The play

Well, the first readable/performable draft is finished. I'm not entirely sure it gets its point across clearly, but I am quietly cheery about the results. Considering this is the first time I have attempted to write a script, I'm quite pleased.

I have been told the "writing (Read: Conan's language) is too esoteric", however I'm thinking that's just a synonym for "the theatre students are dumb". I'm thinking I'll just ignore that and steam ahead; I like Conan hamming it up and being ludicrously verbose.

Anyway, here it finally is. Draft 3, The Draft That People Could Read. Part I. Take 2.

(You may have to click it on the right, it's too big and badly formatted to fit on this page. Yea, I suck at converting Word docs into HTML)

In A Wicked Age

Characters: (they are quite
noticeably of identical build)

ROBERT HOWARD: a tall, well
built 30 year old Texan author.

CONAN OF AQUILONIA: a tall,
well built 30 year old fictional character with long black hair and
blue eyes.

The two men are sitting. They
start facing away from each other. ROBERT HOWARD is dressed in black
jeans and black flannel shirt, while CONAN OF AQUILONIA is wearing a
chain shirt and black jeans. They stand in a corn field, almost ready
for harvesting. It goes on forever, there are no signs of humanity.

ROBERT HOWARD

I took mother out for a drive
today.

CONAN OF AQUILONIA

Across the fields.

ROBERT HOWARD

Across the fields, yea. She
needed the air. Clears her chest up fine, lets her breathe for a
while. She needs the air.

CONAN OF AQUILONIA

Her cough gets worse every day.

There is a long pause. The two
men are not awkward about it.

ROBERT HOWARD

There's blood now.

CONAN OF AQUILONIA

There has always been blood.

Another pause, shorter this
time.

ROBERT HOWARD

True.

Another pause. As long as the
last.

ROBERT HOWARD

I'm weak, you know.

CONAN OF AQUILONIA does not
react.

ROBERT HOWARD

I mean... I mean I'm strong an'
all. I could lift you clean over my head if y'asked. Let me show you.

ROBERT HOWARD stands and makes
a move towards CONAN OF AQUILONIA with his arms out as if to pick him
up. CONAN OF AQUILONIA stops him with a stern look, stands quickly,
then speaks.

CONAN OF AQUILONIA

Do you deem yourself strong,
because you are able to twist the heads off civilized folk, poor
weaklings with muscles like rotten string? Hell! Break the neck of a
wild Cimmerian bull before you call yourself strong. I did that
before I was a man.

Silence. ROBERT HOWARD sits.

ROBERT HOWARD

I wish I could take a break now
and go boxing. I wish I had a beer. I wish I had time. I have to work
twice as hard to earn half as much, what with looking after mother
taking up my time.

I lay awake at night listening to
her. Holding my breath to hear the wheezes and the chokes; they're
killing her while telling me she's still alive.

I need to rest, to be alone.

ROBERT HOWARD stares at the
floor and speaks in an imitation of the townsfolk who talk about him.

“What kind of young man
would go around mumbling to himself? Punching an imaginary enemy?
What kind of young man chooses to write for a living? That ain’t
no living. Why, he’s just leeching off poor Isaac Howard, that
nice doctor. And you know what he spends all his time writing about?
Ghosts and warriors and harlots. All just sex and violence. He
should be ashamed of himself. I heard he carries a pistol in his car.
And he sleepwalks at night!”

CONAN OF AQUILONIA

Civilized men are more
discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite
without having their skulls split, as a general thing.

ROBERT HOWARD stops staring at
the floor.

ROBERT HOWARD

I caught them following me last
week.

I was picking up some of mother's
well-wishers and noticed a movement in the fields. Harvesting season
is almost on so the fields were high but my eyes... my eyes are
sharp; I saw the rustling, the bending stalks.

They were watching again.

CONAN OF AQUILONIA

So you thought.

ROBERT HOWARD

So I knew.

Long pause.

CONAN OF AQUILONIA

What happened there?

ROBERT HOWARD draws a .380
Colt and stands.

ROBERT HOWARD

I took out my Colt and shot off a
few rounds into the field by way of a warning.

CONAN OF AQUILONIA nods
slowly, looking thoughtful.

CONAN OF AQUILONIA

You see devils where there are
none.

ROBERT HOWARD

I'm not going out of my way
looking for devils, but I wouldn't step out of my path to let one go
by.

Long silence.

ROBERT HOWARD

One has hold of mother. She has
done nothing but help others her whole life, and she suffers like a
dog. The devil is on her back laughing at me, using her as a shield.
It wants me, it's always wanted me. It put me in the wrong age and
watched as it fell apart.

CONAN OF AQUILONIA looks
somewhat disinterested throughout.

CONAN OF AQUILONIA

Give me a clean sword and a clean
foe to flesh it in.

ROBERT HOWARD

(Sullenly)

It's a liberty we rarely enjoy.

CONAN OF AQUILONIA

For which I pity your civilised
age.

ROBERT HOWARD

(ROBERT HOWARD turns on CONAN
OF AQUILONIA somewhat aggressively during this. Gesticulating with
his gun)

My age? At least my age is real!
Yours is all illusion. No, delusion! Just a wish! Just...

CONAN OF AQUILONIA turns on
ROBERT HOWARD and interrupts.

