My thanks to the two people who bought books and the woman who donated a mix of paperback and hardcover best sellers. Here’s a one-act play that began as a short story. A small magazine publisher in California asked me to change it for his publication. I was happy to do it. It might even work better as a play. It’s about famous dead white guys, Washington, Jefferson, Twain, Shakespeare, etc. having a conversation in the afterlife. Political incorrectness abounds. Although it is a tad more than 3000 words, it is all dialogue, so my guess is it’s a 15-minute read. Only one person has commented on it at the site at which it’s posted. Female, she rated it one star out of five. I hope you have as much reading as I had writing it.
In a vast, infinite place of pitch darkness hangs a huge television screen, seemingly suspended in space.
George: What's new is old, Tom.
Tom: Everything changes, Georgie, and it somehow all seems the same. Is that paradox, Sam?
Sam: Ask the pair of docs.
Tom and George chuckle. Others groan.
Sam, irked: Every line can't be a gem. "Tough crowd, tough crowd," as that old comedian would say.
Leo: Sssssh!
Tom: Aw, lighten up, Leo.
Leo mutters in Russian, which the others understand perfectly.
Tom: Same to you.
George: Ignore him. He's been dead a hundred years. He's not going to change. Whoever said that character is destiny didn't know how right he was.
Tom: True, isn't it? We haven't changed, either. Is that irony, Sam?
Sam: We don't do ironing here.
More groans arise.
Leo: Somebody stop them before I go mad.
Sam: Damn, I wish I had a cigar right, even a cheap one. So many years in the grave and I still have the craving. That characteristic has certainly been a part of my destiny.
Ben: Soon they'll be arresting anyone who lights up in public. Can you imagine that - after all tobacco's done for the Republic?
Sam: Never happen, Benny.
Ben: Mark my words. They're fanatics.
Sam: Do you miss anything?
Ben: I was just thinking how wonderful a glass of the finest port'd be.
Walt, dreamily: An open field; lilacs blooming.
Tom: I can't see you, Walter, but I know it's you. I bet I can identify anybody here, if not by the sound of his voice, by what he says. Try me.
Herm: Sails billowing against the sunset.
Tom: Herm.
Hank: A shack in the woods. A cool, deep, pond.
Tom: Too easy, my friend. One of you non-Americans try.
Miller: You're all nuts. Gimme a night with the likes of an Elle or Cindy, or both.
Laughter explodes. Catcalls and whistles fill the air, drowning out those who protest.
Tom: Henry, you are priceless.
Leo: Barbarians.
Focus returns to the screen. Suddenly the atmosphere is grim.
Wolfie: I vant my MTV.
Luddy: Don't you dare, Wolfie. Stay away from the remote.
Wolfie: Ah, Luddy, you are so square.
Again silence predominates. It is broken by a whirr and smack.
Leo: Kraut dog! One more and ....
Sniggering arises.
Tom: Are you firing imaginary spitballs again, Wolfie? Siggy, you better talk to him. There must be some latent desire behind that.
Wolfie: Of course - to have fun. I didn't worry about how I might be perceived when I was alive - why should I worry about it when I'm dead?
George, amazed: How does he do that?
Tom: Cut him some slack, Lee. Every class has to have its clown or the world'd be the dullest place.
Leo's muttering ceases at the sight of carnage around the world. The mood again darkens.
Tom: You'd have no shortage of people to nurse, Walter.
Walt: But why doesn't any of it have the magnificence of our Civil War? And not a Lincoln in sight to raise spirits.
Abe: I knew Lincoln, and Lincoln was no Lincoln.
Subdued laughter ensues.
George: Always loved your delivery, Abe. I wish I'd had that. These days you'd be making millions on T.V..
Abe: You didn't do so bad.
Ben: How would you explain the carnage, Doc?
Tom: Natural selection, Charlie?
Charles: Which Charlie?
Tom, irked: Not you. If we were discussing the great novel, I'd ask you. You're Charles - he's Charlie. How many times do we have to go over this? Common sense, man.
Thomas: Did someone call me?
Tom: No, Thomas. A little miscommunication, I'm afraid.
Thomas, disappointed: Oh.
Charles: Terribly sorry. Sorry, really I am.
Miller: Damn, I hate that about the English. "Sorry," "Sorry." Do something terrible before you apologize.
Leo: Like steal two-thirds of the world from its rightful owners.
Ralphie: "We will bury you," "We will bury you." As if injustice is exclusive to a single race. And at least the English advanced civilization, not set it backward.
There is grumbling in the background.
Tom: Point, Waldo. Your serve, Charlie. Still with us?
