Act I

The camera focuses in on a half bottle of absinthe. The lights now blaze on, then turn dark and the light is changing the color to blue gradients.

Sounds of racecars go by; a voice in monotone comes awake. 2 men in their twenties are in a house, tied up and facing a wall. They do not seem to be aware that they are in the dark, tied up and can only see shadows on the wall they are facing. When they do find out, they are nonplussed.

Chris: What’s that? She didn’t tell me shit! She liked you, she let you write about whatever she wanted but she didn’t tell me what to write. We read some pretty interesting stuff. What was that one novel?

Oregon: Pride and Oedipus? By Jane Austen-Heely. I think so. It had this girl who would only marry for love but it turned out that she had actually been married before and had a kid.

Chris takes in a deep breath and says the next lines exceptionally fast but also able to be heard.

Chris: …and the kid was ugly and had one eye or something so they put him in that place where Oliver Twist lived and when he grew up, he fell in love with his mother. And that is how he lost the other eye. I would stab my eye out with a marshmallow pick too if I did something that treacherous. This stuff, what’s the alcohol content? Looks pretty incredible. I wonder why it’s changing colors? I was thinking, why did they go and start the racecars when there are always these signs saying “Don’t drink and drive”?

Oregon: I think you have a nice mullet. I think they mean public roads. You can do whatever the hell you want when you are on your own private property. That’s what the insurance companies believe, anyway.

Chris: Man, who cares. I go everywhere when I drive even when I’m sober, I’m fast but not safe. I wish I could boost. I bet thats what absinthe makes you feel like, that you are boosting. Maybe I should buy a car?

Oregon: Mebbe. Who can afford one nowadays? The nitching insurance kills you. America is set up so that we will never go beyond our station.

Chris: What is this babble. You nefarious rabble. You are worse than that bullheaded teacher. Who hires a woman fresh out of college that can’t keep her goddamned ideas to herself and who certainly cannot even drive a stick shift?

Oregon: What is our station? What determines our station? I should pack my backpack back

He picks up the bottle and surveys it. His eyes squint and his hair falls over his face. Oregon grabs it from him.

Chris: Glad I didn’t pay for it. What?

Oregon has started flicking it so that the liquid moves. He takes a swig.

Oregon: My butt hurts. Do you know, I really hated that teacher.

Chris: Which one?

Org: The one that bothered us. Small, petite, avec petite bouche. Actually, it was un grande bouche. Oh, yeah I know you said she hated you and that she wouldn’t tell you what to write about but in actuality, she was just a bitch. Bitch brutale. That’s French.

Chris: Always going on about the symbolism of this snake or that apple. It was enough to make me want to study theology. Pure speculation never helped anybody.

Chris takes a swig. He passes it to Oregon. Oregon takes a swig. Oregon looks around. A commercial appears on the television describing the side effects of Viagra.

Chris: I can’t get up.

Oregon: Chris. Where are we?

Chris: We’re in that house. The one with the asbestos ceilings and wax. Wax and ceilings. I was saying it’s apparent to me that antique hash pipes are going to make a lot of money one day.

Org: But why do we have to break into the houses to get them?

Chris: Pussy. If your bouche wasn’t so big already, I’d give you fat lip, make all the guys fall in love with you. And kick you so hard in the ass that when you go to prison, you’ll be as loved as Pope Joan, before she had that baby.

Org: Sometimes I think you say things for sentimental reasons.

Chris: What? Look! A roach. I feel like we’re in the Great Depression.

Org: What? I don’t think the Depression was great! I think it sucked! I can’t keep track of what track they’re on. Whats that shadow?

Chris: It’s alright. It looks like a girl. What is she doing?

Org: She’s smoking something. Why are we here?

Chris: Do you remember that girl that killed herself? Or rather, allowed a tractor to kill her?

Org: You’re wrong. /What was her name? Did she mean to kill herself?

Chris: /Oh, Mr. High Life. How the hell are we supposed to guarantee that? It’s those goggles of yours, they’ve made your vision and your brain turn to warm M&M’s in the sun. Oh, and the M&M’s are crushed. Your bastard child sat on them and drooled on them and then ate one and spat it out and now it is in a big dung heap full of ants and saliva. THAT is your brain. That is a shadow of some girl smoking. And now she’s snorting. It reminds me of Henrietta. Wasn’t she a doll. She had the darkest hair and the bluest eyes. She lived with those miscreants after she was pushed out of prison. Everyone wanted to get into that prison so that one day, when they were let out, they could be real humans.

