Killing Time

A man of the cloth [Jude] is out driving in the country and gets lost in the fog. He has the dead body of a woman in his trunk. He is running out of gas but a gas station looms up out of the gloom. The prices on the pumps are stuck circa 1965. At a nearby house Annie, a woman of about 45, lives alone. She invites Jude in . The house is also stuck in a time warp circa 1965. There is an instant mutual attraction between Jude and Annie. Annie hardly ever gets out of the house because her mother is an invalid. Jude says he has just broken up with his longstanding girlfriend and was driving around just ‘killing time.’ Jude invites Annie out for a drink, which she accepts. Annie finds a spare can of gas. Annie goes upstairs to change and talks to her mother as she is transforming herself from a frumpish middle-aged woman into something of a siren. Annie walks downstairs and links arms with Jude. They go out, get in the car and drive away. But we now see that a knife is missing from the wall-rack in the kitchen. A CD player in the bedroom flicks back to Track 1 and we hear the voice of Annie’s mother repeating the same words that we heard previously. Annie’s mother is dead in bed. Her throat has been cut. She has been dead for some time.