— (Sir) Tristram Bexindale-Webb, Editor-in-Chief

c. 1861-1872

This nameless applicant (on right) is a personal acquaintance of our in-house urchin. Were this applicant taken on as a summer intern, it would present confusion in addressing him aggressively. Would he be referred to as Urchin 1 or Urchin 2? Will his still-soft head sustain the blows of my rolled-up Daily Telegraph? Which urchin am I supposed to kick first?

Yes, I know. He looks a bit old to be an intern. But Edwood’s application is impressive.  He’s high-spirited. He often initiates games and larks. His feet compulsively move in a sort of dance or “reel.” He is rarely sick with bile. His rants are minimalist. He will only steal from those he despises. He’s an “even” drunk—at once belligerent and glad. He is happiest with buttons, twigs, and lint. He only tried to kill one American president. He rarely wets himself, when “rarely” means “always.”

He is not my father.

Can you help us decide to made this difficult decision with supplementary decision-making?(Just tell me what to do. )

Urchin! Come! And bring the bin liners!

Here at The Good Ear Review‘s cosy set of mahogany cubicles, we are fortunate to have such a creature in our midst. My staff, under my direction, have adorned the office urchin to dress as something—we don’t quite know what—but something that is at once spastic, sad, and flamboyant.

Can you guess what he is dressed as? We can’t. But no matter! Enough! Enjoy yourselves on this hideous of holidays. I don’t understand any of you.

Best,
Tristram Stjohn Bexindale-Webb,
Editor-in-Chief and Port-drinker 

I am currently looking for a well-appointed garden shed or cave for hermetic possibilities on your property.

I require very little upkeep as I am partial to voles.  I am suitably apoplectic, adequately eccentric, and erudite in my mutterings. 
I philosophise. 

Let me be your living lawn ornament.

I can be reached at…  I am not reachable.

Setting:
Interrogation room

Character:
LIORA, 20s, is a multi-racial young woman with a soothing southern drawl that evokes innocence.

LIORA sits in a chair on a bare stage.

LIORA

That night child Jamal kept goin’ on an on about who knows what. I just made sure I looked like I’s listening real good. Frowning real hard like I’s thinkin’ with him. Except, I had a real hard time with that. I didn’t tell ‘im that or nothin’. But what’d he expect? We were in the middle of something else, you know gettin’ it on, and I’ve never been any good at doing more than one thing at once. Besides Jamal wuz never much for talkin’, especially when he’s in the middle of… um…

(Embarrassed) …Grindin’ and poundin’ like boys do. But that night child he kept goin’ on and on while he’s on top of me looking straight at me and what he said… Wait — I wanna make sure I get it right… “Liora, e-ve-ry human… person –” Yeah that’s what he said, “human person… when their life’s gone to crap realize suicide’s right there for one’s taking. Most try to shake their heads straight cause it’s a sin to go against God’s law but then for others, its God calling on ‘em.” And then as he come inside of me, Jamal shouted to the heavens above.

(Imitating Jamal, she shouts) “As God is my witness, I’m no coward.” I couldn’t keep my eyes off him even if I wanted to. Jamal’s hands found themselves around my neck. Grunting like a bull in heat. His dark eyes stared down at me while his sweat kept dripping on my forehead and his hands got tighter and tighter around my neck.

Jamal didn’t know what he’d done till after… he’d ejaculated. It wuz when he stopped shaking from head to toe that he looked down, saw I’s turning into a ghost with my eyes about to pop out. Jamal never felt so bad in his life. He collapsed on top of me and just started… weeping. I’d never seen Jamal like this. Calling out to God like that…

Watching him cry, I could see his shame and he didn’t like that one bit. He back handed me and said, “Who don’t think at one point or another about killin’ themselves?” Never crossed my mind.

(For a beat, she’s lost in thought, then…)

Jamal was good to me. Really. I’ve been with both nice and not so nice boyfriends. He’s one of the nice ones. He’d come and go as he pleased which most girls hate but for me it was a real good thing. When he wuz gone I’d have the bed all to myself and of course, Fat Cat. He weighed at least 15 pounds when I found him strolling across the highway with cars driving 70 miles an hour. I almost ran over him and two other cars almost ran over me. Fat Cat is one lucky bastard — does whatever he wants and nothing ever happens to him. He’ll lie in bed, belly up, making little sleeping sounds. And whenever I can, I’ll lie next to him, stare at the ceiling and let the inside of my head go completely blank. Thinking of nothing is one of my favorite things to do, ain’t it?

