1:33 pm
[Scene: Around the ideal form of a table sit Æ., Lizzie Twigg, the Reverend Dr. Salmon, Cassandra, and a Wizard. The stage is darkly lit and the theatre is neither over heated nor chilly but at a comfortable temperature as typically a séance releases an unusual amount of magnetism, thus the room generally becomes warmer than ordinary. The shades of the living like good ventilation too, so keep that in mind. On a side table a buffet brunch waits congealing for any hungry living soul which may come. Today’s menu includes nut steak, weggebobbles cooked in soda, fruit, two headed octopus, eyes of cow, and poached eyes on ghost.]
Æ: Those cow eyes are following me everywhere I go. Right. Let’s get started, shall we. Five of us today, not an ideal number. I would have prefered seven or something occult like 13, more symbolic.
Rev. Dr. Salmon: Take yourself in hand, Æ, you can’t have everything. Am I right Miss Twigg?
Lizzie Twigg: Not saying a word. Just taking it all in.
Cassandra: It is easier with one medium but we appear to have two. Well, as long as he remembers who is running the show, we can’t have the energies dividing. Now, the purpose of today’s séance is to attract a living spirit Æ might possess long enough for his astral body to re-enter the physical world.
Wizard: Metempsychosis?
Æ: No, resurrection. I’ll be needing my body which I understand will regenerate around me.
Rev. Dr. Salmon: Hold on a minute. That body was tinned long ago, you’ll smell like a bad egg, you can’t put an egg back into the shell, the genie is not going to fit back into the bottle, once you get it out it’s hard to get it back in.
Cassandra: Please, too many images scrambled. Let’s keep clear, yes?
Æ: My vegetative body will be attracted by my active astral body and through the vibration of molecules the phenomena of density and apparent weight will collect particles together along with an unseen mass of electrical and magnetic matter, and from that my physical body will form within the living world. Easy. Scientific.
Lizzie Twigg: I answered the wrong ad. I could have picked the other gentleman who wanted aid in literary work. Or even the riding companion one. That sounds pretty good now. I could use a good belt of booze.
Æ: Shall we venture now into the untrodden woods to carve the future ways?
Wizard: Æ, Æ beware of the day! For dark and despairing, my sight I may seal, but man cannot cover what God would reveal: ‘Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore, and coming events cast their shadow before.
Lizzie Twigg: [Agitated, her stockings loose over her ankles. I detest that. Tasteless.] Yes! Remember, time put by a myriad fates that her day might dawn in glory; death made wide a million gates so to close her tragic story. I took it all in. Didn’t you pay attention to your own words? Why go back? Here, there, eternity, temporality. What difference does it make to us? We have left the day to day.
Rev. Dr. Salmon: I say, it is feeling quite close in here.
Æ: We are doing this. I want to do this. I’ll get a different séance circle, but I am going back.
Lizzie Twigg: This isn’t what you thought it would be, is it Æ? There is nothing dreamy here, or cloudy, or symbolistic. You wanted the light of lights. You still do. You miss wanting what you didn’t get. So you retreat back into wanting. You want to be the head upon which the ends of the world have forgotten to come.
Cassandra: Please, you are disturbing the vibrations. Let us join hands and begin.
Lizzie Twigg: Fine. But why anybody would want to entrap themselves into the present moment amongst the unenlightened. This will never work.
Cassandra: Believe me, we will channel the living and Æ will go back.
Wizard: Down, soothless insulter! I trust not the tale.
Cassandra: Please. You don’t believe me? Tell me something I haven’t heard before. Ok. Moving on. We call on the living spirit of the one who has been hovering near. I feel you. I know you are here. Make a sign to us. One click for yes and two clicks for no.
Æ: Anything?
Cassandra: I heard something but it was more a mouse than a click.
Wizard: The war drum is muffled.
Cassandra: I call upon you, you know who you are, to draw near. Lean in honey, we can hear you breathing.
Lizzie Twigg: Look at Æ!
Wizard: Oh! mercy dispel yon sight, that it freezes my spirit to tell! Life flutters convulsed in his quivering limbs, and his blood-streaming nostril in agony swims.
Cassandra: Oh holy Zeus I didn’t believe myself this time but look! Æ? Can you hear us Æ?
Æ: Click.
Lizzie Twigg: Where did he go? Oh Jesus Fucking Christ, I swear to stage manager, nothing good can come from this.
God: [from the booth on the god mic] Ok hold. Jesus, what in my name is going on down there? Where is Æ?
Jesus: I’m not sure. He’s gone. I think they resurrected him.
God: He can’t be resurrected. This is supposed to be a dress rehearsal, and people please stay on script and stick to the blocking. The light cues were a mess toward the end of that. Jesus, get Æ back and let’s go again from the top.
Jesus: I can’t get him back, he’s been resurrected. Like Lazarus, remember?
God: [On the god mic] How can I forget that debacle? Can still smell his stench.
Rev. Dr. Salmon: How was I? I felt a little off.
Cassandra: You were very convincing, believe me.
Rev. Dr. Salmon: I didn’t get to say my speech. The dreamy cloudy gull, waves o’er the waters dull.
Jesus: Um, God? Now that Æ is loose in the world, well, that’s going to throw a wrench into Scylla and Charybdis.
God: [on the god mic] Not our problem. Jesus Christ where’s the holy spirit? Why we are going with a director we can’t keep track of, only I know. Well, we don’t have time for this. Let’s recast Æ and move on. Is Arius busy? Did he get over his, well, issue? Maybe call his agent. Let it be done. Don’t forget we have casting for Circe coming up and tech for that will be a nightmare.