Overgrown
Key art
Filed beside the screening
The picture is Overgrown.
Scenario
2:57 · 16:9
Vines have taken a survey hut. They cross the console, the chair, and the only window. Leaves press the glass from inside and from outside, a double dark. What still runs inside the green does not answer on any band a person would use. Dials sit at zero. A woman settles a headset and sends a tone. The tone is a clean thin sound in her own ears and nowhere else she can see. The needles stay down. She sends it again. The hut gives her leaves and nothing else. A vine near her wrist does not flinch at the tone.
A vine slides a loose cable along the console and seats the plug in a port she did not choose. The plug clicks. She reaches to pull it and stops when a dead panel lights green behind the leaves. The green is small and certain. Her headset remains silent. The tone she sent is not the tone the panel is answering. No needle rises to admit her signal. The panel's green does not flicker with her second attempt. She lets her hand fall short of the plug. The vine's grip on the cable does not loosen.
She takes the headset off and sets it on the vines. The earpieces hold the shape of her head for a moment and then are only equipment. The green stays. She walks to the door and looks back once, not toward the open air, toward the panel. The cable remains seated. The vine does not withdraw it. Day outside the door is ordinary day, bright on the step, and it does not reach the green square enough to wash it out.
She steps outside. Behind her, through leaves, the green light holds at one small square. The headset on the vines does not whisper. A leaf shifts across the earpiece and does not become a voice. The panel keeps its answer for a frequency she is no longer wearing. She does not go back in to put the headset on and steal the answer. The plug stays seated in the port she did not choose. The needles stay down. The hut keeps a green that is not hers, and the step outside keeps her, looking back at a light that does not need the band she was using.
The door stays open. Vines at the jamb do not swing it shut. The green square does not follow her onto the step. It remains a small certain color inside the leaves, answering a tone she cannot hear and did not send, while the headset rests where she set it and stays silent.
She does not step back across the threshold to reclaim the port. Leaves at the window shift and show the green again, then cover it, then show it. The headset does not hiss. The tone she sent is finished. The panel's answer is not. She remains on the step with ordinary day on her shoulders and a small green square behind her that keeps faith with a plug she did not choose.