Ugly Features

My first collaboration with The Fiery Floods Theatre Company back in 2019, I was asked to write certain passages of this play and edit others. I've included a section here. Please note all rights to the play including this passage here is owned by The Fiery Floods Theatre Company. I just wrote it but I do not own it.

This is where you are:

bathroom.

The stench of bleach as it swills around the bath.

Water thunders from the tap, drowning the bleach and veins of scarlet, pulling them down the plughole.

Wadded tissues stew in clotting blood clogging the toilet bowl.

A splatter effect of crimson punctuates the enamelled white. You'll clean that in a moment. The bleeding stutters. You remove a final, sodden flap of tissue. You drop it into the toilet. Now, pressing the flannel hard into the gap in your skin, you squeeze. Bleach sops out between your clenched fingers. Traces of bubble-gum pink run in jagged paths across your knuckles. Rinse out the flannel, apply cold water.

Using tissue now would result in irritating beads of shredded paper in the wound; contamination.  You clench your elbow, pinning the flannel to your chest.

You screw the cap back on the empty bottle. Place it behind the bowl. Using another flannel wipe every surface which is contaminated. The trick to removing blood is to swirl the water, allowing it to settle means it sticks.  You push the water, watching it contort in its eddy’s as it slides toward the drain. You tear the cleanest possible portion of linen from the shirt, bundling it against the wound until it oozes. Bleach, water, plasma, blood. The remainder of the shirt is screwed up with the flannel and loo role. You can still hear your dad’s rampage down stairs,

Mum screams again,

poor Mum.

Stuff the ball of evidence into the bin, you’ll 

deal with it later.