A Zed & Two Noughts

The Deuce twins lose their wives in a car crash when a large swan crashes through the windscreen. The other driver, Alba Bewick, survives but loses a leg. This tragedy marks the beginning of their unsettling descent into obsession with growth and decay.

Alba Bewick survives the crash but is left with a severed leg, altering her life forever. Her presence becomes entwined with the twins as they redirect their grief into their research and strange fixation. Her resilience makes her a recurring figure in their experiments.

Venus de Mille, a zoo-based prostitute and storyteller, appears and tries to form a bond with the twins, hoping to help them heal. She observes their fixation and influences the evolving dynamic between them.

Oswald and Oliver begin feeding their obsession with growth and decay, watching videos on the origins of life and shooting time-lapse footage of decaying matter. They start with a green apple, bitten and rotting under the camera.

They expand their time-lapse filming to the decomposition of prawns, documenting each stage with clinical detachment. The project grows as they delve deeper into decay and the patterns of life and death.

As their obsession deepens, they progress to filming increasingly complex animals, effectively climbing the species ladder through decay. Their fixation equates life and death with a dramatic, methodical display.

The twins become romantically involved with Alba, and their bond with each other intensifies as their fixation deepens. Their relationship becomes part of the driving force behind their project.

They develop a personal interest in Alba’s childhood, asking her to show the field seen in a photograph on her bedside table. This reveals how they want to map her life into their decaying project.

Alba becomes a subject for a surgeon’s experiments, culminating in the amputation of her other leg as part of a Vermeer recreation scheme; Venus de Milo participates.

The brothers’ obsession drives them to a life-and-death negotiation with Alba, treating her as central to their ongoing project. The stakes become personal as the project nears its apex.

Alba offers herself as the final specimen for their decay project, but her family intervenes before the brothers can claim her. This interruption forces the twins to rethink their approach.

They return to the field of Alba’s childhood and set up the necessary equipment to capture their own decomposition, aiming to finalize their time-lapse masterpiece.

A huge infestation of snails covers the equipment and bodies, overwhelming the setup and shorting out the electrical system, halting the grand project.