Meph
MEPH: What would you do first? If you had my power? Wish it now… (holds a hand up) … silently!
JONATHAN: (a pause, then) Made.
MEPH: Check your bank balance.
Twombstones
“I don’t know what these kids are worried about nowadays. I really don’t. Come see us when you hit your first million, hey? I know, I know. I can hear you saying it. Nasty, nasty. I shouldn’t be so nasty. Hard not to be. Took you. There. That’s better. (sighs) I’m exhausted. I’ll sit down here with you for a spell. I owe you that after yesterday. Sorry. I am more and more unnerved at the sight of this vacant lot next to you. When the penny finally drops and you realise there are less days ahead of you than behind. Well, it is. It’s unnerving. You wangled your way out of that one, didn’t you? I’m glad you can’t see me now. I really am. That blonde Adonis I once was has scrunched up something alright. I look like a bloody sock puppet. How young we were. How young, how gorgeous. I had to put that photo away.”
Shitface Girl
MAN: She’s been sick and she’s got shi- … dog-do on her face and you’re filming it first?
WOMAN: Because someone needs to be held accountable!
MAN: Not to the detriment of -.
WOMAN: Are you a parent? Would you like this to happen to your child!? I’m here, baby girl, one more second. You’re doing really well.
Damon Takes Out Kim Jong-un
[Based On A Real-Life Conversation]
I can tell you the precise moment when my brother decided to take out Kim Jong- un. Not in a polite, asking-someone-out-to-dinner kinda way. No. Who eats North Korean food apart from North Koreans, anyway? Little grey cubes of Communist Soylent tofu?
Hm, that terrorises the very notion of appetite. No, Damon was not asking the Asian enfant terrible to join him for supper and a movie.
[…]Mousehole
At Bowjey Hill I heard a tuba being practised from number eleven, its gabled, gate- split door half open, the top partially swung inside. This was where the bloops came from.
I was unsure as to whether the fog was lifting or settling, but the music fit it well. I was walking into the unknown and I was pretty jolly about the whole escapade.
[…]Ghost’s Alive
In the summer of 2020, actor Claire-Monique Martin put together an online writing festival of 80 new plays to help raise funds for Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London. During the COVID crisis, The Globe received zero financial help from the Government or The National Lottery Fund. I was privileged to have ‘Ghost’s Alive’ to be a part of the line-up, a monologue that was my own way of dealing with the emotional fallout of being a living ghost to an ex of mine.
The Spoonbill
CAM: So is he coming here? I want to meet him!
INCARNATION #1: You may never, now.
RO: It can’t be that bad?
LAURA: He’s just overdramatising. It’s what they all do.
INCARNATION #1: Us gays?
LAURA: No, you artists.
INCARNATION #1: Well, this artist is fucking exhausted. Already. It’s not even… 5pm on a Sunday. I’m tipsy, tired and… Tragic. I thought daytime drinking was meant to be a lot more fun and easygoing than this.
Nevergonna
MICHAEL: Now. I nominated myself to go first because it’s the plaster-off-quick syndrome. I couldn’t bear the thought of waiting while other people show me up for being a charlatan. Wow them first. It’s like what my Dad always told me: get the first round in of an evening. You’ll be remembered for being generous and you won’t have to buy a drink for the rest of the night. I don’t know how that metaphor applies, but…