livius drusus
01-07-2007, 07:08 AM
VACIO
Stage is curtained with black. Two strange structures, one contemporary, one old are on the stage, towards the rear. MARCO paces stage right, muttering incomprehensibly for a good thirty seconds. Then he stops and listens:
MARCO: Another comes to ponder poor Marco.
Cruel Vacio doth dip its snout once more.
(Enter HAILEY. She looks around, dazed. )
HAILEY: Where the hell am I?
MARCO: (Not looking at her) It sings, and what a woeful trill it is.
HAILEY: Hello? Excuse me? Could you tell me where I am?
MARCO: (Still does not look at her)Ever a boon, always a recompense
Their mirrored chant doth never flaunt a note
“What is this place? What is this firmament?”
More, “What are you? What is your matter here?”
What am I, you ask? I’ll tell: A man that was.
HAILEY: OK…Uhm…look I didn’t really understand any of that and, I mean this is really freaking me out, so if you could just tell me what is going on I’d really appreciate it.
MARCO: Mmm. Marco leaves.
HAILEY: Look…one moment I’m driving my car and then the next…I’m here…this is…OK this is really scary.
MARCO: There! It flees. Silence.
HAILEY: Pardon?
MARCO: Oh Isabella, what hast thou there, child?
HAILEY: My God, I must be going out of my mind. Ok, Hailey, just relax, calm down. You’re not going to solve anything by panicking. Ok. So I’m driving my car…it was dark…did I crash? Oh my God, have I crashed? Am I dead? Am I dead?! Goddamn it, why don’t you answer me?
MARCO: No more sweet songs hath since been writ, my love
The melancholic tune is all that yet remains
(sings)
Flitter in the breezes
Dance within a stream
Twirl about a mountain
Sink within a dream
HAILEY: Why don’t you just tell me?! Oh you useless piece of… (pause) Ok, Hailey, calm down. Maybe he’s just a figment of your imagination. You can’t be dead, death isn’t anything like this. I don’t think anyway…maybe this is a dream? Or a coma? Maybe I did crash. Delusions maybe? Schizophrenia?
MARCO: Flitter in the breezes
Dance within a stream
Twirl about a mountain
Sink within a dream
HAILEY: Quite the singer/songwriter there, aren’t you? Would it trouble you to maybe string a coherent sentence together and tell me what’s going on? Do you even know? (pause) Well I guess if you are a figment of my imagination then you aren’t going to know either, are you? I just wish this place didn’t seem so…real.
MARCO: (Finally looking at her) Thou jest.
HAILEY: What? No. (MARCO looks away again) Were you speaking to me? What do you mean?
MARCO: How many suns hath risen since Marco
Hath heard again the sounds of walking Earth?
How many summers scorched the backs of necks
How many winters hath chilled weary bones
Since my design was graced from the struggle?
Many I deem, but truly do not know.
Nor care. For Marco’s opportune is now a grape
That vines upon forgotten trees and yon
Shall see no feet to stomp its juice to wine.
HAILEY: Are you on drugs or something? I really must be going crazy. This is so weird. So your name is Marco. I take it you’re talking about yourself in the third person or something? You’re a very strange individual.
MARCO: Half truth. (MARCO suddenly peers at HAILEY intensely and spins around as if attempting to find some strange new perspective of her)
HAILEY: Look, I really would like to know what is going on here. Maybe you’ve already told me and I just can’t understand you but I just…this sort of thing has never happened to me before, OK? I’m normally pretty good with unfamiliar situations, I’m a pretty intelligent kind of girl, you know? I mean I’m halfway through getting a Masters in Finance, that’s got to count for something, right? I realise this isn’t exactly a joint-stock company float or a blue chip’s relative P/E ratio, but I would hope it qualifies me to be considered above your average airhead. I don’t giggle at a problem to make it go away and I’m also not crazy. I don’t see UFOs and I definitely don’t think someone’s watching me. So this whole thing is very unlike me, do you see? That’s what is scaring me and I guess I just need to find some way of rationalising what is going on and– well– I can’t really, but I’ve kind of figured that if I keep talking then maybe I won’t have to think about it and…and… Feel free to jump in any time, buddy, if you want to try and make me feel better about all of this.
(pause)
[BREAK]
MARCO: What is this sense that plays upon my mind?
Here I stand a broken harp whose strings, still taught
Do strum an un-played melody into
The careless nothing that mute ears ignore.
Long shadows stretch beneath this sunless light,
This grasp-less vice that sorrow lubricates
And makes a slip of former selfish joy.
So here within a Hell that Hell would fear
And make Hades turn to seek anew and I
A man no less abhorred of the plight
Do feel a gleam upon my wretched heart
That dread is shared by equal part without
And consternates this troubled soul within.
HAILEY: Right. Very poetic. What are you saying?
MARCO: In truth, nothing.
HAILEY: Now that’s the most lucid thing you’ve said so far.
MARCO: (moving to Hailey in a rush) I once beheld a wench more fair than thee
A whore, I think she was, though maybe less.
HAILEY: Gee, thanks. Arsehole.
MARCO: A flame thou bring? There is naught here to burn.
HAILEY: Whatever. Look could you please just tell me what’s going on? Where are we?
MARCO: Some medicine could be drawn from thy probes
So overgrown are they with false creation.
I cannot tend the fungus of thy question.
HAILEY: The fungus of my…what does that even mean? You’re speaking nonsense.
MARCO: A nonsense that my lids don’t quit mine eyes
Thou bore me with thy practiced malcontent.
(moves away again, stretching)
HAILEY: (Following him) Look, I don’t really like you either, if that’s what you’re trying to say, but you’re the only other individual around that I can see right now so I’m not going to leave you alone until you tell me what’s happening!
MARCO: Retrieve that.
HAILEY: I’m not retrieving anything, tell me where we are!
MARCO: (Rounding on her) Vacio.
HAILEY: What?
MARCO: Thy mewling question hath been suckled now.
HAILEY: But what is Vacio? That doesn’t tell me anything!
MARCO: (Ignoring her again) What is this tongue that flips a jig until
Some mark is reached and quiets the display?
Why strive I to instruct my flesh to speak
My mind unto that world outside my own?
HAILEY: Oh no, don’t think you’re starting off on that stuff again!
MARCO: What do I hear? What is this voice inside?
HAILEY: Marco, please, please, tell me what’s going on!
MARCO: (To HAILEY)Art thou without conception? It is plain.
The curling of thy hair provides more sport
To whip thy mind into a steady trot
Than this lacklustre lot thou hath been drawn.
HAILEY: Just tell me!
MARCO: Such passion to be told what is fore-known
Wherefore doth tedium excite thee so?
HAILEY: I’m ‘excited’ because you aren’t telling me what I want to hear!
MARCO: Is this the vex that ails thy twitchy mind?
A walking fish doth seem to me less strange.
But Marco is a bridge without a stream,
His stature may be poor for newer flow.
HAILEY: (almost pleadingly) I don’t understand you!
MARCO: Thou sayeth my words.
HAILEY: Why can’t you just answer me?! Why can you just tell me – in plain English – what is going on?
(pause)
[BREAK]
MARCO: Doth Marco breathe the air that thinks he does?