Oregon: What was her name? The one that killed herself? This Henrietta has exploded my brain. Goddammit! Henrietta wasn’t it.

Chris: Her name was Azalea. You don’t remember her? She used to walk by us every fucking day and we’d look at her and she’d ignore us. And then the next day, we’d look at her, and she’d ignore us. Don’t you remember seeing her get into that car a week ago? She looked as though she was going to have a wild time.

Thing is, I didn’t especially like her, she did nothing for me. But when she was driving that racecar and smacked right into the tractor on the other side of the road. She will always be remembered as a young, hot thing. “Oh, what a waste! Young life!” No. She will never be old in people’s minds, she will always be elusive. Never had wrinkles, never had diabetes, never had to get a real job.

Oregon: She had a good pair of legs on her too. It’s nice how when we get ignored, we’re at least sitting on the ground and get a nice view. It’s always nice. Skirts oh man. I bow down to the man who invented “em.

Chris: Where do you find the time to think up these things? Scotsmen wear skirts.

Oregon surreptitiously takes a few swigs while engaging Chris in conversation. Chris studies the surroundings and states things vacantly.

Chris: Well, I figure that you have got to spend at least several hours a day just thinking up the stupid questions that you so naively ask that there is a lot of time to just come up with analogies, metaphors, caterpillars, astigmatisms, whatever.

Scotsmen wear kilts. They run around and throw javelins at things. Things like gymnasts. Or republicans. Do they have turkeys in Scotland? Och aye.

Org: I think if you were an animal, you”d be a wolf. I never see very many wolves fishing and I’ve never seen you fishing.

Chris: That girl, there’s a man next to her now. My eyes! They are doing the horizontal sprint! I do believe that we should practice the art of Conversation Conservation. They say that conservation is the key to life. Most Americans throw that cheese to the wind, which mostly works out to our favor. Keep your message concise, precise, and full of vice.

Oregon: Ok, well in precise terms, why are we tied up here? Why is it so dark? Why can’t I see?

Oregon readjusts his top hat that partially conceals his goggles.

Chris: I think it is the fact that you lacked a prominent father figure that you can’t see. You fall down the hole that so many others do not grasp. It’s incredible that you have gotten this far.

Org I think it’s my goggles but I also believe I can quote Kurt Kobain as saying “I tried to have a father but instead I had a Dad.” That’s the traumatic part.

A large alarm bell begins ringing. Chris frantically looks around, trying to gauge the vicinity of the sound. Hearing slightly impaired in his left ear.

What’s that sound?

Org: Sounds like a church bell.

Chris: At 3 in the afternoon on a Tuesday? I suppose so. Could be the cops. Could be an air raid. Life is getting pretty dangerous around here. Criminals steal things from right in front of you. Just like you’re drinking all the absinthe. That stuff can kill you, hey. Just be careful. Sirens. Could be that evil teacher taking revenge on the poor and hapless men that used to be pupils.

Oregon forgets what Chris is talking about immediately and focuses on the shadow he believes is his longtime friend.

Org: Hey! Joe! Come here! Who’s this dog? Sir, I’d like to ask you, do you have health care? I don’t. One in five Americans don’t. And, out of the three of us here, two of us don’t. Those ain’t good odds are they, sir?

Chris: Org, who are you talking to?

Org: I guess that wasn’t Joe. Man, what’s in this absinthe stuff. I mean, they make this granadilla stuff illegal for a reason, right? I feel like I’m hallucinating. Now the bottles pink and yellow!

Chris: No more than usual. Remember when we had that computer?

Org: I don’t remember that. I do remember now that woman’s legs. Got me up in the morning, if you know what I mean…

Chris: You were probably searching for Delilah.

Org: (Singing offkey) “And here’s to you , Oh Delilah Oh, heaven only waits for those who pray, hey hey hey.”

Chris: Do you think that if someone dies, they really are remembered for their virtues? I mean, they’ve got to have had enemies. “Don’t speak ill of the dead” but really, if they were cupcakes in life wouldn’t it be that people wouldn’t just forget all their misdeeds?

A figure comes closer to the two tied up heroes. They squirm to see who it is but are blinded with darkness and are turned around towards the wall once more. They sit.

Org: Halt. Who goes there?

They are sprayed with a squirt gun.

ACT II

They sit. Oregon is desperate for the restroom and squirms and wriggles. He acts as if he might die and speaks quickly so that he may say more.

Chris: Didn’t Azalea kill herself because of Gitmo?

