Psychokinesis — Excerpt

Scene II

Early 20th Century, Contemporized
The Hesperides Sisters’ Apartment, An Enchanted Salem

Prompta grooms Sabine.

SABINE
And if you mention the hairy one again I’ll command another waxing; remember your waning with the last?

PROMPTA
Your nether-marsh was sulf’rous.

SABINE
His hair-padded hug, ‘lectric ends—sulfurous! You scabrous slag! Perfume helps—and washing: draw me a bath! My paranoia makes eyes of everything; could I pin and cushion each, and craft a plush mosaic of their prying.

PROMPTA
Could you sit your paranoias we’d need a larger apartment.

SABINE
I’d release all but the furry ones to their terrors.

PROMPTA
Where would the patient end and the thing begin?

SABINE
One in the same as the colors of the sky, as the sane spy shadows..

PROMPTA
There sanity hides what should proclaim, but you don’t stand in that repove.

SABINE
That sanity hides is the sanest impulse, for time evades in ambush, and anxiety has murdered patience.

PROMPTA
It dies of disbelief when you breathe your charms to puff the day, but witchcraft lingers in half-lives, for we know not where the other foot wanders.

SABINE
We may pry and we may poke, launch investigations, lead mobs, threaten horrorshows, still the partner may. A possibility is enough to banish tenderness.

PROMPTA
A man never needed more—

SABINE
—which leaves women fools of testosteroid sins, casting a martyr—

PROMPTA
—And a sadist. Is that why you dangle so many?

SABINE
Little amusements for little days, to garboil my gaggle for their laves.

PROMPTA
Please don’t rhyme your trolloping.

SABINE
To flirt with men I’ll never meet for money—

PROMPTA
—That’s not true.—

SABINE
—Wigged and enmasked in another name?—

PROMPTA
—There’s not much else covered.—

SABINE
—More like erotic pen pals, that I’m wealthier by word count.

PROMPTA
Is that why they pay for pictures?

SABINE
What’s a hint of ankle?

PROMPTA
Your pictures prove ankles hardly sexy.

SABINE
You like them, Prompta? And here I thought you were just being an obedient servant.

PROMPTA
Don’t confuse my exemplary service for pleasance on demand, but this point never gets through.

SABINE
You know you could earn far more from a less demanding elsewhere, yet you stay. What shall we say that says of your affections?

PROMPTA
Yes, I must be in love with you.

SABINE
I knew it! But you hate it when I’m naked.

PROMPTA
Only because you enjoy it so much. I’m your friend, Sabine, and Misi’s, and Meira’s; there’s care here, and a mutual kindness more familiar than any strange elsewhere.

SABINE
That’d be sweet if our family was, but if you’re going to pour sugar on my head, you better lick it off.

PROMPTA
I’d rather dump water on you.

SABINE
My bath! Run it like a thief in the night, and I’ll hide in the shallows.

PROMPTA
From Count Promsca or one of your other suitors? Juggle while you can, but you tempt scandal by your income; if your letters and pictures breach in even a whisper of your name the echo outlives in your family’s exile to the fallen world.

SABINE
Oh, Prompta, this is Salem—

PROMPTA
—Which societies the wider realm: however strange the blooms, they bouquet the grander stage, where all take tiered seats in judgement of your seaward sorcery.

SABINE
We bubble passing, and intoxicate any who linger to see that they might be something new.

PROMPTA
Seeing yourself in the nature of things can feel a spell, til you forget where or who or what.

SABINE
And what do I inspire?

PROMPTA
A glimmer—

Misi is heard approaching.

—It could only be—where’s Filio’s letter?

SABINE
The one you won’t let me open?

Misi enters.

PROMPTA
Chaos ‘bounds—

MISI
—If chaos, then appease me fast: cash or combustion: there are no further words but that demand, so come: roil the furnace, overrun the levies, tilt the house into the whirlwind: it’s destruction at your consent.

SABINE
And toll the troll? I can evict you to the bridge to growl at waddlers if all I hear is that request.

MISI
I’d gill myself first to drag you to the deep you draw.

SABINE
To fan me with flippers? Will you squirt my denial? Splash me in a wave?

MISI
All you know is swimming the surface, but what would you think of what breathes below you?

SABINE
How dare you speak of my flower’s bees when you welcome any cyclops!

MISI
Dives has more eyes than three!

SABINE
And all in a drunken sleep.

PROMPTA
Even waking he’d forget.

MISI
Now I want more money! Everything in your purse or I harpy til doomsday.

SABINE
Highway robbers are less blunt, and less desperate.

MISI
Sabine, please: add it to my tab, take my clothes for collateral, ration my food, ply me chores, but requite my request or I shall go mad.

SABINE
Too late for that. You wouldn’t do chores if I companioned you with guard and command, you haven’t been eating of late anyways (but that’s not where your money goes), I already own your wardrobe by your collateral, and your overstuffed tab burst long ago. You are not yourself.

MISI
More than myself, for I have sipped the witch’s soup, caught the moon by forest light, danced the floating fire, and visited the castle under the lake—

SABINE
Then seek your spices there.

MISI
Thus the money! Shall I pay them in kisses?

SABINE
You better not. Go talk Dives into a job, or tend the Cauldron: I’m sure they’ll trade for service.

MISI
While you whore for your hoard and squander our inheritance? You desiccate me while their ghosts weep, mother and father; they wail the squalor you impose, shadowing my everything with your pompous self-pampers. Father saved Prompta for us all, yet you demand her attention more than an infant wallowing its wilting mother.

PROMPTA
I second that.

SABINE
Shut up and remember your side.—Stand closer to me.

