LO3: Radio Voiceover Script - Radio Drama

LO1: Radio Voiceover Script - Radio Drama

"Fractures - One"

(Opening with a wind sound effect, bedding music grows)

Around you. There is nothing. A pitch darkness that your subconscious conceptualizes as nothing. “Where am I?” Open your eyes and you’ll see. (Audible click, wind cuts, buzzing of random electrical appliances) “What happened?” Around you, there is a retched place. There are piss-stained patches all across the tannin carpet; they’re mixed with the poignant tinge of many kinds of alcohol. They fill your nostrils with a pungent toxin so excruciatingly grotesque that it makes your stomach wretch in perpetual agony (Groaning, retching sound). “Why do I feel like this?” Look around you. “I feel like shit.” Shit? What you’re feeling is the ultra-deluxe edition of shit. (all goes quiet)“I need to get up.” (Crinkling of clothes and a groan) Careful now soldier. Your back, at your age, is almost to the point of total atrophy. “I’m not that old.” (A click of bones, as if stretching)

You stand up. (bottle rolling sound into paper) The bottle you were clenching in your hands rolls away into a stack of dirty clothes and old newspapers. You lurch forward, (sound of moving and an audible crinkling) grabbing one of the ‘off-white’ shirts from the pile. Raising it up to your nose, you take a whiff (sniffing noise, music begins to drone nauseously). If the carpets were a wasteland of toxic sludge, the smell which this shirt invades the deepest crevices of your nostrils with, is the culmination of every disease known to man made manifest in one ugly shirt. “Is there anything else to wear?” No. (Music returns to normal)

“Where are my trousers?” Across the room, (burning sound) a hideous orange is illuminated by slats of sunlight peering through the blinds and reaping their way into your hovel. (noise of lifting clothes) “I have better taste than this.” The orange mass takes shape into what resembles a tattered pair of slacks. You have no other choice. “I need a drink.” Yes, I’m sure you do. A Bloody Mary perhaps? “Water.” 

(Sounds of flesh slapping onto tile flooring, electrical buzzing fades) You hobble into the bathroom. This apartment was fancy. No need to use communal bathrooms. No, my friend, you, are living the lavish life (pause and then toilet flush sound). The cold tiles send a sonorous shiver from the palad of your swollen feet up to the top of your spine. The sweat beading from your forehead breathes a sigh of relief. (Sound of running water and tap turning, swallowing sound) You turn the tap and take a swig (the water stops). “Yes...” You drink from the rusted faucet like you haven’t seen a drop of water in days and you have finally found your oasis. “I need to clean my face. Wake myself up a little.” You turn the tap, using your mastery of toilet-mechanics to change the temperature of the running water in an instant (running water starts again). The warmth against your dead, frozen fingers is euphoric. The steam from the hot water coats the shattered mirror overhead. “I don’t remember anything. I don’t even know what I look like.” Are you sure you want to know? Discover the beast beneath the fog? “I need to remember at least something.” (Mirror wiping sound).

You wipe your hand across the mirror, eradicating the steam as your bitter fingers usurp the remaining heat. The coarse cracks splinter your appearance into a thousand, revolting fragments. “Is this... me?” No. This is Jack Whittington. Famous actor extraordinaire. “I wish.” No, that thing staring back at you, is you. “What happened to me?” (Music becomes distorted) Your nose is misshapen, as if Picasso painted it in a violent clash of vermillion and violet. (sound of pulling flesh) Your eyes are stained red. Bloodshot. Bags weighing heavily beneath them in a purple haze. Your hair, or what is left of it, is matted to your forehead as if it were stuck on with superglue (rustling of hair). “I have a full... well mostly complete head of hair.” The knotted tangles writhe down to your shoulders. They interconnect with a line of bush which runs down from your ears and slugs across your top lip to create a stagnant moustache upholstered with a putrid beard. You should really check your breath while you’re here. Who knows what’s under that gnarly moustache? “I can quickly brush my teeth I guess.” (Exhale) Your tongue is tainted by an outbreak of purple rash as your breath lunges outward in an explosion of pure ethanol. “Screw this.” (Glass shatter sound).  

(Plodding of footsteps, electrical buzzing grows) Stepping out of the decrepit bathroom, you enter the main stage of your shabby apartment and lumber toward the blinds. (Burning sound) The subtle warmth of light on your dull, pale flesh is palpable to a raging fire. You have some serious vitamin D to catch up on. “Where even am I?” (sound of shutters opening violently, flashing sound) You open the shutters, hesitantly. The radiant glare from the outside world blinds you. Blinking your eyes sporadically, you attempt to make out the land behind the stained window. “It’s all a blur.” (Subtle ambience of industrial work, sounds of steam erupting and metallic clinks) From beyond the veil there are monoliths which tower over an intricate series of weathered industrial buildings. To you, they’re just fuzzy rectangles in an ocean of light. There is an intricate series of pipes and large, snake-like wires which erratically slither into the monoliths. Steam juts out of the buildings erratically. Underneath the canopy of wires and debris, you can faintly make out a system of tight corridors, or are those... streets? This...city, around you, is desolate. “This is hurting my eyes”. (Sound of blinds shutting again, sound of footsteps) You shut the blinds and lurch toward the steel door containing you inside the apartment. Are you forgetting something? “My shoes. Where are they?”. Beside the door, you notice a magazine, turned to page 3. Beneath it, an irregular crimson shape hides under the pages. “There.” (sound of paper being moved, sound of stickiness) Removing the magazine, your hand is assaulted by an unknown, sticky, substance. Below, a singular brogue. Torn vermillion leather and lined purple stitching. “Where’s the other one?” (sound of putting on brogue and footsteps, one a naked foot, the other, a leather brogue). Sighing, you sink into the lone brogue and hop to the door. The cold metal sends a multitude of electrical impulses that course viciously throughout your body and up to your spine. (sound of harsh metal opening) With a sonorous creak, the door opens.  

(Lounge music fades in with a reverb/echo effect) The faint sound of lounge music, a smooth guitar, echoes through the dreary halls. The overwhelming aroma seeps out of the apartment and floods everything around you, sticking to your clothes. (Sounds of footsteps on carpeted floor) Hopping across the stained carpet floor, you come across an elevator. (Footsteps stop. Sound of a button being pushed and doors opening) “Ow!” Pushing the button, you feel a slight spark of electricity course into your fingertips and the shutters tear open. (Short sound of footsteps on a metallic floor) Entering the elevator, you are met with an intricate panel of seemingly random numbers. Amidst the crowd, you notice a... letter? ‘G’. You really have forgotten everything. (Sound of another button being pushed. A shudder and a sonorous, digital countdown, a tick, plays) Your ‘curiosity’ entices you to push it and the elevator begins to shudder. The overhead display furrows a red tint across your forehead as the numbers count down. (The countdown distorts and heavy breathing plays) Heat rises, ensnaring you inside the iron box. Sweat bleeds from your forehead and the intensifying smell worsens.(The countdown continues to distort, growing worse, getting louder) Why didn’t you shower? “Just let this be over...” The dive continues (Sound liquid broiling) and the unimaginable amount of fluids clashing in your stomach rise. Your throat intensifies with the pungent stench of alcohol. Suddenly, your back arches and you fall to your knees. (Sound of vomiting) “GOD!” (Silence for a few seconds followed by elevator doors opening with a ding) As the elevator crashes and the doors part, you sit, eyes swelled over a puddle of vomit. You better get back up before those doors shut again.  

- cuts back to rest of show