CHARACTERS
PETER RAWSON – 35 years old, with round glasses. A sleazy former member of a New Age cult, who is now in prison for various kidnappings, rapes and murders. He uses a pedantic, philosophical façade to hide his psychopathy.
CHRISTINA – Peter Rawson’s wife. 29 years old, beautiful. Warm, compassionate and funny.
DAVID – Christina’s dad, who is keenly aware of the cult’s dangerous influence, and wants to protect his daughter at all costs.
MAURICE – Burly, athletic, around 50 years old. One of Peter’s fellow inmates, and head of the prison gang.
ANASTASSYA – Wearing white, eighteenth century French nightgown. Large eyes. Beautiful. Late twenties. Barefooted. She is a spiritual, supernatural muse who behaves as Peter’s conscience. However, she is not a figment of Peter’s imagination, but with her spectral powers, she only makes herself visible to him.
EVELYN – One of the cult’s victims. Twenty-eight.
JAMES – Forty. A member of cult.
MARCUS GRIFFITH – Sixty years old. Head of cult.
SETTINGS
- A prison cell with a bed horizontally facing the audience, and a small silver table beside it. A toilet is to the left of the bed.
- Basement of monastery with gray brick walls and ceiling.
- Prison cafeteria with three long tables perpendicularly facing the audience. White brick walls and floor.
- Christina’s kitchen. Table perpendicular to audience. Fridge stage-right. White tiled floor. Kitchen counter stage-left, perpendicular to audience.
Director’s Notes
This is a naturalistic play with attention to psychological details. The acting should serve this genre.
SCENE ONE:
(Night. The sound of crickets. The bed is horizontally facing the audience. Peter is sitting at the side of his bed that faces the audience, center-stage. A dim white light shines on them. Chopin’s Funeral March sonata is playing. Beside the bed stands Anastassya with her eyes closed, but he does not notice her at first).
PETER: My disorientation is ceaseless; I keep trying to fight through a barrier inside me, because I know I’m alive in there in somewhere. I’m aware that there are emotions I have ignored and dismissed, and now they are relentlessly wailing at me from a distance: regret, friendship, happiness, fear. But static keeps appearing in my head and preventing me from experiencing and surpassing them. I feel more self-aware than I have ever been, and I feel as if change is at my fingertips and I’m just about to grasp it. But then it eludes me. (Pauses). I feel your presence again, Anastassya.
(Anastassya opens her eyes)
PETER: Why do you continue to torment me like this? I feel as if you’ve secretly existed in my life all these years. And now you think you can show up here and change me with all your pretty phrases. It doesn’t work that way, I’m afraid.
ANASTASSYA: Your glibness won’t work either.
PETER: (Turns to her) Tell me the real reason why you’re here, lunatic! What do you want from me?!
ANASTASSYA: To use your terminology, I want you to come to terms with yourself Peter. I can’t bear this any longer. I am a muse, a spirit who was sent here for your sake, and in the world I come from, I watch the souls of your dead victims mourn their departure from the Earth, and your vanity that sent them spiraling into madness before they died—
PETER: This is nonsense, Anastassya! Let me be! How dare you come here and tell me how to live!
ANASTASSYA: I can only guide you. I can’t force you to rehabilitate yourself.
PETER: (Sighs) I guess we will never understand each other. But you will always be following my every step, hiding near me and making ripples in my thoughts and feelings, like some kind of parasite.
ANASTASSYA: You will bring about your own demise and a life of misery. I’m not going to linger around and watch that happen.
(Anastassya disappears through a doorway that opens back-center-stage, and emanates blue light and emits fog. The door closes and Peter walks swiftly to where she exited, looking at it as if he is trying to make sense of it. He then faces the audience as he looks at his hands while holding them up, and then everything around him in bewilderment).
PETER: (Quietly) This can’t be real. Somebody tell me this isn’t.
(Peter desperately leans against the wall and slides down to the floor, sitting and slouching in defeatism and confusion. He looks behind him once more, and then at the audience).
PETER: There’s nothing left for me now.
(Blackout).
SCENE TWO:
(Lights come on. Peter is sitting in prison cafeteria, in the table center-stage. Christina enters stage left escorted by two officers).
PETER: (Getting up and storming over to her) Ugh, what now?! Can’t a man catch a break. I don’t want hear the same sob story again.
CHRISTINA: (Angrily turns away from Peter and faces audience) Why do I even bother? This is absurd. You are clearly too holier-than-thou to own up to your mistakes, and I married you. Why was I such a fool? Why did I put up with this for so many years? You’re the same spineless coward that you always were, but I guess I had magical thinking, believing that you would turn around and admit how you betrayed me.
