Short Script Example

Little hand on the Seven

by Martin Holdcroft

Sept 1993

Night in an american city, late sixties or early seventies.  We are in  the two rooms that comprise a tattoo parlour; An entrance lobby, several chairs surrounding a low table on which sits an ashtray and an untidy pile of biker magazines. There is a water dispenser on a stand with sign next to it which reads: “ CUPS 5 cents “. The walls are covered in tattoo design posters. There is a curtain of plastic ribbons which fills a doorway to; the inner sanctum, two chairs facing each other, a trolley full of inks and needles, a long black leather couch. There is a lamp on a long extending arm which illuminates whatever the tattooist is working on. On a shelf next to the couch sits an ashtray and a radio, the radio is constantly tuned to a soft country and western station. The tattooist, RAY, sits with his back to the audience and is leisurely wiping his tools clean, one by one. RAY wears a sleeveless leather jacket and jeans. His arms are suffused in a welter of colour and bold patterns.

VICTOR enters the lobby, brushing the rain from his suit. He puts his briefcase down and sits heavily on a chair, wiping the rain from his forehead using the sleeve of his jacket.  He is in his early thirties and looks tired on it. His suit is of some quality but dishevelled and creased. Victor looks around for about ten seconds, then rises and crosses to the ribbon curtain. He listens. There is a pause of twenty seconds.

VICTOR(quietly)

Hello?

PLEASE NOTE THAT RAY’S DIALOGUE IS NOT HEARD AT ALL. VICTOR’S REACTIONS ARE ALL WE KNOW OF RAY’S WORDS. RAY’S BACK IS ALL WE SEE OF HIM.

VICTOR

Yeah sure. Shall I leave my things out here? Or bring them-. Yes, okay.  

Victor picks up his briefcase and enters through the ribbon curtain. He puts down the briefcase and takes his jacket off and hangs it on a hook on the wall. Victor unbuttons and rolls up the left sleeve of his shirt. He takes his watch off, lays it on the trolley.

VICTOR

I want a watch tattooed on this wrist and yes, I know that it will be painful - I know, I know. Just the outline of a watch. Single colour ink, black. A design like this watch - No, I don’t have any blood diseases, venereal diseases or anaemia - on the face? Oh, right, the big hand on the eleven, and the little hand on the seven.

Ray begins delving into his tray of tools and gestures for Victor to lie down on the couch. Victor approaches the couch warily, he sits, and then lies down. Ray stands and brings the extending lamp arm down to just over Victor’s left wrist. Ray pulls at a swab of cotton wool, tips a bottle up against it, and dabs at Victor’s left wrist.

VICTOR

I’m quite drunk, well to be honest, really drunk. I was trying a little self-anaethesis, huh, you know - I heard it would be painful having it on the wrist so- no, no, go ahead. I’m happy to go ahead, no problem.

The tinny whine of the tattoist’s needle is heard, Ray applies the needle gun to Victor’s wrist. Victor squirms for ten seconds, staring madly  at the sight of the needle on his wrist.

VICTOR (Through clenched teeth)

It’s okay. Kinda ticklish but deep in there, know what I mean?- Yeah. Yeah. Relax.

VICTOR

I guess drunks like me must be just about your biggest customers, huh? But not many chickenshit lawyers wearing creaseproof pants I guess

Victor looks down at his crumpled clothes.

VICTOR

Well, I left the court this afternoon and the mood just got me, you know? I just wanted to lose the rest of the day before it became just like all the others that end up in the same dead end, I got drunk because it was there, waiting to happen. (He brightens up) Hey Ray, I must be the first member of the DA’s office to use your services eh? You could put our department crest up there on the wall, next to death in a top hat and the spider’s web.  The buffalo of wisdom and the eagle of justice, all hail America!

Ray pauses to light a cigarette and looks intently at Victor for a few seconds, then returns to his work on Victor’s wrist. Victor sighs heavily. His eyes wander to the tattoo designs on the walls around him.

