Welcome to my audition tape! (I am in agony)

Hi! Hello. I’m Abigail Edwards, I’m 23, and this is my audition tape for the role of “young mentorless writer in agony”. Thank you!

Scene: dark bedroom, lit by a draping trail of white fairy lights and singular candle balanced on the edge of a desk. The desk is an atlas of highways and intersections marked in India ink and cat scratches. The candle smells like smoke, intentionally (it’s called Cigar Lounge). The unfortunate subject of the scene: pajamas and fluffy socks, a glass of limoncello on ice, blue-light glasses and wet hair, tired eyes glued to a low-glowing laptop screen.

The screen is a blank document. The cursor flickers.

Empty document. Empty mind.

Give up and try again tomorrow. Or wait for that jolt of inspiration that comes at the exact moment your body is ready to go to sleep. Sleep windows exist, but we don’t particularly care about them in this moment. Crank up the sea shanties or Hozier or Tamino on your headphones. You don’t hear the cat churring at the door or the moths bumping up against the window, just the dulcet tones of Indigo Night.

Hold out for a moment just beyond your reach. Grasp it. Squeeze your eyes shut and slip back into yourself, buried in an avalanche of fictitious imagery. Here’s the smell on the breeze: salt-soaked wind and sun-baked wood. Here’s the feel of that same sun and salt burning into your skin, the tickle of light turning the hair on your arm to gold. Callused fingertips. The buck of a deck beneath your feet. The slosh of sea and the scream of birds and the groan of old timbers straining beneath the weight of living things.

Don’t turn around. Don’t blink.

In Slavic folklore, the narrator often employs formulaic phrases speckled throughout the story to disconnect the reader from their surroundings and immerse them in the tale: “In a certain tsardom, in a certain country….” We are in that certain country.

At least, we were. We’re not on a boat anymore, are we? You can’t smell the sea. We’re sitting at a dim-lit desk with a watery limoncello, paging through a reference book about Russian folklore and its motifs. This is a lesson now, you messed it all up.

Laptop is shut. Fairy lights go dark. You crawl into bed and under a duvet too warm for the summer temperatures. You shut your eyes and pray for nothing—to see nothing, to think nothing till dawn.

You missed your sleep window. You’ll lay there and listen to the bouncing of pale-winged moths against glass while disjointed stories and senses ricochet in your skull (like moths). Eventually, blessed sleep will claim you (too late; you’ll be tired tomorrow, but you aways are). Maybe you’ll slide back into that space you found before, that gentle scene with the warm sunlight and the rhythmic churning of waves. Wouldn’t that be nice?

In Slavic folklore, the narrator will often employ a phrase to lend authenticity to their tale. My favorite is this: “I was there, too. I drank beer and mead; they flowed down my beard but did not go into my mouth.”

Of course I was there. You were, too, for however short a time.

The lights come up as suddenly as they dimmed. Blinding light, yellow light, fierce stage lights and a sweaty sheen on my forehead. My cheeks hurt from smiling. I nervously dodge the onslaught of rotting fruit and veg.

This has been my audition tape! Thanks for your consideration! Don’t forget to tip your waitress!