PETER: Look, Christina, I’ve got a lot on my mind. Please leave me alone!
CHRISTINA: (Ignoring him and continuing) Evelyn, my friend who you kidnapped and raped was only a human being like you, and yet you saw her as an existential threat, as if she had so much power over you—
PETER: I didn’t believe she had any power. Do you really think she meant anything to me? You remember her, don’t you? She was quite a character: the way she batted her eyelashes with that coy, mysterious expression, whenever she was in my presence; I hated her lustfulness. I always sensed she was trying to manipulate me.
CHRISTINA: How?
PETER: (Broods for a moment) That I couldn’t pinpoint. But of course, I never said anything. I managed to hide my disgust and behave civilly. Yet I always felt this strange urge to hurt her, whenever she spoke to me. I think it was that voice she used; she was like a deranged little girl who was desperate for my attention. I could tell she was up to something. She was also an intense, fervent critic of my New Age organization, the cult that everyone despises because they think it’s too eccentric, edgy and dangerous. We’re trying to purge Western Christian values out of our subjects (through drugs and indoctrination), so that we can free them from control, and let them indulge in desires that—-well, society wouldn’t normally allow them to indulge. We’re the kind of boogeyman everyone hides from—
CHRISTINA: Don’t be ridiculous, Peter! The real reason why you’re all feared, is because you’re a criminal gang! And many of your victims were not even Christian! Evelyn certainly wasn’t!
PETER: Yes, but she was just like them in some ways: she was one of those stupid, wealth-obsessed journalists who were against our sexual proclivities and completely obsessed with monogamy—
CHRISTINA: What did monogamy have anything to do with this? You and your gang of degenerates were raping women and children; that’s what she was raising awareness about! But you think anyone who calls you out on your depraved crimes, is not progressive enough, especially if she’s rich and upper-class! You guys call yourselves counterculture, and act like you’re a bunch of saviors who are gonna change humanity! But you’re the biggest tyrants in the country! Evelyn wasn’t a Nazi who was out to destroy you! You were a thug, and she wanted you to get caught: plain and simple!
PETER: Trust me, she was going to find some way to sabotage me! I wanted her to become part of my cult, so that I would have the upperhand: she would do all the things I told her to do, especially if I gave her enough drugs. Eventually, she wouldn’t need anything or anyone, including herself. She could just follow orders without thought or question. And even though we were somewhat close in age, and we weren’t biologically related, I saw her as my daughter in the spiritual sense of the word, which was she never aware of and never appreciated, and I wasn’t going to let her use me. I felt that she could be a future disciple, and that it was my responsibility to free her. I often tried to lecture her out of her narrowmindedness, telling her that the only reason why she resisted us was that she was brainwashed by her ridiculous family, who don’t care about anyone but themselves. They also hate radicals like us. After all those years of pain, I just couldn’t be silent. Something had to be done. I seized her from her apartment and took her to where I thought she belonged: the monastery that I knew would fix her. But she continued to make the situation difficult for me, even after I violated her. She continued insulting me, telling me that I was worthless, ‘cause you see, that’s what happens to decent people in this day and age. Those who have the best and humblest intentions, are smacked down by the airheads that this generation has created—
CHRISTINA: Once you’re done spewing jargon, can I interject? How much longer am I gonna have to wait before I can offer my perspective, and talk about how I was victimized?
PETER: Shut up! Let me finish—shit, now I’ve lost my train of thought.
CHRISTINA: (Snickers) Maybe that’s a good thing. You think way too much. That’s why you can’t keep your mouth shut. You’re full of ideas just bouncing off the walls. No wonder you became a charlatan. Instead of all this rambling, don’t you have anything meaningful to say to me? Can’t you feel remorse? Aren’t you aware of how deeply you broke my trust and faith in you? All these years, you’ve never let me in on anything that’s going on inside you. I never knew what you were thinking or feeling. Everything was halfhearted, condescending bullshit.