The blinkered subject’s wit is pursed with stitch
Of fine and strong dimension wasting but
A mouse-foot’s vacuum in its tapestry
For true reflection and can ill contend
Its sight is visioned sooth beyond contempt.
HAILEY: Oh God…
MARCO: Each passing glimpse of waking sufferance spurns
My aged request to stop my soul up short
And quit my wit so vacuumed that it is.
A ransom I am wanting with no gift
Of coin or grain upon me in this place
For I would offer all that could be named
And that a bargain should my will be met.
HAILEY: (MARCO mumbles incomprehensibly throughout HAILEY’s monologue)Oh to hell with you. Forget it. I guess I’m just stuck here. Wherever here is. Wherever ‘Vacio’ is. What is that anyway, Italian? Not talking, huh? Probably not a bad thing. Like I said, to hell with you. So what do I know? What is making sense to me right now? I know I’m Hailey and that I have all of my Hailey memories up to a point. Now I am somewhere that is pitch black yet somehow lit so that I can see myself and those weird things and my buddy Marco. Why am I stuck here? Why is Marco stuck here? Huh. Why is Marco stuck here? Is that the same reason that I am? Do we have something in common? Marco?
MARCO: (To himself) I would that I had erred and quit with thee.
HAILEY: Marco?
MARCO: (To HAILEY) Remainst thou still, thou false-illusioned wench?
What is thy niggle thou would have me treat?
What irritation burning for a scratch?
Shall I thy sores reveal with brilliant words?
HAILEY: Look just shut up. So you won’t or can’t tell me where or what Vacio is, can you at least tell me why you are here?
MARCO: Answer is confounded by this question.
HAILEY: Well you tell me what I should ask! You’ve obviously been here longer than I have, why don’t you just tell me what you know?
MARCO: That is a better quest and quickly met.
Thy praise, though, may be small: For I know naught.
HAILEY: You’re right, you won’t be getting much praise if that’s the best you can do. You obviously know more than I do about this place and what we’re doing here. I assume you’re talking about some sort of grand objective knowledge by saying you don’t know anything, right? Well forget that. Stop being so dramatic and tell me whatever it is that you do know and I don’t.
MARCO: Away with thee, this tilling bears no store.
HAILEY: How do you know it bears no ‘store’? Hey that reminds me… before, when I first came to “Vacio”…you made it sound like I wasn’t the first to have bothered you here. (pause) Is that right, Marco? There have been others who have come to Vacio?
MARCO: Yes.
HAILEY: Finally a coherent answer! How many?
MARCO: Countless.
HAILEY: But…why?
MARCO: Thou taint thyself again, thy hunt is bare.
I prithee favour me and still thy thoughts.
HAILEY: I will not! How did the others get out? What were they here for?
MARCO: Let Marco be at peace, he doth not care.
HAILEY: Please! All you have to do is explain what’s happening! Why can’t you just do it?
MARCO: Thou suffocate mine ears with thy duress!
The air depart betwixt us too and leave
Thy voice-box stranded as a gasping fish!
HAILEY: In case you haven’t noticed there’s nowhere for me to go…so where did the others go? The ones who were here before?
MARCO: How could I know, thou fool, for I am here!
HAILEY: Yes but…alright, that’s fair enough but you do know more than you’re telling me! How else would you know this place had a name? Marco what is Vacio?
MARCO: Vacio is Vacio.
HAILEY: You know that’s not what I mean!
MARCO: Its name is the description thou would seek.
Now be away and rule thy thoughts alone.
HAILEY: Marco you know why I am here! You know why you are here as well. Something has happened. What? What has happened?
MARCO: (approaches her slowly, menacingly) Happened? What has happened to thyself?
Shall I tell thee what thy mind already knows?
HAILEY: Please…
MARCO: Thy life is stopped. Thou art no more than dead.
HAILEY: I’m…dead?
MARCO: But more to this: thy hand hath claimed thy life.
HAILEY: What…what do you mean?
MARCO: (Still advancing, HAILEY backs away to far side of stage.)
Some sorrow thou endured hath triumphed o’er
Nature’s whip whence thou escaped from life.
Thus thou inflicted death upon thy soul.
[BREAK]
HAILEY: You…are you saying…I killed myself? (Marco nods, smiling) But…that’s impossible…I don’t remember doing that.
MARCO: Thou seek for truth yet fly when it is brought.
HAILEY: But…but…
MARCO: Tell me of the deed, poison did thou drink?
Or did thou noose thyself with rope stretched taught?
(MARCO takes HAILEY’s wrist) Perhaps thou scratched a blade across thy veins?
HAILEY: (snatching her hand away) Shut up. Leave me alone.
MARCO: What ailment was thy frail infected mind
Too impotent to ward against before
It claimed thy fragility with its seed?
HAILEY: (shrinking against the side wall)I…I don’t remember…
MARCO: Thou effort is deficient be that so.
Some evil thou perceived and could not best
With hearted self-regard or strength of will.
HAILEY: Please stop…
MARCO: Thou wept and tantrumed ‘gainst tranquillity’s bane.
Thou suffered from its touch that others bared
And defeated not beneath its thrusted hand.
Thy soul is now thy….(Stops and stares off stage. He quickly backs away)
Comest thou once more most hated wench to see
Thy scourged corruption set upon thy slave?
Enter Goddess
GODDESS: Thy welcome lacks the spurn thou once could boast.
Be silent lest my presence scourge thee more. (Marco snarls wordlessly and turns away, crouching. To HAILEY, smiling warmly)
Hailey, I am the Goddess of Vacio, I’m very pleased to meet you.
HAILEY: Hi.
GODDESS: I understand you must be confused by what has happened to you. I will provide you with some answers but, alas, not all.
HAILEY: Ok. Well…Marco was saying to me that…that I’ve committed suicide and that I’m dead.
GODDESS: I must apologise for Marco. He is a twisted soul and cannot relate very well with others. You must understand that nearly four centuries have passed on Earth since he died and spending such time in Vacio has made him quite mad.
HAILEY: So…it’s true? I’m dead?
GODDESS: Yes, Marco did speak the truth about that. I’m sorry, Hailey, this is never an easy thing for a soul to realise.
HAILEY: Can I go back?
GODDESS: No. You have taken your own life. There is no hope of returning.
HAILEY: But…why did I…I don’t remember.
GODDESS: That is what you will need work out for yourself, Hailey. For while you may not return, you may progress to the next life.
HAILEY: What next life, like Heaven?
GODDESS: You must go there yourself, Hailey. You cannot understand that now.
HAILEY: Well…how do I get there?
GODDESS: I’m afraid that’s another question I cannot answer as well as you would like. But I assure that there is a way. There are many who have come to Vacio as you have and with just as much uncertainty.
HAILEY: But what is Vacio?
GODDESS: It is a life between lives. It is a world specifically created for reflection.
HAILEY: But why?
[BREAK]
GODDESS: Some people, yourself included, have something not quite right with their souls. Something is out of place. It is in Vacio that you correct this error before you move onto your next life.
HAILEY: What error? What’s wrong with me?
GODDESS: I cannot tell you that. But this I can say: it is the reason that you killed yourself.
HAILEY: Oh…so, if I work out why I…?
GODDESS: Yes. The answer will present itself when you do.
HAILEY: I still can’t believe I did that. It just…I don’t know.