Charlie: Yes. Well. I'd hoped man would evolve to a higher form. While many have, there are still far too many who would drag him down. It appears there will always be a fierce, often barbaric battle to preserve or advance civilization, the likes of which will probably keep civility from ever taking root completely.
Some feign yawns.
Tom: Is that paradox again?
Sam: My three of a kind beats your pair.
Charles: If it's all just a freak of nature, why haven't we here perished? Why are we together in this place, wherever it is? And why aren't there any women or people of color among us?
Sam, chuckling: Aren't Plato and Beethoven black? Wasn't there a book proving that recently?
Laughter erupts as those cited grumble.
Charles: Where is Miss Austen? And Miss Eliot?
Miller: You mean Evans, sexist pig.
Charles: Where is the Reverend King or that marvelous Robinson fellow? Surely their great work ....
JP, morosely: No exit.
Tom: Hell? Interesting, JP. No women, no one of color - maybe it is.
Sam: Some'd say it was the opposite.
This incites boos, hisses, as well as mirth.
Sam, chuckling: Sorry, boys, can't help myself. I'm glad at least some of you have a sense of humor.
Tom, breathless: You kill me, you really do. Keep throwing them out there, Sammy.
Leo: Yankee swine. Stick a feather up your....
George: This can't be hell. It's too many laughs. We don't suffer anything but the boorishness of a few - who shall remain nameless.
Ralphie: Maybe it's purgatory.
JP, morosely: Being or nothingness.
Wolfie: Somebody stop him before it's too late!
Tom: We love you, JP, but we're not in the mood. We've grasped it by now, anyway.
Miller: Tell it to Simone. No wonder you were always arguing. No wonder she was bangin' other guys.
Wolfie: Maybe this's an endangered species zone, set aside for our preservation. What an opera that'd make. I can see it so clearly....
He bellows melodically.
Tom: Down, Wolfie, down, boy. There's not a piano in sight.
John: Maybe we'll exist in spirit as long as people talk about us.
George: Who's that? Donne? Good answer, man.
Others, in the mode of a popular game show: Good answer, good answer.
Sam: I can't for the life of me figure any of it out. I couldn't down there and still can't despite this awesome perspective we've shared for so long. I don't even know if O.J.'s guilty.
Many shout an opinion, most pro.
George: Maybe we should just accept it for what it is.
Tom: And what is it?
Sam: A cruel joke.
Lewis: Maybe this's just the deathbed dream of the last of us to go.
Tom: Who said that?
Herm: The Jabberwock.
Tom: Carroll? Figures. Sometimes I think all that speculation about drug use was true. Anyway, if it is a dream, I wish whoever it was would give up his ghost already and let us rest in peace.
Leo: No!
Many laugh, however uneasily.
Miller, petulantly: What - you wanna live forever?"
Tom: Feel free to jump in whenever you like, Fydo. As far as I'm concerned, you have as much right to speak up as your "esteemed" countryman.
Tension characterizes the ensuing silence.
George, softly: Obviously this wasn't what poor Fydo expected. Maybe he's afraid the ax's going to fall. Maybe he thinks he's on death row again and that this time the dream of an eleventh hour reprieve won't be coming true.
Tom: Why're you whispering? You can't really hurt anybody here. And why should he be any more afraid than the rest of us?
The television screen displays more dead, survivors weeping. A man has gone on a rampage, gunning down co-workers.
Tom: How 'bout it, Doc? Explain it to us.
Siggy: Which Doc?
Tom: Not you, Siggy. Keep a lid on that ego-libido stuff. We've got it down pat."
Siggy snorts his way to silence.
Ben: Well?
Doc: Evil is. Maybe it's as simple as that.
Ralphie: But why is it?
Tom: Maybe it's just an extension of natural selection. Maybe there's a gene that ensures a certain percentage will prey on others, as animals and insects do, thereby controlling population. Maybe that also explains the diseases that take the young.
Ben: But how does nature know? It still doesn't explain that. How could something so intricately programmed have just come to be? Novels don't write themselves. Music doesn't compose itself.
Charlie: Sometimes I wish I'd kept my thoughts to myself.
Tom: Free speech, man - greatest concept ever, despite the license it gives idiots.
Leo: Fools!
Miller, softly: Speaking of idiots.
Leo: Social injustice is the answer! Social injustice!
Ben: Here we go again. If that's the case, why do so relatively few of the downtrodden become violent? Face it - it's a part of what man is and it always will be.
Leo begins lecturing, to the consternation of many. Two new voices shout encouragement in French.
Sam: Do I hear frogs croaking? Am I back in Calaveras County?
The American contingent is in stitches. Leo is undeterred.
Ben: Shut up already. You're dead. You've been dead a hundred years and you will always be dead. You can't change things anymore. It's their turn now. We've had ours.