PETER: Okay. (Sighs). Last night, I felt like I could write out what was going on in me, as a way to take a step back from myself, and study it. But now the only way I can finally get this off my chest, is through some form of human contact, to keep my mind centered and rational, to keep it from veering off on horrible tangents. I started off writing these sentences, ‘My objectivity continues to decrease as my joy increases, since my will power is incompatible with my inner life.’ Then I stopped because I became aware that I was indulging. Now, I’ll be clear and honest with myself and you: I shut you out for a while, and refused to talk to you because you reminded me of what I was incapable of, the empathy, strength, decisiveness and will that I have suffered to keep up, but then I fail because of my own callousness. Even though I am sitting in prison, and have everything taken away from me, I feel the constant urge to take back the power I used to have, as if that’s possible. I want to rejoin society and dominate it again, with the help of my friends who destroyed my sense of self, and rebuilt it again in a new form. The more deeply religious I became, the more desensitized I was from others. But I disguised this with the pretense of wisdom and intelligence, and I wished that I could just shut out the rest of the world, without the need for anyone else. I could just turn to people whenever I felt they were necessary, but otherwise, they meant nothing.
CHRISTINA: (Sarcastically) Well, I’m glad that you care about me so much. I’m glad that all the principles you have said you believe in: benevolence, kindness, wisdom and self-knowledge, have somehow been conveniently inapplicable when it comes to you. I should have trusted my instincts about you the moment I met you. You were such a creep. How could anybody trusted you? I feel like I’ve been used by a lunatic who’s escaped from the asylum, because he realized that he couldn’t run it. I mean, who the hell do you think you are? Why did you demand that I give you so much care and attention all these years? I always tried to serve you. What did you ever do to serve me?
PETER: I serve no one.
CHRISTINA: Well, good for you. I hope that works out for you.
PETER: Don’t give me that smart-alecky bullshit, Christina. I’m trying here, okay? I’ve been trying to be a better person. It’s just been difficult because I’m faced with the fact that no one has ever done that for me. No one has ever stuck their neck out for me, and worried about what I needed. I am constantly told that I’m delusional, and that I’m trying to gaslight everyone else.
CHRISTINA: But that’s exactly what you’ve done all these years. You tried to make me think that I was blind or irrational. Your vanity amazes me! Aren’t you embarrassed? Don’t you feel any shame? The farther we got in our marriage, the stranger you got. All the times I ran to you for comfort and advice, you were checked out, distant. And whenever I argued with you to wake you the hell up, you were either calm and unfazed, or extremely hostile, to the point that I feared for my safety. But I always felt you had the potential to turn around, which was what exasperated me the most. I thought I had sometimes seen glimmers of compassion in you, but you stifled them like they made you uncomfortable. Please tell me that you’ve thought about my feelings just a little bit. I’m not asking for much.
PETER: (Scoffs) I guess you hide all this hysterical idiocy from everyone else, and save it for me.
CHRISTINA: So this is what it’s come to. After all this, after all your apparent remorse that you expressed during the court hearings, and after all the time I’ve painstakingly set aside for you: the therapy sessions trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with your mind, the series of inquiries about why you were acting so strangely and refusing to return anyone’s calls. I wished that I had seen this coming.
PETER: There’s nothing you could have done to stop me, even if you had.
CHRISTINA: I guess I should get going. I won’t torture myself anymore. There’s no point to this conversation.
(Christina exits stage-left, as Peter smirks and shakes his head)
SCENE TWO:
(James, Marcus and Evelyn are standing inside the basement of the monastery, to the right of the stairwell. Evelyn’s nose is bloodied. She tries to open to the door stage left)
EVELYN: SET ME FREE! SET ME FREE! (She bangs on the door). SOMEBODY HELP!
(Evelyn gives up and cries).
JAMES: (Ignoring her as he talks to Marcus) Isn’t it obvious Marcus? The police caught Peter Rawson a couple years ago, simply because he was too stupid to conceal his crimes, unlike the rest of us. We, the rest of the cult escaped the grasp of the law, because we were smart. We told everybody that we wanted the kids just for indoctrination, and we made sure to take liberties with them in places that no one had access to, which no one could see, like in these underground rooms and passageways for instance.
MARCUS: That’s not the only factor. We were also much stronger and more persistent than he was.
JAMES: Well, I definitely disagree with you on that. No one fought harder and fell harder than he did. He’s a unique kind of tough. He intellectualizes his crimes even more intensely than the rest of us, which gives him a coldness that I deeply admire. His female victims say he’s not the kind of tough that resembles courage; he’s just the absence of feeling. He only feels when it serves some purpose, like an automated switch that goes on and off. (Pauses). I feel that we’ve lapsed in our development. We were cowardly in having run away and hid from society, keeping our true identities hidden. So what if none of the law is on our side anymore? Let’s not run from the law any longer. Let’s embrace it, and try to get John and Radcliffe, those federal officers on our side again. As long as they support us, we’ll never be prosecuted no matter how hard our victims fight in court, just like it was in the past before they were brainwashed and turned against us. They agreed that so many Americans were a bunch of God-fearing maniacs. They weren’t fazed by all the crimes we were committing.