VICTOR

I’ve probably seen your work before, like when I’m standing in court number three.  There they’ve been, wearing your..your stuff, on their way down to a five to ten for robbing a 7-11 of thirty dollars or such. They’ve usually carried a knife or a small piece, and they have dragons right across their shoulders. You can see the tails running right down their arms. Now I’m not saying that having a tattoo means you’re a criminal. But I’ve seen so many down in the court that they’re like part of the scenery, there’s the judge in his big black dress, there’s the people with tattoos, and there’s us, the lawyers.

Ray takes a wad of cotton wool and rinses it in a chemical, dabs daintily at Victor’s wrist, he turns it this way and that, under the light. It looks medical.

VICTOR

I only ever had the small change to deal with, which suited me, the shop robbers, the auto thieves, the exposers, the drunk drivers.  Drunk drivers are the worst, they always whine and cry, always. Do you remember the Manolo kid? - Yeah, the very one, you got it. I was dragged into that case, right at the end. Remember all those appeals? Last minute reprievers? The anti-capital punishment demonstrations? More exciting than the superbowl, that’s what the papers said. It was on TV just as much.  On channel eleven, did you see that? No? They had a mock up, get this, a life-sized model of the electric chair, it had a dummy sitting on it, when they pushed the button, Wham! The screen went black and then good old George Sangster was standing there, with his sad old face on and they had stuck a big black cross on the dummy’s chest, like he was cancelled out. Stupid. Stupid.  Then straight to a commercial break.

Victor lies back, breathing heavily. The whine of the needle intensifies and wavers up and down, up and down. Victor covers his eyes with his right hand. On the radio a lively bluegrass banjo tune.

VICTOR

Well I was there. At the execution. A goddamn cert-ee-fied witness. The DA must have thought he’d do me a great big favour. Hey. Let’s give that schmuck Victor Jankowsky a wonderful thing, just what every DA’s assistant needs. A good old fashioned technological American execution. The kid had shot his pusher, then his landlord. Holy shit! They should have given him a citation, the order of good sense and necessary action. But after he had admitted to it, with no special circumstances, there was no way he was going to escape the chair, no way. I knew it.

Victor watches Ray at work, studying the needle and the blood and the ink.  Ray turns Victor’s  arm around to check that the lines meet up. In the distance we hear the banshee wail of a fire engine.

VICTOR

And so, therefore, to this tattoo, this watch. I don’t know how it came to me, never thought of it till this afternoon, hell, you’d never ask. If I came in here, said put Abe Lincoln on one cheek of my ass, and George Washington on the other, your only question would be, whose on which side? But I’d put Nixon right between them.

Victor looks at Ray and  laughs a little, as if they were sharing the joke.

VICTOR

Anyhow. On the day of execution, six a.m and I’m in the office, I’d been up all night drinking enough coffee to float the Brazilian Navy.  That last, pointless appeal. We heard first , down town. We called the Mayor who was in some hotel balling his girlfriend.  The mayor called the Governor, The Governor called the DA, who made the call to us in the first place! Everbody acting like its an extra fourth of July. It was   “ Thank you Governor, we hate your miserable guts day in day out, but not today, no sir. Today you earnt your money, you finally did something”.

Pause

You know they put these things together weeks in advance? A whole team of people spending their working days together for weeks, thinking, talking, planning, rehearsing. All for the death of one dumb schmuck, that’s what I call scary.  You want to know the sickest, most mind screwing thing? When you’re in jail, you don’t have late nights, it’s lights out by ten. So in the morning you feel really awake, no hangover, plenty of sleep cos it’s your biggest escape, and then just when you’ve woken up and you’re really alive. They put you to sleep forever. That’s why executions happen so early in the morning, because by the time night comes around, you just might end up wanting it.

The whine of the needle stops. Ray shakes a bottle of ink and drops it in the bin. He picks another up and loads the needle up.  The radio now hosts a slow, sweet mix of slide guitars and mournful cowboy voices in sickly harmonies.