Free from question marks and exclamation points. Only ellipses… As easily as a thought comes in, it trails out.

(beat)

I got an A in grammar. Don’t look at me like that? You think I’m some dumb girl. A slut. An open door for Jamal or any other guy to come in and out of my life and do whatever they want. Honey, you got it all wrong. The thing is I just fall in love a lot and just the same, I fall out of love. I’m no slut and I’m no cheater, either. I got that extra sense that knows when it’s time for me to pack up and go. And I don’t judge when a man does the same. It’s like what Jesus says, “Do it the way you like it done to you…” or “Do onto you what others do…” something like that. That’s why I don’t keep pictures. It hurts less. After a while you forget what they look like. Then you forget their name and finally you forget they were even in your life. They’re in a box you donated to the Salvation Army. It don’t mean they weren’t important. It just means there’s a bigger prize ahead of you.

(beat)

It was just about a month after Jamal left me without saying goodbye that I’s flipping the channels when I saw him in the news. His face looked right at me, his picture filled up the screen. It was from his driver’s license. I remember I’d made fun of his picture. Told ‘im he looked like a mug shot. Then on the TV it showed Jamal cuffed, like some Hollywood star, he kept covering his face as they rushed him into a police car.

But he was no Hollywood star. They said he was a terrorist. Jamal, a terrorist?

(beat)

Then the FBI paid me a visit. Saw I didn’t own much stuff. They accused me of a whole bunch of things. They said things like “covert operation” and “sleeper cells.” I’d heard of those words but understanding what they meant, was a whole nother thing. Agent McNeill said I had to be involved. Why else would I’d been with an Arab?

And here I am now. In a jail cell at the women’s penitentiary. Waiting for some lawyer I’ve never met. I’s in solitary confinement for 30 days. They told little ol’ me, Liora James, a janitor working at a mall in Jacksonville, Florida, wuz a terrorist. That I am a terrorist and that I’m dangerous. Thirty days is a long time being all by yourself. So when they said, you, a woman journalist wanted to talk to me… I thought why not.

(beat)

Jamal was right. Everyone thinks about killing themselves at one point or another. And I figured out when it happens — when you start thinkin’ like you got somethin’ to say yet nobody’ll listen. Finding yourself trapped in someone else’s story where they decide what’s gonna come of you. So you start thinkin’ and thinkin’ and everything that pops in your head somehow finds it’s way back to one idea — one solution.

Being a victim gets old after a while so what’s left?

Just cause I’m thinkin’ about suicide it don’t mean I’m ever gonna act on it. Right?

Fat Cat’s waiting for me. And when I get out, I plan to lay in bed with him. He’ll be belly up, making little sleeping sounds while I stare out at nothing. The inside of my head completely blank.

copyright © 2011 Kimberly Mercado. All rights reserved.
_________________________________________________

Kimberly Mercado has written for television, film and the stage. Most recently she wrote for A&E television show Breakout Kings. Now based in Los Angeles, she was born and raised in Puerto Rico and is a graduate of New York University’s MFA writing programme.

A fantasy on poems by Jacqueline Kolosov

by Norman A. Bert

Setting:
Outside an apartment, on a little balcony, 12 stories up.

Time:
Late at night.

Character:
PETE, 50s

PETE is in his pajamas, sitting in a plastic chair, smoking.

PETE

I get back from lunch, drowsy. Wander through those three rooms. My world. Mine? That’s a good one. Pictures of strange, long-necked women. Watch for the hidden camera, the reaching hand—what makes people think they can touch the paintings? Gotta remember to pick up the eggs, the tortillas—means taking the slow way home. Jesse. Who did he think he was, saying that to our mother? Then I notice her. Where did she come from?

Blue scarf. Foreign. Maybe European.

And then he expects you to fix his car. After a comment like that. Must be the water pump.

She’s slow, this one. Gonna be here a while. Methodical. One picture at a time.

Then the kids come in with their teacher. Third graders? Giggles. Pointing. More giggles. What was that teacher thinking? Didn’t she know about the nudes? She’s gonna catch hell from the parents. Serves her right.

