HARPER, LUCAS JAMES

[LUCAS JAMES HARPER]

[atrb=style,width: 420px; background-color: efefef; background-image: url(http://i.imgur.com/6jh1H.png); padding: 5px, bTable] LUCAS J. HARPER 17 | HETEROSEXUAL | STUDENT | HIGH SCHOOL | ALEXANDER LUDWIG HARPER FAMILY HOME MOVIES 3rd APRIL 2001 – LUKE ON APRIL’S BIRTHDAY Camera flickers on. Screen briefly goes bright white, picking up the glare of the hospital walls, before the balance settles and evens out again. A grey speckled linoleum floor. A man’s shoes, expensive Italian loafers, moving quickly. A corner turned, confusing tangle of chair legs and battered children’s toys. The shoes again. Another corner. Then there, wedged in the gloomy gap between two vending machines, a small blond boy, hugging his knees. The camera stops, settling in on the scowling child, as a man’s voice says with evident relief: “There you are, buddy. There you are. You can’t just wander off. What are you doing down there?” The boy’s scowl deepens. He gives a frustrated little shrug. The man again: “You upset, bud?” The boy shakes his head. “Really? ‘Cos we know you like to run and hide when you’re upset.” Another furtive shake of the head. The camera briefly focuses on the speckled lino while the man crouches down, then swings back up to point directly into the boy’s face. Luke is a stocky child, pale and blond with sweet expressive blue eyes. His little face is pointed with evident pain, or perhaps frustration. It’s not always easy to tell in a five year old. “Come on, Luke. Tell me what’s wrong. It’s you and me, remember? Always you and me. Men of the house gotta stick together.” Luke sighs, shakes his head, looking away, then looks back almost immediately and blurts out: “I don’t want another sister. Send her back.” The man laughs, which only makes Luke’s frown deepen. “Well I don’t! You promised it’d be a brother.” The man laughs again. His hand appears on camera, his thumb pressing at the crease between his young son’s eyebrows. “I never promised it’d be a brother. I said they thought it might be, but I guess they were wrong. It happens.” Luke tries to shrug off his father’s hand, pushing it away and wedging himself further back between the vending machines, disappearing into the dusty shadows. He says: “I already have enough sisters. I have this many!” He holds up all eight fingers and two thumbs, clenches his hands into fists and then splays the digits once more. The man laughs again. “You don’t have twenty sisters, Luke. This many, maybe.” The camera dips down, for a moment focusing on those expensive loafers and nothing more. When it swings back up, Luke has edged forward slightly and is holding up the four fingers of his left hand. Looking at each digit as if the real sibling’s are represented there. “See, that’s four. That’s Issy and Lou and May and Sylvie. That’s four. But then we’ve gotta add one more – put your thumb up, good boy – and that’s April.” Luke looks at his thumb with barely concealed dislike, then back at his father, who chuckles slightly. Luke says: “April? That’s her name?” The camera judders slightly. Static spider webs across the screen. A red ‘low battery’ icon is flashing in one corner. “That’s her name. And she really wants to meet you. Mom’s told her all about you, and she is just dying to meet her big brother Luke. What do you say? You gonna come and say –?” Low battery icon flashes and disappears. Static. 23rd NOVEMBER 2008 – THANKSGIVING Camera blurs in on a typical Midwestern kitchen, full of light and warmth and chatter and one too many people to fit comfortably around the table. It pans around the room, focusing in on different faces one by one, some of whom look up from their food preparation tasks to grin or poke out their tongues. A man’s voice keeps up a steady narration: “So here we have Isabel, back from Cornell to peel us some sprouts. Hey Issy baby. Nice face. Thanks for that. And Louisa, who got in from Dartmouth just this morning. We put her straight to work, of course. My Ivy League girls, home for the holidays. Oh, and here comes Sylvia from the pantry – what you got there, Sylvie? Aha, she’s bringing in the booze. It isn’t a family holiday without that. Hey, where’s May? Shouldn’t she be pitching in?” A woman’s voice