The Vivid Dream of the Vegetable

The incomplete screenplay that follows a man in the nightmare of his life.

                            THE VIVID DREAM OF THE VEGETABLE

           A play by Alejandro Manuel Espinoza

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ACT I

 

Scene 1 (Apartment)

 

(He is struggling, looking through rapidly blinking eyes over the edges of the black vinyl bed sheets. He sees his room as a disgruntled mess. He reaches out with trembling fingers, but the pressure of his dreams made him weak. A dust cloud of fear grows and settles in his stomach. Moments later, a crescendo of sobriety awakes him from his vivid dream, taunting him and tossing him back and forth between darkness and light.)

 

(He is awake now, his eyelashes are blurring out the dim scarlet room. He looks at the digital Toshiba clock near his bedside table which reads: 7:05)

 

Him:     Oh, for her desire I am the chauffer…

            The opera…

            To the jezebel, I promised her,

            That I would attend her opera.

            Her distorted voice I awaken for…

            Her little significance I should depart for? 

 

(He thinks of the Opera he is supposed to attend this night. His lover is in one of the subsidiary roles, and he had promised himself and his woman he would attend the play. Glancing at his near barren walls, he notices a thin paper poster for Les Saignement Situer, The modern innovative French opera revived on Broadway.)

 

Him:     You are still, yet beheld by all on a glimmering stage

            Bestowed am I…

            Damn it, bestowed am I!

            With the DEEPEST RAGE!!!

 

(He tinkers with his thoughts within himself, a handful of vinyl bed spread in his hand. The lamplight makes a buzzing sound and nearly burns out.)

 

Him:     What sort of man am I?

            (…I must relax…. just, sigh…

             …sigh, just…relax must I…)

            To be so jealous, to be jealous of her high

            To make love to her

            But hate her, so sly…so sly

            To be a bottom feeder…

            To plant this seed in her…

            Just to barely get by.

            I think… I will sink… back into the “Me” that is apathetic

            Oh, no you don’t, you’re f*****g pathetic!

Will you always sit on the brink…inhaling that stink…?

Shut up! You’re a voice in my head…Let me think!

 

(He holds his ears and gets under the covers, afraid as a small child, hiding from something he holds within his mind. Looking at the window, he notices snowfall piling up on top of the wooden rods outside the window. He approaches the window, watching the people down below.)

 

Him:     The Incessancy

            Of this city…

            People so dumb

            Snorting their crack and gargling their rum!

           

            And how do you sum

            Above those people…

            With their crack and their rum

            You have no right to be imperious

            Calling them dumb

            Do not take my wisdom for granted, I’m serious…

 

            I am silent…a tool on warehouse shelf

            I cannot run, I cannot run

            From the rays of the sun

            Which is me, myself.

 

(He sits at his desk and starts to stroke at the long grooves in the chipped cherry wood.)

 

Him:     My life…

            An Inferno

            Of passing days…

            Of passing days…

            Ongoing, undone, unlived

            Unsolved, unfulfilled

            Passing days…

            Passing days…

 

(He shivers and stares at the wall, with the tall shadows of the small imperfections and lumps on his wall stretching across the red plaster.)

 

Him:     Passing Days,

            Of nothing more

            Than a future behind a locked door

            Never your fault, Never! They are God’s laws!

No, there never was

            There had never been

            Anything but my cardinal sin

            Outlandish aspirations

            And unmade perspirations

           

            If I am making nothing

            Then what will I create?

            The end result

            What is my fate?

 

(He becomes angry with himself, he slams his fists on the desk and walks over to the wall where the poster for Les Saignement Situer is hung.)

 

Him:     No!

            Never, no!

            The dirge of solace!

            My morose tenderness it will throw

            The song, its solace, will make death’s departure slow!

           

It is a Godless miracle

            It is human intervention of supernatural force

            The Opera is human life at its pinnacle

            Destroying my desire from the source…

           

            Oh, she will never know

            She will never know

            That my desires of death will not slow

            My want for the end continues to grow

 

(He tears the poster from the wall and shudders. He walks to the desk that is against the window and sits down, blankly staring at the sky. He reaches into his desk drawer and withdraws a charred black revolver. He pulls out one bullet from the desk and opens the six-shooter’s chamber. Inserting the bullet, he c***s the gun back into place.)