Doc: I'm afraid there'll never be a permanent cure. Those who choose to be civilized will be, those who do not will not be.
Voices are raised everywhere. The tumult ceases abruptly at the sound of another whirr and smack. Everyone seems to be holding his breath.
Wolfie: Sorry, Will. I lost my bearings in all the confusion.
The tension is thick.
Will, feigning pain: Et tu, Wolfie? Then fall, William.
The tension is obliterated by laughter.
Leo: You apologize to that stinking limey and not to me? What did he ever do to correct injustice? He never even tried, the hack. What are his plays: "Sound and fury signifying nothing."
Suddenly all is still again.
Sam: Me detects the presence of a green-eyed monster.
Hank: I'd punch him in the nose if I could.
Leo: Say something! Defend yourself, coward.
Tom: You're going too far, Leo. The man's been translated into every language on the planet. Four hundred years after his death, all over the world: "Now playing ...."
Leo: You're all in awe of him. Why? He's no better than any of the rest of us.
Ralphie: And, of course, you are. That's the problem, isn't it, Count?
Tom: Point Waldo - again.
Leo: The English dog will not speak because he is a charlatan. It proves he did not write those plays. A commoner could never have, despite their silly bombast.
Silence ensues, as everyone awaits a response.
Tom: If he still had cheeks, I'd say he was turning them to you, Leo.
Suddenly there is another whirr and smack. Bedlam erupts.
Wolfie: Right between the eyes!
George: How does he do that?
Leo: Master race - ha! How I wish we'd met down there. I'd've killed you in a duel and spared the world your perversions.
Tom, irked: See what else is on. Something to soothe the savage beasts. We should stick to entertainment, forget the news.
Miller: But that's the greatest entertainment of all: le comedie humane.
George: True, Henry, in your perverse way, true. It's just that many here lack a sense of humor.
Huey: It's indecent to make light of human suffering.
Tom: We've all been there, Vic. It'll pass. All will pass.
Ben: If fifty percent of the world is suffering at a given time, should the other fifty percent be miserable in deference? Where is the logic in that? Life would cease.
Response is furious. Debates fight to a stalemate.
A political roundtable is now on screen.
Several: Borrrrring!
The screen flashes.
Ben: Oh, look, it's Gloria. Remember how hot she was when she was young? It made you want to sit up and listen. Her words don't carry the same weight anymore.
Miller: Still a chauvanist pig after all these years. I love it.
Quiet reigns for a while.
Tom, whispering: Why're you sneaking about, Wolfie?
Wolfie: How do you know it is me?
Tom: A sixth sense. Stay away from the remote.
George: C'mon, Tom. I want to see Luddy wig out. There's nothing more entertaining than a German tirade. He's still in a snit over the latest movie about him.
Tom: As I am about mine.
Miller: I can't wait 'til it's on HBO.
Tom: I'm sure many of our "friends" are just as eager.
Wolfie: I liked my movie. Artists should have license. Art should be larger than life. You haven't lost your sense of humor, have you, Thomas?"
Tom, resigned: Okay, go ahead.
Soon a music channel is airing. Luddy is livid. Even the serious are amused.
Luddy: It makes me wish I were deaf again.
George: That surround sound is awesome. We missed out on so much, Tom.
Tom: So much drivel, maybe. We weren't under the endless bombardment of civilizations depravities, as today's citizens are. We had the decency to keep them behind closed doors. We should be thankful for that.
Ben: Look! It's Janet!
A raucous cheer goes up.
Leo: Decadent dogs. See what America has done to culture.
Miller: Jeez, that bare midriff.
Ralphie: That profile. Was Sally anything like her, Tom? If so ....
Tom: You give me too much credit, Waldo.
Leo: Slave owner!
Tom: Serf boy! For your information, Countess, blacks are now enslaving blacks in parts of Africa, a hundred forty years after Abie set them free in America, which he did while there were still white slaves in your neck of the woods. Slavery is universal, not exclusive.
Leo: No thanks to you.
A rythmic clapping begins.
Ralphie: Wolfie's moonwalking! Teach me how.
Joy subsides as the video ends and another airs.
Several: Sucks!
Wolfie: Agreed.
A literary roundtable is now on screen. Attention is snared.
Leo: Listen to them. They want everyone to forget us.
Tom: They're succeeding too.
Ben: It's technology that's succeeding. It's going to wipe out even the tripe they espouse.
Leo: That cannot be allowed. We must find a way to stop the erosion of cultural standards.
Tom: Leo, we're dead. We have no control over things down there anymore. Let the world evolve.
Leo: Devolve, more like it.