replies unintelligibly from off-screen. The camera spins to catch her, a tall spindly blonde with a gentle face, rinsing dishes in sink. Crow’s feet line her eyes. Silver hair encroaching at her temples. She gives a wry smile at the camera, then returns her attention to the dishes. He says, “What was that, Jules?” She looks back up. “I said she’s playing bridge with your mother and my sister.” The man turns the camera briefly on himself to give an exaggerated grimace. A lined face, dark hair also grey at the temples, blue eyes light with warmth. “Bridge with Nana Joy and Auntie Katherine. Poor May must have drawn the short straw. What about the other two? The young’uns. Where’s Luke and April? Tell me they’re not stuck with my mother as well.” Louisa passes directly in front of the camera on her way across the kitchen. She pauses briefly to breathe on the camera, fogging the lens, then says: “When I got in, Luke and the cousins were hitting each other with sticks in the front yard, and April was in the tyre swing demanding that he push her.” A hand appears, wiping the lens clear. “Don’t do that, Lou. You’re breathing on our precious memories –” “Steve, will you put down that camera and either help out or get out, because you’re in the way –“ “Precious memories, Jules. When all our kids have flown the nest, we’ll live vicariously through these home movies –” From somewhere in the distance, a vague scream. The sound of the front door banging open. Panicked voices from the hall. “Call an ambulance! It’s April!” The camera is put down with a bump, showing only the counter and the edge of a tureen and the red tiled wall. Sounds of a commotion ensue from the other room. Raised voices, half-muffled by distance, but audible. “Okay, okay, good man, Luke. Good man. Put her down on the couch there, nice and easy. What happened?” “She just fell down – she just – she said she wasn’t feeling well and she fell down –” “Okay. Good man. Good man. Well done. Just ease her down on the couch there. Put her down. There’s a good boy. There we go. Julie? Julie. Call an ambulance.” Voices fade out, get quieter, muffled. Camera keeps rolling on the tiled wall. Finally: static. 17TH MARCH 2009 – UNNAMED MOVIE “April. April. April. Hey April.” Luke’s voice, scratchy. Poor quality recording. “Hey April. Hey. Hey. Hey April, baby, smile. Smile for the camera.” No picture, but after several seconds the sound quality improves as the recording levels out. “Luke? You’re a real genius.” Luke laughs – his voice hitching, breaking in that awkward pubescent way. “Yeah, I know. Why’d you say that?” Momentary silence, then a girl’s voice, small and gentle, with an undeniable waver on the words. “Because the lens cover is still on.” Another momentary silence. Then a sudden synchronised snort as both Luke and his sister start to laugh at the same time. A quick fumble, a hand removing a black disc, and the room comes into view. A pale blue room. The window open, a view of sun beating down on a still parking lot. On the dresser in front of the window, a vase of sunflowers, a plethora of pink and white cards with ‘Get Well Soon!’ messages and cute, cartoon animals. The camera swings back round – a girl comes into view, tucked up in creaseless blue sheets. April. She is eight, but looks younger. Tubes and wires plug into stick thin arms. Her skull is visible beneath the taut white skin of her face. Her hair fell out so quickly, so suddenly, she didn’t have time to cut it off, and now just a few strands of blonde cling to her scalp, moving this way and that in the slight breeze coming through the window. Her eyes are huge in her emaciated face. She beams and says: “You want me to smile?” The camera judders slightly, Luke nodding behind it. His voice, now: “You are smiling. Look at that. Look at that gorgeous smile.” She laughs, then reaches down into the covers beside her, and brings up a small tatty stuffed dog. She proceeds to make him wave at the camera. Luke says, the smile almost audible in his voice: “Go away, Woof. I’m trying to talk to my sister. You are such an attention hog. April, get that joker outta here.” She makes the stuffed dog walk across the bed. The camera follows his movements. Luke’s knee appears in the shot, a