CONAN OF AQUILONIA

I know not, nor do I care. Let me
live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat,
stinging wine on my palate and the hot embrace of white arms, and I
am content. Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over
questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion,
then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real
to me. I live, I love, I burn with life, and am content.

An angry silence. ROBERT
HOWARD sits.

ROBERT HOWARD

(With rising desperation)

She's dying you know. She's all I
have left. Do you know how that feels? To be alone? To be helpless?

CONAN OF AQUILONIA

When I cannot stand alone, it
will be time to die.

ROBERT HOWARD looks at CONAN
OF AQUILONIA for a long while, as if thinking, then leaves, CONAN OF
AQUILONIA looks on after him.

CONAN OF AQUILONIA

All fled, all done, so lift me on
the pyre;

The feast is over, and the lamps
expire.

CONAN OF AQUILONIA sits down.

A play

A play will be forthcoming, as soon as I get a first draft done. I think I need the fear of people actually looking at it to finish it.

More dreams

I was at an art show. I knew this much.

I was bored, or didn't like it and had wandered off to the back room where they kept all the books. I was thumbing through them and found a book called something like "The Necrovisions of...", I couldn't remember the author. I looked through it, it was an art book full of glossy pages full of black and white and red photos, mostly of bits of anonymous lumps of meat hanging on lines, siting on the floor looking rather sad. Then I got to a picture of a mans face, he was pure white skinned and had chewed away his lips. They hung down in taters.

I hated this. It was the last straw and I decided to leave, I didn't want to be there anyway.

The problem was, I had to go through the show room to get out. I went in and people were seated on the a kind of baseball layout seating, barely a scaffold. They were waiting and watching the other side of the room where it had been covered in plastic sheeting with a plastic curtain in a kind of mockery of the theatre. They wouldn't let me leave because I had paid for the show so I might as well stay and get my money's worth.

The artists came out. He was a decadently fat man (from good living, not laziness) and was wearing a golden dressing gown. He was powdered up like Elizabeth I, all pure white. There was another man with him, he was dressed like a mortician, black rubber apron and gloves, white overalls, and a mask that hid all of his face; you couldn't see his skin.

The artist took off his robe and he was naked, entirely white. He laid on the nearby table and the other man took out a delicatessens' meat shaving thing and started shaving him down, spraying blood everywhere (it was most up his white body). He moaned in agony and ecstasy.

The show ended with him eviscerated up to his ribs, splayed everywhere. He moaned quietly and the audience clapped.

Fevered notes

Was a pretty although disturbing (like an adult baby) face sitting attop a black scaled shape shifting thing. Although the shape shifter took the form of a tall hulking humanoid with skin like an anaconda's. His fists were white. Tney loved each other (the head was sometimes considered the woman, although genderless and reffered to as a "he". They loved each other unconditionally, although there was no physical aspect to it as far as I can tell). They were helping their friends get somewhere (getting somewhere was always a chore, this is post apocalyptica. At one point they slipped through Disneyland at night, dodging the shotgun wielding Disney cultists).

This pair (possibly the whole group) was being chassed by a man. I'm unsure who he is, but he's definately part of "The Law" as it stands. Not a mere bounty hunter or something, he had moral justification for what he was doing. Think the Big Sleep, but more of a sociopath. He would do anything to get them. "For the greater good" etc.

For some reason the shape shifter stays behind as the others go on. He doesn't doubt them, he knows they wil succeed even, he just stays. The face doesn't think this is a good idea (the face is a reasonable thing, moderate, keeps him safe, acts as another pair of eyes). The body rejects the head. Eventually (after some kind of conflict) giving it the big scaled body and pushing him away, breaking his heart (possible setting fire to the body (not sure), the face runs around in pain for this turn around). The body becomes a full person (he didn't need him he says/shows him) and puts him in a bath tub full of hooked tentacles (I have no idea) which strip aways the body, down to the bare neccecities to keep the head alive (maybe only mobile, I'm not sure). Now it is emaciated, ribs (literally) show, and his hands are over-sized crab claws on weedy arms.

The face is tortured. The ohysical torture is not so bad, the body is not so subtle, more beatings and semi-drownings in the tub. It is the emotional aspect that hurts. The body becomes some kind of gang boss. This is only important in showing his self-sufficiancy, the gang is irrelivant.

The detective finds them, but I don't think he recognises the body. He would suspect that he would change, but not that he would hold his head captive and torture it. He invites the detective to dinner, he brings his pretty wife.

The face is brought along, and humiliated. Innitially he is full of mad hatred for the detective, shouting through teary eyes at him (tears mainly of rage, partially of what he has lost). The body hurts him (physically, somehow) and makes him apologise. He is casually abused by them through the meal and has to say he enjoys it, answering the detectives questions in a submissive answer. The face is given a fatty, raw tongue to eat, some comment is made on it, he picks at it, eating the meat (he is so hungry, but he is humiliated by this). He wishes he had told the body he loved him (I think he loved him too much to let the detective know who he was. The body didn't even think the face would let out the truth, unconciously trusting their bond).

During this dinner something happens. The detective says something, his wife agrees and the body decides to go on after the others, asking the face if he should (unconscious relyiance on habit? he still maintains a distance, although a hint of sincerity comes through). He knows the others have found what they were looking for and he wants to go find them. The detective seems to fade out.

They leave and it becomes irrelevant. The face can't love the body again, but he goes through the motions.

Heil there!