Still the blue scarf lingers. Seated now, eyes fixed on that skinny armed woman in the white nightgown. I walked between her and the painting. Just as I thought. She’s not there. Where does the soul fly when it leaves the body, eyes gazing into space?

A cough. Tentative. Like someone trying it out. Was that her?

Finally Vira comes so I can take my break. Late as usual.

Beyond my cigarette smoke, there in the garden, grackles fuss up into the live oak. Never noticed before the blue black of their flight.

Vira doesn’t even look at me as she leaves. Blue scarf’s still there, stuck in front of that one with the face like a loaf of bread, hands spread over his crotch.

Later, she hovers in front of the fat girl holding her bare boob in her hand. Then back to Bread Face. Then back again.

Her mouth’s too small for her face.

She tilts her head, the angle a match for the painting. What if I asked Angie to tilt her head like that? Just try it. She’ll do that thing with her eyes, that thing that says I’m a fool, a disappointment, probably screwing around again.

I’m in the other room when I hear her moan. Looking through the door, I see her sitting there. Flushed. Eyes closed.

Next time I look, she’s gone. But she left her blue scarf hanging in the closet of my mind.

“Anything new at work today?” Angie. Always a barrel of laughs.

“In a museum?” I say.

“Never hurts to ask.”

So what wakes me up in the middle of the night? Clock says it’s after two. Unfolding there from the hallway of dreams, what? Tomorrow maybe I check out that picture of the goose-necked, red-headed woman. Something about it. Wouldn’t hurt to take a look.

(Silent, he stares off into the dark.)

copyright © 2011 Norman A. Bert. All rights reserved.
_________________________________________________

Norman A. Bert teaches playwriting and script analysis at Texas Tech University. He has written over 30 scripts for the stage. His books include Theatre Alive, One-Act Plays for Acting Students, More One-Act Plays for Acting Students, and The Scenebook for Actors. He assisted Sam Smiley in the revision and reissue of Smiley’s classic text, Playwriting: The Structure of Action.

by Deidre Dowling

Setting:       An artist’s studio in Paris, France

Time:          Christmas Eve in the late 19th century

Character:   JOANNA HIFFERNAN, 25 years old, artist and model. For six years Joanna was the Irish mistress of painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler.

JOANNA

Do I want him to come? Well, I do…and then maybe I don’t… I’m expecting “the curse” an I feel like a piece of stretched elastic…and I’m that mad at him. Who the hell does he think he is ranting and raving at me like that? Maybe he has some little whore’s melt lined up somewhere whose only too happy to put him up these last few nights

(She vigorously brushes her hair) The best thing my Da did for me—the red hair…the only thing…the drunken ole shite! Though, it has to be said…I’ve never met the like of him…and he does stir me up so! His lovemaking isn’t all talk like some I could mention! I suppose you can’t blame the fellas back home, what with the priest and their mammies breathing down their necks and them afraid they’ll be hauled before the parish priest and condemned from the pulpit for immoral and debauched behavior with a girl of “uncertain” character! If it wasn’t for me Ma, I’d have been carted off to one of those homes for women—where they keep you in slavery washing sheets and scrubbing floors. What would the good people of Ballyjamesduff make of me now? I could be living at home with nothing better to do than saying a Novena to the Blessed Virgin. I wouldn’t go back if they paid my fare and threw in a hundred pound! Glory be to God, I’d go out of me mind and be sent off to the looney bin like Mary Henderson!

(Church bells ring out 11 o’clock as she climbs onto the bed)

Worse still, there’s Mags Talbot who should have taken the boat like meself but got “caught” and now is tied down with a clatter of kids and a “ne’er-do-well” who only has to put his trousers over the back of the chair for her to be “up the pole” again. What a life! No thank you very much… All the things she’ll never do…climb to the top of the Eiffel Tower…sit outside a café on a starry night…dance in the Tullerie Gardens!

