Shadows

the bright light of entertainment and commerce, to the dim shadow lands of betrayal and death. Within the spectrum of violence it is not color that registers most—it is darkness.

Blank air. Despair. Anxiety. Angst. Desperation. Blank space. Incarceration. Blank wall. Blank wall.

SCENE II

Second banner is displayed, reading DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, SEX CRIMES, PEDOPHILIA.

Crippled Dancer (CD): CRIPPLED DANCER MONOLOGUE & THE TALE OF RIVER MONEKEYS

Since childhood I have had a gripping and crippling fear of moving before others. Moving, I dare say, with simple, unguarded directness, with a sort of natural flow; going legato; with any bit of genuine, spontaneous, unrestricted animation; like dancing. Like a bird in the grace of flight, a fish swimming, a flower flowering, or liberating laughter, or free, free unconscious play. Even with a bit of warmth, a modest hint of sensuality. I mean, just being sensually visible as a woman in a public space. It’s hard! It’s hard! But I am trying to overcome my strange, suffocating disability; this malediction I have and call my God-convulsion. I am practicing right now. Although it is perpetually dark around me, I imagine I am illuminated, even inwardly luminous, delicately sheltered inside of a subtle something only I can see. Like a bubble of yellow pollen. Only when the ecstasy comes on, how I wish it was not so strong, so violent, leaving me knocked out, afterward in a coma!

But see: I step out of my hiding. Even now, I step out. I step out. I detach myself from the shadows and step out. Or do I?

The CD moves in various ways, physically enacting the contractions contained in her words; achieving minor successes, stricken and aware of recurring failures.

CD: Recently I had a striking thought. I thought that my fear is the fear the timid have from the lurking nearness of an animal of prey; the helplessness before a powerful aggressor the weak fall into, cowering in dread of the big, the threatening, the savage. Does that make any sense? Are my perceptions abnormal or can we communicate? I mean, I feel the way hunted creatures tense up, freeze and push themselves stiffly and ever so cautiously into an opening, suspecting, suspecting as we rightly do that somewhere out there, spying, calculating, brooding in an obsessive blood-lust, is the predator, the monster, the camouflaged bogyman. Do you understand? Can you feel me? Please do not touch. Stay away! Stand back. I am speaking of the one who attacked and took. The one who will always attack and take again. You know who I mean: the unsuspected family terrorist, the friendly next door neighbor, the school teacher, the priest, the police officer, the occasionally visiting, humorous relative. Wolves in sheep’s clothing: Bah!  Bah! Bah!

CD falls into momentary narcolepsy before continuing.

Still, still I am trying, trying hard, struggling in all directions to discover or recover my movement, my courage, my ordinary, my innocence—skin, flesh, bones, skin and bones. Only it is hard. It is hard. It hurts! And I am only always, always, always like a sleepwalker in a bad dream, attempting to dance my way out of the sticky darkness and into the light of life. But I am only a small shadow in a vast shadow land of large shades, phantoms and darkly breathing fears.

When the darkness began to descend upon the forest, the wolf appeared among the trees, the elf king’s brood rode rough and wild upon the wind, the moon came up and a spot of blood shown in one of his hollow eyes. And the wolf said, “Where are you going Little Red Riding Hood? I will eat you up!”