 

Him:     With a carnival-esque…

            Roulette at my…desk…

            Death comes, with a looming surprise

            In one of these chambers

            Lies

My creative demise

 

(He spins the bullet chamber and puts the gun to his temple.)

 

Him:     I hear only the beating

            Of my heart that is retreating

            And the screaming

            Of the life I am cheating

            And the breathing

            Of the lungs that are seething.

            I can feel norepinephrine teething…

 

(He pulls the trigger. A click)

 

Him:     Oh, Alpha

            This is what I name you

             It is ironic. Always in the beginning Death…

            Clearly disowns you.

 

(He pulls the trigger again. A click. He gets a little angry, but settles.)

 

Him:     Oh, Beta!

            Second is always a failure

            But third is promise

            The Baptist priests told me this

            If I fail, Beta

            Then I will go beyond Beta

            I will never live, Beta

            That is the point of ending this

            I will never feel this pain, Beta!

 

(He frustratingly pushes the gun’s barrel against his temple. In hopes, he closes his eyes and pulls the trigger. A click.)

 

Him:     Gamma…

            My mother’s sorority

            And that man…

 

(He silences himself, refusing passage of the memory. A Click.)

 

Him:     Delta!

            Intersecting life…

            Why won’t you intersect me…

            With the end of my strife!

 

(A click.)

 

Him:    DAMNED SABLE GUN OF TREACHERY!

            Why did you not fault and break

            When my father decided to break

            And go to the lake

            WHERE MY MOTHER COMITTED LECHERY!

            He…

            He…

            Ha, Irony…

            In Greek – Epsilon…

            In Phoenician – He

 

(He frowns, knowing that the last bullet will be in this chamber.)

 

Him:     Granted

            I know death is advent

            I have ranted

            A nun in confined convent

            This is six, this is six, this is six

            No more ways of emptiness

            No more outs

            No more obsessions of prettiness

            For this end I have anticipated, but now I’m having doubts

 

(He stands and then sits back down. He closes his eyes for a moment and then opens them. He starts pacing around the room.)

 

 

Him:     I thought you had no fear of death, you quivering p***y

            I thought you could pull the trigger, you pansy, you wussy

 

            No! I can’t believe in suicide, I refuse to

            The consequence of what I am to do!

           

            Do it

           

            No, SCREW IT

 

            DO IT!

 

(There is a knock at the door. He turns to answer it, never attempting to take his gun from hand. Hurriedly, he opens the door, and someone is standing there. The Stranger is silent, and raises a gun and shoots him in the face. He falls to the ground. He tastes singed flesh, and the grit of sulfur stings the back of his throat)

 

Him:     I stare, at the darkened hall, so bland…

            I’m on the floor,

A smoking gun in hand 

I look out the door

            And continue to stare

Because no one was ever there.

 

(He blacks out.)

 

 

 

 

Scene 2 (Sky of Thorns)

 

(He awakens amidst a hazy fog densely covering a thick dead forest. The emaciated trees stretched into infinity in all directions.)

 

Him:     Lost into an empty world

            Beyond the sight of flames and gunpowder swirled

            What afterlife have I been born into?

            A barren land, this starved and cold slew

           

You’ve lived your life as an empty shell

            Turn your eyes to behold the truth, you are rotting in hell

           

This is a Dream…

            This is a Dream…

           

(Whispers echo as the wind blows through the trees.)

 

Trees:   ‘Tis a dream…

            ‘Tis a dream…

 

(The trees begin to stretch their branches toward him.)

           

Trees:   Yes…

            ‘Tis a dream

            A dream

            Of darkest splendor

            Behold

            This Nightmare

            So terrible, and so tender

 

Him:     I have cheated my life, and now I see

            In death…

            Life plans to cheat me

            To plague my brain

            With unbearable pain

            These auditory hallucinations

            Will drive me insane

            I begin to wonder

            My memories have been torn asunder

            A photograph sealed in stone, a visual blunder

            How I had become this way

            Nay!

