MEMOIRS OF AMPLEXUS

A play about falling out of love by Sophie Cundale.
Two lovers find themselves in the midst of 'The Reversal', a terrifying evolutionary process that will change the face—and body—of humanity.

Credit: Image taken by Christa Holka, two person play with actor Bryony Miller, originally presented with Rose Easton & Ginny on Frederick (2025)

SET: Two chairs on either side of a table. On the table there is a spray water bottle, two glasses of water, a box of tissues and a mobile phone. Under the table is a wastepaper bin. 

HUMAN and INTERVIEWER enter the room. The HUMAN is glistening wet with alien-like facial features wearing a trench coat and high heels. The INTERVIEWER is dressed in smart clothing.

INTERVIEWER 

Did you find us okay? 

HUMAN

I couldn’t find the entrance, am I late? 

INTERVIEWER  

Don’t worry, it’s a maze. We’re all very grateful that you’re here, thank you for coming in. 

HUMAN stops when she sees the AUDIENCE.

HUMAN 

Oh, there’s more of you than I thought there would be.

INTERVIEWER

Yes, well there was some interest.  [Addressing the AUDIENCE] Welcome, and thank you all for coming to the  ‘Astro-biological Eye: On the Reversal and Beyond’ case studies and lecture series. We are very lucky to have with us: a first hand account.  

INTERVIEWER gestures to the chair, HUMAN sits down.  

HUMAN 

Ok, hi, um, well, I’ve got some notes so hopefully I’ll remember it all. I’m not that good, in public, especially not at the moment. 

INTERVIEWER 

Please don’t be nervous, just pretend they’re not here and speak to me. [Addressing AUDIENCE] There will be time for questions at the end of the interview, please keep any interruptions to a minimum until then. 

HUMAN

[breathing deeply] OK.

INTERVIEWER presses record on the phone and sets it back on the table. She then sits on a chair in the front row of the audience. The HUMAN is alone on the stage.

INTERVIEWER

Whenever you’re ready. 

HUMAN

It started with the sex. Her entire body felt unfamiliar, devoid of emotion. And she became kind of ruthless, sexually. And not just with that but with everything, everything frustrated or irritated her. Sometimes she actually flinched when I talked—and she stopped laughing— couldn’t take a joke at all. Her breathing became strained, like it was an effort for her to even bother. I felt sorry for her, insisted she went to the doctor. They gave her some pills I thought it was a depressive episode but that didn’t really explain the sex because… rather than deplete, as had been normal in the past with her low moods, her libido was insatiable. She became sexually obsessive—would not leave me alone—and her body grew stronger with all the exercise. She dominated me with it, I was her captive. We would fuck aggressively for hours. It was weird, awkward. 

INTERVIEWER 

In what way? 

HUMAN 

It’s hard to describe.

INTERVIEWER

Please try.

HUMAN

Angular, difficult, hardcore, bony, lots of elbows and knees, almost like fighting. I’d get… hurt. It was not just with me either, she’d come back late after work smelling of other people. It made me… competitive. Honestly I was the best fuck I’ve ever been, and she brought it out of me. All this weird fucking was a fabulous distraction from the growing dysfunction in our relationship but something in her eyes wouldn’t let me forget it. There was this membrane; a sheer membrane that glazed over her eyeball for a split second after she blinked. So momentary it was barely perceptible but I’d say to her, I can see it, I can see it in your eyes, something’s different, something’s changed. She’d tell me that it was nothing, to ignore it. In fact any display of emotion became intolerable for her because quite simply her blood was turning cold. It seemed that no matter how hard we both tried, I couldn’t give her what she wanted. Our ‘mating period’ came to an end and communication soon followed. At first I thought she was just ignoring every single thing I said on purpose, but then I realised that she was stumbling over certain letters, consonants mainly. Soon she became monosyllabic. Without communication to ameliorate things, I started to notice it more. 

INTERVIEWER 

Be specific, what exactly did you notice? 

HUMAN

Signs of the ‘Reversal.’ Her face became smooth of hair and lines. I was still so in denial I told myself it was just botox. Then came this sweet spot, oh god she looked incredible, supernaturally hot. Her cheekbones grew a few millimetres and everything tightened around her contours like a first class fucking face-lift. Her eyes turned pale, the iris white and cloudy like she was in some kind of clairvoyant rapture and her skin, oh god, it was just beautiful…

HUMAN removes their coat and starts fanning themselves, her fingers appear webbed.