MARCUS: Let’s not be too hasty in our decisions either. We must be as discreet as possible. Otherwise we won’t survive.
JAMES: But we must get those federal officers on our side, so that we can enhance the cult’s power, without any worries that we will be brought to that artificial construction of justice that everyone talks about. See, that is the downside of us being brought into the world. We have to be subjected to the establishment, and all these human follies, and made to feel that if we don’t submit to them, that we are too vain and simplistic.
MARCUS: That’s enough talk. What should we do now? Are there any other alternatives, which will substitute the agony that we have suffered all these years?
JAMES: (Scoffs) What pain have we suffered? Our lives have been well-rounded—cruel but well-rounded, and I agree with your sentiments. We no longer need to conceal our true identities. We need to face our adversaries fearlessly, and we won’t tolerate these animalistic, primitive people who are trying to keep us down. We are much more daring than all these idiots who surround us. We need to fight them to the death. If the police find us, we’ll kill them. I hope they and their families get as much hell as they deserve. Most human beings, except our little circle, are psychologically maladaptive and selfish. I hope that one day, we can depopulate the planet, leaving only us left. They don’t recognize genius; they’re too caught up in their materialistic views. There are far too many of them, fraught with masculine, oppressive values.
EVELYN: (To James and Marcus) SET ME FREE! PLEASE!
JAMES: Keep it down, Evelyn.
EVELYN: WHILE I’M FORCED TO STAND HERE AND SUFFER, YOU GUYS TALK ABOUT NONSENSE!
(James slowly approaches her with a sadistic, sanctimonious expression).
JAMES: Evelyn, you’re going to have to earn the respect you want. Your worth is in your actions.
EVELYN: I’ve done nothing to deserve this! All I’ve done is just watch myself waste away every day!
JAMES: Please don’t insult my intelligence. Appealing to sympathy is a logical fallacy, as I’ve explained to you before.
(Marcus laughs harshly and salaciously, as he comes up behind her and gropes her breasts).
MARCUS: No wonder Peter was obsessed with you. You’re cruel, and you’re also an enigma.
(Evelyn tries to push him away but he slaps her in the face. He unbuttons her skirt as James holds her back, to stop her from running away. She eventually escapes and pulls a knife from her pocket).
EVELYN: If you don’t set me free I’ll kill myself right here!
(James runs over to her and tries to yank it out of her hand).
JAMES: YOU COWARD! HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN YOUR PLACE?!
(The knife falls out of her hand as she resists, and he chases her to the corner of the room, grabbing her neck).
JAMES: Stop this absurdity right now! I’ve been your spiritual guide for so long. Are you going to abandon me like this?!
EVELYN: You’re nobody! You’ve destroyed my life! You’ve destroyed everything!
(Evelyn runs over to the knife, grabs and stabs herself in the chest and falls dead, before James can stop her. There is then silence as James and Marcus furiously gaze at her body).
JAMES: She betrayed me, even though she had so much potential. But instead she decided to waste it.
(Marcus picks her up)
MARCUS: Let’s get her out of here.
JAMES: Let’s just stay and relax here first. We’ve had a lot to deal with.
(Marcus puts her back down).
JAMES: (Looking back at Evelyn’s body) The egocentricity of youth these days is appalling. More of them should live with far more austerity and asceticism like us. We’re living in a land of lost souls. When I wake up every morning, I ask myself, ‘How the hell did we get here?’
MARCUS: (Wistfully shaking his head) I wish I could answer that question. I try to put these issues at the back of my mind.
JAMES: Do you ever think that we could get past it all?
MARCUS: No, most likely not, but we may as well keep trying.
JAMES: (Pause) Have you ever wondered about all the reasons why we’re doing this? Are we really driven by a force that’s bigger than ourselves? Or is that just an illusion?
MARCUS: I don’t think it’s an illusion. I think it’s a legitimate feeling. It never feels like there’s enough time to accomplish everything though. I always feel like someone is around the corner, ready to drag us down.
JAMES: That’s ridiculous. Why would you think that? Even though none of the law is on our side anymore, we still have a great deal of status and recognition. If we can get enough admiration, even if it’s false and sycophantic, we can avoid incarceration forever. We can secretly work within the government, so that any decisions we make will be disguised with a political mask that no one will question. There’s no limit to our capacity for influence, and our philosophical understanding.
