Words are fatal, they are full of slips and misprints, they can consume the air, burn silence, and call the ghosts in ones throat at moment of death.
SCENE 11:
(Scene opens on a diner at twilight on the crossroads of an old highway. In the distance the sound of a truck speeding by can be heard. The neon sign is burnt out, it is unreadable, we can see a few small figures moving within. As the camera zooms in we hear Faith speak).
Faith (the voiceover is a soft distracted whisper): The ones who feel the silences, I love. Everything else repells me, all the artificial signs, the detailed descriptions, and the estatic vengence that stops and starts in different forms . . . This is the fault a sordid faith without tears, with its ferocious tranquillity, and its secret complicity that seeps into everything. Now the black sun has opened the voice of dead at some crossroads. Under the lighting, shapless things, call the living. Then we gather under our endless smoke at the outskirts of town. Faith, Hope, Mercy and Grace have gone to hell with empty hands. We prolong miracles--and wait in the remains of existence. (As the voiceover ends the camera stops at the window. We see four waitresses looking worn out and motionless, just sitting at a round table in the middle of the empty diner, in the distance we can hear pots and pans being cleaned and the sound of a Mexican radio station playing a song. Suddenly the music becomes white noise).
CUT TO INTERIOR OF DINER.
(The shot is from the top looking down. The waitresses are smoking and waiting for someone to speak, the smoke rises into the camera. After a long pause Faith speaks).
Faith (Her voice is one detached serenity): Are you afraid of ghosts?
Mercy (She takes a drag of her cigarette and then blows it up towards us): Keep silent as before. It's better.
Grace (She is drinking a cold beer): Everthing is naked.
Hope (Her voice is an endless howl, the bones of the dead, dancing): You who enter here abandon all hope of not being what you are. (The gathering laughs with this shared secret).
Mercy (Contemplating her ashes as they fall from her cigarette): The messages come from small things, tiny objects, electric shadows --bits of nothing.
Grace (Lighting two cigarettes, one for herself another for Mercy): Some machine always leaves an inventory on my machine: makeup, burnings, outfits, missing bodies, vanishing words and skinned codes.
Faith (She gets up to get some coffee, pours it into her cup, and then takes the black liquid straight to her lips and drinks. After a moment she speaks, almost underheard): She just gave birth.
Mercy: We Know. (She opens a small white bag of sugar and pours into her mouth).
Hope: The three of them will come here to escape, to be alone, and to hide. Madeline, Maddy, and Michael. Fleshy shadows, lamenting, abandoned and mouths on fire. (Out side the roar of van slamming its breaks and hitting another hulk of metal. We can hear the sliding engines move towards the four as they turn to look out the window as it shatters across the diner like stars.)