Bullet Holes and Barbie Doll Heads: If Mellissa Married Ed Calkins Act one

Yes, I know "Melissa" is spelled wrong, but the following play is Ed Calkins unboxed, uncensored, and unedited.

As I re-read his play this evening--originally sent to me in April 2012 or seven months before the release of the holiday editon of Visage, I was struck by how many subtle Visage references Ed's play actually contained, even though he never read any of the books before publication. He just merely signed away his identity.

Warning: Violence, strong language, sexual references, and "Chris" is actually "Steve" and "John Copper" is "Jack Cooper," a hybrid of the fact that Ed can't spell and his "improvements" to the original novel.

Without further ado, Ed's play, but first...his intro letter. Enjoy! (or not).

P.S.: For the uninitiated, "MOMI" means "Mistress of My Immortality."

 

Dear Momi,

      Ok, here's the scary part. This play was supposed to be 4 pages long, but the charactors kept banging at the keybroad and MS Word tells me its now 22 pages long. Much of it you'll be censoring I'm sure, but I'm going to try and paste it now .....damn, it worked. Use this anyway you wish, but I'm casting now for actors/actresses.

          

 

Melissa: Mom, Chris, I’m home! 1976 is a really bad year to start collage. I’ll explain myself defensively later. Right now, I’m going to bed. (Fake yawn) I’m really tried and can’t wake to dream…er wait to sleep.

Chris: We weren’t expecting you till Thanksgiving: (Calling out) Darlene!

(Darlene enters stage with mess up hair and a jacket over pajamas)

Darlene: Dear, what are you doing home?  You couldn’t have flunked out already; you’ve only been gone for two days

Mellissa: But it was two days of hell.  With so many different classes to go to, I ran out of clothes the first day. So when I told my roommate to help me with my algebra dress, she told me to ‘get bit’; you know (looking dreamy) it seemed like such a good idea! Yep, great talking to you guys, but now I have to get to my room.

Darlene (whispering harshly to Chris): Honey, do something to delay the inevitably awkwardness we’re about to endure.

Chris: Mellissa, you can’t go to your room now.

Darlene: Why?

Chris: Well because…because we have to go to the police station now. To ahh…

Darlene: Fill out a restraining order…

Chris: Right! A restraining order against a very dangerous….

Darlene: Harmless.

Chris: Yes a dangerously harmless

Darlene: But unsufferably annoying ….

Chris: Yes intolerable, this is the third Barbie doll this week that old fool sent you

Mellissa: Ed Calkins!

Chris: Yah, that’s the guy. We’ve got to do something. Come on honey, I’ll go with you so that when you get back nothing weird will be afoot and we can change your mind about this college thing.

Mellissa: Wow this is embarrassing!

Darlene and Chris: NO NO, we’ve nothing to be embarrassed about.

Chris: No we’re not hiding anything as you’ll find out when you get back, unless you just want to go back to your dorm room…

Mellissa: I can’t file a restraining order on Ed Calkins

Chris and Darlene: But you have too! He’ll keep coming back

Mellissa: Well, it just that I sorta…. Kinda… married him a little.

Darlene (outraged): You’re married now! When were you going to tell us!

Mellissa: I was going to tell you, honest I was. I was just going to wait until I married someone more impressive.

Chris: Now listen here young lady, and I saying this a fatherly as I can muster as to cover that fact that I am neither you father, stepfather, or for the moment, potential stepfather but I want to lay the groundwork so that I have some credibility when I finally do ask you mother to marry me, and you’ll be used to taking me for you father and your mother will be impress with my handling rebellious teenager abilities thus giving me a stronger hand within the makeshift family…

Mellissa: do you have a point?

Chris: You can’t marry a vampire! Especially not bad vampires!

Mellissa (taken back and trying to (badly) lie): There’s no such thing as vampires. I learned that in college.

Chris: Don’t lie to me again Missy or I’d do something punitive!

Mellissa (hopefully): Like send me to my room?

Chris: No! Like lecturing you on and on without make any sense so that your mother can slip away and take care of a situation without you realizing…

Darlene: (to herself): What does he expect I can do.

Chris: (rambling) ….so the thigh bone is connected to the hip bone because everyone knows that teenagers don’t hear a thing you say anyway…

Mellissa: Why would anyone think he’s a vampire?