            Not Today!

            This is not real…

            ‘Tis a dream….

 

Trees:   ‘Tis a dream…

            ‘Tis a dream…

            The darkest dream…

            As false as you want it to seem

            This is your darkest dream

            Look into your palms

            And look into your past,

Settle the qualms

            Of a violence long past

The reasons are also forgotten

From the moment you harbored sorrow

From the moment you became its glutton

That is how you find the ‘morrow

 

(He looks into his bleeding hands, and a rose petal is silently drifting and swaying in the pool of blood in his left palm.)

 

Trees:   Your bleeding hands

            Do not make you Christ-like, a martyr…

            Your transgressions make you nothing but flesh

            An empty embalmed corpse but not nearly as fresh

            You are flawed human with a stagnant smell

            The earth would not have you, and neither would hell

 

Him:     Stare down!

            Stare down!

            Stare down into your mephitic ground!

           

(The trees bend backward, screaming and cowering.)

 

Him:     Cower into the dust from which you have risen!

            You damned creatures, trying like hell to twist my vision!

            Embellishing guilt into all those around you

            Is that all you exist to do?

 

Trees:   Yes, this is what we have been birthed to do.

            Torture you

            Feed on your cries

And cover the skies

            Burning

And churning them dull

            Warping your sky and graying it null

            Yes, this is what we have been birthed to do.

            Because we are only  the manifestations of the flaws within you.

(He thinks of his anger and nihilism. He looks up at the sky as the branches stretch over it. Lowering his head, he clenches his fist.)

 

Him:     These dark manifestations

            Are my hate of all nations

            MY HATE OF THE PLEASURE DESPERATE!

            MY HATE OF SORROW SO DEEP I CANNOT MEASURE IT!

           

(The trees begin to lull him, roses budding on the bare branches, making a bed for him to lie upon. They begin to fashion him a lullaby, some scream, others sing, and few remain silent.)

 

Trees:   LET US, THIS WOOD OF ANIMOSITY!

            SCORCH THIS CANVAS!

            THE ABRASIVE MONSTROSITY!

           

(The branches shoot into above and begin growing in the sky into ringlets of thorn covered brambles. The sky is soon covered in darkness, only hints of the red sunlight that used to exist show through unblocked holes in the mess of entwined branches. The trees are calm and in whisper again.)

 

Trees:   Only when blind

                                   Branches:   In vision and mind

            Can you find new light

                                                     And a blessed sight….

            And hold dominion over fear

                                                     And all you hold dear…

 

(The bed of roses gives way, and he falls inside what should be solid, only to find himself drifting in an empty void.)

 

 

Scene 3 (Path of Burning Immortality)

 

(The air is silent, and he is flailing, under the impression he is still falling. He flicks open his eyes and stares into the blacked-out sky. He rolls over to his knees which are cold with frozen dirt. He is in a graveyard with ivory symbols of Christian martyrdom jutting out from uneven patches of long, sable grass. A beautiful white church stands grimly in the distance illuminated by firelight.)

 

Him:     Loneliness again

            The passage to my cardinal sin

            But singing my nostrils thin

            I smell again this smell of sin

            The fragrance of charring and rot

            The fragrance of a future brightening not

            A thin and drifting lullaby

            The breath of a deadly, smoke filled sigh

            Rising smoke

            Continues to choke

            The mystic air

 

(In the distance, He sees that the graveyard turns into a winding path. The path, barren with dark and dry dirt, opened to reveal a field of burning crosses. A little below the sky of thorns, vultures circle the field amidst clouds of black smoke. He gets to his feet and begins pacing toward the path.)

 

Him:     Figures, each glowing in flame

            Without screams of agony, they are naked without shame

            Enduring perpetual torture, an eternity of pain

            Scorched humans emit a fragrance of spiritual feign

            I see the vultures, they circle in smoke

            The sky, under the devil’s grasp, begins to choke

            And I see the vultures, as they dive into flame

            Their ashes fall, decorating the feet of the figures

            And the flaming humans laugh without shame.

