Screenplay: The Assassin

Answer :

“I think therefore, I am…”

The “I” of ‘I think’ is not the same “I” of ‘therefore, I am”

  @Jean-luc Godard

FADE IN:

1 EXT. A CABIN OF A MENTAL ASYLUM – DUSK

The counselor frames in. He discovers the assassin is sitting idle and staring at the mirror, which is cracked from between. Remote Sounds of chattering and giggling from the premises. After having the awareness of the presence of his counselor, the assassin shifted his gaze towards him.

ASSASIN (ASSASSIN)

(appear astounded)

Why they yell like this all day? It awfully irritates me.

COUNSELOR (COUNSELOR)

                       And why so?

ASSASSIN

What is there to celebrate? This yelling resonates with the spirit of celebrating their existence. I feel pity for these hopeless guys since they are under the misconception that their existences are precious. It is awfully pestering, on the contrary.

COUNSELOR

And are not you one of them? Contemplating about existences in this solitary cabin, are not you doing the same but just in an oblique way?

ASSASSIN

(furious outburst)

No, I am not. They make me think about existence. About celebrating fake notions of freedom, of salvations, which are awfully farcical. How ,on earth, you dare to judge a poet from thy poetry?

In this regard, I remember a proclamation by a poet. He, with sheer conviction, said that I have been never so true to the earth that I am to the paper I write.

Minutes of silence while the dusk approached a little bit more. The counselor dragged a chair and is seated.

ASSASSIN

(appear tamed)

Fair enough. Now, it is your turn. Go on.

COUNSELOR

(with sincere inquisitiveness) 

What are you staring at in the cracked mirror?

The assassin seems to lift himself up from the chair with meticulous effort.

ASSASSIN

(bustling with excitement)

C’mon. I will demonstrate you.

The assassin took his counselor in front of the mirror with firm hands. As the mirror is cracked from between, the counselor came across two reflections of his face. The assassin bends a little closer to his shoulders and literally hissed out of the urge to explain.

ASSASSIN

So, there is two of you within you. Look. Can you decipher which one is the real you? Which one of you performs the errands of your tedious designation? Which one of you have the same philosophically simulating conversations with me  in every afternoon? Which one of you utters the verdicts of your life?

The assassin pushed his counselor from his position with irresistible inertia and replaces himself there.

ASSASSIN

Here’s mine. Now tell me, which one is the celestial bastard? I feel that I know both of them but I have never met the second one. Then which is the one I am supposed to kill in order to establish my exclusive identity. Is there anything called exclusive identity? Hell.

The counselor appeared mesmerized with these random questions. It felt impossible to him to intervene in this self-enquiry of the assassin. 

COUNSELOR

(guising in an authoritative countenance)

I wish to know what have happened that night in your own words. Instead of that, I am unable to work for your..err..

An annoying embarrassment choked the voice of the counselor.

Meanwhile, the Assassin appear ignorant to this muttering of his counselor, as he appear playing with the crumbled pages of Crime and Punishment, his favorite novel by Dostoevsky. Whenever he felt to respond to this choking of voice the book drifted from his hand into the floor and shocked the counselor.

ASSASIN

(firm conviction)

My what? Detention?

COUNSELOR

No, not really. Your, say, redemption. 

The assassin began jesting out of his urge to mock the remarks of the Counselor as the sun sets completely. 

ASSASIN

Your pranks are more bitter than mine, you hopeless, ridiculous creature.

Perceiving that the assassin is fading into insanity, the counselor prefers to remain silent. Meanwhile, the assassin dragged his chair little closer to the counselor’s and fixed his grin gazing to the Counselor.

ASSASSIN

So, you wish to explore the truth, to peel the incident phase by phase to fathom the truth as you are appointed in a divine investigation, as you are a mole of honest admissions.

COUNSELOR

No, I wish to investigate it borrowing your perspective. I wish to get your version, your apprehensions regarding the morbidity of the event as the legislations does not allow the juries to take those into consideration. And, with brevity. Avoid beating around the bush with your philosophical rhetorics. 

The assassin appear to undergo a mood swing. After letting his head down for a little while when he stared at the counselor again his eyes are brimming with tears.

ASSASSIN

Believe me, you epitome of godly diagnoses, not every murder is an assassination. An assassination is something preordained, framed upon the fantasy of committing petty sins. I am naïve, believe me I am naïve as a maiden sinner. 

COUNSELOR

(spirit of participation)

You mean to say that you are not supposed to assassinate the moneylender, you are obliged to. But what obligation? What obligation do you have that you are vindicating your sin?

As the assassin appear to delve into the nuances of the gruesome incident, a jump cut appears.

CONTINUED:

2 UNIDENTIFIED WATERLOGGED STREETS. DEAD OF THE NIGHT.

The assassin appears tottering in the streets in the dead of the night. The stray dogs are so stunned that they literally appear to forget barking at him. The streetlights shed a little light in the hands of the assassin conforming to a divine instruction to divulge what he is carrying.