skinny knobbly joint sticking gangly and awkward from the bottom of his cargo shorts. The dog makes the leap from the bed to his knee. His hand appears in the shot, pointing a harsh finger at it. “Woof, if I told you once, I told you a million times. Me and you aren’t ever gonna be friends, okay? I don’t like you stealing my sister from me.” April’s hands, her fingers bone thin, make the dog hold a paw to his eye as if wiping away a tear. The camera goes back up. She’s half out of bed, kneeling on top of the covers, skeletal beneath her hospital gown. Her skin is grey with death, but she is grinning like she doesn’t care. She leans back, pulling her stuffed dog to her chest, crossing her scrawny legs beneath her, and says: “So are you taking over being the crazy camera guy?” The camera moves with Luke as he shakes his head, blurring the room left to right and back again. “No, that’s dad’s thing. I’m just keeping the camera warm while he and mom are talking to the doctor.” April frowns. Says: “They’ve been in there a long time.” The camera zooms in on her face, jerkily, awkwardly, settling in on the top left corner of her head. A mistake. Clumsy fingers on the buttons. Luke says: “Serious doctor stuff. I wouldn’t worry about it. Hey, where did Woof go? Woof! Oi! How did you end up back near me? We’ve had so many words about this I don’t even know –” Static. 11TH AUGUST 2009 – VACATION Sun. Sea. Sand. The camera roves back and forth, creating a panorama of striped umbrellas and elaborate sandcastles. Briefly lingers on a row of swimsuit clad sunbathers, all blonde, lying in a perfect line. “There they are. The sleeping sirens of Indianapolis, come thousands of miles for a vacation only to spend it all face down on the beach –” Two of the five heads look up. Roll eyes. Someone says into their towel. “Dad, give it a rest with the camera. We’re on vacation from all your weird shit.” The camera zooms in on the perpetrator, who still doesn’t look up. “Steve, leave the girls alone. Go and find something to do if you’re bored.” The camera zooms out again. Focuses briefly on an older woman’s face. Her hair is much more liberally streaked with grey than it was even a year ago. “Like what?” She shrugs and lies back down on her stomach. “Go and find Luke and April. Make sure they’re not getting into any trouble.” The camera pans out. Sun. Sea. Sand. Another panorama. “Yeah, I think I will. If this is all you ladies plan on doing all day…” No one answers. The camera shifts. Blue sky. Then down, to golden sand. Golden sand, and a pair of sandal-clad feet. Noise comes in and out of focus. Laughter. Faint music. More laughter. A child crying. A seagull crowing greedy overhead. The sand shifts to rocks, covered slick with seaweed, forming little crystalline pools of vibrant life. Then two figures crouched up ahead. Fourteen year old Luke, beginning to fill out the stockiness of his frame with muscle from all the sports and the track and swim meets. His skin stained brown, his hair bleached so light it’s almost white from exposure to the sun. Crouched down, poking a long piece of driftwood into one of these tide pools. Next to him, sat with her feet dangling in the water, a still scrawny April. Sunburnt fierce pink, smothered in so much sun cream she bears a passing resemblance to a snowman. Her hair has grown back thin and very wispy, and she’s wearing a hat to cover her delicate scalp. “Hey kids. What’re you doing?” They both look up. April grins. Luke lifts his stick up in the air, waving it briefly above his head like a flag pole. “Trying to catch fish.” Laughter. “With a stick?” Luke grins. April laughs. “We weren’t trying hard. What are we gonna do with a fish, daddy?” The camera tilts as he shrugs. “I dunno, baby. Eat it, maybe.” A pause, while both Luke and April look into the pool, and then at each other and pull the same sceptical face. Nothing in there worth eating. “So I’m making a movie –” “You’re always making movies, Dad.” “Thanks for pointing that out, Luke buddy. It’s all for posterity.” “What’s posterity?” “April, you wanna tell your brother want posterity means?” April looks momentarily just as clueless as Luke, but then quickly works her face into one of knowing exasperation. She shakes her