(She lies there reflectively. Her voice slows)

Or lie on a studio bed while your very own artist paints the sweet lips of your wet and swollen flower. His brush caresses each stroke as he spreads the luscious paint across the cloth… (Joanne looses herself in reverie) …and adds a highlight here and there to bring the essence to the fore. The scene built up to reach an exquisite piece—a work of art…

(Pause)

(Church bell rings out the half-hour)

Will he come back tonight? I have to confess, I miss him this Christmas Eve…

Mam would have put together the dried fruits, the Jameson and she mixing the Christmas pudding and the smell wafting all over the house. The roar in the chimney this night would soften the sound of the wailing wind in the fields beyond the road. I’d be wedged in beside the range scalding my chilblains and waiting for the kettle to boil to make the cup of tea before we’d all head off for midnight mass. Later, after the loud singing and the quiet tinkle of the altar boys bell was done, I’d follow the crowds out the church door with the smell of incense in my nostrils. I can hear me Ma shouting against the wind to get a move on home before we catch our “death o’ cold.” Maybe Johnny Moran would try to steal a kiss under the arch…the smell of porter on his breath and his eye peeled for the priest out trawlin’ the roads…ready to break up any bit of warmth he found.

(Pause)

Then we’d wait up for “Captain Costigan” to roll in. Ma would be praying he’d not spent all the money got for the bullock in McGuilligan’s. The childer after hanging one of his ole holey socks from the mantle hoping for an orange and maybe a sweet and a pencil on Christmas morning if they were lucky.

(She sings) Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat…
please put a penny in the ole man’s hat.
If you haven’t got a penny a ha’penny will do.
If you haven’t got a ha’penny God bless you…

(Laughs, then pauses)

“Have you no shame,” says he to me and him fit to be tied. “Courbet painted the cunt of Whistler’s tart,” the headline said. “The Origin of the World,” says he “has made me a laughing stock.” I told him, “How could anyone tell who it was when all you can see is my pussy?” He frets half of Paris is ridiculing him. But here I am and it’s been three days and two nights and he had to lay his head somewhere. If Jim came in now and ran to the bed and threw himself on his knees—I’d turn the other way.

(Pause)

But… if he said in his darlin’ voice “Jo…I’m such a fool. You are my life…forgive me, Jo.” I’d say, “Let’s put everything behind us…it’s Christmas.” He’d kiss me and ask me to heat some water for a shave and I’d be out of the bed in a flash and the water on the range and his shaving things ready. I love to watch a man lathering up and scraping the day’s wear and tear from his face. And when his face was as smooth as a baby’s bum, we’d nestle under the covers and make up!

(Church bells ring out 12 o’ clock)

Christmas morning! If he doesn’t come soon I’ll lock the door and that’ll be the end of it…he can clear off for good! Whist…is that someone mounting the stairs I hear? Oh Jim, please God!

(Fade to black)

copyright © 2010 Deidre Dowling. All rights reserved.
_________________________________________________

Deirdre Dowling’s plays have been produced and stage-read at theatres in New York City and the Hudson Valley. While most of her work-to-date relates to Irish subjects, she believes the themes have a universal resonance. She co-authored the screenplay A Love Divided, a full-length feature film released in Great Britain, Ireland, and screened in New York City.

by Dick Curran

Setting:
A confessional box in a Catholic church, Newcastle, England.

Time:
present

Character:
DAVID, a well-dressed man, 45 years old

DAVID

(Part 1)

Right. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been…a very long time since my last Confession.

Specifically?  Shit—sorry, Father. Right, it’s over thirty years since my last confession. Thirty-two probably. I accuse myself of…

Do you still do it like this? These words?

I’m out of touch. Obviously. Not even called confession any more is it? An act of reconciliation.

Perhaps I’m Old School but it sounds strange. Hard to believe God’s so upset that  we need to be reconciled.

I used to exaggerate it when I was little. Accuse myself of extra sins to make it more interesting than just arguing, fighting, being disobedient, and telling lies—which I didn’t apart from saying I did. I stopped going about the time it became…embarrassing.

Don’t suppose I was unusual in that. Not wanting to chat about my sexual fantasies with a priest in a wardrobe.

I’m glad you’re Irish. My Mam was. Last Catholic in the family.  Look, seriously, father, I’m sorry, I’ve made a mistake. If I accused myself of everything I’ve done since my last confession, we’d be here all night. Traffic offenses and financial misdemeanors alone, never mind sins of the flesh.

I don’t want to waste your time. Might be people waiting. Proper Catholics.

Okay.

(DAVID opens the confessional door and looks out into the church.)

No there aren’t. But I only came in here because it was raining. You were open for business and I thought, “Why not?” Not lived in Newcastle for a long time now—nearly as long as my last confession. Don’t know anybody here anymore apart from my sister. Nowhere else to go. Libraries are depressing and I try to avoid pubs.

