doubt. He squirts saline on the object to clean it up. She needed this bodily matter this morning to run her life as a – kidder. Because she must be. The joke’s on him. Because now, now he can see it, he’s definitely seeing stuff. 

This cannot be possible. Still holding the tweezers that hold the thing that he’s pulled from her brain, and washed off her blood from, he sits. Entirely deflated. Everything now is over. He must tell the hospital shrink and then they will tell the Royal College. He must take an exhausting sabbatical with his awful children and furious wife. Or he could lie, and be a deliberate danger, an unexploded bomb in the heart of the hospital. Because what he’s seeing is not possible. ‘Cos this thing in his tweezers, dragged angry from this wound, that smashed into her skull and made her whole life end, this thing looks unfeasibly like a tiny old car horn, the sort clowns would honk in your face at the circus. Looks like? It is. Undoubtedly. PARP PARP. 

(c) Gill Kirk 2023

A PS- I went on one of Curtis Brown’s courses at the end of last year and it was superb for building my confidence. We had weekly deadlines, but online teaching and feedback from an excellent tutor who’s a published writer. I’d thoroughly recommend this – I’m sure I wouldn’t be feeling so confident and therefore able to push forwards without having done that. Have a gander for yourself (of loved ones) if you’re interested, here’s the one I did with David Nicholls – here.