There is an analog clock on the stage, initially working, that, somewhere towards the end of the play, stops.

Female twentysomething enters the room, breathless. Sees the audience, screams (in anger? in fear?), then walks out again. Walks in from a different entrance, stops dead, gives audience a look, then walks out again. Walks in from a third entrance, resigned, composes herself, and begins.

The "black hair, green eyes, pale skin" description of Elizabeth can be varied so that two of the attributes are possessed by the actress, but one is strikingly different.

People shed on things, and I hate the things that people shed. The oil they secrete with their fingerprints and hair. The scabs and skin cells that dust up rooms. The mist that sprays out with every exhalation. The bad breath, flatulaion, and body odour. The piss shit snot mucus saliva cum, the sweat phlegm pus vomit menses and tears that you expose yourself to every time you go to the bathroom. People who don't wash their hands should be shot, I tell you. I want to sit outside and take photos and stick up wanted signs. This criminal enjoys holding their dick then shaking your hand. This bitch works at the food court. You like her sandwiches? -- well you should. They're fresh from her vagina to your face. We bake our own bread here.

I never hugged mum very much.

Not even when she was dying, not even when she asked, drowing in her hospital bed with a lung full of blood. I can't remember the last time I hugged her, actually. Maybe when I was a kid. Maybe when I was too dumb to know better. I have this mental image of me, in preschool, perhaps on my first day there, being released from captivity by the three o'clock bell -- I have this picture of seeing her at the school gate, and running to her with arms outstretched, "Mummy mummy" -- and making the other mothers jealous -- or so she told me, years later.

The last I saw her I was asleep -- and I knew I was asleep -- and you can tell, because no matter how many times you dream you've woken, there are things that are wrong -- you try to read, and the words keep changing; or light switches don't work; or you pinch yourself, and it doesn't hurt. And in my dream mum was pleading with me not to go. Go where? I don't remember. And I don't know why I was adamant, where the urgency came from. But I do remember the sensation. I have to go, I said. I'm sorry. You don't understand. And at that point my phone wakes me up, for real, and it's dad, and I know that something's wrong, and I say Just tell me, and he's sad and serious, and I say to him I know, I know, and I did know, and I drifted back to my pillow, and I kept thinking about how I never hugged her, not even when she asked.

So dad was there, and there was no one else at the funeral parlour, just me and him and Smiley the undertaker. And dad was looking good, and it'd been so long I think he was surprised at me, I think he'd forgotten there was a body attached to my voice. And mum was looking good too, a lot better than I'd ever remembered seeing her. And the ceremony was such a fucking farce, such a farce. We played her favourite song, I read her favourite poem, we hold an awkward minute of silence, and Smiley presses the button, and the casket rolls along a conveyor belt and disappears behind black curtains... and that was mum. They burnt, buried, or dumped the body. Who knows what the hell they did with it. Then dad pisses off back to his life, and I go back to her boyfriend's house, where I was staying, and I fucking ransack the place, I fucking do the place over. I take everything I can fit in my car. I take the TV set, the DVD player, the computer, the microwave. I take the forks and knives, the cups and saucers, the blankets, the towels, the ashtrays. I try to move the fridge, but the fucker's bolted there, it's chained to the wall. And then I take her picture from her bedside table, and I sell it. White elephant store. The photo came with the frame, I said. You're willing to give me five bucks for this piece of shit, you got it, mister, it's yours. But none of it sold for very much.

And by this time I'm needing a new place to stay, you see. Death is so inconvenient when it happens. It's not like mum's boyfriend will take me in. Let's not go there. And it's not like I want dad to take me in. So it's just me, it's just me, and I'm desperate for any room at all, and I'm so flat broke, you've got no idea. And this is when I stumble on the apartment. And oh my god. There are dead cockroaches stepped into the carpet in the corridor outside. There's a fat, striped roach belly-up on the dinner table, legs and antennae twitching. There's a fucking antnest in the microwave. I don't know how they survived in there, but they did. There's a miasma of garbage fumes, there are flies, there are silverfish. And the place even has its very own fratboy. The second I open the door he looks me up and down. He doesn't bother to hide it. He's twentysomething, and it's his last semester at uni as well, and he's got cupcake on his collar, and he was born to be sloppy. He has a girlfriend. I'd like her. Her name was Elizabeth, same as mine. But don't worry about her because she's not around very much, he says meaningfully. He leans in towards me, and I lean away. So it was mildewy and stained, and there was no parking, and every tap was leaking, and the roof was leaking, and there was a stinking communal toilet, and my room and Michael's were separated by a piece of cardboard, but -- bottom line -- it was dirt cheap, and I was dirt poor. And Michael is ejaculating in his pants from excitement, and he gives me a key, and he says to be careful to wash all the toothpaste from my mouth at night, or else I'd wake up with a cockroach on my lips, eating.

So I move in, and you better fucking believe I stay out -- as much as possible. After class I linger in the library, in museums, parks, galleries -- in anywhere that doesn't stink too bad and that saves me from having to return too soon to that sewer. I notice my lecturer is attracted to me, so, innocent little me, I taunt him, and bum cigarettes off him and coffees and bagels. I spend days at the movies, sneaking from one film to another, coasting through hour on hour on a celluloid high. I avoid Michael, but I see the shit he leaves to mark his territory, when I come home, late in the evening. And I see also the remnants of his girlfriend -- a pair of cheap shoes, a supermarket bag, a ratty jacket left in the hallway. I make up pictures of what she might be like, and how desperate she'd have to be.