It had this sheen over it, iridescent, just glowing. She kept saying it was too hot in the flat and misting herself with the spray bottle we used for our plants, [examining her own hands] that’s when I saw that her fingers were beginning to web at the base. She must have noticed it too because she became self-conscious, stopped going to work, stopped going out, just stayed in her pyjamas all day. Silk. So when she moistened herself it clung to her.

HUMAN picks up the spray bottle and starts spraying herself seductively.

It was as if she was doing it on purpose— trying to turn me on. Then she stopped wearing clothes altogether.Wet, naked, all day long. It was torture because we’d stopped being intimate at that point. I couldn’t help myself and one day I just grabbed her and licked her. The taste of her skin drove me wild and I became kind of addicted it, just kept licking her naked body all over, as much as she allowed me to. 

INTERVIEWER moves from her seat in the front row of the audience to the chair on the other side of the table to be closer to the HUMAN.

INTERVIEWER

How did it taste? 

HUMAN sprays water into mouth.

HUMAN

Umami… a kind of bitter honey, almost sickly, but so compulsive, like MSG, she stimulated my taste receptors, my mouth was always watering for more. I could have lived like this, continued living like this, living for her skin, but then she began to withdraw again, taking these long baths. Maybe it was so I’d leave her alone or maybe she needed to be submerged in water, I don’t know, but after a couple more weeks, she stopped bathing altogether. The sheen on her skin built up and became a kind of mucus. Thick, sticky, grimy, and although she was still alluring to me physically, the smell was like a forcefield. 

INTERVIEWER

So then you were living without physical contact or communication? 

HUMAN

That’s right. I don’t know whether it made it better or worse when I finally learned that others were suffering in the same way. Because in a sense, it took the experience away from us, made it impersonal. 

INTERVIEWER

How do you feel about that now?

HUMAN

Angry because they chose her. I wish they’d chosen me.

INTERVIEWER

Who’s they? 

HUMAN

They? I don’t know, no one, God, the earth. [PAUSE] That’s when I realised that she was communicating with others.

INTERVIEWER

Others? 

HUMAN

There was this guy. This awful guy that lived upstairs; our neighbour Roberto. Honestly we used to take the piss out of him all the time, he was such a busybody you know, twitching curtains kind of guy, always complaining about something in the building’s WhatsApp. “Could whoever is ordering pizzas ask the deliveryman to only ring the buzzer once. The noise is very disturbing.” Ugh. I could hear him one night, calling down from his window and I dare say the sound was a little more disturbing than an incoming Margherita. But by then it wasn’t unusual, they had already started to, um, I guess you’d say, ribbit. 

INTERVIEWER

Ribbit?

HUMAN

Yeah, ribbit. It was an extremely guttural sound and at night you’d hear it echoing all across the neighbourhood. I guess it was quite beautiful really, in its own way. If you weren’t trying to fucking sleep. It went on and on. I’d close the window but she’d go over and open it, stay next to it, listening. I began to get jealous. Started locking her in when I left the house. I’m not proud of it. I’d go to get everything for the both of us. I felt guilty and would buy all of her favourite things but she didn’t want any of it. 

INTERVIEWER

What did she want?

HUMAN

[Sighing] I was returning home from the store, bags full of random stuff for her, and walking towards our flat I heard a kind of harmonic whaling, a hammering sound coming from our window. 

HUMAN briefly makes a wailing sound and thumps on the table.

I followed the sound into the bedroom, then I saw…

HUMAN pauses, momentarily unable to continue.

INTERVIEWER

What did you see? 

HUMAN

A writhing, crawling amphibious mass of bodies. All on top of her. She was right in the middle. They must have climbed up through the window, scaled the wall like fucking Dracula. They didn’t notice me of course, just carried on like… 

HUMAN wails and thumps the table, louder this time, the INTERVIEWER interrupts.

INTERVIEWER

That must have been… surreal. How did you respond?

HUMAN

Well I dropped the shopping, then went into the kitchen, and… put the kettle on. I turned on the radio to block out the sound, the news was on, and that’s when I first heard the word ‘Reversal.’ 

INTERVIEWER

Do you think they had a choice? 

HUMAN

Who?

INTERVIEWER

Your partner, the ‘Reversed’?