Oregon: (In exasperated and exaggerated breath)

I swear to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me please find a bathroom. Yes-she did.

Chris: Gitmo started working at the coffee shop. Was it a coffee shop? Nah. They don’t allow skirts in a coffee shop. I don’t know where rightly it is. Or what it is. No matter, turkey bladder.

She started traversing with Gitmo. And they’d go to the movies the apple store the grocery store the Piccadilly store the almost was there but now its not store and the Thai store.

Oregon: Your point?

Chris: They did everything together. She even forgot Plunge. Sirree, was that a plumber with a crack problem. That aside, she and Gitmo were going swell until very recently.

Oregon: Jesus Chris! Or Jesus Christ! Holy Gandhi! Finish the goddamn story!

Chris: They moved in together, found a house, and continued her newly acquired habit of smoking the pot. The weed. The happy stuff. The green spleen. They had more “friends” move in. Their only connection to each other was drugs. These friends moved in, would steal things like video game stations and old pizza and quickly got them into doing heroin, zappa, crack, acid, various pills, delucious and then at the end of the day, they came back to weed. Absinthe doesn’t sound half bad now, does it Org?

Org: That doesn’t sound so bad… in fact, a life like that might suit me.

Chris: Well, when you start taking these drugs and have casual sex with your loved one, or even your loved one’s acquaintance whom you met an hour ago and has a reputation and makes a living off of selling crack, you forget to do certain things.

Oregon: Like what?

Chris: Like take birth control, like put on a condom. Like go to work and remember to be presentable. Like to make up lies for what you did over the weekend. Like remember who you are supposed to be fucking.

Oregon: What an idiot! What a darsh! What a woolsack!

Chris: Some say people who take drugs have low self esteem.

Org: Nah, they just want to do drugs. Some kids when they are young see it and the image projected by the people who take them. Like aunts and uncles that are the black sheep.

Chris: Terrible. Terrible for the ego, for the skirt and for us because when did we see those legs again?

Oregon: (Morosely)

In the coffin. Cut up and bruised.

Chris: She found him with another woman. He had promised to marry her when he could afford a ring. However, all she saw was an extravagant festival of legs.

Chris: She drove and drove and saw her end. And she took advantage.

Oregon: Legs au jus?

Chris: Legs on a platter.

Org: Legs a la maison?

Chris: That’s not coherent. So, bathroom?

Oregon: Sirree yes!

Chris: See that bush?

Oregon: You know I’m not looking for a woman, Chris.

Chris: No matter. Just go now.

Oregon: That’s disgusting. Soil myself right here?

Chris: You always said you wanted to be a gardener…

Oregon: Alright, cheddar. Keep it to yourself.

Oregon: Can you see them? They’re still moving. Shadows?

Chris: I wish I knew.

The stage fades to black. The captors draw forward towards our heroes. They are sheathed in light coming from behind, blinding the heroes until it is too late. They pick up the men, blindfold them , hit them violently on the head with one immediate motion, and drag them by their ankles to an unknown destination.

ACT III

Chris and Oregon wake up, struggle with their blindfolds and are blinded by the intense light. They can’t see anything but white. As the colors adjust, they find themselves in a fluorescent light factory. All of the lights are on and they try to work out how they got there. They are groggy from their stupor and have heavy headaches that weigh them down.

Chris: It hurts! It’s hurting my eyes. Daggers in my eyes! Can you see the shadows?

Oregon: The shadows have long since gone. We are free.

Chris: I see!

Org: I see!

Chris: If we are now free, that means we were prisoners. Prisoners!

Org: Prisoners of …

Oregon appears to hold his head in his hand, eyes closed. Looks like he is thinking deeply.

Chris: Mankind in all his material glory. We wanted things. Things that cannot last, not in this world, not in the next. Truth! Integrity! Clarity! Freedom! What we saw was an amorphous situation without clarity.

Org: As is what we perceive to be reality. I understand. No, why must we stay? Were they shadows? Did the shadows bring us here?

Chris: They were less than shadows. They were creatures of our thoughts. We brought ourselves here. We can now see what life is, not the shell which we have been brought up to feel was right and that we thought was real.

Org: No!

Oregon punches Chris in the neck. A flash of silver and it appears that Oregon has stabbed his friend in the throat. Chris stumbles, stammers, and crumbles to the ground. Oregon kicks him and searches for the bottle of absinthe. He quickly gulps it down, wipes his mouth, and prepares to go back into the darkness.

The stage fades to black.