GODDESS: It is difficult, I understand. But the sooner you accept what happened to you, the sooner you can leave and continue your journey.
HAILEY: But what if I can’t?
GODDESS: You will. Everyone does.
HAILEY: What about Marco? You said he’s been here for four centuries…
GODDESS: Do not worry. That will not happen to you.
HAILEY: Why not?
GODDESS: Because he chooses to stay.
HAILEY: What?
GODDESS: It is true. He learned what he needed soon after he came to Vacio. It is his own accord that keeps him here.
MARCO: As if my will had any voice to claim!
GODDESS: (To MARCO)Thy will requests an impossible fare.
Within thy crooked dreams slink as thou will
But thou art a fool that think dreams be truth.
Thy leave was met as all before and aft,
Thy soul is tortured hence by thine own hand.
MARCO: A brace of iron maidens would I lay
Before I whored my wit unto thee and
Succumbed to thy better alternative.
GODDESS: Thy choice.
MARCO: No choice is here.
GODDESS: Thy blindness then.
For thy puffed breast doth thou revoke thy mind
MARCO: Puffed breast be mine? And doth my robin breast
Puff itself for want of consummation?
What doth thy godly inference thus conclude
Since there is for naught to puff in Vacio?
GODDESS: Thy madness speaks thy words and holds thee here.
MARCO: My madness shoots more straight than sanity
When thy perspective is considered sane.
GODDESS: With hammered nails must be thy lids restrained
Over thy eyes so skewed is thy opinion.
Thou, robin, art afraid to leave thy perch
Though all thy brothers hath since taken wing.
MARCO: My brothers fly without knowledge nor care.
None know wherefore the wings they beat be sewn
Unto their less-puffed breasts.
GODDESS: Self-pleasing fool.
Thou dig a pit so deep the sky is hid
And trapped art thou to languish low beneath
The acme of thy excavated walls.
HAILEY: Guys…um…I hate to interrupt this really…weird conversation but, well…from what I can gather, Marco seems to have a problem with moving on to the next world.
MARCO: Thy envied mind implores most high regard.
GODDESS: Be silent, wretch! Thy mind is envied less.
I’m sorry, Hailey. Yes, Marco does have a problem with moving onto the next world.
HAILEY: But what if he’s right? I mean…I don’t really know what his problem is exactly, but if it’s dangerous…
GODDESS: He stays from obstinance as much as from fear. The one thing I can assure you, Hailey, is that there is no more to fear in the next world than there was to fear in the last.
HAILEY: Ok…well I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t getting into anything that I should be avoiding. I was always too quick to sign on the dotted line, if you know what I mean.
GODDESS: Be at ease. But you must realise that there is no hope of you going back. Your options are to proceed or, like Marco, to stay here.
HAILEY: Right. What about you?
GODDESS: (Smiling) I am a goddess, Hailey. I do not subscribe to the same lifetimes of you or Marco or any other mortal being.
HAILEY: Oh, cool.
[BREAK]
MARCO: Divine subscription doth indeed appear
Apart from mortal inclination with
Thy mental borders rendered so unfree.
GODDESS: Are wintered bears unfree of mighty cloaks,
Or fish unfree of gills and flippered tails?
Thou fool doth name thy heart a manacle
That name my rendered mind imprisoned so.
MARCO: (Smiling, but still defensively postured) Thou know this truth: thou art without free will.
Will thou deny that further?
GODDESS: I will not.
But shackle it is only as the horse
Is shackled by his hooves, or lion chained
By fearsome daggered teeth to best all prey.
HAILEY: What’s he saying? I don’t understand.
GODDESS: Oh he’s being foolish once more. He is saying that I cannot understand his perspective because I am a goddess and I have not been given the free will of thought that is granted to mortals. He is true enough in this, but Marco’s problem is ever that he cannot see his own disease. He believes his thoughts are the most true and that all who disagree do so out of intellectual short-comings.
HAILEY: Oh yeah, I know plenty of people like that.
GODDESS: Indeed. While I would like to heal him I have not been given the power to infringe upon his will. I can argue with him – and have done – for centuries, but I am unable to force his will. He must make up his own mind. That he is unable to do this is, sadly, a symptom of his madness.
MARCO: What madness doth this magistrate critique?
Wherefore thy groped reproach against my name?
GODDESS: Thou art more mad than ever could conceive.
Thy lunacy deceives thy suspicion
So thou suppose thy muddied thoughts be clean.
MARCO: So mad am I?
GODDESS: Thou art.
MARCO: Be thou so sure?
For doth the deer not name the tortoise mad
Submerged beneath the perils of the stream?
“Thy hooves will find no purchase, thou will drown
Ye mad unlistening fool!” the deer doth cry.
A different beast is tortoise to the deer
Who, so equipped, knows not the reptile means.
GODDESS: Reptilian yes, but more akin to snake
Who, bellying the ground, doth spurn the deer
His granted hooves that see him walk with grace.
HAILEY: I don’t understand!
GODDESS: I’m sorry, Hailey. Marco believes I call him mad because my divine nature prevents me from truly empathising with mortal consciousness. He is so afflicted that he doesn’t realise he has cast this self-fulfilling delusion upon himself. He damages himself and believes that it is virtuous to do so. That is his madness.
HAILEY: Is he really mad? I mean…well he does talk strangely, but then you do as well…
GODDESS: I communicate with all who come to Vacio, it is he who forces us to converse in that speech. And I assure you, he is insane, of that there is no doubt.
HAILEY: But…I mean how do you know?
MARCO: Most favoured wench, thy virtue dances now!
Thou truth-dyed portrait shall discover this
Unwholesome demon’s slanting of the plot.
GODDESS: Would thou still favour Hailey if her dance
Did change a beat and illustrated new
Investigation of a darker hew?
MARCO: Be silent in thy threat. No call for that.
HAILEY: (To GODDESS) What do you mean?
GODDESS: Marco can deny his madness here all he likes. But he knows how he died.
Is that not true, thou wicked unloved cur?
Will thou report now how thy passing fared?
MARCO: In truth, no. Let this matter rest aside.
GODDESS: Thou art too modest of thy special deeds.
Come, be our fool and favour us with tales
Selected from thy fell biography.
MARCO: I’ll make no strife. Good Marco doth retire.
GODDESS: (To HAILEY) He is at his most tormented, you see, when he remembers his own death. He spends much of his time creating a world in which he can forget what happened. Yet he seems to have no trouble reminding others and trying to draw the same pain from them.
Is that not so, thou ineloquent villain?
MARCO: Marco is quiet.
HAILEY: Maybe we should just leave him alone?
MARCO: Such worthy words.
GODDESS: But worthy thou are not.
You see, Hailey, it is important you are not taken by Marco’s spell. His madness seeks to spread itself, and he has trapped others here by words for periods of time. So far none have lasted so long as he, and those brought under by his crooning have managed to free themselves…mostly with the help of my intervention. So it is important that you know now what manner of man Marco was and indeed still is.
MARCO: I am a man and claim not more than this!
GODDESS: Thy claim falls short of accolades thou earned.
Come, Marco, tell…how many didst thou kill?
(pause. GODDESS glances at HAILEY meaningfully)
Before thou drove thy knife into thy heart
How many other lives did that blade end?