head. Luke gives her a nudge, and when she turns to look at him, he puts on an unconvincing glare. “Posterity is for all the people who come after us. So when I say I’m making movies for posterity, I’m saying I’m making movies for the people in our family who’ll come later. Your kids, when you grow up and have kids. In case they’re curious about what things were like for us.” Luke and April both consider this a moment, then he says: “What if they’re not curious?” The camera tilts again along with the resultant shrug. “Then your mom and I can still enjoy these old moments when you guys have all left home and don’t come back to visit us anymore. So, because we’re gonna be old and senile when we watch this back, you want to tell me where we are right now?” Another brief pause. Luke looks to April, raises his eyebrows as if to say ‘go on’. She scrunches up her face, twisting her skinny fingers together anxiously. “California?” Luke gives her a high five. She laughs, then grabs hold of his hand and clings to it tight, swinging their interlocked fists back and forth. “That’s right, baby. We’ve come all the way from Indiana to California for a vacation. That’s a long way, huh?” She nods solemnly. He says: “And you know why we’re here?” April’s face breaks into a grin. She looks up at Luke, who’s face is crinkled against the sun. He beams back down at her. She says: “Because I had cancer but now it’s all gone, gone, gone.” The three of them laugh. “That’s right. All gone, gone, gone. So we’ve gotta celebrate, haven’t we?” April nods furtively. “Yeah, we do. Can we celebrate with ice cream? Right now ice cream?” She is blinking those big blue eyes a hundred times a minute, still swinging on Luke’s hand. “Yeah, we can celebrate with ice cream. Come on down from there. Luke, lift her down for me? Pass her down to me.” “Yeah, yeah. Put down the camera a sec–” Static. 16TH OCTOBER 2010 – LUKE’S GAME Camera focuses in on a crowd. A confused blur of faces made up with green and orange paint, wearing hats and scarves or sweatshirts in the same colours. The sky is black, the colours on the ground more vivid beneath the floodlights than ever they are in daylight. Little huffs of cold air form and dissipate in the air in front of mouths. Tips of noses flushed pink with cold. The camera moves around, as if excited, as if unable to hold and focus in on anything for more than a second at a time. “Steve, maybe give it a rest with the camera. I’m sure Luke doesn’t want it in his face in front of his friends…” The camera briefly flits round. Focuses for slightly longer – three seconds, maybe – on a lined face, blonde hair streaked with ash, two lines of orange and green painted on each wind-bitten cheek. “It’s his first win with the team, Julie. This is an important moment. It’s important – hey! Hey Luke!” The camera turns, darting onto a group of adolescents emerging from a shadowy pocket of the crowd, hair damp with sweat, shoulders still blocked out with protective pads beneath their jerseys. Luke is almost dead centre in their midst, laughing easily and perhaps a touch obnoxiously with his teammates. At the sound of his name, he looks around. A spasm of unease crosses his face, blue eyes dart briefly to either side of him, but then he seems to make a split second decision to just not care. Slapping backs and shoulders and palms, he says goodbye to his friends and makes his way over to his parents. His mom hugs him, and laughing, he pats her on the back, rolling his eyes into the camera. “Great game, buddy. That was amazing.” Luke rolls his eyes again. “Yeah, thanks Dad. Mom, get off, I’m all sweaty. Hey, where’s April? She promised she’d come see me play.” A flicker of awkwardness across his mother’s face, as she says: “April wasn’t feeling well, honey. She’s tucked up in bed at home. She’ll be fine in the morning.” Luke’s brow furrows. That same crease appearing between his eyebrows as ten years ago, when he hid between a pair of vending machines and demanded a brother. “It’s nothing to worry about, bud. Just a touch of flu. Hey, hey come on, give us a play-by-play. Tell us all about it –” Luke is shaking his head. He runs an awkward hand through his damp hair. “Nah, dad, I don’t really feel like –” “Talking? But