OFF TRACK

A “Misshapen Features” FILM
WRITTEN BY MJ Gibbons

Alister Hunt is back from two years in Afghanistan and he can't sleep. The army counselor wouldn't have a clue though, Alister was always good at telling people what they wanted to hear.

His old rugger mate Caz drags Alister to his swanky city apartment for a catch up. Caz wants to hear 'war stories' and they play a first person shooter game, but Alister is stony. Caz's friends arrive for cocktails and Alister meets Sandra a feisty newspaper writer who wants to break into investigative journalism. She is instantly interested in Alister and pesters him for 'the scoop', his only option is inebriation.

In the morning Alister wakes on the couch with a naked Sandra draped over him. He cleans his phone number off her face and gets out of there. Drinking more whiskey he drives out to forested ranges. Leaving his car he walks for most of the day into the bush and off the track. On his phone are a bunch of files that he scrolls through, he gets a text. It is from Sandra saying there are ways of making her sources anonymous. Throwing away his phone he slings a rope over a tree and climbs up.

The tree is slippery and before he can put the noose over his head he falls. In a blinding instant Alister is snapped back to sobriety with a smashed ankle. Now lost and in constant physical pain, his training kicks back in and the hypervigilance is like an old friend.

The truth of what happened in Afghanistan is in those video tracks on his phone and if it can hold a signal it could be is his life line out, but it's running out of battery and so is Alister.