Were not also thy children numbered there
Within thy frenzied bloodlust’s catalogue?
How many years had lived thy eldest son,
How many less had lived thy daughter twins
Before you slit their throats upon your whim?
(Pause. MARCO has withdrawn into a defensive ball)
[BREAK]
MARCO: Flitter in the breezes
Dance within a stream
Twirl about a mountain
Sink within a dream
GODDESS: Most murderous fiend.
HAILEY: Oh my God.(pause) Oh my God…I’m…I’m beginning to remember. I was driving my car…but I was thinking (approaches MARCO)...my thoughts they- they were so…cold.
MARCO: (Looking up at HAILEY) Cold thoughts embrace more true from want of heat.
HAILEY: I was thinking about my life.(exit GODDESS slowly) I was thinking about some of the things I’ve read too. Nietzsche mostly. And it just hit me. Why? Why life? What is the reason for being? And the answer which had been staring me in the face all along finally spoke up. There is no reason. There is no such thing as the question.
MARCO: (eagerly)Yes.
HAILEY: Nothing happens for some kind of esoteric reason…everything simply happens. It doesn’t make sense to ask ‘why’. It only ever makes sense to ask ‘how’ something happened.
MARCO: The glass that sits upon some tavern bench
That, knocked, doth break upon the floor in shards…
Wherefore this happenstance? What is this fate?
HAILEY: There is none.
MARCO: Yes!
HAILEY: There wasn’t some overarching reason and it wasn’t a little chink in some grand design of things. The glass was knocked off the table and it shattered. It was a case of pure cause-and-effect. The cause was itself an effect of a previous cause and its effect will be the cause of another.
MARCO: So pure be thy song! I prithee keep singing.
HAILEY: Well I was thinking about this stuff and I was driving and…I realised that it didn’t matter if I died. Objectively, it just didn’t matter. It would be a particular event in the cause-and-effect design of the universe. All of these subjective reasons for being that I had built up around myself were bullshit. They were real only so long as I believed them to be real.
MARCO: The man who loves his saucepan as a god
And worships all its metal sanctity
Is not a self-considered fool, though fool we mark him.
HAILEY: Exactly! You can believe whatever you want and so long as you believe it, it will be true! How can people ever entertain belief systems knowing this? How can you live knowing that your life is equally as objectively meaningful as worshiping a saucepan? There’s just no point to it! It’s all so arbitrary. (pause) That’s what I was thinking about. I wasn’t really depressed or angry or anything…it was just an intellectual acknowledgement that life didn’t matter. Then I saw a telephone pole up ahead, just off the side of the road. I swerved towards it.
MARCO: There is no greater cruelty, than life’s truth.
HAILEY: But…But I mean I was an atheist. I didn’t think there was an afterlife or anything. I thought…well I thought that when you died, that was it. There was nothing. I thought that the moment I hit that pole it would like it was before I was born and every night when I slept. I thought it would be over and that for me, time would simply stop. But now I’m here…and with yet another life beyond this one. And how many more beyond that?
MARCO: Do thou not see? There is no greater sense
To life’s invented drives where time prolongs
It’s stretched countenance to infinity.
What meaning, prithee tell, in life that never ends?
What greater purpose bests unhappy time?
There is naught: we are the glass upon the bench
That shatters endlessly throughout the worlds.
HAILEY: I don’t know…
MARCO: Then what reason doth reason rest upon?
HAILEY: What reason does reason…you mean like what objective reason is there? I don’t know. Well there isn’t any. There can’t be. It’s like we were saying before…we are just patterns of cause and effect in reality. We’re energy configurations behaving badly. Just as there’s no reason for the glass to break, so there is no reason for us to live…even an eternal life. (pause) But…what did the Goddess say? She said you…did you…kill someone…?
MARCO: (nodding slowly)I took their lives just as that devil said.
My own begotten children did I slay.
HAILEY: But…but, why? Oh….of course. There wasn’t a why. It was just what you did. It just happened. And what is it for me to judge what you did? If what we’re saying is true, then what is the difference between what you did and chopping down a tree or roasting a chicken? What is it but conversions of energy in the patterns of reality? But…I can’t stop just feeling terrible…to kill your own family. I can’t see the energy exchange, I only see the people.
MARCO: Emotion doth enslave thy reason’s wit
As is the fare of all born of our kin.
HAILEY: Your own family.
MARCO: Yes.
HAILEY: Your own children.
MARCO: Yes.
HAILEY: How can I have been so stupid…Oh God what did I do? I’ve lost so much…I didn’t think…
MARCO: What is this new complaint? Do thou forget?
HAILEY: Who cares, Marco? Meaning doesn’t stop sensations. A rose may not be beautiful, but is it not beautiful to me?
MARCO: But what appreciation entertained
Doth give foundation to thy life’s pursuit?
HAILEY: It needs no foundation. Pleasure is its own reward.
MARCO: Reward that thou might recognize again
The theft that pain exacts upon thy soul!
HAILEY: Maybe. But pleasure’s enough. It should have been. Oh God, why wasn’t it?
MARCO: Thou flee from reason as thou more confess!
HAILEY: Maybe. Maybe I just don’t need reason.
MARCO: Are painted so thy ears upon thy skull?
Can thou not hear the words thou do expound?
HAILEY: (looking offstage) I hear them. And I see too, Marco. I see the way out. That’s what I was to do here. I had to see the mistake I made. I see it now. I can leave.
(Starts walking off stage. She stops as Marco says)
MARCO: Then go! Trick yourself into thinking what you’re doing matters and forget about the truth you’ve just articulated. Forget it all. It’s certainly the easy thing to do. Hell, maybe I should do it! Then I could leave this spiritual dungeon and escape the memories that haunt me as if I’d done my deed yesterday. I murder my family! I murdered them. Do you know what it is, to kill the ones you love? Do you know what it does to you? They never leave me. They are always here, screaming. But worse than the screaming is the laughing. The songs and the play, their faces smiling…and bloodied. Yet for all this, what I did simply doesn’t matter. And that’s exactly why I did it. It was nothing. It is only my weak, stupid mind that entertains significance and makes me feel this way. It doesn’t stop the truth. All I want is to stop existing; to escape these emotions, and the truth. But I can’t. And I can’t step through into the next world. For how could I live, knowing that there is no reason for any action I commit? So since I can’t stop existing, I live here, in Vacio. I stay in nothingness, and use what structure I can to keep some semblance of sanity with only the memory of my family’s screaming voices and a deity with an agenda to keep me company. It’s a terrible way to live, but it’s the only way I can escape from life so empty and hideous is its beauty.
HAILEY: I can’t ever imagine wanting that, Marco. I can’t help what I desire. I don’t desire nothingness, I desire pleasure.
MARCO: Then Marco doth retire back to his place
Where emptiness is death’s poor substitute
And structured speech is sanity’s device.
HAILEY: Come with me. Why do this to yourself? Why not accept what has been given to you?
MARCO: This fruit is spawned upon a poisoned tree,
I would not taste its foulness though it be
Elixir to the less affected man.
HAILEY: Please come. Try. (pause) I think the Goddess was right, Marco. Only a madman could want what you do. I’m sorry. Goodbye.
(Exit)
MARCO: Gone.
