Day 10: Her Ghost In The Fog

Today we had to be inspired by one of our favorite songs. As someone with a lot of favorite songs this took a lot of narrowing down. So much so that  the eventual piece was written in a bit of a rush, which limited what I wanted to do. I originally wanted to do something silent and movement based, taking inspiration from a different song, but due to time issues I ended up picking one I knew fairly well and essentially adapting the narrative of it as a short play. A bit of a cheat. However the song is one of my favorites, I remember the first time I heard it and the world of music it opened up to me compared to what I was listening to at the time. 

The piece itself is a nasty bit of gothic melodrama essentially. Trying out a talking style that is more "theatrical" and less natural sounding than a lot of that I write

Time wise it was written in a bit of a rush as I have been quite busy the last few days and rather writing in the afternoon/evenings I've actually been writing on the morning the submission is due. This does leave me more time to play around with ideas but I actually think I prefer the other way of doing it. I'll probably try and write number 11 today as well. 

I tend to use music a lot in my writing, incidentally, I'll often hear a song and pretty clearly picture a scene that could go with it or be based on it, and spin things off from there. 

                                                   

                                                        Her Ghost In The Fog

                                                            By Jeremy Linnell

A man is bound in robes, head bowed. It is an old courtroom, colonial style.

Judge: This trial is a formality at best. You  were found at the scene of the crime. How do you plead.

Kimble: Not guilty

Judge: Not guilty? Are you insane man. There is nothing to spare you from the tinder or the noose, it is merely a matter of what this court sees fit for use.

Kimble: I’m not guilty because you have no witness.

Judge: Dead by your hand!

Kimble: Dead by their own. Their fate was sealed when their touch befouled her.

Judge: You threw your life away over some whore?

Kimble: SHE WAS NO WHORE.

Judge: Now that is a known lie. She’d had relations with many men of the village. All of them your victims.

Kimble is silent

Judge (cont.): Is that what this is? Vengeance of a spurned lover?

Kimble: She would never spurn me.

Judge: Her reputation suggests otherwise.

Kimble: I care not for your talk of reputation. It means nothing here. Men whose social masks hide corpses stuffed with feculence stalk this place.

Judge: Regardless of your indulgent prattle, she was seen, there were witnesses.

Kimble: Aye, and I was one.

Judge: So why deny her nature? Her belly was swollen with the seed of many of the village elders, doubtless to gain some favour.

Kimble: I saw what happened and the acts were not willing.

Judge: What is this fresh lunacy?

Kimble: From afar I watched as they made use of her, and sick to my stomach I turned away. My strength returned I redoubled my efforts and made my way through the fields to the place where they had left her. She was dead.

Judge: Where you killed her.

Kimble: No. I’d never…she was the one beautiful thing in this stagnant, reeking hole and they took her, used and discarded her.

Judge: And what makes you so sure of this.

Kimble: She was to be tried as a witch. By your own brother. No doubt the instigator of this. Who’d miss a blasphemous whore?

Judge: Who indeed. She should have been left to rot, undeserving of Christian burial as she was.

Kimble: Aye. I knew how your circle would treat my beloved. She was taken and used and when they had her fill they discarded her and my life along with it. What was there left for me.

Judge: So you confess to the murder?

Kimble: It was not murder. It was justice. Kneeling in the snow, a fresh settlement swirling in the air around me I caught a glimpse of her still standing. Alabaster white and untarnished she bade me follow. Through the fog and snow we danced, together once more, one final task upon us.

Judge: The church tower.

Kimble: Aye the church tower. Where her ruiners drank and reminisced over their victory. To think one could celebrate such horror as they left in their wake. That fat pig Magistrate Johnson even pleasured himself as he retold the tale. Their men surrounded them drunk on the power they had over us smallfolk.

Judge: Those men were innocent.

Kimble: They chose to which households they pledged themselves. They were as guilty as those that entered her. Those that crushed her skull and broke her bones. They thought they had power. But fire. Fire has power. Not even the cries of my first born son were as beautiful as the sound of their screams and crackling flesh.

Judge: As you yourself will see on the morrow. You see where your love of this whore as led you Kimble? An end more ignoble and painful than that of hers in the snow

Kimble: And in the flames we shall dance. I have no more to say.