At night time I dream of bugs. Which is fine with me, because I adore nightmares, j'adore nightmares, I love how you wake up, and your body is thick with them. And it's a burning summer, and the more I dehydrate the worse the nightmares get. And in my bug dreams I might find myself lecturing to a crowd of people, when the lights begin to fade. I hear a rushing sound, and -- click -- there's darkness, and wave on wave of dead cockroaches sweeps in and over me. I'm struggling through them, and I'm surrounded by the sound of their crunching shells. I can feel them against my skin, filling up my clothes, and their antennae are pushing into my nostrils, and into my ears, and against my mouth. I keep my mouth closed -- firm -- but I know that sooner or later I've got to breathe.

I only really see Elizabeth once, the day of my finals. I come home in the afternoon, and I'm exhausted, and I just want to crawl into the sideboard, and she's sitting in the kitchen, and she has black hair, green eyes, pale skin, but what I first notice is her fingers, and I'm not sure at first. She's wearing a thin woollen sweater, casual, and there are long sleeves, and the cuffs of the sleeves run halfway up her right hand, just exposing the top of it, and she's cupping a glass. So I'm watching, and her hand is long and elegant, and there's something strange in how she's holding, and there's something in the way the hand moves, almost too smoothly, or too quickly, and there's no bump in the sleeve where a thumb should have been. I think her beautiful. I stare, and decide that the sleeve is a cover-up, like a blind person and sunglasses, to make the thumb's absence less confronting. But I don't say a word. She looks up at me with an odd expression, and Michael is coming through the front door, and I vanish to my room. I hear them talking, and then they fall silent. I hear them fucking, the bed creaking. I try to block the noise out.

That night the cockroaches are on holiday. I wake up, and I know I'm still dreaming. My feet make no noise on the floor. I open my door, and move towards the sighings and moans. But in my dream the corridor lengthens, and when I reach the end of it, and open Michael's door, it's too late -- the room also has changed -- and I find myself in the funeral parlour, and it's dark, and there are people there, though I only catch glimpses of tangled limbs, with white moonlight on them. And where the casket was, Elizabeth is lying. And she's surrounded by men. And she glances up towards me standing at the doorway. And she has the same odd expression.

And I wake to her and Michael arguing. The tone is vicious, but they're whispering, so I know straight away what the deal is. I hear her walking past my room, dignified, but determined, right out the apartment. I hear Michael going after her, then returning. He pauses, he knocks. He's wild-eyed when I open. He begs me to speak to her. He's desperate. He grabs me by the shoulders and I lash out at the son of a bitch, I slap him hard, and he's astonished, but undeterred, he keeps right on talking. He says he'll PAY me if I try to explain things, and that throws me, you know, but I say There there poor boy, I make sure I negotiate a decent price, and I go to see her in the dank little bookshop that her family owns and lives in. I ring the bell at the delivery entrance, and a man who looks like her dad opens the door, in the middle of a phone conversation. Can he help me? Yes he can. No, I don't mind waiting, and so he goes upstairs to fetch her, and I'm left in the storeroom, surrounded by shelves and piles of books, and I thumb through Coleridge's collected poems: Through caverns measureless to man // Down to a sunless sea. And twice ten minutes later, by which time I do mind waiting, he returns. And he's cold, and the storeroom's cold. And the whole thing has blown up ridiculously. And she doesn't want to see me.

I don't know what the hell to do, and I don't want to deal with this shit -- it's so not my mess, you know what I mean -- but I ask that he pass on a message. And I tend to be a little direct sometimes; I'm not very good at the nice girl thing. Terribly sorry. I tell him that Michael sickens me, and though clearly I'm a loose slut, believe it or not, no, I've never fucked him, and there's nothing between us, and there never was, and oh my god as if there ever will be. I don't know if I convince him, but maybe he's a little mollified.

On my way out, a girl passes me in the street and whispers, You're shit. -- I didn't realize it was that obvious.

On the day before my graduation, surprise surprise Elizabeth dumps Michael, and Michael is distraught, and that night I dream that she comes into my room. I stand up and start kissing her. I am kissing her in my room, my arms wrapped around her, reaching under her sweater, and her hand is scratching down my back, when Michael bursts in. He touches me on the shoulder, and I push him in the chest, hard, and the push is grotesque, has an effect out of all proportion to its strength. He falls back, blood flowing from his mouth, and crumples into pieces.

And I wake up coughing, I feel like I'm going to cough my lungs out. It's the middle of the night. I think I've heard a loud noise from next door. Something is wrong. My hands sweat. I move down the corridor and Michael's room is open, and moonlight streams in from his window. I see inside for the first time. It's bare -- it has a clothes rack, and a bed, but no Michael. There is a bad smell. I start to worry. I go to the kitchen, and there is the same smell. I can barely breathe. It's coming from the microwave. I open the microwave, and even in the moonlight I can tell it's crawling with ants.

I'm panicked. I don't know what to do. I return to the bookshop. I knock at the back door, and there's no answer, but it swings open. And the storeroom is empty. Waterstains and cobwebs. Nothing's been there for months. I walk up the stairs, calling out. I hear the sound of female laughter. There is a narrow corridor. At the end of a corridor is a bedroom, the door ajar. I walk towards it. I get a strange feeling. I can hear noises from inside. I push the door open, and there is a bookstand in the centre, with an open book, but the place is otherwise empty. I approach, and I read, but the words don't make sense. I hear a sound and glance towards the doorway, but there's no one there. I walk out quickly. I'm scared. The pulse of my right hand is throbbing. But there's nowhere to go. There's nothing I can do.