ASSASSIN

(voice over)

I was horribly drunk that day, as a pig. I remember once Verlene has been designated as such by the elder brother of Jean-paul Sartre, which insists me to use that to define that condition. And, I was tottering in the streets, penniless. I have not had anything from yesterday. This sense of famishing saturated me with anxiety and disgust irrespective of anything. Boozing appears the only thing that I am able extract the requisite solace from.

The setting shifted to the cabin again. The counselor lit the lamp there in the cabin, stained with lampblack.

COUNSELOR

(interruption with the urge of taking the assassin back into the track) 

So, you are drunk. Where are you going in the dead of the night? To the moneylender, I presume?

ASSASSIN

Yes, I badly need a little money. I do not know why I am so desperate to have that, probably to buy my smoke. I have not realized earlier that existing is so toilsome without a smoke. By the way, do you have one?

The counselor offers him a fag, which he lit with intense satisfaction.

COUNSELOR

You have not explained your answer yet.

ASSASSIN

I am not here to behave as per your expectations.

COUNSELOR

Please, it is already quite late. I have other inmates to visit.

ASSASSIN

Your remarks are flagrantly expressing your lack of interest and empathy. In that case, I wish to quit.

COUSELOR

(with a sense of urgency)

Please!

ASSASSIN

I felt nothing in front of me expect a rigid darkness. I decided to visit the moneylender with a piece of shit hoisted in my wall from the day when I have shifted there. I thought the moneylender will spare me some of hers debauch money if I am able to pawn that shit.

COUNSELOR

(eagerly)

And what was that?

ASSASSIN

(expressing effulgence)

A painting by Edvard Munch. Scream, probably it was. It was in a gilded frame. There is a rumor regarding the painting, which ensures me that the shit will, definitely able to allure the slut.

  COUNSELOR

Let me have the rumor then.

ASSASSIN

That was the prototypal canvas, which Munch have tried before affirming his decisive strokes.

COUNSELOR

I see. Then what happens when you visited to the moneylender.

ASSASSIN

(hissing with rage)

She started to pester me as usual. That gobble of filth, that perpetual dirt, that deformed epitome of fur. Probably, I was alarmed a little more than every time else. I was hungry and literally imploring for a little money, which can buy my fill. Am I asking it for free? And she is constantly designating the portrait as beyond the ability to pawn.

The assassin stopped for a little while. He distinguished the fag with a spirit, which resembles with killing. He drank a whole bottle of water with petrifying promptness.

ASSASSIN

She said is it a time to visit to person for money. Just attempt to assess the insensibility of that dumb 

moneylender. Is not it her audacity to reject to listen to me that why I am that much frantic to have the money?

I hope, counselor, I feebly hope you will be able to justify my notion of vindication now. I killed her after a long and tedious verbal conflict. I killed her with the machete, or it was a cleaver might be which I saw resting in the pantry helplessly. 

The moneylender appear petrified as she sense her death squirming in front of her with a blood-seeking cleaver. 

MONEYLENDER

How much, how much money do you need right now. I wish to lend any amount you seek. Please spare me, please for god sake.

The assassin seems ignorant to the ultimate cry of the moneylender. He hoisted the cleaver and slit her throat at once with an abrupt strike of the apparatus. Immediately after that, he literally slashed her neck off from her shoulder. The assassin took a little while to comprehend the consequence of this gruesome affair. He appears mesmerized when he stares at the fresh corpse of the moneylender. 

ASSASSIN

(mutters)

You must be grateful you figment of dirt that I have endowed your resurrection with ease. 

Instead of taking the money dispersed from the wallet of the moneylender, the assassin just walked out from the circumstances. 

ASSASSIN 

(self-mumbling)

It must not happen. Where is this sense of most primordial pleasure coming from? This absurd excitement of existence. 

 I must die since no excuse is potent enough to vindicate this audacity of my existence. I must die.

The scene returns to the cabin. The counselor coughed to drag the assassin into the setting.

COUSELLOR

Now I can fathom you?

ASSASSIN

So counselor, can you tell me who I am really. It is not an assassination that I have committed, it is the sin, the flagrant sin which saturated me with the primordial sadistic pleasure, it is the sin that fuels this dilemma regarding my identity. But the world would not believe me, and you, the prosecutor of good will and hygienic acumen, is not potent enough to heal me. 

The assassin left his chair restlessly and faded in dark where the light of the lamp is unable to reach.

ASSASSIN

(self-muttering)

I must die.

As the scene fades in again, the assassin, found dead in his cabin. He committed suicide by slitting his vein off by a machete. He is not alone in his cabin. A bucket of water, drenched with the stinky blood of the assassin appear to accompany him.