Rubens, Fall of Icarus (image from Wikimedia)
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.
– Jack Gilbert, from Failing and Flying, 2005.
TIME AND PLACE
The present. A scrim on one side of the stage; a desk (with gold telephone) on the other.
CHARACTERS
VINCENT, early 30’s, in a car in Scene 1 and in a wheelchair in Scene 2.
Vincent’s Offstage Voice is dressed in black and masked.
LIL, 20’s.
VOICE (offstage) of Vincent’s physical or spiritual father.
FRED, Vincent’s uncle.
ISAAC, friend of FRED.
… in the dialogue indicates a thoughtful break.
SCENE 1
VINCENT is driving a car.
VOICE (offstage)
Get off the road, Vincent!!
VINCENT swerves the car immediately before the sound of screeching tires, a truck horn blowing, a blinding flash of headlights, and a crash.
Blackout.
SCENE 2
VINCENT is center stage in a wheelchair, his head lolling to one side.
VINCENT (in an offstage voice)
If I were in space, well beyond a return to Earth,
a shelf life of say four months at the most, which, in a way, is where I am, doctors say.
Actually, four months and a day longer than they gave me a year ago when it happened.
But if I were, and absolutely alone … would my father be with me?
Out there?
Like he was when he saved my life, to live in this shit-mobile.
What I saw … not what they tell me I saw … was not a runaway truck with headlights.
Not at all.
It was a dragon with white-fire-blazing, hateful eyes.
One of those massive reptiles of a dragon.
Ugly.
Repulsive.
That swallow people whole.
Like me.
Green, turning to yellow, and then to black.
Black as finally death becomes, burnt at the stake.
Or eaten into the sightless stomach of a dragon.
With six legs and a tongue of blood red fire,
rising up from the river I was driving along.
LIL enters behind the scrim and lights dim as Vincent’s Offstage Voice enters behind the scrim to dance with her.
As the dancing stops he hands her a folded letter pulled from his pocket and exits.
LIL
[reads] Lil. My precious Lil.
In every way and in every life, life will be frustrated.
All we can do is wait patiently for the end when it crosses our path.
LIL exits, and lights return to normal.