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"The Killer"
A play in two acts
Download Full Script Here
Format: MS Word Document
File Size: 102 Kb
Zipped: 28.4 Kb
CHARACTERS IN THE PLAY
KILLER
POETS
RAYMOND CHANDLER
B.S. GREENBURG
EDITOR
BUFFY LA RUE
MR. MOVIE
ROUND JOHN
NICK DICK
TIME: I REMEMBER IT...AS IF IT HAPPENED
TODAY...WHICH IT DID.
-The Killer-
ACT 1
A long excerpt
SCENE: AN EMPTY STAGE
(A sallow faced shade steps forward. He
studies the audience and begins speaking in a quiet menacing voice.)
KILLER
Killing people is a lonely business. When you're on top of your profession
you have to work alone. So there's never anyone to talk to. No one to talk about your work with and nobody you can confide in. But that's the way it is if you're gonna prosper in this business. Amateurs, you see, are always working with groups of people, always
talking at the wrong times, always going off in front of witness types, in short,
they're psychologically unfit for this line of work. The slammers are full of these hot- heads, wife-beaters, cheap thugs, drug pimps, and assorted jerk-offs who tried to step up to murder one. These losers couldn't kill cockroaches with black flag. Most of these Bon-bons are doing hard time behind cement walls and even wearing stiletto heels and little slit skirts just so they can get by.
Me? I am a professional. Not your average professional neither. Twenty-two years of killing, and I've never so much as seen the inside of a police station. Everything in my professional career was jake, till I started having, how should I say, certain difficulties. Sentiment! That's what did it: sentiment. Get sentimental—get dead. Anyway that's
always been my motto. So, I don't know what came over me. Or how it happened. It was like a spell, or maybe a change—maybe like a mid-life crisis. I remember this mark. An older guy… a gentle type, you know? He was mine to do. And I've always enjoyed my work. You see, the most fun about killing people is looking in their
faces…staring at them with my dead look…like this..(He stares at audience) see? Some of them panic, some are terrified, some go numb, and others start crying, some beg for their lives, some even cry out for God to help them. They were all disgusting. No pride. Most died with shit in the shorts.
(Moves across stage).
Anyway, not this guy. He was different. He just smiled at me and looked serene as hell.
I mean he was taking all the fun out of my work. Well, let me tell you, it just pissed me off. It was like he was making light of my work. It was clear to me, that he did not appreciate the gravity of his position. So, something snapped right there. And I broke the first cardinal rule. Which is never talk to a mark. Just
look at them as if they're a bug and pull the trigger. And that's what I should have done. But no. All of a sudden, me, I get real gabby. Conversational! I mean, I remember the whole thing as if it happened today. . . . . which it did. (Lights fade to. . . )
Two men standing in the shadows. They walk forward.
KILLER
Keep walking! Go! O.K. That's far enough.
Take the shovel. (He hands man an imaginary shovel} Start digging!
MAN
No.
KILLER
No? Want I should finish you right now?
MAN
Yes. Do that. (He smiles, turns his back, and freezes)
KILLER
(Resumes monologue and mimics the MAN ) Yes. Do That.
That did it. I was really pissed off now. So, I stepped out of the shadows and showed him my steel blue Glock. 9 MM It's a nasty looking piece--sleek, deadly and very efficient. I walked right up on him—which usually makes them squirm. Sometimes they break out in a sweat—right above their lips, but not this guy. . .
(Resume scene)
KILLER
I'm going to kill you.
MAN
I know. (He smiles and freezes as before)
KILLER
(Resumes monologue) I hate days like this—you have everything worked out,
Every detail's detail is accounted for. You know, I never should have agreed to a group- rate-killing. But I was offered a handsome price to kill six poets. I'd never heard of any of them, and I figured how much trouble could that be? They met every Tuesday as a group in the public library and read little poems to each other. They weren't
regularly employed, so it wasn't like anybody would miss them.. 6 for the price of 3! Their wives were very eager to be rid of them Confidentially each wife had lined up an accountant from the personals on the world wide web. They wanted a two-fer deal, like at the Malls. I agreed . . . but only if I could do them all at once. The wives were thrilled, but it was just another night's
work for me. I called the 6 poets telling them I was a producer for KCET and we were doing an improvisational poetry reading in the Mojave Desert. Just South of Boron and West of California City. Anyway, I told this poet . . .
