Psychokinesis — Excerpt

Scene III

Early 20th Century Contemporized
An Enchanted Salem, The Moving Crossroads




Meira has been gaslighting Revelien, pretending to be her sister, Misi, through letters, til Revelien comes to visit, and Meira’ s fear of Revelien and Misi meeting counts down. Faolan, Misi’s ex still claims to be in a relationship with her, and has followed his friend Revelien to Salem to expose them both, traveling with his friend Drumdley. Ever since their breakup Misi has had a manic disposition, and has started dating Dives, a homeless man with early-onset Alzheimer’s.

Meanwhile, Sia is in Salem as well. She is Misi’s twin, separated at birth, and recently suffered amnesia from a violent fall. Her ex boyfriend Gaero pursues her.

Faolan and Drumdley enter.

FAOLAN
We must stop here, Drumdley.

DRUMDLEY
Are you thirsty, panged in the side, ankle cramp?

FAOLAN
No, dear Drumdley, the crowd thins and we can’t creep Revelien too close, and besides: I believe we’re being followed. There is a woman in a shift running as though touched with a maniac enchantment directly towards us some four or five blocks back.

DRUMDLEY
Get me the knives!

FAOLAN
No, Drumdley! We must play coy to this protest. I fear she’s seen me, that she’s a vengeful former lover come to shred, for I know her as in a drunken half-wink.

DRUMDLEY
Maybe you just recognize the shift from your closet, or it’s a trick of the town.

FAOLAN
No, no, I know that energy; it is certainly hazy her. We must hid her passing.

DRUMDLEY
But lose Revelien!

FAOLAN
All’s well, dear Drumdley. If Misi’s not home I know where she’ll be, if rumors are right, and he goes to her. Now hide!

Faolan and Drumdley hide. Meira enters frantically running, but trips.

MEIRA
Fah! Overstriding always trips, my legs are short, and his a manly pace. This declension undoes me; I cannot face the next note, yet must hear to ending the mad symphony I began. Must love eat itself?

Sia enters.

Focus the storm, redress the winds and remember him to me, however faces dissuade (notices Misi)—Misi! Volume! Misi . . .

SIA
Am I?

MEIRA
Where does your sunlight wander? Where have you been Where do you go?

SIA
I know nothing but these streets maze.

MEIRA
Lest they amaze us all—let’s go away: today, this minute, now. We could boat the pinnacle of the reach, climb the spiral lighthouse and hum sea psalms to the glow, explore the tidal caves that secrets treasure and desperate bones, beach the day with the meditative surf, or cast dreams in the witching house with hair and bone.

SIA
There are witches here?

MEIRA
You know they never left. Now, quickly, we must go, play the wind against itself and become the day. Call it sisterly adventure, anywhere you dream outside the city.

Prompta enters.

Ahhh!

Meira hides.

SIA
You must be terrifying.

PROMPTA
Thank you, Misi, but your antic dispositions of late fortifies us to new-branded thorns: I armor for our interactions and make platitudes of pleasantries,, even more when missioned: I come from your sister.

SIA
Another one?

PROMPTA
Was that Meira here? She fled the same: first time out of the apartment in years and she can’t get dressed.

SIA
Her worry was frantic, with whim-whisked plans, affecting becoming.

PROMPTA
You hum clear, the violent harlequin reverted to soft sacriscence; there’s holy dew on your brow. It’s good to see the real you again, that you cleared the violent tempest and the tentacles of your tangled mind, unless hope presumes too much?

SIA
Only if I do the same in being seen, returning like the refulgence of the Void what you mirror in me, miming what you emulate.

PROMPTA
As I’ve learned my best self in you, and dallied years in our connection to verdure sands of fate to a garden of our fancies, where we can delight and remember, and loosen pain in our lightness. I’ve missed that place in missing you.

SIA
I’d forgotten what I missed, a retched emptiness that reaches for a remembering that finds us here, a load that nothing can’t burden.

PROMPTA
Still you titan opposites, a sweet abyss as temperance returns, a carriage in the clear that’s still pursued, for a shadow’s on your back, and tonight the moon is bright. But the storm sleeps, whatever sang you to your shore, and my vindication: from your sister’s purse, a gift of my cajoling. (Prompta pulls out a purse and hands Sia money.) May it not calumniate the Cauldron. I have further errands for your sister, but your return to sees our meeting home, and my expectation for it. (Prompta hugs Sia.) It blesses me to see you yourself.

Prompta exits; Meira emerges.

MEIRA
What did she say? What words? Speak the pantomime, soliloquy in summary, an academic autopsy; peach it to yourself but pleach my hopes or bleach them but purpound! Did she talk of Revelien, chart my scheme, speak of pictures? They would undo me with what they do to you, to fray to splitting loving languor’s hefty thread with a word to shred all weaving: the suit to his suit or relive in a laugh with easy cruelty, to spite and scrub me from my room that dares a voice. Of all you should know, for you’ve been screaming since your ex’s lies. Then let us go to feel the grass, remember the breeze, become our running feet, and forget the maze, for there are minotaurs here, and they shall write us on the dusk to make the night glow.

Revelien enters.

Ahhh!

Meira hides.

REVELIEN
It could have been any street, beached aside, or happy anywhere, but you are here. From a thousand echoes hello.

SIA
A single hello echoes.

REVELIEN
I’m as removed from myself as I am from my pictures, and knowing you better than my mirror, your inky spirit bodied, your Revelien.

SIA
As I know you more than my reflection, for there’s recgonition here. You scared to fissures my chaos sister, but the only urgency I feel is now before me.

