The Baby Monitor
Format: Horror monologue
Approx. length: 1-3 minutes
Original audition scene

INT. NURSERY - NIGHT

A parent speaks quietly into a phone, trying not to wake the baby.

ROWAN
No, don’t come over. I’m sure it’s interference. Baby monitors pick up taxis, radios, people ordering kebabs at two in the morning. That’s normal, right?

The thing is... it said my name.

Not clearly at first. More like when you hear a song through a wall and your brain fills in the words. But then it said, “Rowan, look under the cot.”

I didn’t. Obviously. I’m an adult. Adults do not take instructions from discount electronics.

Then the baby started laughing.

He’s four months old. He laughs at ceiling lights and the dog sneezing. He does not laugh like my dad. He never met my dad.

I went in and the room was freezing. Not cold. Freezing. There was frost on the inside of the window, and his mobile was turning the wrong way. I know how that sounds, but I watched it. Backwards.

I picked him up, and under the cot there was a photograph. My parents’ wedding photo. The one that burned in the loft fire.

So no, don’t come over. Take a picture of this call log first. Because if something happens, I need proof that at 3:12 a.m. I was sensible. Terrified, but sensible.

Wait.

The monitor just turned on again.
