The Luck of the Dead

(The round portal to an oven is opened. We hear and see the roar of a fire. White and orange moving light reveals a man in a gas helmet, grey work coveralls, rubber gloves, and boots. BDU 51 is printed on his chest. A similar figure enters pushing a great cart loaded with bodies as stage lights rise. The bodies are covered with open sores and drip fluids.)

2

Up to Temp?

1

Yeah, come on, lets get moving. You got more to pick up on the East Side.

2

Great. I thought it was empty.

1

People keep coming back. They’re nuts. Take the head.

2

Careful, some of these are pretty ripe.

1

Lucky bastards.

2

Jesus, how you figure that?

1

Once you got it you can forget worrying about getting it.

2

Some philosophy. Jeeze, this guy is heavy.

You can get pretty fat on garbage before it kills you.

2

Well, you are what you have to eat, right?

1

What?

2

Forget it. You get that little one. I got the girl.

1

You can lift her ok?

2

Yeah, I got her on the cart by myself, didn’t I?

1

Yeah. (grunts while lifting)

2

How’re your kids?

1

One of them got a cancer.

Great. Which one?

1

Malignant. Colon.

2

Christ. (pause) I meant which kid?

1

Bobby. Figures. He’s the only one who still had all his hair. Something in the milk they said. I told him not to drink that crap, but you know kids.

2

Jesus Christ!!

1

What??

2

She moved!

1

What?

2

She moved! That one, there!

1

Rigor mortis.

(an old woman in the pile of bodies begins to move, spasm, twitch. Her eyes open and she looks at #2)

2

Rigor mortis my ass! She’s alive!

(woman tries to speak, face contorts in pain, a gout of vomit breaks from her teeth and spatters #2 with filth. She screams and twitches violently.)

1

God damn it Jack. Didn’t you check her before loading?

2

Who checks anything? Jesus, get a medic down here or something.

1

Fuck that, just shoot the bitch.

2

What?

1

You heard me. I said shoot her before she has the foreman down here chewing us new assholes.

2

I can’t just shoot--

1

Well, throw her in the oven alive then, I don’t care.

Are you serious? You can’t just shoot people.

1

She’s scum. She’s got the bug, man, she ain’t people. Look at her, she’ll be dead in an hour anyway and we’re already behind schedule. (Hands Jack a pistol) Be a man, do her a favor.

2

You do it.

1

Listen, Jack, she’s your fuck up. You’re supposed to check them first.

2

I’m not going to kill anybody.

(The old woman, dribbling goo, reaches for JACK and startled, he instinctively shoots her in the head.)

2

Jesus Christ!

1

Good man, Jack! I like your style! (laughs)

2

Shut up and help me get her in the oven.

1

Hooo, boy, you should have seen your face.

(lights fade as they lift the body to the oven door)

Shut up.

1

(mocking) I’m not going to kill anybody!

2

Shut up. It was an accident.

1

You can’t just kill people--pow pow--oh, sorry lady.

2

Shut up, would ya?

(only the fire now lights the stage, we see the shadows, then black out)

A DIALOGUE WITH CHERYL SNODGRASS:

TODD: Anybody have any idea what the approx date was for me doing the piece called "Luck of the Dead" where Stanton Dosset and I wheeled a huge cart of dead bodies into theatre B and we had a furnace door mock up we would throw the bodies through? There was a swirly red light to simulate the fire and I think Mark Rosenberg was in it, along with Dawson....at the end one of them is not quite dead and I shoot her with a blank pistol. I think it was in 88, but not sure.

CHERYL: Ummmmm.....that was me. Being shot and all. And I also had to have some nasty ass condensed soup in my mouth to spit up which is how you could tell I wasn't dead yet. That and a groaning rising from the fire. I also recall that you guys carried me *last* and since you were so tired from carrying everyone else, you had a lot of trouble hefting my fat ass from the cart to the pit. Wasn't that part of a larger piece? 88 sounds about right. I think I was still S.M.ing then.

• q.v. Living In Shit by Todd Ristau