MARCUS: Don’t be sanguine though. We’re not invincible.
(James picks up Evelyn’s body).
JAMES: Alright, I’m done for the day. Let’s take out the trash.
(James unlocks the door stage left and they exit).
SCENE THREE:
(Lights come on. Peter is sitting in prison cafeteria, in the table center-stage. He sits at the end of the table as he faces the audience. Another inmate, Paul, sits next to him. Two prison guards stand beside each other stage right, and survey the crowd. Maurice Gibson is walking through the crowd with a fierce expression, and occasionally flashing contemptuous looks at Peter, who pretends not to notice him as he pathetically eats with his head lowered, like a sickly, downtrodden dog)
PETER: What a monotonous day it’s been. When will I ever get the respect I deserve? I feel like I’m trapped in an alien world, where my intelligence is being insulted by a bunch of automatons with no will or mind of their own. I wish I could just sink into the floor, or fall into a coma for an indefinite period of time. But I am trapped here having to face the reality of other people, who don’t know how to think for themselves, and don’t know how to contribute to society.
(Maurice sits down at the table next to his, and angrily bites into his sandwich while he looks around him in a paranoid, arrogant fashion, as if he perceives a threat. He is sitting at the end of the table, and facing the audience).
MAURICE: (To one of the inmates) There’s Peter over there.
PETER: I’ve gotta tell you Paul, it’s strange. I feel across between depressed and ecstatic—it’s like that feeling you get when you’re starving but you’ve drunk a lot of caffeine. I guess I’m just adjusting to this place, and I don’t know how to handle myself. I keep telling myself, ‘Just be a gentleman, and don’t get into any trouble.’ But you know me, I’m always on the verge of doing something zany and unpredictable. I guess I’m addicted to scaring myself, ‘cause my existence is so small. I want some surprises, and every day I’m faced with the fact that I have to create my own reality; it’s ironically more damning for me to know that it if it always remains the same, I am the only one at fault. Since it is all in my hands, I feel more powerless. I feel like my environment could give me more freedom than I could provide myself, and yet it never does.
PAUL: Well, that’s just human. Don’t worry about that. I’ve given up trying to manage myself. I just wait to see where my feelings take me, and there’s something calming about that.
PETER: I’ve been in a frenzy these days. I’m starting to think that the freedom I yearn isn’t real. I’m stuck with the endless banter around me, the sounds of people talking behind my back, and describing me in ways that I don’t recognize, as if I’ve never existed in my own body, or controlled my own actions. They say I’ve been heartless, but I don’t know what that truly means. To me that word is old-fashioned and poetic, the kind of term that bigots used against revolutionaries. Everyone thinks I oppress them, but I am indeed the most oppressed individual there is. People despise me because I represent an idea: spiritual independence.
PAUL: (Rolls his eyes) You’ve been part of an elite circle for a third of your life already. What oppression are you talking about?
PETER: People look at me like I’m some kind of specimen, a monster who doesn’t belong their little cliques that they’ve formed. I, in particular, am an intellectual with the ability to be unbiased, and therefore I am morally superior. I just have some issues with self-control.
(Chopin’s Funeral March comes on again as Anastassya enters stage-right, accompanied by Andrew’s ghost. They approach Peter, but no one else sees them except him. Peter anxiously looks at them)
PETER: (Quietly) Please leave and give me some peace.
PAUL: Who are you talking to?
ANASTASSYA: (To Peter) When you killed them, you lost all sight of yourself. You don’t represent an idea. You represent nothing. You are just a bare skeleton of a human being.
PETER: Don’t madden me like this!
(Maurice notices Peter doing what he perceives as talking to nothingness)
MAURICE: (Laughing harshly and talking to the other inmates) That nutjob is at it again!
(Anastassya somberly exits stage-left and the music fades, and Peter quickly exits stage-right. Lights fade).
SCENE FOUR:
(Christina is sitting in the kitchen, at the table with David, and they are both facing the audience).
CHRISTINA: Dad, it’s too late now. Evelyn is dead, and on top of it I can’t have her killer prosecuted. The cult now has all of the law on their side. It’s even worse than before.
DAVID: This is hell. What are we going to do when the cult becomes globally influential. Then we’ll really be screwed. Let’s just hope that eighty percent of the world’s countries don’t get economically and physically destroyed like they have in the past, because of constant wars.