you always feel like talking. We can’t ever get you to shut up.” Luke is shaking his head again. “Maybe we can just go on home? I wanna see April.” A momentary pause. The camera flits very briefly from Luke’s face to his mother’s. From frowning to anxious. “All right, bud. All right. If that’s what you want. You know when I played football in high school, we always used to go hang out after the game –” A short pause. Luke’s expression doesn’t change. His mother has to reach up almost uncomfortably high to put her hand on his shoulder, but she does so, giving it a little squeeze. “Let’s just go, Steve. I don’t like leaving her on her own either. And she’ll want to see Luke, to hear all about the game.” “All right, all right. Let’s turn this off and we’ll –” Static. 24TH DECEMBER 2011 – CHRISTMAS EVE Camera blurs in. White walls wash out any sense of colour until the balance adjusts. It’s back to grey speckled lino floors. Two pairs of shoes: the expensive Italian loafers and dark blue kitten heels. Voices overhead, murmured, as if in a deliberate effort to keep low. A woman: “ – like you have to do this all the time. You’re a photographer, Steve. You shoot god damn school pictures and weddings. You’re not Quentin fucking Tarantino –” A man’s voice: “Tarantino’s a director, not a camera man.” “Do I look like I give a shit? Steve. Steve, fucking look at me, okay, please? Can we just – This is not precious family memory stuff. This is our daughter dying, slowly and painfully and horrifically, and it’s awful, and if you think we’re ever for one second going to forget – It doesn’t need to be on film! Please. Just stop.” The camera swings up. A lined face gaunt with worry, ashy hair pulled back. Forehead so pale it glints under the lights. The woman’s face is annoyed – her eyes dart away the second the camera comes to rest on her. He says: “It’s been over a year since it came back. They said she’d have a year, with all those drugs. It’s gonna be her last Christmas, Jules –” The woman looks at him, at the camera, then looks away again very quickly. She presses a shaking hand to her eye, catching a tear before it can cling to her lashes and smudge her make up. “I just don’t know why you feel like you have to keep doing this.” A sigh from somewhere out of sight. “Because soon it’s gonna be too late –” He stops, interrupted by a crackly announcement over an intercom for ‘Dr George to go to the cardiac ward’. Then continues: “Let’s not argue. Let’s not waste anymore time just now. Let’s just go see her –” Camera shifts onto a pale wood door. Hand reaches out and tries the handle, pushing the door inwards. The scene is peaceful. A hospital bed. April looking thinner and weaker than ever she has before, lying back on her pillow with her eyes gently closed. Luke is slumped forward in his chair, his head resting on the side of her bed. His hand closed around hers. Pair of them sleeping. Momentary silence fills the room. “Should we –?” Another beat of silence. “Yeah. Get Luke up, he’s been here too long. We’ll come back and see April in the morning.” Luke’s mother walks in shot. She too, is looking thinner and weaker than ever she has before. She goes and rests her arm along Luke’s shoulders, pressing her face against him to kiss his hair and whisper something inaudible in his ear. He stirs. Mumbles: “I wanna stay with her.” But he is already getting up, too tired to fight against the guiding direction of his mother’s hand on his back. The familiar voice behind the camera: “You been here too long, bud. Need to go home and shower – I can smell you from here.” Luke’s mother is saying, simultaneously: “It won’t be tonight, honey. You won’t miss it if you come home tonight. Steve, turn off the camera. You won’t miss anything. Just turn it off.” Static. 