           

The burning figures laugh with sick cries…

            At the entity that all humans tend to despise

At an entity eternally recreated…

            It seems the ashes seduce them, inebriated

 

            Who are these people, these masochists a-fire

            That take pleasures in this pain, this hellfire, this quagmire

 

(He walks onto the path as the ashes of vultures drift onto his shoulders and face. He approaches a burning cross, looking at the figure as it continuously regenerated its peeling and burning flesh.)

 

Him:     This wind, it brings the smell of your flesh to me!

            Who are you, you people in concentrated flame?

            Crumbling in this scorching light, who might you be?

            For what deed have you been placed under blame?

 

Martyr: Ah, a human vulture, an absent winged bird

             Are you sure it wasn’t the screeching of the vultures that you heard

             That brought you to me?

 

Him:     I am no winged beast – my ashes are not of this snow

            My faults have brought me here, ones of which I have faded to know.

           

 

Martyr: Do you not understand why we burn in this flame?

            To light your path, there is no such blame

            Take pride in what you take away from us

            Our life stays in flame

            While you scurry like a rat

            In your constant maze game

 

Him:     My path cannot be lighted

            For it is deeply benighted

            To the depths – I cannot even fight it

            I need no such help – cease burning in flame

            For your truth is everlasting falsehood, forever the same

            Intended to keep me within this maze

            While on the outside hell is what you raise

            The darkness is the truth, and I know it grays

            But whilst you take my mind from it, my body stays

            And when my body dies, my mind decays

 

Martyr: Here, your path is beset

             You know a path of truth, there is nothing you can regret

             Look no farther

             Trust in the burning candle of your Martyr

             Search no more

             Follow this path as my divinity w***e

 

Him:     Your truth and my eyes have come abreast

            Yet I am the one with blood pumping through my chest

            As shepherds of blind acolytes you have driven the masses

            Of mutilated sheep and burden-burned asses

            To the acrid beaches

            For which the blood of the lambs it beseeches

 

(He steps onto a precarious nail jutting out from the foot of the cross. He gripped the arm of the martyr, anticipating the sting of fires, but he feels nothing.)

 

Him:     Yet you laughed in flames?

            Gave guile to your hallowed dames?

            If your light never burned –

            What was the masochistic bounty you earned?

            I’m silencing the candle – extinguishing the flames with my tongue

            You will forever regret that you embraced to be hung

 

(He pulled at the martyr’s arm, attempting to tear him from the cross – the arm stretched like elastic until it finally ripped, spraying wood shavings onto the ashes. The martyr’s laughter ceased and his body became entwined with wooden solidity – his eyes glossed over with pale ashen blankness. He looked at the towering crucifix, its martyr frozen in a blissful visage. He looked all around him, and he heard the church bell ring endlessly in the distance. He heard the laughter of Cain’s offering to the world, and walking across the fields aflame, he blew out all of the candles – converting flesh into ashen statues.)

 

Scene 3 (The Bells Broken)

 

(He returns, shavings of wood covering the shoulders of his coat. His hands bleed profusely, and splinters are imbedded in his palms. The ivory church that glimmered in the distance now leaned over with a visceral mortality, the flesh of it the dark color of onyx. He lifted his face to stare into the tiny window where the bell rung.)

 

Him:     Illusions, melt away

            Fade away, the moon in day

            Would you have me say

            I murdered the sun this day?

 

            Oh, the martyrs, parading divine candlelight

            Raping me with fantasy, prayer-derived sight

 

(It begins to rain drops of blood, which sting at his skin.)

 

Him:     Is the void a sanctuary 

 

 

 

(INSERT)

 

Enter me, these walls of flesh and visceral gravity

You million hands that reach to grab at me

Fare under rain do I, so you must have me

 

Be gentle with my existence

As a silver Sagittarius night

I’m breaking thinner and hence;

Be as gentle as a Sagittarius night

 

Permit me to traverse among boundaries of my spirits fear

I have the holy son’s blood on my hands, and I am filled with fear

This is the very act that suctioned me here

 

Be this a prayer I know not

My crusade over my mentality triumphs not

 

 

Author's Note

The last part is choppy - the last insert was a random thought I had.