Tom: Then so be it. It's up to the living to fight for what will or won't survive. Right, Charlie?
Charlie: Yes, although I must say I'm distressed at the course of things.
George: One by one our portraits are being taken down.
Siggy: A world without Shakespeare - or whoever it was who wrote the plays?
Ralphie: Never happen. Life'd have to cease altogether. He'll bury them with their own dirt.
Leo: And the rest of us?
Tom: Christ, can't you forget your ego for one second!
Fydo: Blasphemer!
Everyone is surprised.
Tom: Sorry, Fydo. Some people just bring out the worst in me. I wish you'd speak up more often. You're already dead. What are you afraid of? Are you still expecting judgement?
Now there was booing of what someone in the roundtable was saying.
Herm: It's just a trend. How many have we seen come and go?
Leo: I predict that soon males will exist only in those dreadful sperm banks. A modern breed of Amazon is rising. All males will be exterminated or enslaved.
Many laugh.
Leo: How can you take it so lightly?
Tom: Because we've all read your books. We plodded through the burning issue-of-the-day digressions that ruined the pace of otherwise magnificent work. The stories are still relevant; the issues aren't. Doesn't that tell you something? Is that irony again, Sam?
Sam: I send my clothes to the dry cleaners.
Almost everyone laughs.
Sam, chuckling: What a straight man - the best.
Leo: They're trying to wipe us out! We'll cease to exist!
Tom: Easy. You'd give yourself a stroke if you were still alive.
Leo: Listen to her! It's not only authors she wants to erase - it's all of us. To her we're just symbols of the preservation of white male oppression.
Ben: She's just trying to weasle a buck and a name for herself. A lot of us were guilty of that.
Ralphie: Her rhetoric isn't half as lethal to western civilization as the fact that the selfish twits aren't having any children. I hope I'm wrong, but they may be the instruments not only of our destruction but their own as well.
Leo: Yes! How many of us have disappeared already? I'd swear there were a lot more of us here recently.
Ben: That might be just the work of time. Some things'll be phased out. It's inevitable. Relax, you're near the top. They may never get to you.
George: You know, maybe we should take roll every day.
The mulling of the idea is audible.
Tom: You surprise me, Georgie. What do you hope to gain?
George: What would it hurt? At least we'd know.
Charlie: I'm for it. I volunteer to keep it. When do we start?
Sam: How 'bout morning in America'?
Leo: Of course! Typical Yankee egomania.
Sam, sniggering: I knew that'd get him.
Arguement rages. Finally, agreement is reached, bitterly.
George: What about the Greeks? They never say a word.
Ralphie: What is it with them?
Sam: Two thousand years and still anal retentive.
Many howl.
Tom, pensively: That's where that quote came from. "A man's character is his fate." Now I remember. Thanks for clearing that up for us, Master Heraclitus.
Miller: Danny doesn't talk to us, either. Maybe he's embarassed that some of those he said'd fry are right here with us.
Ralphie: The Greeks again.
Leo: Typical Holy Roman egomania.
Tom: He was only as weak a prognosticator as you were, Leo.
Wolfie: He's only interested in finding his Beatrice, anyway.
Dante, urgently: Have you seen her? Is she here?
Silence ensues.
Ralphie: And I'd always thought she was fictional.
Siggy: Which would mean he's delusional.
Miller: Serves him right. It's the silliest of holy grails. With all the booty around - to fixate on one? C'mon.
Herm: How could you be dead and delusional?
Freddie: Maybe we are all fictional - dead white men in search of an author.
There is a pause.
Tom: To what do we owe the honor, Freddie? Maybe Gerty'l1 deign to speak to us soon. People say he was so charming and sociable in life.
Sam: Maybe he's been phased out, forgotten, stricken from the canon.
Argument ensues. Again attention returns to the screen.
Miller: Hey, sweetheart, bury this.
Ralphie: Wolfie's mooning her!
George: How can you tell?
As the hubbub subsides, only Will continues to laugh.
Will: You're the most wonderful companions. In this eighth stage of man, you each play your parts so well. Bless you.
Exeunt laughing.
Vic's 4th Novel: http://tinyurl.com/bszwlxh
Vic's 3rd Novel: http://tinyurl.com/7e9jty3
Vic's Website: http://members.tripod.com/vic_fortezza/Literature/
Vic's Short Story Collection (Print or Kindle): http://www.tiny.cc/Oycgb
Vic's 2nd Novel: http://tinyurl.com/6b86st6
Vic's 1st Novel: http://tiny.cc/94t5h
Vic's Horror Screenplay on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/cyckn3
Vic's Rom-Com Screenplay on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/kny5llp
Vic’s Short Story on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/k95k3nx
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