Flitter in the breezes
Dance within a stream
Twirl about a mountain
Sink within a dream
(Curtain close)
Stage is curtained with black. Two strange structures, one contemporary, one old are on the stage, towards the rear. MARCO paces stage right, muttering incomprehensibly for a good thirty seconds. Then he stops and listens:
MARCO: Another comes to ponder poor Marco.
Cruel Vacio doth dip its snout once more.
(Enter HAILEY. She looks around, dazed. )
HAILEY: Where the hell am I?
MARCO: (Not looking at her) It sings, and what a woeful trill it is.
HAILEY: Hello? Excuse me? Could you tell me where I am?
MARCO: (Still does not look at her)Ever a boon, always a recompense
Their mirrored chant doth never flaunt a note
“What is this place? What is this firmament?”
More, “What are you? What is your matter here?”
What am I, you ask? I’ll tell: A man that was.
HAILEY: OK…Uhm…look I didn’t really understand any of that and, I mean this is really freaking me out, so if you could just tell me what is going on I’d really appreciate it.
MARCO: Mmm. Marco leaves.
HAILEY: Look…one moment I’m driving my car and then the next…I’m here…this is…OK this is really scary.
MARCO: There! It flees. Silence.
HAILEY: Pardon?
MARCO: Oh Isabella, what hast thou there, child?
HAILEY: My God, I must be going out of my mind. Ok, Hailey, just relax, calm down. You’re not going to solve anything by panicking. Ok. So I’m driving my car…it was dark…did I crash? Oh my God, have I crashed? Am I dead? Am I dead?! Goddamn it, why don’t you answer me?
MARCO: No more sweet songs hath since been writ, my love
The melancholic tune is all that yet remains
(sings)
Flitter in the breezes
Dance within a stream
Twirl about a mountain
Sink within a dream
HAILEY: Why don’t you just tell me?! Oh you useless piece of… (pause) Ok, Hailey, calm down. Maybe he’s just a figment of your imagination. You can’t be dead, death isn’t anything like this. I don’t think anyway…maybe this is a dream? Or a coma? Maybe I did crash. Delusions maybe? Schizophrenia?
MARCO: Flitter in the breezes
Dance within a stream
Twirl about a mountain
Sink within a dream
HAILEY: Quite the singer/songwriter there, aren’t you? Would it trouble you to maybe string a coherent sentence together and tell me what’s going on? Do you even know? (pause) Well I guess if you are a figment of my imagination then you aren’t going to know either, are you? I just wish this place didn’t seem so…real.
MARCO: (Finally looking at her) Thou jest.
HAILEY: What? No. (MARCO looks away again) Were you speaking to me? What do you mean?
MARCO: How many suns hath risen since Marco
Hath heard again the sounds of walking Earth?
How many summers scorched the backs of necks
How many winters hath chilled weary bones
Since my design was graced from the struggle?
Many I deem, but truly do not know.
Nor care. For Marco’s opportune is now a grape
That vines upon forgotten trees and yon
Shall see no feet to stomp its juice to wine.
HAILEY: Are you on drugs or something? I really must be going crazy. This is so weird. So your name is Marco. I take it you’re talking about yourself in the third person or something? You’re a very strange individual.
MARCO: Half truth. (MARCO suddenly peers at HAILEY intensely and spins around as if attempting to find some strange new perspective of her)
HAILEY: Look, I really would like to know what is going on here. Maybe you’ve already told me and I just can’t understand you but I just…this sort of thing has never happened to me before, OK? I’m normally pretty good with unfamiliar situations, I’m a pretty intelligent kind of girl, you know? I mean I’m halfway through getting a Masters in Finance, that’s got to count for something, right? I realise this isn’t exactly a joint-stock company float or a blue chip’s relative P/E ratio, but I would hope it qualifies me to be considered above your average airhead. I don’t giggle at a problem to make it go away and I’m also not crazy. I don’t see UFOs and I definitely don’t think someone’s watching me. So this whole thing is very unlike me, do you see? That’s what is scaring me and I guess I just need to find some way of rationalising what is going on and– well– I can’t really, but I’ve kind of figured that if I keep talking then maybe I won’t have to think about it and…and… Feel free to jump in any time, buddy, if you want to try and make me feel better about all of this.
(pause)
[BREAK]
MARCO: What is this sense that plays upon my mind?
Here I stand a broken harp whose strings, still taught
Do strum an un-played melody into
The careless nothing that mute ears ignore.
Long shadows stretch beneath this sunless light,
This grasp-less vice that sorrow lubricates
And makes a slip of former selfish joy.
So here within a Hell that Hell would fear
And make Hades turn to seek anew and I
A man no less abhorred of the plight
Do feel a gleam upon my wretched heart
That dread is shared by equal part without
And consternates this troubled soul within.
HAILEY: Right. Very poetic. What are you saying?
MARCO: In truth, nothing.
HAILEY: Now that’s the most lucid thing you’ve said so far.
MARCO: (moving to Hailey in a rush) I once beheld a wench more fair than thee
A whore, I think she was, though maybe less.
HAILEY: Gee, thanks. Arsehole.
MARCO: A flame thou bring? There is naught here to burn.
HAILEY: Whatever. Look could you please just tell me what’s going on? Where are we?
MARCO: Some medicine could be drawn from thy probes
So overgrown are they with false creation.
I cannot tend the fungus of thy question.
HAILEY: The fungus of my…what does that even mean? You’re speaking nonsense.
MARCO: A nonsense that my lids don’t quit mine eyes
Thou bore me with thy practiced malcontent.
(moves away again, stretching)
HAILEY: (Following him) Look, I don’t really like you either, if that’s what you’re trying to say, but you’re the only other individual around that I can see right now so I’m not going to leave you alone until you tell me what’s happening!
MARCO: Retrieve that.
HAILEY: I’m not retrieving anything, tell me where we are!
MARCO: (Rounding on her) Vacio.
HAILEY: What?
MARCO: Thy mewling question hath been suckled now.
HAILEY: But what is Vacio? That doesn’t tell me anything!
MARCO: (Ignoring her again) What is this tongue that flips a jig until
Some mark is reached and quiets the display?
Why strive I to instruct my flesh to speak
My mind unto that world outside my own?
HAILEY: Oh no, don’t think you’re starting off on that stuff again!
MARCO: What do I hear? What is this voice inside?
HAILEY: Marco, please, please, tell me what’s going on!
MARCO: (To HAILEY)Art thou without conception? It is plain.
The curling of thy hair provides more sport
To whip thy mind into a steady trot
Than this lacklustre lot thou hath been drawn.
HAILEY: Just tell me!
MARCO: Such passion to be told what is fore-known
Wherefore doth tedium excite thee so?
HAILEY: I’m ‘excited’ because you aren’t telling me what I want to hear!
MARCO: Is this the vex that ails thy twitchy mind?
A walking fish doth seem to me less strange.
But Marco is a bridge without a stream,
His stature may be poor for newer flow.
HAILEY: (almost pleadingly) I don’t understand you!
MARCO: Thou sayeth my words.
HAILEY: Why can’t you just answer me?! Why can you just tell me – in plain English – what is going on?
(pause)
[BREAK]
MARCO: Doth Marco breathe the air that thinks he does?