In like a shot. It’s all coming back to me. How you operate. However nice you are, it’s your job. Find a chink and work away at it.

What really did it for me wasn’t the impurity stuff. No. I just took it all too seriously. Do you know what I was worrying about at the age of twelve? Football, school, sex? No. Having an over-active conscience. I was worried I was committing the sin of having an over-active conscience. Tom, my brother, he was the one talked me out of that.

Do you still do that one? The sin of worrying too much that you might be sinning. Genius.

No. Your church preys on people like me and I’m going. Away from you—and all the statues and candles and rules and all the cover-ups, which I really hadn’t been going to mention and all the, with the greatest respect, shite of it.

(Part 2—the same confessional)

OK, Father. I was in here twenty minutes ago. And I accuse myself of, among other things, losing my temper and lying.

You seem like a decent guy. You don’t need me sounding off, and don’t tell me you don’t mind. I know how it works. I’d have made a good priest. Thought I had a vocation when I was nine.

And I did come in for a reason. My Mother died.

Coming home’s always weird. Home? Still call it that. But the service…I felt sorry for the priest; trying to lead a congregation who didn’t know any prayers, never mind when to stand, sit and kneel. Ended up trying to nurse us through the Our Father. Must have felt like a missionary to the Colonies two hundred years ago. So thanks for trying, Father. Katie, my sister, said you were a nice bloke.

Mam would have wanted it traditional.  All she’d said was she wanted the hearse to go through Cradlewell. Past Armstrong Bridge. Did they tell you? Mam never went past it afterwards. She couldn’t. But she wanted to then, because she thought they’d be together. Heaven. That’s proper Old School.

For the first time in ages I wanted her to be right. Up to now it’s just been a relief—no eternity.

Perhaps it’s my fault. Taking it too seriously. I enjoyed confession. There was like a rush of relief I got after it. Suppose I was quite a strange little boy. I believed in Santa Claus way after everybody else because he was a Saint. Saint Nicholas.

Tom put me straight on that as well. Least he told me to keep it to myself.

Yes. Miss him a lot. Look I just wanted to say it’s nothing against you personally.

What do they say? “It’s not you, it’s me.” If we get on to God we’ll just fall out.

Okay. Okay.

The Hail Mary? That takes me back. Okay. Right. If I can’t remember, I can always Google it.

(Part 3—the same confessional)

A week or thirty-five years. Depends on your point of view.

I know I said I was Old School but do you mind if we skip the formalities this time?  I’m on my way back to London now. Home. But first I need to tell you something. I always enjoyed a good confession. If that’s what it is.

I never told my Mam. Or anyone. When Tom came off Armstrong Bridge—did they tell you it was Christmas Eve?

I was with him. Not just there; but up on the handrail with him. I don’t know whose idea it was. I really don’t think it was mine. He usually led the way. But we were both very drunk—been in town all day. Christmas Eve.

But the bridge was mad. I think I sobered up when I looked down. Perhaps we both did. The shock. I sorted of leaned back and fell on to the pavement. He went the other way.

Eighteen.  No point in telling Mam all the details, was there? Don’t think I can go through Cradlewell now.

And Mam can. Perhaps that justifies all your statues and the rest of the—well all I said before. It comforted her.

Which is why I’m not exactly teetotal but close to it.  And here they judge your sexuality by the amount you drink and the strength of your accent. And they were right. So I left. Given up on your lot by then—really weren’t a lot of help with my impure thoughts.

The Egyptians used to paint an eye on the outside of the coffin, lined up with the eye socket of the body so they could see out. But if it works. Amazing what comforts people.

I’d have been a good priest. Just have a problem with that God thing. I Googled those prayers, and I’m sorry. Nothing.

Yes but your doubts’ll be the kind of doubts that make your faith stronger. Not like the overactive conscience, brittle stuff.

No. Sorry, Father, I’m done now. I need to get my train.

(Part 4—the same confessional)

About three months, I suppose. Look, Father, I didn’t really come to make a confession.

An act of reconciliation. That’s it exactly. But with Father O’Neill.

Do you know when he’ll be back?

How do you mean?

Right. Could you tell me which parish? Is it in the diocese?

I don’t understand.