CHRISTINA: I’d like to think that we’ve got enough prowess and knowledge to prevent them from destroying the planet, but on the other hand, I keep thinking that maybe in spite of the cult’s buffoonery and unrealistic ideas, they still have some ability to be cunning and clever, in which case they will be much harder to defeat. I feel that at the end of the day, the situation is utterly hopeless.
DAVID: Don’t give up that quickly. I’m sure there’s a solution. We just have to expand our horizons, and expand our perspective so that we have more latitude, and we can face these pseudo-academics and stupid politicians, with gusto. I’ve never condoned violence in the past, but I’m starting to feel that it’s the only option. These people we’re dealing with, resemble the demons that people used to warn the population about, and those people used to be laughingstocks to us, since they never tried to appear charming and agreeable. They were just blunt and honest.
CHRISTINA: Yes, I know exactly what you mean. It feels like honesty is a sin nowadays. I wish that I could just flee the country; I wish it were that simple. But I have to stay here and figure out how to overthrow these people, since now, they seem to be leaking into the government. I was hoping they would stay out of politics, since they are religious fanatics with seemingly no interest in real affairs, or people’s well-being and prosperity. They’re like every other intellectual elite group; they don’t see other people as real. They only see them as a string of ideas and theories that they can apply whenever convenient.
(The door stage right opens and policeman storms in).
POLICEMAN: Christina, you’re under arrest.
CHRISTINA: W-What happened? What’s going on? What is—
POLICEMAN: You’ve been spreading false information about Marcus Griffith and Peter Rawson’s organization.
CHRISTINA: No! This isn’t right! I swear! Everything I said was true! They killed my friend Evelyn! There is mountains of evidence for their crimes! Please!
(Christina gets up and moves away from him as he advances on her, holding the handcuffs).
DAVID: LEAVE HER ALONE! THIS IS ALL WRONG! YOU’VE GOT IT ALL WRONG! THERE’S PLENTY OF EVIDENCE, I SWEAR!
POLICEMAN: You’re only making this harder on yourself, Christina. Just come with me. It’s over.
(Policeman tries to handcuff her but she punches him in the face and runs away. He chases her and pins her to the floor. He handcuffs her and she keeps resisting, beginning to suffocate under his weight and physical exertion).
DAVID: YOU’RE KILLING HER! STOP!
(She continues to resist until she suffocates and dies. Noticing that she’s stopped resisting, the policeman pulls her up and notices that she is limp, responseless and that the life has left her eyes. David agitatedly runs over to her, weeping as she crumples to the floor after the police officer tries to get her to stand. David feels her pulse and checks her heartbeat, and tries to rescuscitate her by pushing on her chest).
DAVID: Come on Christina! Come on! You can do it!
(David eventually stops when he realizes she’s dead).
DAVID: (Screams) NOOOOO!
POLICEMAN: (Quietly) You’ve seen this coming, you’ve seen this coming all along. This should come as no surprise. You stay here to clean up the mess. I’ll have no part in this any longer, and don’t try to get the law involved. They won’t do a damn thing.
(Policeman coldly gazes at David weeping)
POLICEMAN: You’ve all brought this on yourselves.
(Policeman exits through the door and lights fade).
SCENE FIVE:
(For a few moments Peter is silently standing in his cell beside his bed, facing the audience. Anastassya stands behind him but is visible to audience, while she has her eyes closed).
PETER: In my conceit, I never saw the world as it was. I was lost in solipsism and now my wife is dead because of it. The only way I could finally reach into myself, get in touch with my emotions and acknowledge them completely, was through some kind of tragedy. Nothing else could get me to awaken. Why does it always require the worst to transition into enlightenment? It feels like some kind of punishment from the universe, whenever things play out that way. I want to believe that I made it all on my own, without the spite of fate or human experiences. Why don’t I ever get a chance?! Why does it have to end this way?! I’ve tried to do so much for humanity, and yet I was always pushed into a corner by society, and made to look like a fool. Christina could have worked things out with me, but instead she took the coward’s way out. What an idiot! I should have predicted this. She never listened to me, and continued with her brainwashed rhetoric. Now, I’m at a crossroads. I could either worsen or rehabilitate myself. I’m too afraid to change. I don’t know what it entails. Paralysis is the only way I feel safest, since inaction is my newest solace: it’s better I have the Devil I know than the Devil I don’t.
ANASTASSYA: This was what I always warned you about. But now you must deal with the ramifications. It is all in your hands.
(Peter sits on the bed breathing furiously, and then bends over weeping. Blackout).
The Specters of Tradition: Volume 1: Daniel Schroder 