A Play A Day #149

Sliver


Cast:
Husband
Wife

Setting: A kitchen table, or table-substitute, basically somewhere to be sat at, and two things to be sat on. Wife is sitting perfectly still, doing nothing. Enter husband, shaking his hand, blowing on his ring finger on his left hand.


Husband: (straightforward, awkward, but entirely sincere and earnest) Ouch. Oh no. This hurts. Wife, I have a splinter.

Wife: (almost robotically flat, no emotion) Oh no. What shall we do now?

H: Dear wife, it must be removed.

W: No, husband, all is lost.

H: No. It is but a splinter.

W: The dream has shattered.

H: I am a mighty man.

W: We are no more.

H: I will remove it myself.

W: We are gone. Dust. Into the empty void of space slash time, we slip.

H: No, we will find ourselves!

W: For a while, our voices fool us.

H: We can come back!

W: Sounding hearty, full, strong and piercing.

H: We will recover!

W: Slowly, however, the emptiness of unending space pulls at our tongues.

H: We can be redeemed!

W: The shouts drain into whispers, the laughter now but a simper.

H: I will seek redemption!

W: We are digested by space slash time. Into the great lacking, we stretch.

H: I will seek our safety!

W: Impossibly thin, to particles, a wave where once a body, then nothing.

H: For both of us!

W: Nothing.

H: It can be done.

W: Noth. (....) Ing.

H: It can be saved.

W: We never ceased.

H: If I can find...

W: Because we never were.

H: The right source of help.

W: Helpless.

H: (sees a tweezers on the table, grabs it heroically, holds it aloft like a mighty sword) REDEMPTION!!!

W: We try to flail. We cannot. (Husband starts attacking his finger like it's a fearsome battle between two awesome opponents, he begins hurling himself and his tweezer and finger around the stage as his wife continues her emotionless rambling) We attempt. We flail. We fail. We forget to remember that we cannot remember a thing. We are not there to have memories. We exist to complement the great nothing with our unknowable nothingness. We stab at our own hearts. We peel away at skin. We pretend we are in love. We hold it all up. Everyone looks. We are perfect. Nothing can penetrate the perfection of our absolute nothing. Nothing can hurt nothing. We cannot abide the slight. We will flail against the intruder. We will fight. But the game is lost. All is lost. All is not. Not is all. All is all for not. We flail, but we have lost. The great void wins. We are no people. We never were. We never will be again. (Great scream from husband, he holds the closed tweezers aloft again)

H: DELIVERANCE!!!

W: Husband?

H: Wife! It! Is! Gone!

W: (complete change of character) Please hurry and wash up, the Tickhearts will be here in fifteen, and the caterers haven't arrived yet. Don't wear that purple tie again. You wore it the last time they visited. And keep the conversation focused on his new Jaguar; it will win us some points if we can show them how much we appreciate their automobiles! Go on, hurry up! Get moving!

(H walks off, lights out)

(end)