The blinkered subject’s wit is pursed with stitch
Of fine and strong dimension wasting but
A mouse-foot’s vacuum in its tapestry
For true reflection and can ill contend
Its sight is visioned sooth beyond contempt.
HAILEY: Oh God…
MARCO: Each passing glimpse of waking sufferance spurns
My aged request to stop my soul up short
And quit my wit so vacuumed that it is.
A ransom I am wanting with no gift
Of coin or grain upon me in this place
For I would offer all that could be named
And that a bargain should my will be met.
HAILEY: (MARCO mumbles incomprehensibly throughout HAILEY’s monologue)Oh to hell with you. Forget it. I guess I’m just stuck here. Wherever here is. Wherever ‘Vacio’ is. What is that anyway, Italian? Not talking, huh? Probably not a bad thing. Like I said, to hell with you. So what do I know? What is making sense to me right now? I know I’m Hailey and that I have all of my Hailey memories up to a point. Now I am somewhere that is pitch black yet somehow lit so that I can see myself and those weird things and my buddy Marco. Why am I stuck here? Why is Marco stuck here? Huh. Why is Marco stuck here? Is that the same reason that I am? Do we have something in common? Marco?
MARCO: (To himself) I would that I had erred and quit with thee.
HAILEY: Marco?
MARCO: (To HAILEY) Remainst thou still, thou false-illusioned wench?
What is thy niggle thou would have me treat?
What irritation burning for a scratch?
Shall I thy sores reveal with brilliant words?
HAILEY: Look just shut up. So you won’t or can’t tell me where or what Vacio is, can you at least tell me why you are here?
MARCO: Answer is confounded by this question.
HAILEY: Well you tell me what I should ask! You’ve obviously been here longer than I have, why don’t you just tell me what you know?
MARCO: That is a better quest and quickly met.
Thy praise, though, may be small: For I know naught.
HAILEY: You’re right, you won’t be getting much praise if that’s the best you can do. You obviously know more than I do about this place and what we’re doing here. I assume you’re talking about some sort of grand objective knowledge by saying you don’t know anything, right? Well forget that. Stop being so dramatic and tell me whatever it is that you do know and I don’t.
MARCO: Away with thee, this tilling bears no store.
HAILEY: How do you know it bears no ‘store’? Hey that reminds me… before, when I first came to “Vacio”…you made it sound like I wasn’t the first to have bothered you here. (pause) Is that right, Marco? There have been others who have come to Vacio?
MARCO: Yes.
HAILEY: Finally a coherent answer! How many?
MARCO: Countless.
HAILEY: But…why?
MARCO: Thou taint thyself again, thy hunt is bare.
I prithee favour me and still thy thoughts.
HAILEY: I will not! How did the others get out? What were they here for?
MARCO: Let Marco be at peace, he doth not care.
HAILEY: Please! All you have to do is explain what’s happening! Why can’t you just do it?
MARCO: Thou suffocate mine ears with thy duress!
The air depart betwixt us too and leave
Thy voice-box stranded as a gasping fish!
HAILEY: In case you haven’t noticed there’s nowhere for me to go…so where did the others go? The ones who were here before?
MARCO: How could I know, thou fool, for I am here!
HAILEY: Yes but…alright, that’s fair enough but you do know more than you’re telling me! How else would you know this place had a name? Marco what is Vacio?
MARCO: Vacio is Vacio.
HAILEY: You know that’s not what I mean!
MARCO: Its name is the description thou would seek.
Now be away and rule thy thoughts alone.
HAILEY: Marco you know why I am here! You know why you are here as well. Something has happened. What? What has happened?
MARCO: (approaches her slowly, menacingly) Happened? What has happened to thyself?
Shall I tell thee what thy mind already knows?
HAILEY: Please…
MARCO: Thy life is stopped. Thou art no more than dead.
HAILEY: I’m…dead?
MARCO: But more to this: thy hand hath claimed thy life.
HAILEY: What…what do you mean?
MARCO: (Still advancing, HAILEY backs away to far side of stage.)
Some sorrow thou endured hath triumphed o’er
Nature’s whip whence thou escaped from life.
Thus thou inflicted death upon thy soul.
[BREAK]
HAILEY: You…are you saying…I killed myself? (Marco nods, smiling) But…that’s impossible…I don’t remember doing that.
MARCO: Thou seek for truth yet fly when it is brought.
HAILEY: But…but…
MARCO: Tell me of the deed, poison did thou drink?
Or did thou noose thyself with rope stretched taught?
(MARCO takes HAILEY’s wrist) Perhaps thou scratched a blade across thy veins?
HAILEY: (snatching her hand away) Shut up. Leave me alone.
MARCO: What ailment was thy frail infected mind
Too impotent to ward against before
It claimed thy fragility with its seed?
HAILEY: (shrinking against the side wall)I…I don’t remember…
MARCO: Thou effort is deficient be that so.
Some evil thou perceived and could not best
With hearted self-regard or strength of will.
HAILEY: Please stop…
MARCO: Thou wept and tantrumed ‘gainst tranquillity’s bane.
Thou suffered from its touch that others bared
And defeated not beneath its thrusted hand.
Thy soul is now thy….(Stops and stares off stage. He quickly backs away)
Comest thou once more most hated wench to see
Thy scourged corruption set upon thy slave?
Enter Goddess
GODDESS: Thy welcome lacks the spurn thou once could boast.
Be silent lest my presence scourge thee more. (Marco snarls wordlessly and turns away, crouching. To HAILEY, smiling warmly)
Hailey, I am the Goddess of Vacio, I’m very pleased to meet you.
HAILEY: Hi.
GODDESS: I understand you must be confused by what has happened to you. I will provide you with some answers but, alas, not all.
HAILEY: Ok. Well…Marco was saying to me that…that I’ve committed suicide and that I’m dead.
GODDESS: I must apologise for Marco. He is a twisted soul and cannot relate very well with others. You must understand that nearly four centuries have passed on Earth since he died and spending such time in Vacio has made him quite mad.
HAILEY: So…it’s true? I’m dead?
GODDESS: Yes, Marco did speak the truth about that. I’m sorry, Hailey, this is never an easy thing for a soul to realise.
HAILEY: Can I go back?
GODDESS: No. You have taken your own life. There is no hope of returning.
HAILEY: But…why did I…I don’t remember.
GODDESS: That is what you will need work out for yourself, Hailey. For while you may not return, you may progress to the next life.
HAILEY: What next life, like Heaven?
GODDESS: You must go there yourself, Hailey. You cannot understand that now.
HAILEY: Well…how do I get there?
GODDESS: I’m afraid that’s another question I cannot answer as well as you would like. But I assure that there is a way. There are many who have come to Vacio as you have and with just as much uncertainty.
HAILEY: But what is Vacio?
GODDESS: It is a life between lives. It is a world specifically created for reflection.
HAILEY: But why?
[BREAK]
GODDESS: Some people, yourself included, have something not quite right with their souls. Something is out of place. It is in Vacio that you correct this error before you move onto your next life.
HAILEY: What error? What’s wrong with me?
GODDESS: I cannot tell you that. But this I can say: it is the reason that you killed yourself.
HAILEY: Oh…so, if I work out why I…?
GODDESS: Yes. The answer will present itself when you do.
HAILEY: I still can’t believe I did that. It just…I don’t know.
