Boil Him. Make Instrument

Continued from Previous Post

APOTH.

Ladies and gentlemen! What we’re about to witness, none of it is true. It’s all in her head, and yours, too. We’re going to make it come true, since, you know, that is the method. That is the process. Shutter Island Cure we call it. Put your billfolds away! We won’t be needing your credit card numbers just yet. We’ll fulfill all your fantasies for free. Yo, listen! At the end, you’ll see, you’re going to come to grips with reality. Anything but the pipe dream, is what they always say. Allahu Akbar! God is great! What they say as well, always. So don’t worry. It won’t be graphic, won’t be depressing. On the contrary! It’s going to be a, a…

FORLORN

Party?

APOTH.

Exactly.

(Pause.)

WESSON

I could have. I…

APOTH.

Yes. Go on.

WESSON

… could have…

APOTH.

Yes. We got that, thank you. It’s time to move on. Don’t you think?

FORLORN

She can’t. It’s impossible for her to...

APOTH.

She can’t.

FORLORN

No. “Move on.”

APOTH.

Uh huh. Why not?

WESSON

I, I, I could have…

FORLORN

(Interrupting)

The issues that drove us, they seemed so pressing at the time. Take action now! Any kind will do. We were getting old, what we thought, may God forgive us. They seem so funny now, those urgent matters of life and death. Sex, drugs, money. God! It strikes me so dreary now, standing next to these vast salt mines of death. The desert of boredom, bliss of oblivion. You may forget your name.

WESSON

I could have been someone!

FORLORN

So could anyone.

APOTH.

(Sings)

“You took my dreams from me when I first found you.”

FORLORN

So what?

APOTH.

(Sings)

“I kept them with me, babe…”

FORLORN

What do you mean? Could have been someone, somebody else, or…?

APOTH.

Or anybody?

FORLORN

Try to be precise.

APOTH.

Try being anybody.

FORLORN

Try it.

APOTH.

Dang!

FORLORN

Tough. And yet, people do it all the time.

APOTH.

They do.

FORLORN

That’s raw ambition for you, dreaming of, being nobody! The common man, as I always say: he…

(He snaps his fingers.)

Like the guy, what’s his face? That blinded the one-eyed fella? That is what the unsung heroes of our time do day in, day out, come hell or high water. Every goddamn day they give everything they’ve got in order to achieve that. Not being one-eyed—being nobody. You see.

APOTH.

Hats off to them! Those about to croak, we salute. Thse about to joke, we just shoot.

(Touching WESSON’s head)

Back of the head. There.

FORLORN

Bam! The urge to be somebody, however…

APOTH.

(Smiling, shaking his head)

Man!

FORLORN

That is a pipe dream!

APOTH.

Is what children dream of, I think, if they dream at all.

FORLORN

Plain silly.

APOTH.

Okay? Moving on…

FORLORN

To the present issue, matter at hand.

APOTH.

That is your future.

(Pause.)

Hey, the future is yours! Whatever you desire… that. A dream come true.

FORLORN

Going through your file, have to say I was impressed.

APOTH.

Me, too.

FORLORN

Your determination, devotion…

APOTH.

Gee.

FORLORN

You can say that again.

APOTH.

Gee. Gee.

(Confused)

A dream come true!

FORLORN

You said that already.

APOTH.

Sorry, boss. I’m sorry. Maybe, if…

FORLORN

Yeah?

APOTH.

If we slowed down a bit, I could keep up.

FORLORN

(To WESSON)

Sorry for the interruption. Won’t happen again, I promise. Abu here sniffed too much glue in his lifetime. And his brain turned into a sponge, real crispy-like. You might think that it was semen covering his grey matter, but no, you’d be disappointed. What Abu does, he pours more glue into it, to smooth out the wrinkles I suppose, only this time he’s calling his glue God, Allah, or whatever. You see we’re running in circles here. So, fuck him. Fuck Abu! Miss Wesson, compared to you, the girls from my neighborhood…

(FORLORN kicks APOTH. in the ass.)

APOTH.

Fuck them!

FORLORN

I’d strongly advice against it. The girls from my neighborhood were a bunch of dry flowers. Like Abu’s brain, as a matter of fact, drenched in come.

You, Miss Wesson,, on the other hand, you are the flame that devours those hags, rags, devours us! Think about it. True.

(FORLORN takes a piece of paper from his coat pocket. He reads.)

“What hours I lay awake in the night, with his precious sleeping body beside me, wondering why he wanted so much to escape from reality.

(Pause.)

Wow. That’s poetry.

(WESSON is crying. She tries to control herself. She cannot.)

APOTH.

Miss!

FORLORN

Miss, it’s alright!

APOTH.

Don’t cry, Miss!

FORLORN

Miss! What is it? Something I said, Abu said or…?

WESSON

(Furiously)

Don’t you have a speck of humanity left in your charred-black petty hearts?

(FORLORN and APOTH. look at each other. They shrug, raise their eyebrows, spread their hands.)

Those weren’t my words, you sick bastards!

(Pause.)

This is worse than the Clockwork Orange, even! Torturing me with my beloved Rimbe…. You’re not humane! Filth! You’re human sewage, you hear?

(WESSON calms down at last.)

FORLORN

“Torturing you…”

APOTH.

Miss!

FORLORN

You think this is torture? We haven’t even started.

APOTH.

That’s what you’re implying, you’re wrong.

FORLORN

So wrong, Frank Lloyd Wright.

APOTH.

We have your best interests at heart.

FORLORN

The best, we do. The thing is, listen to me now. The lesson here is, given proper guidance, you could get better.

APOTH.

Easy. If you put your mind to it.

FORLORN

That’s right. Try a little, I’m not saying tenderness, all I’m asking is try building a teeny weeny speck of trust. A spark… all right?

WESSON

Spark?

APOTH.

That ignites the charge hidden inside of every dream.

FORLORN

Either that, or transorbital lobotomy.

APOTH.

What?

FORLORN

An icepick through the eye. That was the treatment Kit Marlowe received at the hands of that ice queen, Elizabeth, and her minions.

APOTH.

(Desperately)

What for?

FORLORN

For being a closet Catholic. Don’t worry. Take it easy! The icepick incident happened a long time ago, in the 16^th century, I think. In our time, there’s nothing but peace and prosperity as far as eye can see. Into all infinity! But there’s a lesson to be learned here for our time as well. Don’t expect anyone to pay your bills just because you’re such a genius or whatever. You are not, and they are not what they seem. They have their own agenda, every fucking time.

(WESSON stands up, takes a step or two. FORLORN doesn’t notice, APOTH. does.)

That’s what my Dad told me, at least, when I told him I wanted to study art.

WESSON

And then he said, “Where’s your spark now?”

FORLORN

I beg your pardon?

(To APOTH.)

What did she say? I didn’t hear.... What?!

APOTH.

“Where’s your…”

FORLORN

Yeah?

APOTH.

I don’t know. I didn’t catch it, either. You know, the full, the scope of it.

FORLORN

(Turning to WESSON)

Well? You open your mouth, and something falls out, and then, like a cat covering its turd, you’re all decency all of a sudden. Well, guess what? Fuck you, Miss Decency, and fuck your brother.

WESSON

You said something about a spark. I said, “Where’s your spark now?” It is a line from the movie The Thin Red Line, based on the novel of the same name. I haven’t read it. It’s second-hand info, I admit. A review or interview, something I read, the piece proposed that the line in question, the thin red one, is what separates a real person, human being, such as the boy in the black kippah, whom you so cleverly called my brother - very funny indeed - from a beast, a sicko like yourself.

(Pause.)

Robert, you sellout! Where is your spark now?