(KILLER walks into next scene)
KILLER
I'm gonna put a slug in your gut. . .
MAN
(He smiles) Yes.
KILLER
Your gonna to be a long time dying. It won't be pretty.
MAN
I see. Well, lets get on with it then.
KILLER
Just a damn minute here. You're pretty nonchalant for a man about to die.
MAN
Death is life. Life is death. It's all the same.
KILLER
(Resumes monologue)
This guy was making me real nervous. Maybe I'm getting too old for this kind of work. But he started me thinking about what happens after you die. And not being a literary type, I drew a complete blank. Like a wall of darkness all around me. Maybe it was the darkness of the night, the lateness of the hour, the coldness I felt in the stars, but suddenly a shiver like what death must be moved through my body. And right then, I had a crazy notion! It was nuts. But all of a sudden, I needed some answers about death and dying. So, I walked back to the car at the side of the road and ordered the other five poets out. I herded them together under a bright desert moon. There was one of them saguaro cactuses standing there and a lot of sage brush all around. It had a kind of haunted look to it. And, as I said, I was feeling kind of unstrung about a lot of things. I pointed my gun at them. And I said. . . (KILLER walks into scene)
KILLER
I got an idea here. We are going to have a contest.
POET 2
What kind of contest?
KILLER
I want each of you to recite a death poem. Your death poem.
POET 3
And if we do?
KILLER
If I like it. You get a prize.
POET 4
What's the prize?
KILLER
YOUR LIFE! All right, the fancy one, you're first; step forward!
POET 1
(French dialect)
Just a minute. I'm not ready. I can't think. I can't compose under pressure.
The moon is so bright it blinds me.
KILLER
You'd better skip the writers' block routine . . .
(He points the pistol at the poet) . . . begin. . . Now!
POET 1
(In French and German)
Le nuit es noir. . .
Und die Tag ist schwarz. . .
And the water is black
And my soul is black. And blackness
KILLER
ENOUGH! (He walks over and shoots POET 1) I can't listen to this shit!
You with the funny looking scarf, step forward! I want some answers.
POET 2
(Somewhat effete)
I'm really more of a lyric poet…The song is my form. But not death.
(Strumming zither, and warming up his voice)
The wind (Poet sings) as it plays along the side of your mind,
as it rustles the strings of your heart,
the wind as it stirs in empty places that bind.
The places where zephyrs start (A shot is fired. The poet falls)
KILLER
That is not it! I grow impatient. O.K. Dirtbag, you go!
POET 3
(Truculently)
We are part of the shadows that move like a plague upon the land
We are stronger than grass, greater than fog,
we are the freeway poets (scratches his testicles) of the new millennium!
our poems will not be words
but they will be the things themselves….
Our poems have become material things….
we are materialism itself. . . (A shot and the poet falls)
KILLER
You're next. Make it good. Come on what are you waiting for?
POET 4
(Pedantically)
Before I read my death poem—since it won't seem to make sense at all—
I would, by way of an introduction, a preface so to speak, like to begin with a few words of exposition, as it twere'. When I was 6—I became aware that in this world I was different-- not just because of my deformities, not because of my fear of the dark, not because of my fear of the light, and not because my father was a dwarf Russian Orthodox Scholar. No, not for those reasons, but I started writing poetry after seeing my father naked. The Penis Poems, some 1800 in the first cycle, are written in a Sumerian sub-dialect, which only I can translate. They were composed on Nile clay tablets. My writing instrument was an exact duplicate of a cuneiform pressing tool from the British Museum. I must now read it backwards due to the fact that I am afflicted with dyslexia.
(POET 4 reads, eloquently and with passion)
The angle of the dangle
was the vector of the pecker
(A shot rings out, the poet falls)
KILLER
(Looking at remaining poets)
I hate long introductions. Goofy. You're next. Make it count!
Want to know what happens? Download the
Script!
"The Killer"
Download Full Script Here
Format: MS Word Document
File Size: 102 Kb
Zipped: 28.4 Kb
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