MISI
Oh, yes, scooch, Prompta, mother summons reassurance. She dehumanizes you to a dog, treating abuse til your mind is a series of clicks—for how else could her words receive, her screams, her constant insults.

SABINE
Enough! Your change dismantles you, be it of Faolan’s infidelity or some hellish charge, either unforgivable for the lien of your tongue, to extort and blackmail with guilt and intimidation, to smile and haw your sins, but I will not mew for you, I shall not lower, however you drag me down, and I will not negotiate with bad behavior. That is your exit cue.

MISI
As your door closes, dirtier ones open.

Misi exits. As she corners the apartment, Revelien enters from the other side, approaching the apartment door.

PROMPTA
Are you alright?

SABINE
You wonder why I don’t want children.

PROMPTA
The stretching?

Revelien knocks.

SABINE
She’s back?

PROMPTA
Knocking?

SABINE
She’s played stranger.

Prompta opens the door.

REVELIEN
Hello!

PROMPTA
How, sir, may I assist?

Faolan and Drumdley enter, following Revelien, trying to listen outside the apartment.

REVELIEN
Too soon to tell, but my hope seeks Ms Hesperides.

PROMPTA
There are three such here. Let us use names and reasons.

REVELIEN
Artemisia, for reasons we share.

PROMPTA
Another hunter; I wonder what she’ll turn you into. She’s used mercy in the past, but that’s past credit, which I give you little of anyways. She’s not here.

REVELIEN
May I leave a message if waiting effaces?

PROMPTA
It does.

SABINE
Show him in, Prompta.

Revelien enters the apartment.

If glamours speak your virtue is humility, which alone grounds dismissal, but I don’t know you, which makes me curious—not so much for you, as your claims. What is your name, street sponge?

REVELIEN
Revelien.

SABINE
With what to revel in?

Meira peeks her head out of her bedroom door.

REVELIEN
I don’t have to prove my worth to Misi by proving it to you.

SABINE
And yet it is my gate you walk through. You peek at my dependent with this presentment and, what? she smiles and agrees? Derangement is diagnosed with less; alone for her degrees. Dives is worse, fair, but he can’t remember why. What is your relationship with my sister? How did you meet?

REVELIEN
We haven’t.

SABINE
A solid foundation. So you’re writing each other or you’re purely delusional, either way fantasy, either way you’re at the right place. Let’s see what happens, but I predict a bum fight: she’s in.

Meira bursts through the door.

MEIRA
Providence! She fled to resolve her head from heartache.

SABINE
She was just here.

MEIRA
On her way there.

SABINE
How do you know?

MEIRA
She spoke me so.

SABINE
You were in your room.

MEIRA
She hollered my window.

SABINE
Like she’s never done before?

MEIRA
To your unknowing.

SABINE
That’s very providential.

MEIRA
And thus she goes for a purposed return.

SABINE
You’ll find her at the Cauldron. Just follow the scent of acidic spirits.

REVELIEN
I thank your compass, lady, and the generosity of your time.

Revelien exits. Faolan and Drumdley stealthily follow.

MEIRA
Why would you do that?!

SABINE
Curiosity, among other things. I’m also not a fan of Dives’ bankrupt prospect. Depressive you and your madcap sister have only ever known the inherited cushion of my financial carpet, abusively taking it for granted, pawning my goodwill for means, lazing your days like a serpent in the sun, and all the while I should swipe it under, let you taste gravel, feel the freezing gust of want, naked midst storms, when I alone provide.

MEIRA
By the inheritance you bankside, or the wiles you market to claim your pretty allowances: for yourself seen first, and all is darkness in that glow. You violate yourself and our trust, keeping us down that your petty heights seem grander.

SABINE
What fire is this? Explain your immolation.

PROMPTA
Meira—

MEIRA
Enough! You push with such pressure you pulse me to a peaking pop—what would you have, Sabine? Just cut me open and relieve me, but that you’d get your hands dirty. Why must you play for yourself at my expense when playing along, even being silent, would’ve been easier than eating cake—you wouldn’t even have to command Prompta to ‘t, but evermore about you, all the rest broken and pushed aside.

SABINE
But why should that limpet incite you to such a lie?

MEIRA
I’ve never met him.

SABINE
I believe that; there aren’t many you have. But you know him, otherwise you wouldn’t have belched like a burping volcano. Why do you want to keep him away from Misi?

MEIRA
Because they were never meant to meet. Different schools, cities, circles . . .

SABINE
Letters. You wrote to him as Misi. You have been quick to the mail.

MEIRA
A few months—a couple.

SABINE
While she was dating Faolan! While she’s dating Dives! Not only do you steal her voice, you betray her character to the world! I didn’t play my recognition: he’s friends with Faolan, they school at Delphi together. If Faolan discovers this nonsense and takes it wrong—well, I’ve never seen him angry. Now you have me interested.

MEIRA
I must stop him, distract them, or extract her, some set let to desperate order—every second passed is another closer met!

SABINE
When Misi spoke of missing pictures . . .

Meira exits out the front door.

A trail of them into the pot; it will be a strange brew.

PROMPTA
One enough for three and three for two.

SABINE
Numbers inspire me to money: Prompta, a pen and ink, I shall dictate: “To the esteemed and sagacious, wickedly handsome Monsieur Beaugenfuert, I am velourous by your wordy touch, like sensual touche that ballerinas me piqued! Enprized and bounteous, heat me with the glowing gold of your giving sun, plant to palm my swashy fields, cash your labor on my untilled earth: a bud to bless in monies sent to flower in what your money’s meant! Repair this hole in me, hold my glass ankles, but feel what you carry, then know my affections weigh far more. . . ”

Fades to darkness, Sabine’s voice fading with it.