No. Why would I? I hardly knew him.

He’d been very helpful. And it’d been a bit of a one-sided conversation.

No. Look, Father, I’m going to go now. There might be a queue building up and I don’t want to waste your time.

(Gets up to leave)

No, Father. It’s not you, it’s me.

(Blackout)

copyright © 2010 Dick Curran. All rights reserved.
_________________________________________________

Dick Curran lives in Newcastle, England. Last year he had a number of pieces produced at Live Theatre, culminating in Venice on Tyne with the RSC. In 2011, Islanders tours at venues including Manchester’s Re:Play Festival, and It Works For Us will premiere in Liverpool. His novel, Almost Persuaded, was published by Red Squirrel Press in March.

Setting:         Stage is empty except chair

Time:            Evening

Character:     SEYMOUR, a sad and confused teen

SEYMOUR

The Baron of Beef. Everyone’s favourite pisser, my favourite solution.

Outside there’s a butcher’s and a vegetarian restaurant with the

obligatory old bastard pissing up the side with his jeans ripped to

expose his arse. When the wind gusts the spray into my face…

CHEER.

It’s the smallest, smokiest, pokiest pub—or bar—or cesspit—you could

hope for. The walls sweat under a fluorescent light that flashes on and

off, on and off. Yobs cheer over their beers at the boxing on the telly,

the tiny black-and-white telly above the barman who’s spindly and

moustachio’d and has red smudges across his apron. (PAUSE.) I look

left and there’s a wizened witch on a high backless stool in a tight

leather miniskirt, a blue jacket dripping yellow at the armpits, and

thick tights squashing the hairs that mushroom from her thighs. Her

face is sandpaper with a vermilion smudge where her lips should be

and wisps of wool where her hair should be and they remind me of

strands spouting from a Chinaman’s mole. A sign of fortune, I’m told.

When she isn’t tugging on her rollie she’s squawking at volumes

inversely proportional to the interest of anyone around her. (PAUSE.)

I look right and there’s a tubby toddler guzzling a lemon ice-cream

laced with flies and stringy snot. When he drops it cone upwards and

screams Mummy rams him into her tits and says he’s so advanced for

his age and the yobs hurrah again. (PAUSE.) The door bursts open

and a bony harassed-looking woman in a black dress and high heels

shoves me outa the way—another hurrah—she’s all bleached hair and

skinny misshapen little hands swinging a pram in and round and past

me. A short plump guy trots in after her, scratching his chest with one

hand and doing his flies up with the other. He doesn’t talk to her, just

plonks himself down and stares at the match. One boxer slugs the

other round the mouth and everyone goes crazy. (PAUSE.) I elbow

my way to the barman but he’s busy pouring a beer and a Bailey’s for

the woman; who grabs them and disappears. When I look back I can’t

see the pram for the man, or hear them for the boxing, but I know

they’re arguing. I put a fag in my mouth, grit my teeth round it: Large

beer please. Cool. In a bottle… He whips a small can of lager from

under the counter, snatches my screwed-up tenner and holds it up to

the light. Another cheer. Then the till clings open and a pristine fiver

falls into my hand so I hold that up to the light. Silence. I shove it in

my pocket, grab the can and back away… (PAUSE.) I crack it open

and slurp at it. Then that woman slams her Bailey’s down and goes,

We gotta get married. He doesn’t answer, just smirks over his fag at

the boxing. I don’t hear what she says next, I just see that poor bastard

get slugged to death and hear everyone applaud—everyone on the

telly, everyone in the bar, everyone except me—and when they shut up

she goes, If I’d known you weren’t gonna marry me I wouldn’t've had

it. The kid starts crying, the man stubs his fag out and claps—that guy

just got his nose broken—then he shrugs: Well tell it that. Tell it that

when it’s old enough to understand. (PAUSE.) I bump into the pram

and the baby wails and the toddler bawls and the crowd shouts and the

green flashes and the woman spits and the boxer falls sweating and

heaving on the canvas and… (PAUSE.) It’s raining I leaning back

against the pub door, my eyes wide and bloodshot. I shiver and throw

my fag away, that sweaty fag I ain’t even lit yet. ‘Baron of Beef’

flashes red and green, that old bastard’s crouching down for a shit, the

veggie restaurant’s marked ‘Closed’ and men in red aprons are lugging

pigs out of a van and into the butcher’s. Someone’s unhooking a corpse

and dragging it away. Some fat guy with red cheeks and blood on his

apron… Pig. Eyes hollow for the worms, arse skewered straight, snout

steaming ugly for the crowds. Flaccid fat fingers…

PAUSE.

