colourless green ideas sleep furiously

JACK: Out comes a woman dressed in black. Like a fairly normal—well, she looks normal, but she doesn’t look normal for a circus. Slim-faced, pale woman, wearing black, people behind her wheeling a huge cart covered in a black cloth. And the lights in the circus dim, and she pulls the black cloth off to reveal a sort of gigantic—you know those, like, those doors that look like a mouth that you sometimes see? Like, big, weird, grotesque carnival door that’s also a mouth? Door that’s a mouth.

AUSTIN: Ah. Yeah. Yeah, I think I know what you mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

JACK: Yeah, if you Google image ‘door that’s a mouth—’

AUSTIN: You’ll find things like this.

JACK: Yeah. And she says, ‘You know, ladies and gentlemen, this next act is called Disappear Altogether and Never Return. I would like a volunteer.’

[SYLVI AND KEITH LAUGH]

JACK: And there’s like a murmur among the crowd, and she begins to make her case. Which is that this act will cause one member of the audience who steps into the mouth to disappear altogether and never return. They will be free of all obligations, she can’t tell you where you’re going to go or what you’re going to see. But she speaks about it with a kind of reverential purity, that there is something majestic and terrifying here. And, you know, lads in the crowd, young lads try and egg each other on to like, ‘oh yeah, you go do it, Dave. Sangfielle Dave.’ Or whatever, and ‘you’re too scared’ and—

SYLVI: Oh, Sangfielle Dave.

AUSTIN: Sangfielle Dave.

JACK: Until eventually, you know, a small man is like ‘I’ll do it, I’ll do it.’ And he comes down the stairs and the crowd goes deathly quiet. It’s sort of the mood of a public execution or some sort of bizarre piece of church performance. And he steps—

KEITH: It’s sort of is a public execution.

JACK: Well, no, he’s not being killed. He’s disappearing altogether, and he will never return. Steps into the mouth.

SYLVI: We’ve already had a public execution today.

JACK: Yeah, we’ve already had one!

SYLVI: It’s a little same-y.

AUSTIN: You’re back at ‘I didn’t kill anyone’ real quick there, Jack.

[JACK LAUGHS]

AUSTIN: They just—Sangfielle Dave just walked through the door.

JACK: Well, no, it’s not a door. He just stands in the mouth of the door.

AUSTIN: Oh, right. Uh-huh.

JACK: And you know, other acts have a curtain involved, or whatever. But no. He just disappears. And there’s like a shocked moment of silence for about 15 seconds, and then the pale-faced woman and her attendants put the black cloth back on the mouth, and they wheel it back out of the arena. Nobody quite knows what they saw.