HUMAN

I don’t know. Being able to breathe underwater gives you greater chance of survival than we do on land. You know all the planets in the solar system have water. They don’t have oxygen, they have water, so if you survive in water there are a lot more options! I sound bitter, but when I look back on our relationship, I wonder if it was there from the start, this restlessness, this desire to leave. It just feels like a betrayal. 

INTERVIEWER

We can’t think like that.

HUMAN 

No?

INTERVIEWER

You have to believe that what you had with her was real. 

HUMAN

Yes. It was real. That’s why it’s so painful. [Voice cracking] I’m heartbroken, I’m in massive amounts of physical pain. 

INTERVIEWER 

A lot of us are. Even here in this room.

INTERVIEWER offers a box of tissues. HUMAN doesn’t take one, looks away.

INTERVIEWER

It’s hard not to be angry. Especially when they behave in the way they do. Completely without empathy. We interpret their actions as selfish, heartless, and my god, their table manners… but it’s not their intention, it’s their nature. They evolve, irreversibly, without us. That’s why we’re all here, to try and understand it.

HUMAN 

So we can stop it from happening?

INTERVIEWER

No, we don’t have that much power. Shall we go on?

HUMAN 

Yes, where was I? [looks at notes]

INTERVIEWER 

You’d seen the mating ball, dropped your shopping and were making a cup of tea?

HUMAN

Coffee… the mating ball? 

INTERVIEWER

Well the technical term is Multiple Amplexus, so that’s A-M-P-L-E-X-U-S Amplexus from the greek word embrace: Multiple embrace.

HUMAN 

[Interrupting, exasperated] So, after it had all finished…

INTERVIEWER

[Interrupting, strict] I’m sorry but we’re going to have to go back. Yes. This is actually very important, it’s why you’re here in fact, because we haven’t got that many first-hand accounts. Usually any reports of copulation say they took place completely out of sight of humans. 

HUMAN

[sardonic] Lucky me!

INTERVIEWER 

You must have been special to her. 

HUMAN

Well I’m not sure I can be of much use… I didn’t watch. 

INTERVIEWER 

You didn’t watch?

HUMAN 

No.

 INTERVIEWER

Hmm. 

HUMAN shifts uncomfortably in her seat and looks away guiltily.

We’re particularly interested in the fertilisation. When the Cloaca is in closest contact with the gamete release. [To AUDIENCE] Cloaca –which translates to ‘Sewer’ in Latin– for the release of both excretory and genital products. [Turning to HUMAN, cheerfully] All comes from the same chute, unlike us mammals! So if you could be as graphic as possible.

HUMAN shrugs and looks away. 

Look, I know it’s hard, but you must consider it a privilege that you saw, it is not something to be ashamed of. You must understand it as a form of intimacy, because it’s something the majority of us are locked out of entirely. I, for one, would prefer to have seen it than to have guessed, grown suspicious, driven to the brink by the all too human impediment that is jealousy. So please, if you could be as graphic as possible.

HUMAN 

[Taken aback] Of course. My pleasure. Ok, [softening] ok so, the multiple clusterfuck ball, or whatever you’re calling it, well, it looked uncomfortable. I was worried, I even tried to claw them off her but they were holding on so tight. And then, I caught glimpses of her, she seemed… her eyes had that cloudy membrane over them, she looked so happy, so heavenly, in a state of bliss. I had to accept that it was something she’d been wanting for a long time. 

INTERVIEWER

What had she wanted? 

HUMAN 

A… gang-bang. 

INTERVIEWER

A gang-bang?

HUMAN 

That’s G-A-N-G-B-A…  

INTERVIEWER

We know how to spell it. We’re astrobiologists. 

HUMAN

She’d spoken about it, about her fantasy of being at the centre of a gang-bang, and I’d been too scared to instigate it... She wanted me to want it too, but I was worried that if she had sex with multiple people all at once, she’d never want to fuck just me. That alone, I wouldn’t be enough. In a strange way I was happy for her, to see her like that, it made me think that maybe if I’d just listened…

INTERVIEWER

You can’t blame yourself. 

HUMAN

I’ve always found group sex a bit challenging, we’d only ever had threesomes and even that was a stretch, for me at least. She was always much more natural than I was, naturally the centre, whereas I’d get stage fright, dissociate, my default was to just watch. I mean, I do get turned on by watching…

INTERVIEWER

Keep to the details please.

