Incomplete Testimony
Key art
Filed beside the screening
The picture is Incomplete Testimony.
Scenario
2:57 · 16:9
A shaded lamp makes a small island of a desk. Beyond the shade the room is a darker brown, and a clock on the wall advances without a tick loud enough to matter. Tomasin Grey reads a page that is almost white. The statement in her hands stops before its last verb: a subject, an hour, and then the sentence simply ends. The paper at that ending is clean, not torn. She does not supply the word. Finishing it would be a different room from this one. She reads the short sentence again, lips still, and the missing verb does not arrive in the quiet.
Beside the page, paper has burned down to curls. The curls hold their shape when the lamp's heat should soften them. A box overflows with more of the same, lid unable to close. A flake of ash sits on the lid's edge and does not fall. A reel-to-reel recorder sits intact, heads clean, tape still on the reels, transport idle. The machine has not agreed to forget. It also does not play. Playback would complete what the page refused. A grey-haired man at the side of the desk holds a fan of burned sheets and looks at what the fire kept. The fan does not shed. He does not offer a verb. He is not the author of the missing word. His work is the holding. His thumb keeps the same place on the char.
Tomasin sets the nearly blank page against the curls. The clean edge meets the blackened edge and neither takes the other's color. Her pencil touches the place where the verb would go and leaves no mark. The lead is not dull. It simply does not write. She draws the pencil back. A second touch, lighter, also leaves the paper white. She does not press harder. The man's burned pages stay in his hands. One curl on the desk tightens as it cools and then holds that tighter ring. The reels stay still. A tension arm on the recorder sits at rest and does not tremble. The lamp stays behind them, and nothing is repaired.
The idle reels sit beside the curled ash. The box will not shut. The grey-haired man does not lay the fan down. Tomasin's pencil rests parallel to the page and does not roll. The page remains short of its last word, the white after the hour as empty as when she first lifted it, and the shaded lamp keeps both of them inside its small island without completing a sentence either of them refused.
The lamp shade ticks as it warms and then holds still. Tomasin does not turn the page over. The reverse stays face down. The grey-haired man's fan of burned sheets loses one flake onto the blotter. The flake is only ash. He does not brush it onto the white page, where it might be mistaken for the missing verb. The reel's tape does not creep. A red indicator on the recorder stays dark. The hour on the wall clock passes the minute the statement named, and the sentence still ends where it ended. Nothing in the room supplies the verb. The curls keep their black rings. The nearly white page keeps its stop, and the two of them remain at the desk with the work of not finishing laid out between the lamp and the idle machine.