There was death in the house on the hill and we had covered the tears and intense grief. We did everything we could to build it up to that point, with the torrid love affair between the man and the maid. That was naturally melodramatic enough for our tastes. We pulled all sorts of cards of the man excluding his obdurate son from his will but promising the maid both the house and the rifle on the wall.

It had it all. It had the maid being overcome by greed and then using the rifle to finish the man, on a night with too much liquor. We then had her freezing where she was, realizing how money had made her a monster and then breaking down on the man’s dead body, with the bullet making little bloody marks on her face.

Then we looked at it and then we threw it in a bin where the rest of our stale ideas were making merry.

We turned off the TV and went to wash out brains with soap and diluted rum.