REVELIEN
Oceans of loving words end in a meeting, playing nerves for strings, presenting to be pardon for all; I know myself in your reception.

SIA
And I in your understanding. Eye to eye entranced, pupil to each, I wouldn’t move but to your arms. (They embrace.) I’ve been running from the resonance of a blank, a pursuing anxiety of what I’m missing, avalanching all security in a foundling intuition, and though foreign steps ward this town, I’ve found family and friends walk the street.

REVELIEN
Just friends and family?

SIA
And self-possessed strangers who aura hidden power. Providence wears masks.

REVELIEN
And which do I try?

SIA
One strange and true, new and rare, close to my morning heart—but my speech o’ersteps time’s modesty, skipping for ambles, stifling prances, prescience overleaping the prologue with a kiss. (She kisses him.) Is this love or destruction?

REVELIEN
We are the matter of time we defy. Let’s to the Cauldron, to bubble with the brews you laurel and tell all between. It continues down this street?

Sia and Revelien exit. Faolan, Drumdley and Meira emerge, watching after them.

FAOLAN
There they go, Drumdley, there they go, to prance and ponce and seek the heated dark, verity in those vegetables. You saw the pages of recognition in their eyes, the dawning smiles, the slow-motioned moves that met in an embracing kiss, vile, vile—(notices Meira) villain! The skipped stalker’s slippery. She lights retributions. Shield me with your body, Drumdley, for I shall recast this reckoning.

MEIRA
Their silent affection cracks the sky and seeps darkness on the world, like a cosmic plot and pressure infecting. They’ve met! and my destruction’s in every resolution.

FAOLAN
(Aside to Drumdley)
This is no fiend of mine, Drumdley, but a fury of Revelien’s. (to Meira) Maniac lady, why do you weep for a nugget?

MEIRA
A diamond as full as your head is empty, though his worth is far more.

FAOLAN
Not by much by an empty head. His is a cloudy testosterone; he seeks heat from any source.

MEIRA
Better than the cold of your prejudice. What is my sister to you?

FAOLAN
Her former—present boyfriend who has just witnessed a strange kiss that will be explained by humiliation.

DRUMDLEY
Why did you not expose them now?

FAOLAN
I want to audience the greatest stage, Drumdley, then bring her down like the chandelier.

DRUMDLEY
Collateral?

FAOLAN
Metaphor.

MEIRA
Violent musings lead to violent misses—

FAOLAN
—And headaches.

DRUMDLEY
Silence!

FAOLAN
Thank you, Drumdley

MEIRA
Present boyfriend? You’re not Dives.

FAOLAN
Yes, I’ve heard of this cartoon, hastily drawn, of nonsense colors, a bum, I believe, who cannot count his yesterdays. She must be ill, tipped off with too many potions, labored in too much literature, or switched places with her familiar, for since she persons a hellsprite. I would avoid her but for leverage, and here’s some more: (to Meira) sister, you say?

MEIRA
Ex-boyfriend, you say?

FAOLAN
Faolan.

MEIRA
Meira. There’s a reputation to your name.

FAOLAN
And none to your’s: I’ve heard of Sabine, even the serious servant, but you are a blank.

MEIRA
I travel beyond the perimeter of your attention, which speaks nothing to deserving.

DRUMDLEY
And yet we can scuttle and call it determined to stealth the subtle breach, play to prick and pounce to burn. Her ex and her sister, discarded separately, but together, with more hints than breath, a spice to choke: pretend a relationship, and let their jealousy follow.

FAOLAN
Drumdley, this is a scheme! and one I’d lay my charge to, bugle and baldric—shall we date hypocrisy, Lady Meira, with a wink and a shove, to flounce our feathers and run them made at their own confusion? Lust leads the way; let it encumber to masking, while enjoying the indulgence the performance lays.

MEIRA
Would it be sinful to enjoy?

FAOLAN
Not in the witches’ book.

DRUMDLEY
With every stroke a venom, a poison of the eyes that bleeds for succor, desires that overcrowd and strangle in trying to hold the water of life.

MEIRA
We shall make a fog that loses their together, blinded and bleating, that I can collect him, and take him far away, where alien winds arabesque our story to a different timbre and the land forgives. His words shape his every angle, memorized to woo, a casted complement.

FAOLAN
I shall throw a punching Revelien at Dives, and abscond with Misi by their fight whose victory she’ll praise me for. These fiendish clowns will return their presumption. We must tune them with passion; our sensuous energy must melt their endeavor that we may scope our desires to shape them to our fitting. Perhaps there is a charm shop that will potion me to purchase, but this is flint for a fire: unveil in revealing your flame, that I may see shapes in you; become the passion you burn for—we need shadows for this.

DRUMDLEY
Time already trails our purpose.

FAOLAN
We shall make do with moving feet, and pluck potencies along the way to blush our pageantry. Direct into the Cauldron, Lady Meira, and speed the recipe.

Faolan, Drumdley, and Meira exit, passing a witch. Gaero enters from another way.

GAERO
Tell me, sorceress, do you know a woman named Sia, of an antic poplexion?

WITCH
Songs sing of her, but not the earth.

GAERO
She may mask as a Misi when the moon’s bright and candles scheme.

WITCH
You seek a ghost, but if you desire her haunting, seek the stew.

FAOLAN
Where is it served?

WITCH
Your’s isn’t for a bowl but into the pot. The Cauldron brews with all roads to it. (She points.)

GAERO
I turn to your measure with my thanks.