10TH JANUARY 2012 – FUNERAL Camera pans around a small but packed church. Relatives from all over and even out of state. Teachers and doctors and bemused fifth graders holding their mom’s hands. A sea of black and white, crisp linen and pressed suits. The occasional splash of colour: a red pea coat, a blue scarf, a bright green hair ribbon. High arched windows line the far wall, letting the bright winter sunlight flood in, splashing over the funsize coffin and obnoxiously bright flower arrangements like heaven itself. Camera dips. Black clad suit trousers. Expensive Italian loafers. The back of a pew. A gentle hand rests briefly on a knee, and a voice says somewhere to one side: “Steve. Do you have to – ?” A quiet response. “Yes.” There’s music playing. A soft hymn that slowly begins to fade out. Camera pans up, to the man in black at the pulpit saying gravely: “And now we’d like to listen to April remembered by her brother, Lucas.” The creak of a pew somewhere to one side. Camera catches Luke, broad and uncomfortable in his suit, shambling up to the stage. When he reaches the pulpit and turns to face the congregation, his face is much older than his sixteen years ought to allow. He has a piece of crumpled yellow note paper in his shaking hand. As if he jotted down his feelings on a post-it note. Possibly he did. Whatever he wrote, it doesn’t appear useful to him, because he raises his eyebrows at it, then crumples it up and slips it into his pocket. He then turns and looks briefly at the coffin. His blue eyes linger on the framed portrait of his laughing sister. He puts his hands on either side of the pulpit. Then drops them and lets them swing by his sides. He is silent. The room silent, but for the creak of the pews and somewhere at the back, an infant cousin beginning to squirm and moan in it’s mothers arms. “April… was my sister.” Luke says finally, as if every word weighs a tonne. “Pretty sure everyone here knows the story of the day she was born. Probably most of you have seen the tape. I’m an idiot. I wanted to send her back.” Somebody laughs. A few more people titter politely. Luke laughs, but it sounds more like a sob. The camera dips down, back on knees and the back of the pew in front. Luke keeps speaking from somewhere overhead. “I’d give anything to have her back. It feels like… I always knew she was going to be gone. The first time she got sick, everyone was all hope and smiles. The second time, when it came back with a vengeance… not so much. But it feels like ever since they first found the leukaemia when she was eight and she collapsed and ruined our Thanksgiving –” A few more muted laughs. The camera pans up. Luke has stopped, his hands back on the pulpit, clenching tight, head bowed as if in prayer, eyes clenched shut. It takes him a minute to gather himself. Then he goes on: “… that we knew… And so I’m really glad. I’m really pleased that she made it so far, and that we got a whole three years to enjoy her even after she got sick. I’m pleased we got all eleven years that she had, ‘cos I wouldn’t give back a single second of that time. April was special. Every big brother thinks that about their kid sisters, but not every big brother has an April. She was my friend. Not some annoying kid I ever wanted to shake off. She was smart and funny and beautiful and brave. She was my favourite person I ever met in my life.” Another pause. Luke’s head is bent down so far his chin is practically bumping against his chest. Eyes shut. A physical tension present in the set of his shoulders and the balls of his fists, as if he is literally struggling to hold himself in one piece. Finally: “It sucks that she’s gone.” He bobs out of shot, head still down. The priest reclaims the pulpit. Footsteps down the aisle. The creak of a pew. The camera pans around and settles briefly on Luke’s face. His eyes are red rimmed. His cheeks wet. Tears cling to his lashes like diamonds. He looks up, sees the camera and scowls, holding one hand up, covering the lens. “Not now. Just turn it off. Turn it off.” Static. 30TH JULY 2012 – NEW HOUSE Camera pans around the front of a big New England style house. Pretty and colonial. The grass of the front yard is parched with summer heat, covered in a vast array of cardboard boxes and scattered furniture. Julie sits on the old family couch, in the shadow of the new family porch. She is thin as a rail. Her hair gone completely grey. Her spindly arms wrapped around the green ceramic urn she never lets out of her sight – the one containing her daughter’s ashes. There’ve been a lot of breakdowns in the past seven months, from violent to pathetic, and each one takes away a little more of herself. She is just a caricature of a grieving parent. “Hey Julie. How’d you like the house? Pretty, right? Pretty fresh start.” She looks up. Her lips attempt a tremulous smile. Twitching once, twice, three times. Almost. She calls back something unintelligible. “Huh? “Hm?” “I said ‘huh?’ I didn’t hear you the first time.” “Said it’s pretty.” “Sure is pretty. Maine’s real pretty in the fall, too, so we got that to look forward – hey buddy, where you been hiding?” Camera spins and focuses on Luke, backing out of the moving van with a couple of cardboard boxes stacked high in his arms. He sets them down on the lawn, then looks up with a wry smile. “I’ve been in the truck. Unloading. Seeing as you two aren’t gonna lift a finger.” Laughter from behind the camera. “This is why people have kids. Cheap source of menial labour.” Luke tips a finger to his temple in a lazy salute. “Great master plan, Dad. I’ll definitely consider it.” Luke turns and heads back to the moving truck. His father calls after him: “You’re only seventeen, so you’re not to consider knocking anybody up just yet.” A muffled reply: “Believe me when I say girls are the last thing on my mind right now.” “Yeah? New town, bud. You have a chance to reinvent yourself as anything you like. You could be a babe magnet.” Luke sticks his head around the open back of the trunk, wiggling his eyebrows. “I already am a babe magnet. I’m handsome, athletic and I have my own car.” “And talkative and annoying with an ego the size of a planet…” Luke shrugs. “Can’t win ‘em all.” His head disappears back into the truck. A few muffled thumping noises ensue. The camera pans back to Julie, still sitting on the couch, cradling the urn. “Jules? You hear that? Our son’s a heartthrob.” She tries to smile again. “You all right, honey? You wanna go inside? Maybe get out of the sun a little minute.” She nods wearily, getting to her feet with all the gingerly caution of an old, old woman. Slowly, she climbs up the porch steps and disappears over the shadowy threshold and into the new house. The camera judders with movement now. Flashes of a sidewalk lined with maple trees. Some kids playing hopscotch on a driveway across the street. Then the gaping shadowy maw of the moving truck. The balance blacks out, then slowly adjusts to the dim cavernous space. The piles of boxes and old furniture. “She gone inside?” Luke asks, approaching the mouth of the truck with a box in his hands. The box says ‘APRIL’ in marker pen on the side. “Yeah. Now’s probably the best time to sneak this on in. Just take it straight up to the attic.” Luke nods, hopping down from the truck with the box clutched protectively in his arms. The camera follows him, as if drawn to his back, or at least to the box. Luke turns back to throw his father a look, then trips over the kerb instead of stepping up over it. He lands hard on his knees, letting go of the precious box, and it bursts open when it lands on the sidewalk. April’s personal effects go scattering off in all directions. Toys and books and old folded up drawings. Her tattered, one eared dog lands on the road. The camera pans down, focusing on it. The asphalt. The dog. The two expensive Italian loafers. “Dad…” Camera picks back up. Focuses on Luke, now back on his feet, looking guilty and anxious and concerned all at once. “Dad, you okay?” A momentary silence. Luke reaches out, takes the camera. Turns it briefly, halfway round. It’s tilting up. Catching half of his father’s face – aged prematurely, eyes old, mouth slack with surprised grief. “Dad, you go on inside with mom. I got this stuff, okay? I can handle it. You two just come out and help whenever you want. I can handle this.” Another pause. His dad’s old eyes are still on the stuffed dog, lying splayed on the asphalt like road kill. Finally: “Are you sure? Don’t want to make you do all the hard work.” Luke’s clumsy fingers are fumbling for the camera’s off switch. He’s saying: “It’s okay. I’m strong enough –” Static. BEHIND THE MASK PUN | TWENTY | GMT | YOU CAME TO ME IN A DREAM | MESSRS KEALEY & HOLDEN OHAI. so i tried to be creative with this app and then this shit happened. i realised it was bad a few hundred words in and just couldn’t be bothered to start again. I’M SORRY. anyway. here’s a gif of whute as cats.