HUMAN

Sorry, yes, but it’s relevant, because… I tried to join in. It was chaotic, all of us fighting over her. We all just wanted her, we didn’t want each other. I got poked in the eye, hit round the back of the head, smacked by these webbed hands like fucking ping-pong bats. Webbed feet are sharp, I had scratches everywhere. At one point I really thought I was gonna suffocate. I never envisioned the end of my life as crushed to death in an orgy of frog people.

INTERVIEWER

There are worse ways to go I guess.

HUMAN

Much worse. Still, I was quite badly bruised after.

INTERVIEWER

How many of you? 

HUMAN

Eleven in total, including my partner and myself.

INTERVIEWER

Did you recognise anyone?

HUMAN

[Shakes their head] One by one, the randoms began to leave until just one remained. Prince fucking Charming himself. I couldn’t believe it. Roberto! That prick from downstairs. Out of everyone she chose him! He was on his knees holding onto her, so tightly, as if in worship. I don’t get jealous that easily but that just pushed me over the edge. How could she, with that guy of all people? It was just so fucking offensive, like she was trying to fuck with me on purpose by choosing such a loser.

INTERVIEWER 

She wasn’t. At least that’s what I’ve been telling myself.

HUMAN

How do you mean?

INTERVIEWER

They don’t choose partners in the same way that we do, it’s not love or attraction, it’s utility, convenience. It could be anyone, it just wasn’t us, anymore. [PAUSE] How was he holding her?

HUMAN

Like, just round the middle. 

INTERVIEWER

A lot of animals have just one mating position, but frogs are quite experimental sexually, almost as much as primates. There are several different types of amplexus holds, we’re trying to ascertain which one it was so that we can understand the fertilisation process. So again, if you could be as…

HUMAN 

…Graphic as possible, yes. She was kind of pressed against the wall. 

INTERVIEWER gets up from her chair and presses herself against the wall, her back to the wall.

INTERVIEWER 

Like this?

HUMAN 

No, more like this.

HUMAN demonstrates, moving INTERVIEWER out the way and pressing the front of her body and hands against the wall as if she is being strip-searched.

And Roberto was knelt, clinging around her waist. 

INTERVIEW kneels down and folds her arms around HUMAN’s waist. 

INTERVIEWER 

Like this? 

HUMAN 

Arms higher up. Tighter.

INTERVIEWER adjusts the hold, moving the arms above the HUMAN’s waist.

INTERVIEWER 

[turning to AUDIENCE] So that would be ‘Axillery Amplexus.’

HUMAN 

Sorry? 

INTERVIEWER 

[to HUMAN] Axillery amplexus [to AUDIENCE] make a note [to HUMAN] and what happened next?

HUMAN 

They started to vibrate.

INTERVIEWER 

Like…? 

HUMAN starts to vibrate while sticking her bum out and arching her back.

HUMAN 

But 100 times quicker. He was holding on so tight it was like he was trying to stop her. The movement was so fast that it reached a fever pitch and then shot them into the air. They started turning around and around, like elite athletes, still locked in Aaaaa…

INTERVIEWER 

Amplexus. 

HUMAN vibrates slower, now more like thrusting.

HUMAN 

This cycle, holding, vibrating, somersaulting, went on for days. Neither of them eating or sleeping. 

HUMAN stops thrusting, leans against the wall defeated.

I felt completely alienated. I didn’t want to be there anymore, I started sleeping at Roberto’s place. His wife and I sat there at the kitchen table staring into space like what the fuck. At night I’d fantasise about what was going on downstairs, I’d feel the vibrations through the floor and reach for my clit… [to AUDIENCE] Clitoris. 

INTERVIEWER 

Thank you.

INTERVIEWER gets up from her knees to sit back down at the table. HUMAN sits back down opposite and sprays herself, then offers the spray to the INTERVIEWER, who nods. HUMAN sprays the INTERVIEWER.

HUMAN 

Then one morning Roberto came downstairs and I moved back into my place.Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw…

HUMAN, suddenly looking peaky, puts hand over mouth and shakes head.

INTERVIEWER 

Which was?

HUMAN 

She was hunched over, in the bathroom, she had all these eggs… embedded in the skin of her back. Hundreds of these big round, slimy eggs… 

HUMAN pauses, looks like she might be sick.

Her skin had begun to swell around them. Her back grew out, steroidal, to encase them, forming these enormous pustules until it smoothed over completely, hiding the eggs in her back. But her form had changed so much by then that I could hardly recognise her. It looked so painful. 

HUMAN wretches, INTERVIEWER hands them the bin, HUMAN pukes into it and wipes her mouth.

