Make My Movie

NZFC / NZ On Air / nzherald.co.nz present... the MAKE MY MOVIE project. Our proud history of profound, progressive & potty thinking: Splittng the Atom / Women Getting the Vote / the Zorb and now we have another world first: the MAKE MY MOVIE project

Project details

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The Man From Upstairs Came Down

A “Cal Jefferson” FILM
WRITTEN BY B.Cal Jefferson

Rooney stands still in the dark. Horrific, unseen beings stir in the darkness, coming ever closer. The darkness shrouds the horror yet intensifying it. She is unable to move; finally she opens her eyes. Rooney, a former drug-addled street-walker awakes from a nightmare but does not flinch. She is used to keeping her pain within. She is still surprised that the room is clean and she is in a safe environment. The safety of her environment is unusual and she is uneasy with her new situation. She has just moved back in her with her parents, finally accepting their help. She is making, or at least trying to make, a clean start to her life.

As she lay’s in bed only a small slither of light sneaks into her bedroom from the hallway, via the gap under the door. Rooney realises that she hears voices but not those of her parents; unfamiliar and loud they echo through her room, yet are incomprehensible. She lay’s still, yet is unworried at first. She’s lived in much worse places, but as the light from the hallway constantly blinks, she realises that someone is walking outside her room. Yet there is no sound of footprints. She does not move and despite her nightmare convinces herself that sleeping is the best course of action. Her past has lead her to believe that getting involved in situations that can be avoided is not to be recommended. The voices continue as she tries to sleep.

When the morning comes, an exhausted Rooney rises. Her family assure her that her night-time experience was merely a bad dream. Memories begin to slowly flow back and Rooney remembers the stories her sister used to tell her when they were kids, to scare her; stories about the bogeyman, about the man on the second floor, The Man from Upstairs.