GODDESS: It is difficult, I understand. But the sooner you accept what happened to you, the sooner you can leave and continue your journey.
HAILEY: But what if I can’t?
GODDESS: You will. Everyone does.
HAILEY: What about Marco? You said he’s been here for four centuries…
GODDESS: Do not worry. That will not happen to you.
HAILEY: Why not?
GODDESS: Because he chooses to stay.
HAILEY: What?
GODDESS: It is true. He learned what he needed soon after he came to Vacio. It is his own accord that keeps him here.
MARCO: As if my will had any voice to claim!
GODDESS: (To MARCO)Thy will requests an impossible fare.
Within thy crooked dreams slink as thou will
But thou art a fool that think dreams be truth.
Thy leave was met as all before and aft,
Thy soul is tortured hence by thine own hand.
MARCO: A brace of iron maidens would I lay
Before I whored my wit unto thee and
Succumbed to thy better alternative.
GODDESS: Thy choice.
MARCO: No choice is here.
GODDESS: Thy blindness then.
For thy puffed breast doth thou revoke thy mind
MARCO: Puffed breast be mine? And doth my robin breast
Puff itself for want of consummation?
What doth thy godly inference thus conclude
Since there is for naught to puff in Vacio?
GODDESS: Thy madness speaks thy words and holds thee here.
MARCO: My madness shoots more straight than sanity
When thy perspective is considered sane.
GODDESS: With hammered nails must be thy lids restrained
Over thy eyes so skewed is thy opinion.
Thou, robin, art afraid to leave thy perch
Though all thy brothers hath since taken wing.
MARCO: My brothers fly without knowledge nor care.
None know wherefore the wings they beat be sewn
Unto their less-puffed breasts.
GODDESS: Self-pleasing fool.
Thou dig a pit so deep the sky is hid
And trapped art thou to languish low beneath
The acme of thy excavated walls.
HAILEY: Guys…um…I hate to interrupt this really…weird conversation but, well…from what I can gather, Marco seems to have a problem with moving on to the next world.
MARCO: Thy envied mind implores most high regard.
GODDESS: Be silent, wretch! Thy mind is envied less.
I’m sorry, Hailey. Yes, Marco does have a problem with moving onto the next world.
HAILEY: But what if he’s right? I mean…I don’t really know what his problem is exactly, but if it’s dangerous…
GODDESS: He stays from obstinance as much as from fear. The one thing I can assure you, Hailey, is that there is no more to fear in the next world than there was to fear in the last.
HAILEY: Ok…well I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t getting into anything that I should be avoiding. I was always too quick to sign on the dotted line, if you know what I mean.
GODDESS: Be at ease. But you must realise that there is no hope of you going back. Your options are to proceed or, like Marco, to stay here.
HAILEY: Right. What about you?
GODDESS: (Smiling) I am a goddess, Hailey. I do not subscribe to the same lifetimes of you or Marco or any other mortal being.
HAILEY: Oh, cool.
[BREAK]
MARCO: Divine subscription doth indeed appear
Apart from mortal inclination with
Thy mental borders rendered so unfree.
GODDESS: Are wintered bears unfree of mighty cloaks,
Or fish unfree of gills and flippered tails?
Thou fool doth name thy heart a manacle
That name my rendered mind imprisoned so.
MARCO: (Smiling, but still defensively postured) Thou know this truth: thou art without free will.
Will thou deny that further?
GODDESS: I will not.
But shackle it is only as the horse
Is shackled by his hooves, or lion chained
By fearsome daggered teeth to best all prey.
HAILEY: What’s he saying? I don’t understand.
GODDESS: Oh he’s being foolish once more. He is saying that I cannot understand his perspective because I am a goddess and I have not been given the free will of thought that is granted to mortals. He is true enough in this, but Marco’s problem is ever that he cannot see his own disease. He believes his thoughts are the most true and that all who disagree do so out of intellectual short-comings.
HAILEY: Oh yeah, I know plenty of people like that.
GODDESS: Indeed. While I would like to heal him I have not been given the power to infringe upon his will. I can argue with him – and have done – for centuries, but I am unable to force his will. He must make up his own mind. That he is unable to do this is, sadly, a symptom of his madness.
MARCO: What madness doth this magistrate critique?
Wherefore thy groped reproach against my name?
GODDESS: Thou art more mad than ever could conceive.
Thy lunacy deceives thy suspicion
So thou suppose thy muddied thoughts be clean.
MARCO: So mad am I?
GODDESS: Thou art.
MARCO: Be thou so sure?
For doth the deer not name the tortoise mad
Submerged beneath the perils of the stream?
“Thy hooves will find no purchase, thou will drown
Ye mad unlistening fool!” the deer doth cry.
A different beast is tortoise to the deer
Who, so equipped, knows not the reptile means.
GODDESS: Reptilian yes, but more akin to snake
Who, bellying the ground, doth spurn the deer
His granted hooves that see him walk with grace.
HAILEY: I don’t understand!
GODDESS: I’m sorry, Hailey. Marco believes I call him mad because my divine nature prevents me from truly empathising with mortal consciousness. He is so afflicted that he doesn’t realise he has cast this self-fulfilling delusion upon himself. He damages himself and believes that it is virtuous to do so. That is his madness.
HAILEY: Is he really mad? I mean…well he does talk strangely, but then you do as well…
GODDESS: I communicate with all who come to Vacio, it is he who forces us to converse in that speech. And I assure you, he is insane, of that there is no doubt.
HAILEY: But…I mean how do you know?
MARCO: Most favoured wench, thy virtue dances now!
Thou truth-dyed portrait shall discover this
Unwholesome demon’s slanting of the plot.
GODDESS: Would thou still favour Hailey if her dance
Did change a beat and illustrated new
Investigation of a darker hew?
MARCO: Be silent in thy threat. No call for that.
HAILEY: (To GODDESS) What do you mean?
GODDESS: Marco can deny his madness here all he likes. But he knows how he died.
Is that not true, thou wicked unloved cur?
Will thou report now how thy passing fared?
MARCO: In truth, no. Let this matter rest aside.
GODDESS: Thou art too modest of thy special deeds.
Come, be our fool and favour us with tales
Selected from thy fell biography.
MARCO: I’ll make no strife. Good Marco doth retire.
GODDESS: (To HAILEY) He is at his most tormented, you see, when he remembers his own death. He spends much of his time creating a world in which he can forget what happened. Yet he seems to have no trouble reminding others and trying to draw the same pain from them.
Is that not so, thou ineloquent villain?
MARCO: Marco is quiet.
HAILEY: Maybe we should just leave him alone?
MARCO: Such worthy words.
GODDESS: But worthy thou are not.
You see, Hailey, it is important you are not taken by Marco’s spell. His madness seeks to spread itself, and he has trapped others here by words for periods of time. So far none have lasted so long as he, and those brought under by his crooning have managed to free themselves…mostly with the help of my intervention. So it is important that you know now what manner of man Marco was and indeed still is.
MARCO: I am a man and claim not more than this!
GODDESS: Thy claim falls short of accolades thou earned.
Come, Marco, tell…how many didst thou kill?
(pause. GODDESS glances at HAILEY meaningfully)
Before thou drove thy knife into thy heart
How many other lives did that blade end?
Were not also thy children numbered there
Within thy frenzied bloodlust’s catalogue?