I wanted to comfort her so much because I could see fear and shame for the first time and regret and grief and sadness and all the things that humans feel when they know they have lost something important to them. And I’m not talking about me, it was bigger than us, she knew that her human form was irrevocably lost. 

INTERVIEWER

But the reality was that she was being reborn.

HUMAN dry wretches more. INTERVIEWER gets up, to crouch next to her and stroke her back.

HUMAN

She wanted wet towels, to be swaddled in them, perhaps so she could bear to have me touch her and I held her, stroked her back as I would have stroked her pregnant stomach if it were our own child. We stayed like that for a long time. She was sleepy… docile, vulnerable, I felt closer to her again even though her form disgusted me. But after a while she started fidgeting, [HUMAN shakes off the INTERVIEWER] she couldn’t bear it anymore and shook herself free of me. Her skin peeled off with the towels  and she wanted me to feed it to her, for me to eat it too, the dried dead skin, for us to share it like a gift. It upset her that I didn’t want it. Underneath, the membrane on her back was so fragile and translucent that I could see the tadpoles shifting in their eggs.Her skin was crawling. So was mine. The animal inside me knew that she needed something other than my attention; that she was suffocating in my arms. I knew this because she was so weak, she’d stopped being able to stand up. I just didn’t want to let her go. 

INTERVIEWER  

You weren’t the only one. Trust me. Many died like this, fossilised in the arms of someone who loves them.

HUMAN  

I couldn’t do it, couldn’t let her go. So instead of taking her to water I turned our flat into a swamp and barricaded us in. I thought that she could revive and we could just live like that. In the warmth of squalor.  I didn’t even think about the deposit. Within the dank and dark of our flat she regained her strength and the final stage of the Reversal began. Her thighs bulged and merged together at the top, her arms welded to her sides with new skin, the creases on her neck became more prominent. She kept very still, conserving her energy. Then one day, I woke up and she’d gone. She didn’t wait a moment longer than she needed to. I hope she got to the sea, that her legs held out and didn’t turn too soon. It would have been my fault. 

INTERVIEWER 

You can’t blame yourself.

HUMAN 

How many of them make it?

INTERVIEWER 

Most. They have a strong will to survive, stronger than ours it seems.

HUMAN 

What about the ones who weren’t allowed, whose loved ones tried to keep them?

INTERVIEWER 

Well in that situation, the loved ones would have suffered a worse fate.

HUMAN

So if I’d tried to keep her?

INTERVIEWER 

She may have killed you.

HUMAN 

How?

INTERVIEWER 

She would have swallowed you whole and her stomach acid would have dissolved your body while you were still alive. 

HUMAN 

Honestly what I’m feeling now is worse.

INTERVIEWER 

Thank you very much for sharing your account with us. I know it can’t have been easy. Now we are going to take a short break and come back for questions. [To AUDIENCE] Please be back here in ten minutes. 

INTERVIEWER stands up.

INTERVIEWER 

Have you seen what happens when they get into the ocean?

HUMAN 

No.

INTERVIEWER 

I drove my partner there. 

INTERVIEWER leans on table, facing out to the AUDIENCE.

INTERVIEWER 

I’d kept them for so long that it was almost too late. It had reached the point that one of us was gonna kill the other. When I came to my senses I was desperate for this not to happen. I drove all the way down to the nearest beach, until the car was in the sea. It was a crazy thing to do, but to be honest, it was an indication of my state of mind, I wanted to go too. We floated for a while until the car filled with water, just as it was rising to cover our mouths, the gills on their neck burst open and they took their first breath. I’d never seen anyone so alive. It was beautiful. They smashed through the windscreen with their tail to free us both. As they swam towards the horizon I tried to follow them, then realised I was drowning. I felt an overwhelming desire for dry land. As I lay there on the beach covered in sand, catching my breath, I prayed to the earth, to please take me back. 

INTERVIEWER looks at her phone.

INTERVIEWER  

Shall we get some air? We’ve still got time.

INTERVIEWER motions HUMAN to the door, HUMAN puts on her coat, gets up and pats the pockets.

HUMAN 

Have you got a light? 

INTERVIEWER reaches into her BAG, finds lighter and ignites it. They leave together.

THE END

Sophie Cundale is an artist and writer living in London. 

Recent work has been presented with Barbican Centre, The Perimeter, Somerset House and The Industrial Art Biennale, Croatia 2025.