Free Mindgame by Anthony Horowitz

colour-blind.
    STYLER: I didn’t know that.
    FARQUHAR: It was one of the reasons I decapitated her. It was meant to be symbolic but to be honest I may have got the image confused with the wrapping-paper.
    STYLER: Why did you do it?
    FARQUHAR: Why did I do what?
    STYLER: Her head…
    FARQUHAR: I wrapped it in gift-wrap.
    STYLER: Why did you do that?
    FARQUHAR: I had to put it in something. And now I think about it, she always used to keep gift-wrap…old gift-wrap. It was one of her habits. If you gave her a present she would unwrap it…sometimes it would take her all morning. She didn’t want the sellotape to tear the paper. And then she’d store the old paper in a kitchen drawer, to use it again when it was someone’s birthday or she was invited to a dinner. And you know, they always knew. Because no matter how careful she was, the paper was always a little crumpled. You could tell at once that it was second hand. And the funny thing was, no matter what she bought you, no matter how generous she was with the present itself, there was never any pleasure in it. There was never any pleasure in getting a present from her.
    He gives STYLER another drag on the cigarette. STYLER chokes.
    Shall I put this out?
    STYLER nods. A pause. Then FARQUHAR suddenly grabs STYLER’s head, clamping his hand over STYLER’s mouth. He twists STYLER’s head and begins to move the glowing cigarette towards STYLER’s face.
    You want me to put it out?
    STYLER tries to scream, tries to beg, but the clamped hand cuts off almost all the sound. At the last minute, with the cigarette an inch away, FARQUHAR changes his mind. He drops the cigarette and grinds it out. Then lets STYLER go.
    STYLER: ( Gasping .) Why…? Why did you do that?
    FARQUHAR: I didn’t. I changed my mind.
    STYLER: But you were going to…
    FARQUHAR: Yes.
    STYLER: Why?
    FARQUHAR: ( A smile .) Because I can.
    STYLER: You are mad. You’re evil.
    FARQUHAR: Surely one or the other.
    STYLER: What?
    FARQUHAR: I can’t be both. Come on, Mark. You’re disappointing me. How could you have written a book about me with such sloppy thinking? ( Pause .) I mean, think about it for a minute. If I’m mad, then according to the Mental Health Act of 1983, I have a ‘persistent disorder or disability of the mind’. In other words, I’m sick. I don’t know what I’m doing.
    STYLER: You know what you’re doing.
    FARQUHAR: So then I’m evil — which makes you wonder why I was considered unfit to stand trial and have spent the last thirty years in a hospital for the criminally insane. It’s a paradox, isn’t it? I wonder if it isn’t possible that I’m something else, something neither mad nor evil but… something we don’t understand.
    STYLER: Why don’t you just kill me? That’s what you’re going to do anyway. Why don’t you just get it over with?
    FARQUHAR: Now you’re being defeatist.
    STYLER: I don’t like these games.
    FARQUHAR: Games? I’m not playing games, Mark. I’m trying to orientate myself into your scheme of things and at the same time, I hope, I’m slowly easing you into mine. But if you think we’re playing around, if you think this is some kind of mind game, then let’s do it. ( Pause .) I killed my mother because I woke up one morning and felt like it. What did you do to yours?
    STYLER: We argued, yes. But I would never have hurt her. Never…
    FARQUHAR: You never thought about killing her?
    STYLER: No!
    FARQUHAR: You never thought about killing?
    STYLER: Well of course I thought about it.
    FARQUHAR: You were obsessed by it.
    STYLER: No…
    FARQUHAR: Two books on mass murderers and a third in the pipeline not to mention your one work of fiction in which you managed to murder your wife.
    STYLER: My book had nothing to do with my wife.
    FARQUHAR: You said it was based on experience.
    STYLER: Loosely.
    FARQUHAR: So tell me