| Flame |
| The speaker is young, can be placed between late teens to late 20's. The piece should start as calm... Too calm. Almost emotionless in a rather eerie way. Emotions should not be shown until they are described in speech or just before. After the first section, when the character really begins to recount the story, the whole atmosphere should take on an undertone of tension and angst. (Pulls lighter from pocket, clicks it on, looks at it intently. Leaves on during next part of speech. Addressing audience.) Fire. Such a simple thing. A few thousand years ago, it became life, a symbol of survival. And from then on out, prehistoric man began is decline from animal to human being. Funny how that works... Something I can now carry around in my pocket once meant survival. Funny how a little glow of heat changed the path of the evolution of man. Funny how something that used to symbolize life can be used so easily to grant death. (Clicks off lighter and returns to pocket) (Playwright's note: The above paragraph might be best placed before your introduction.) They say family's like fire. Always there, even just in embers at times, warm and constant and life-giving. A basic survival need. But fire can burn you. And sometimes that's all it does. I never knew my mom as more than the picture on my beside table; she died when I was three. So growing up, it was just me and my father. Not that that arrangement ever constituted family in a way I'd ever seen it portrayed. As far back as I can remember, my father was a drunk. He was always out of work, and when he did get a job, he'd lose it because, more often than not, he'd be too hung over to show up. I used to put myself to bed at night, usually without supper because there was none, because he wasn't around. But most of the time, when he came home, he'd be drunk and not thinking straight. I'd wake up to him shouting at me for something stupid, words slurred, and then the feel of his fist. His belt. I hated it... I hated him. But I wasn't big enough or strong enough to fight back. So I started locking my door. His shouts still woke me up... But at least his fist was on my door and not my face. 15 years of that. Then, on my 18th birthday, I got a card and a letter from my Aunt Lily... I didn't even know I had an Aunt Lily. It was an apology... For not getting me out of that house because she was afraid of my father. That was bad... But what came next was worse. I never knew how my mother died. I'd never asked, but even if I had he probably wouldn't have told me. But in the letter from this Aunt Lily person, I found out the truth... But I wish I never had. The police put it down as accidental... Impact injuries and a broken neck from falling down the stairs. That's what they recorded it as. But according to the letter, that was only because they didn't have enough evidence to incriminate my father. He had an alibi, and the stair theory was possible... But everyone knew it was him. He was a drinker, even then, and my mom tried to hide it, but he abused her. Until one day he went too far. I didn't know what to think, what to do. All I knew was what I felt: Rage. Resentment. Pain. He killed her... That beautiful woman in the picture from whom I got my eyes, my smile, my life. He killed her. The one thing in my life that had ever been good, and that I now can't even remember... He destroyed. And for what? For nothing! The same reason he tried so many times to destroy me. We lived in one of those old houses, where every door locks with a key. That day, I stole the key to his room. Then, after he came home and passed out on his bed, I packed my clothes, the money from his wallet, and the picture of my mother into my backpack and his one small suitcase. I opened his bedroom door, saw him lying there, snoring, in his disgusting drunken stupor. Then, slowly, I lit a match from the box in the kitchen, tossed it to the wooden floor, locked the door... And never looked back. They caught me. It doesn't take long for the police to find you in a small town, especially when you're travelling on foot. It was a short trial. I confessed. Pleaded guilty. But not before I told them everything my father ever did to hurt me. And everything I knew he'd done to my mother. I walked out of that courtroom facing the next fifteen years in prison, guilty of arson and murder. And I saw, for the first time, my Aunt Lily, sitting in the back. And as they led me out, a guard at either arm, I turned to her and mouthed, "Thank you." Crazy? Maybe. Avenged? Definitely. Regretful? Never. Because I finally, once and for all, put out the flame of a so-called "family" that had burned me body, heart, and soul, for years. |