VICTOR

And then it stops being a punishment. So the Manolo kid is scheduled to die, I’m at the pen by quarter to seven as a representative of the DA’s office. Well I’m sure not there representing the so-called human race, shit, I still don’t know to this day why I didn’t just run, check out there and then. But there was no time. I had all these things to go check, to see that everything was, uh, proper. All the names had to be checked, the guards, the door lockers, the door openers, the button pushers, oh yes, and the padre. He looked like he was having a little problem with it too, he kept looking at the floor, or his shoes, any goddamn thing, the whole time.

After I had done my checks I had to go and sit in the witness’ gallery. It was like a tiny little cinema, a tiny cinema for the creme de la creme of sadists. All the seats were numbered and allocated. I guess I got lucky, the front row.  Between us and the chamber was a blind, a thick grey blind, so the kid wouldn’t see us as he went in, or maybe it was the other way round, anyway, we couldn’t see a thing at that moment in time.

After a long wait I heard them approach the chamber. A lot of heavy feet, all in time, couple of voices. Then I heard the kid, this kinda..shout. It could only have been him, sounded like he stubbed his toe or was hit by panic or something. I heard the straps being put on, they creaked as they were tightened. Then footsteps leaving the chamber.

They lifted the blind. Jesus Christ. I nearly screamed. I tried to shrink down into my seat, he was so fucking small in the chair and he was less than twenty feet away from me.  He was wearing a short sleeved shirt and they had cut the trousers so that the straps on his shins made good contact. He looked about twelve. Jesus.

The mask made his head look bigger. You couldn’t see his face, not one part of it was visible. Then he pissed himself. For crying out loud, this kid, this man, I’m sitting there with this human being so scared, so dying, that he pisses himself. His breathing was so loud, so fast. Then the lights flickered as they prepared to do it, the door to the chamber closed. There was a bell ringing, like a bell for recess at school.  And then they pushed that electricity through his body.

At first you couldn’t see any difference, he just stiffened. Then the kid seemed to be trying to stand up. He really started to burn, around the mask came this smoke, and spit and blood started to run down his chin. Somebody behind me said the tongue was trying to force itself through his shut teeth. They sounded like somebody pointing out their favourite scene at the movies. Then I saw the watch.

I kept my eyes and my mind on the watch so that I didn’t have to actually see, see the death when it came. It was sliding down his arm, a sports watch, way up here, it came down from his shoulder, from under the short sleeve. He had smuggled in a watch for the last three minutes of his life, what good is a watch then? Anyway, it caused quite a stir in our little gallery, they said it was against the regulations, personal effects were not allowed. Somebody’s balls would be on the Governor’s carpet.

The watch had slid all the way down to the kids wrist. It came to rest against the strap that held him still. A couple of long minutes later,  they decided that he was dead. You could tell, his neck was stretched back, real far, frozen in a spasm. They cut the juice, some guards went in, pushed the kids head forward.  The doctor came in next, looking for signs of life, he gets to the wrist with the watch on and he has to remove it, the regulations say so. The warden signalled to him to break the watch, the doctor pulls and pulls on the expanding strap until it’s stretched out nine or ten inches, then SNAP. The strap broke and a piece of it hit the gallery window, I think we all jumped. Where the watch had been on his wrist, there was a perfect shadow, a bluey-black burn in the shape of a cheap sports watch. 

That’s the reason for this Ray. The tattoo. It’s been six months since that day, I can’t sleep, I can’t screw, all I can do is drink and remember. I reckoned that if I was going to be so messed up remembering something this bad, I may as well stop keeping it a secret and let my skin do the talking.

Ray has finished work for the last few minutes. He starts taping on cotton wool over the tattoo. Victor stops him, and looks at the tattoo. Ray finishes taping the tattoo. Victor stands, puts his jacket on and fishes in his trouser pocket for money. He hands a couple of bills to Ray.

VICTOR

Twenty dollars. Thanks for the tattoo and everything.

Victor picks up his briefcase and goes through the ribbon curtain. Ray dissembles his needle gun. The door of the shop closes silently as Victor steps out into the night. The radio is playing a happy country hoe-down as the stage is released into the dark too.

The End.

copyright martin holdcroft 1996