I SEEMED HAPPY
a short play for the voice
by Kyle John Schmidt
FRANKLIN:
Nor night, nor day, no rest. It is but weakness
to bear the matter thus. Mere weakness.
Last night I dreamt I stayed at home.
Last night I dreamt I drank a cup of tea.
Last night I dreamt of monster arms.
Last night I dreamt I killed Lucinda.
Last night I dreamt I couldn’t sleep.
Lucinda. Lucinda? Lucinda!
I want
From you neither bed nor food,
Yet there’s not a minute each day
That I don’t want to be with you,
Because you drag me, and I come,
Then you tell me to go back
And I follow you,
Like a seedling blown on the breeze.
Lucinda.
The postman came to the door today.
I said, “thank your for the mail.
It is so kind to know someone cares
To bring letters, catalogues, and the weekly local classifieds.”
He laughed. And laughed. And laughed.
Slapped his knee, belched his chest
And ran to tell his wife
That I opened the door.
If the postman knew the whole story he wouldn’t laugh.
If we knew all the stories from the beginning of time
We would never laugh.
Ignorance is the foundation of laughter.
Comedy is life with limited perspective.
Knowledge is tragedy.
I can’t laugh because I know what happened.
Lu----cin---da.
Dear Son:
I have heard things about you.
Are they true?
Love with hope,
Mom
Dear Mom. Four night ago. Monsters raided the town.
Scores of them swarming through the streets. Blue skin.
Tusks. Porcupine hands. Octopus arms. Everyone ran to
their houses, locked their doors and prayed they would pass.
Everyone ran to their homes. And hid. Monsters exist and
they came to my town. Love, Franklin.
Four nights ago, I held Lucinda in my arms.
Lucinda with the red hair.
Lucinda with the carmel skin.
Lucinda with her quiet smile.
Homecoming queen Lucinda with smile, skin, and hair.
Lucinda was a girl who captured the dreams of every boy she ever met.
A teenage fantasy. A desert oasis.
Every night a hundred flags whipping high on steel poles for her.
Every boyish fantasy ribboning white on my hands for Lucinda.
Dear mom,
There’s a girl in my class. Her name is Lucinda.
Love without hope,
Franklin
I’ll sleep at your feet
To watch over your dreams.
Naked, looking over the fields,
As though I were a bitch hound.
Because that’s what I am!
Deserts upon deserts.
Oh, Lucinda I look at you
And your beauty seers me.
In his dreams, the postman delivers a letter to Lucinda.
She takes the correpsondence in her thighs
And then let’s him open her brown parcel post
In his dreams, the postman takes the entire day to deliver one package.
Last night I dreamt I stayed at home.
Last night I dreamt I drank a cup of tea.
Last night I dreamt of monster arms.
Last night I dreamt I killed Lucinda.
Last night I dreamt I couldn’t sleep.
Four nights ago, I went to Lucinda’s home.
Her parents were missing.
I am a virgin.
I said.
She led me to her room.
I was a handsome boy. Some say. Not too handsome.
No one ever killed themselves for my beauty.
Looking in the mirror, I wouldn’t kill myself for that.
But boy, boy, I was a boy, forever youth.
I was a late bloomer.
My hands always shook.
My nose streamed blood.
My smile? Pale and crooked.
My lower body hairless.
No trace of manhood.
My voice high, contra tenor.
A cherub. A eunuch. An eternal boy.
And I feared everything.
When I turned 26 I moved to Millersburg
To become a Senior High English Literature teacher.
In the halls, everyone thought I was a Junior High genius.
No. I’m a teacher. I look young.
First period. Lucinda, the red rose with a carmel skin
Walks in, surveys the chairs, and sits at my desk.
I should have bawled her out.
With high voice screeching.
But
For some strange reason, she was my only student first period.
Open your books.
I said looking forward at the seats she should have sat at.
I’m Lucinda.
And I’ve already read them all.
I turned and she looked at me
And I can’t explain it but to say
That she looked into my soul
And read the book of my life.
For the first time,
In my long life,
My hands stopped shaking.
My nose stopped bleeding.
My face started itching.
And my khaki pants hurt.