How many years had lived thy eldest son,
How many less had lived thy daughter twins
Before you slit their throats upon your whim?
(Pause. MARCO has withdrawn into a defensive ball)
[BREAK]
MARCO: Flitter in the breezes
Dance within a stream
Twirl about a mountain
Sink within a dream
GODDESS: Most murderous fiend.
HAILEY: Oh my God.(pause) Oh my God…I’m…I’m beginning to remember. I was driving my car…but I was thinking (approaches MARCO)...my thoughts they- they were so…cold.
MARCO: (Looking up at HAILEY) Cold thoughts embrace more true from want of heat.
HAILEY: I was thinking about my life.(exit GODDESS slowly) I was thinking about some of the things I’ve read too. Nietzsche mostly. And it just hit me. Why? Why life? What is the reason for being? And the answer which had been staring me in the face all along finally spoke up. There is no reason. There is no such thing as the question.
MARCO: (eagerly)Yes.
HAILEY: Nothing happens for some kind of esoteric reason…everything simply happens. It doesn’t make sense to ask ‘why’. It only ever makes sense to ask ‘how’ something happened.
MARCO: The glass that sits upon some tavern bench
That, knocked, doth break upon the floor in shards…
Wherefore this happenstance? What is this fate?
HAILEY: There is none.
MARCO: Yes!
HAILEY: There wasn’t some overarching reason and it wasn’t a little chink in some grand design of things. The glass was knocked off the table and it shattered. It was a case of pure cause-and-effect. The cause was itself an effect of a previous cause and its effect will be the cause of another.
MARCO: So pure be thy song! I prithee keep singing.
HAILEY: Well I was thinking about this stuff and I was driving and…I realised that it didn’t matter if I died. Objectively, it just didn’t matter. It would be a particular event in the cause-and-effect design of the universe. All of these subjective reasons for being that I had built up around myself were bullshit. They were real only so long as I believed them to be real.
MARCO: The man who loves his saucepan as a god
And worships all its metal sanctity
Is not a self-considered fool, though fool we mark him.
HAILEY: Exactly! You can believe whatever you want and so long as you believe it, it will be true! How can people ever entertain belief systems knowing this? How can you live knowing that your life is equally as objectively meaningful as worshiping a saucepan? There’s just no point to it! It’s all so arbitrary. (pause) That’s what I was thinking about. I wasn’t really depressed or angry or anything…it was just an intellectual acknowledgement that life didn’t matter. Then I saw a telephone pole up ahead, just off the side of the road. I swerved towards it.
MARCO: There is no greater cruelty, than life’s truth.
HAILEY: But…But I mean I was an atheist. I didn’t think there was an afterlife or anything. I thought…well I thought that when you died, that was it. There was nothing. I thought that the moment I hit that pole it would like it was before I was born and every night when I slept. I thought it would be over and that for me, time would simply stop. But now I’m here…and with yet another life beyond this one. And how many more beyond that?
MARCO: Do thou not see? There is no greater sense
To life’s invented drives where time prolongs
It’s stretched countenance to infinity.
What meaning, prithee tell, in life that never ends?
What greater purpose bests unhappy time?
There is naught: we are the glass upon the bench
That shatters endlessly throughout the worlds.
HAILEY: I don’t know…
MARCO: Then what reason doth reason rest upon?
HAILEY: What reason does reason…you mean like what objective reason is there? I don’t know. Well there isn’t any. There can’t be. It’s like we were saying before…we are just patterns of cause and effect in reality. We’re energy configurations behaving badly. Just as there’s no reason for the glass to break, so there is no reason for us to live…even an eternal life. (pause) But…what did the Goddess say? She said you…did you…kill someone…?
MARCO: (nodding slowly)I took their lives just as that devil said.
My own begotten children did I slay.
HAILEY: But…but, why? Oh….of course. There wasn’t a why. It was just what you did. It just happened. And what is it for me to judge what you did? If what we’re saying is true, then what is the difference between what you did and chopping down a tree or roasting a chicken? What is it but conversions of energy in the patterns of reality? But…I can’t stop just feeling terrible…to kill your own family. I can’t see the energy exchange, I only see the people.
MARCO: Emotion doth enslave thy reason’s wit
As is the fare of all born of our kin.
HAILEY: Your own family.
MARCO: Yes.
HAILEY: Your own children.
MARCO: Yes.
HAILEY: How can I have been so stupid…Oh God what did I do? I’ve lost so much…I didn’t think…
MARCO: What is this new complaint? Do thou forget?
HAILEY: Who cares, Marco? Meaning doesn’t stop sensations. A rose may not be beautiful, but is it not beautiful to me?
MARCO: But what appreciation entertained
Doth give foundation to thy life’s pursuit?
HAILEY: It needs no foundation. Pleasure is its own reward.
MARCO: Reward that thou might recognize again
The theft that pain exacts upon thy soul!
HAILEY: Maybe. But pleasure’s enough. It should have been. Oh God, why wasn’t it?
MARCO: Thou flee from reason as thou more confess!
HAILEY: Maybe. Maybe I just don’t need reason.
MARCO: Are painted so thy ears upon thy skull?
Can thou not hear the words thou do expound?
HAILEY: (looking offstage) I hear them. And I see too, Marco. I see the way out. That’s what I was to do here. I had to see the mistake I made. I see it now. I can leave.
(Starts walking off stage. She stops as Marco says)
MARCO: Then go! Trick yourself into thinking what you’re doing matters and forget about the truth you’ve just articulated. Forget it all. It’s certainly the easy thing to do. Hell, maybe I should do it! Then I could leave this spiritual dungeon and escape the memories that haunt me as if I’d done my deed yesterday. I murder my family! I murdered them. Do you know what it is, to kill the ones you love? Do you know what it does to you? They never leave me. They are always here, screaming. But worse than the screaming is the laughing. The songs and the play, their faces smiling…and bloodied. Yet for all this, what I did simply doesn’t matter. And that’s exactly why I did it. It was nothing. It is only my weak, stupid mind that entertains significance and makes me feel this way. It doesn’t stop the truth. All I want is to stop existing; to escape these emotions, and the truth. But I can’t. And I can’t step through into the next world. For how could I live, knowing that there is no reason for any action I commit? So since I can’t stop existing, I live here, in Vacio. I stay in nothingness, and use what structure I can to keep some semblance of sanity with only the memory of my family’s screaming voices and a deity with an agenda to keep me company. It’s a terrible way to live, but it’s the only way I can escape from life so empty and hideous is its beauty.
HAILEY: I can’t ever imagine wanting that, Marco. I can’t help what I desire. I don’t desire nothingness, I desire pleasure.
MARCO: Then Marco doth retire back to his place
Where emptiness is death’s poor substitute
And structured speech is sanity’s device.
HAILEY: Come with me. Why do this to yourself? Why not accept what has been given to you?
MARCO: This fruit is spawned upon a poisoned tree,
I would not taste its foulness though it be
Elixir to the less affected man.
HAILEY: Please come. Try. (pause) I think the Goddess was right, Marco. Only a madman could want what you do. I’m sorry. Goodbye.
(Exit)
MARCO: Gone.
Flitter in the breezes
Dance within a stream
Twirl about a mountain
Sink within a dream
(Curtain close)