What is Weakness?

ACT I


SCENE ONE
(The stage is set up to resemble a bar. There is a table on stage, sideways to the audience. Under the table is a row of glasses. GWEN is a middle-aged woman with a fierce demeanor and exacting movements. She stands behind the table, holding a rag, cleaning a glass and humming to herself. The door opens. DURZO is a young-looking man with an air of casual hostility, dressed in black. He enters, slams the door shut and stalks forward to take a seat opposite GWEN. She gives him a dark look.)


DURZO
Give me a drink.

(GWEN frowns, and slowly does so.)

DURZO
(mutters)
Thanks.

(DURZO downs the drink and slams the glass down, glaring at the table.)

GWEN
What's wrong this time?

DURZO
Kylar.

(DURZO motions for another drink, seeming agitated. GWEN fills another glass and sets it down.)

GWEN
What about him?


DURZO
(drinks and slams it down again)
Doll Girl.
(pauses and regards the empty glass)
I see him looking at her. I think he's falling in love. That can't happen.
(to himself)
It'd ruin everything.

GWEN
He's a boy.

DURZO
(snarls)
He's a killer. I trained him myself.

(DURZO pauses, holding the glass before pushing it forward with a growl. GWEN picks up the emptied glass.)

GWEN
You seemed to have managed all right.
(angrily)
You managed to give my sister a child.

DURZO
(snort)
There's a difference between fucking and love.

GWEN
(refills glass and sets it on the table)
I doubt Vondra saw it that way.

DURZO
(downs the glass)
Vondra was the bitch that didn't know when she wasn't wanted.

(DURZO sighs and puts his face in his hands for a moment. Then he lurches to his feet and grabs the glass he was drinking from and flings it across the room.)

DURZO
Damn him!
(softer)
Damn him.

(GWEN fills a new glass and holds it, cradling it against herself for a moment, while watching DURZO. For a brief time he is unaware of being watched, then DURZO looks up and sees GWEN looking at him. He reaches for the glass she is holding.)

DURZO
Give it to me.

GWEN
(pulls back)
You've gone through three already.

DURZO
(snarls)
Three or three hundred –

GWEN
You're a drunkard. You understand that, right?

DURZO
A drunkard isn't sober after leaving a bar!

GWEN
But a drunkard does drink night after night in the hopes of getting drunk.

(DURZO stares at GWEN for a long time, not quite reacting to what she has just said. His hands migrate to the table and curl into fists. He looks away. GWEN sets the filled glass down.)

GWEN
(slightly bitter, slightly wistful)
What's the problem with love, anyway?

DURZO
Murderers don't worship the goddess of love. We worship the god of potent liquids.
(raises glass in a mocking toast and takes a sip with each pronouncement)
Blood. Semen. Wine.
(pauses, looking into the glass and laughs)
He's a lie, like they all are, but at least he isn't a weakness. Not like Doll Girl.

GWEN
(shakes her head)
You're obsessed.

DURZO
And if I am? Give me another.

GWEN
(fills another glass and sets it down)
You can't expect –

DURZO
I'll expect what I damn well want to!

GWEN
(placating)
Durzo –

DURZO
(frenzied anger)
He knows the price of failure!

(GWEN stares at DURZO, then turns her back on him to fill another glass. There is an extended silence between the two of them. DURZO sits completely still, his face unreadable. GWEN sighs as she turns around with the filled glass and sets it on the edge of the table, watching DURZO.)

GWEN
He's just a boy, Durzo.

DURZO
(echoes)
Just a boy?

GWEN
Kylar.

DURZO
(reaches for glass and fiddles with it)
Kylar.
(looks down)
Yes. He is just a boy.
(extended silence)
Gwen. Help me.

GWEN
(puts down another glass)
Help yourself.

(GWEN exits silently. DURZO picks up the glass as though mesmerized, and stares after GWEN for a moment. Then DURZO stands and throws the glass after her.)

DURZO
You stupid bitch!
(long silence)
Whore!
(pauses uncertainly, then plaintively calls)
Gwen?



THE END

(Here's my disclaimer: Durzo, Gwen, Kylar and the Night Angel series does not belong to me... That's the property of one Brent Weeks. (And if you haven't read it, you damn well should.))

10-26-2009

It's been two years already. We were perfect, once upon a time. I promised, once upon a time.
But that was a long time ago. It feels longer than it has been. We met across time, across space. I was stuck here, and there and places blurred together and then fell apart. There's nothing in this life to replicate the artistry of being one whole individual, locked in a clock. It starts ticking backwards, and the lock is missing from the tower's door while the wolves are still howling, out on the moor.
Or maybe I've been dreaming. I used to dream. The songs flowed through my mind, and they got caught, laughing at me as I sought out words that would make sense to use. I've been hard pressed to choose which way I'm going to turn in the end. On the mend, I'll send you a postcard, I swear. I wish you were here, but of course…
You are sitting somewhere far away, staring at the desk, cords wrapped around your wrists, smiling. It's tape? Or something else? You will be there, sitting, eyes closed, that grin – maniacal – plastered across your face, and you'll begin laughing, just laughing, so softly at first, until the silence of sound extends. Then maybe you'll stop, and see something else. Singing. The rhythm of drums, mirrored in your mind. It's all a dream, isn't it? Or have we been playing songs of silence in the sadness, mixed with madness – was this gladness that brought the beginnings… It's not time to be awake. We're dead on our feet.
I'm sorry. I've been sorry, and I meant to apologize, but I couldn't quite get myself to say the special words. I died, a little inside when this first began, but those were supposedly tears of joy that brought us together. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I've been trying, trying –
This exhaustion of being, of mind, of seeing. Believing.
I’m done believing.
If I was sorry once, I'm sorry now again, and question motives. It's time. It's been two years, but now it's been three, and sitting here, shitting on a field of victory that was lost… It's been costly, these years, these months, these days. We praised the sun, once upon a setting, getting higher off it. Do you remember? Or is it lost to the wind and the sands, the way your hands are now?
Call out words to the fields, and smile for me one last time, across the vast landscape of my imagination. You'll always be here, in my mind, grinning, sinning with a smirk. It's been your way since that day when we first accidentally connected. Maybe I'll be remembering that when the sky lights go black and the dew begins to form newly on the rocks of the ending of my universe. It's a curse, can't you see?
I invested so much into this, and what did I get out of it?
Everything.
Nothing.
I'm sorry. Whyfore, I cannot say, nor want I to, for speaking in tongues is the curse of a devil that lived with me for far too long. I'm trapped, and so are you, but you're freer than I ever was, and now you're waiting for the final days. I'm here, brushing fingers over grave letters, burnished lovingly by a man whose job is to play with the stones that serve their purposes through the ages. In stages, we've torn this down.
It's been two year, or maybe three. Now gone four… I'm sorry darling. You're gone – I can't do this anymore.
-
-
-
She stands by the iron fence. Her back is pressed against it. Wind blows chill. She has no jacket. Rocks tower over her. Her arms are around herself as the traffic squeals in the background. The sun is descending. Trees glitter. She turns against the fence. It is cold and black. Her face is contorted. She ventures a step from the fence. Nothing moves. She seems to be looking for something. Her eyes are tear-filled.
The graveyard is still.

Word of the Day - Ill

Love sick, darling.
It's that sickness that keeps you tied down in hospital beds, long after all the other patients have mended.
The kind of sick that gets you rolling over yourself in the morning, dry-heaving because nothing else can come out of you.
The kind of sick that feels like purple, trying to take out blue.