I ran to bathroom
And sitting in the locked stall
I look at at at at
I look at at at at
My pubis. Legs between.
And a single curly hair sprouting there.
Dear mom,
I’m a man. Now.
Love and hope,
Franklin.
Weeks go by.
Lucinda begins my mornings.
Thoughts of Lucinda end every night.
And every day I look more the man.
My body unleashed.
I smell.
I sweat.
I wear deodrant.
I grow six inches.
I shop in the men’s department for all new clothes.
Hair in every crevice.
I learn how to shave.
My voice descends.
Telemarketers no longer ask me to retrieve my husband, Mr. Franklin
Moore.
You’ve changed Franklin.
Lucinda says at my desk.
It’s Mr. Moore.
I say looking at the rows of seats where she should sit.
Open your books.
But everyday: I’ve already read them all.
And we sit staring at each other.
Me in student’s chair.
Her at teacher’s desk.
My body grows but my blood grows thicker and bigger.
Stronger and stronger a daily battle to keep my veins from bursting out.
Painting the room. Covering all. Everything drenched.
Franklin, you look strained.
Lucinda.
I
Am
Frightened.
I want to rape you on my desk.
Monsters. MONSTERS! There are monsters everywhere.
Nor night, nor day, NO REST!
Come over.
Where are your parents?
They’re missing.
What’ll we do?
I’ve read all the books.
Then I have nothing to teach you.
Come over anyway.
Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here
And fill me from the crown to the to top-full
Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood;
Stop up th’access and passage to remorse
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th’ effect and it.
Lucinda’s bedroom was peach.
Her breath was raspberry.
She held my man’s hand.
She touched my man’s chin.
She showed me on her girl’s bed.
I’m a virgin
I said.
So am I
Said she.
Lucinda.
Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark
To cry “Hold, hold!”
Her room was peach.
Her hair was red.
Her skin carmel cream.
I held her in my arms.
I touched her girlish cheek.
Fingered her full plum lips
Licked her butterscotch breasts
She moaned.
I smiled.
This is the glory of living.
I tremored.
And then Lucinda
Homecoming queen
Vanished.
Underneath my boiling blood
My girl crumbled into sand.
Breaking into a hundred thousand
Tawny pieces.
I lay in the desert
Drenched in sweat.
My body covered in grains.
My hair trapping her to my skin.
My baritone roared.
Disintegrating horror.
Four nights ago. Lucinda. Under me. Gone.
Fallen between sheets. Blown away by ceiling fan.
Lost. Outside. I hear a thousand screams. I thought
they were for me. A thousand angels mourning her death. My
murder. I peak out the window and see scores of monsters raiding
the town. Horror undulating in the streets, winding jaws and jellyfish
bodies. Forked tails. Cerulean skin. Gelatinous Cilia
flowing in the wind.
Kill me. Kill me. I clamor out the window. Kill me!
While monsters terrorized the town. Everyone hid. The
streets stood without people. But I needed to die. For
Lucinda in piles. Tumbling out of Lucinda’s home naked, I found
the monster crowd. Porcupine hands. Tusks. Hard and
toothy. I threw myself into their long slimy arms. Their
suction cups tore at my nipples. Their rigid claws toying with my
hair. Flirting with my thighs. Twisting, twirling. Taking
the boyish fantasies away from my hands. And I covered in
sand. Bright! Carmel! Red! Red! No!
Who! She! Lucinda! Release. Blackout.
The next morning, the people peaked from behind their shades and sees
me, my new body, entwined in sparkling blue monster flesh and
sleeping. And they laugh. Cackle! Fart a thousand
giggles! And they don’t know I didn’t want to dance. I
found monsters for death. I wanted to die.
Last night I dreamt I stayed home.
Last night I dreamt I drank a cup of tea.
Last night I dreamt of monster arms.
Last night I dreamt I killed Lucinda.
Last night I dreamt I couldn’t sleep.
Four nights ago my dreams turned to sand and I slept in tusks and
slime. And now I lay wake night after night in deserts and
swamps. No rest. And no one knows. No one
knows. I’m waking dead.
Last night I dreamt I was the boy who lived before the monsters
came. I seemed happy.