The butcher chops and lops, it’s a clean cut. This one’s a steak, that

one’s a rasher. The oil slides and sizzles… Hisses in the saucepan.

Blood on my shirt, sweat in my mouth. Gristle in my gut… Vomit

squirms worms on the floor. Live pig, vicious bastard, the Earth will

maul and mangle. (PAUSE.) Everyone has their own hell and

everyone knows what it’s like. What it feels like and sounds like and

smells like. Hell ain’t the wailing and the gnashing of teeth, hell ain’t

what some smarmy slimy priest tells kids about to stop them nicking

sister’s sweets, hell ain’t some abstract concept dreamed up to scare

the shit out of us. Hell’s right here the minute you’re born.

copyright © 2011 Michael Monkhouse. All rights reserved.
_________________________________________________

Michael Monkhouse was born in the North, bred in the South, educated at Cambridge, bored poopooless in Germany for a bit, now happily settled in the Eternal City. His career spans over five jokes. He’s trodden the boards at Footlights, performed and written in Italy, and once got a smile out of a German. Currently in his very early 30s, he’s enjoying this chance to spread his wings and burn his fingers.

by Rahila Gupta

Setting:         Bare stage

Time:             Present

Character:     CANDIDA FORTESCUE, 40s

CANDIDA faces the audience, wearing a white laboratory coat and sexy glasses, holding a test-tube in her hand and leaning against a makeshift counter. All the paraphernalia of a photo shoot, white umbrella, wires, lights, cameras. She talks to Mark, the photographer, while she poses.

CANDIDA

Thanks, Mark. You certainly know how to make a girl feel at home. This is not my forte. As you can see. (Laughs) Is it that obvious? I have to say my media training… (camera flash) …oh yes…sorry, was my mouth open?… Let’s do it again… Where was? Media training…didn’t stretch to this… it’s been mainly displays in city centres, beer swilling youths peering down a microscope at a stem cell beating like a heart, going, cool, there’s a heart… Sorry, yeah, okay… No, I’m doing myself down, not like me really… There were the radio  interviews and… h yes… Open University…but this… (Poses. Flash, flash, flash.) Wow! the paparazzi! You know…we don’t really…I don’t wear, need to wear a white coat in my lab…unless you’re an actual, hands-on researcher type… What? …Puh-lease…lie on the counter…why? That’s ridiculous…I’m not lying on the counter… I can just see the headline now, “If your brain’s short of a cell or two, then Candida’s your girl.” Tell you what, I’ll sit on the counter…

(Candida’s shapely legs in black tights and fancy stilettos are now visible. Her lab coat is unbuttoned. She’s stylishly dressed.)

How’s that?

“Candida gets on top of her research.” Or “Candida gets on top of her tubes.” Scrap the last one. That probably suits “Loaded” better… A model who supplies her own headlines… (Flash) Two for one… Can I take my glasses off? I look much better without them (Takes them off and then puts them back on, wearily) Oh…alright. (Flash) Why couldn’t they have done a feature like “Candida: A scientist relaxes”? Pictures outside the Royal Opera house in a Dolce Gabbana dress and jewelry that comes with its own security guards…wouldn’t that be great?… I guess that would be Vogue, not Hello… Yeah, alright, keep your hair on…I’m sure Hello is a great magazine to work for… (Flash) Was I talking again?

(She looks at her watch) How much longer?… I have to get across town for a really important meeting… No I don’t think so. You keep flashing at the wrong times… No I’m not, I’d never dream of doing such a thing… I WOULD NOT… I’m not telling you how to do your job…okay, okay, I’ll stop talking. You started it …wanting to know what I had for breakfast…

(Flash. CANDIDA caught with grotesque expression. Blackout.)

copyright © 2011 Rahila Gupta. All rights reserved.
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Rahila Gupta co-wrote Provoked, a film that was released in 2007, about a battered woman who killed her violent husband. She was a member of the writing team of Westway, a BBC World Service drama series. She is currently under commission from the University of Newcastle to write a play on stem cell research and public engagement.