Chris (thrusting a card at her): Cause he left a calling card.

Mellissa (reading it): and it says right here, “newspaper distributor”, the guys a paper boy, Chris

Chris: Read the fine print!

Mellissa: “ruthless dictator, vampire, steward of Tara, novel character...” oh boy, how does he get away with it?

Chris: and international terrorist. What, we marry terrorists now!

Mellissa: Well he’s not a terrorist. He thinks he’s a terrorist. Some cop gave him a ticket while he was doing his paper route. So he decided to retaliate until the village dropped the ticket….

Chris (not listening to Mellissa): So, what are we supposed tell the relatives, uh? ‘Yah sure, come over for Easter, but don’t forget to bring a bomb proof vest. You never know when Mellissa’s husband’s going to get that ‘blow myself up’ urge….

Darlene (looking uncomfortable but not saying anything):

Mellissa (listening like a teenager): So, ever morning he’d randomly pick up ten names from the phonebook…to think badly of them… Terrible things…disgusting things…and you never know who it was he picked because he never told anyone… but He was sure it mattered. Didn’t help that it worked…

Chris (still): Here in American we do not negotiate with terrorists…we don’t marry them, don’t date them, don’t befriend them, sometimes we behead them, other time we invade their countries, sometimes it’s the wrong country, maybe one they heard of somewhere…

Darlene:

Mellissa: So they must have dropped the case because there’s no record of it anywhere, but does that stop Ed Calkins from having his day in court? Are you kidding? He shows up in his kilt and doesn’t stop to sign in but walks right up to the judge with his mouth moving and his arms waving and you’d think the sheriff’s police would have made quick work of him, instead, after 15 minutes and some bangs of the gavel, Judge Thomas stands up, shakes the steward’s hand, and thanks him for his time! Next thing, instead of giving fines, the judge orders all guilty offenders to write and acceptable limerick praising the judge and making him immortal. How does a fool make everyone else a fool? … Including me.

Chris: I like the country! Like the music too… it can really get to your heart, ya know, makes you what to drink whiskey while cleaning the shotgun. Twang twang twang twang…. Twang twang…twang twang ….what were we talking about?

Darlene and Mellissa: fools and men.

Chris: Oh yes, Ed Calkins, now how can you say he’s not a terrorist? Look on the card. It’s says IRA spokesmen.

Mellissa: He means ‘IVA”.  He can’t spell!

Chris (now shouting again): Unacceptable!

Mellissa: Ok Ok next time I see him, I’ll tell him we’re divorced.

Chris: Yeah you’re divorced! He’s lucky I don’t…

Mellissa: He won’t believe me. Even if he did, he’d forget the next time. Why do you think he sends me Barbie dolls instead of roses? He forgets that he met me in the nineteen century when dirt old men were in fashion. Why he keeps calling himself my first husband when I was with number one when I meet him.

Chris and Darlene: First Husband!

Mellissa: Yeah, crazy isn’t it. Geez I’m glad we had this talk. I’ll just go to my room now.

Darlene: Mellissa, who and how many ‘husbands’ do you have?

Mellissa: Lets see, there’s the vampire you never met, Ed Calkins, another vampire you have met, just not as a vampire, Judge Thomas, some other guy I can’t remember, oh and the cabbie that got me here…I didn’t have enough money to…”

Darlene: You married a judge!

Chris: You married a Democrat!

Darlene: Six husbands, have you heard of bigamy. Chris, I told you this would happen…but no, send her to a university, let her meet Mormons… why not?

Chris: You married a Democrat!

Mellissa: Mom, I pretty sure it’s seven…who did I miss…oh that boy in town.

Darlene: That Copper fellow.

Mellissa: No! That’s Ann’s husband.

Chris: Great! Terrorists and Democrats! If you meet that Kennedy fellow are you going to marry him? This family gets worse ever moment. Why not marry a Vegan for good measure.  Sure, never have turkey again.

Mellissa: John Copper is only my boyfriend.

Chris (trying to calm down): So Mellissa, make me understand. What was your thought process when you married a Dem…er married the judge?

Mellissa (calmly trying to remember): Well, at first I thought I could beat the ticket, but he didn’t believe me, and then I couldn’t think up any words that rythmed with ‘Thomas’.

Darlene: So you married a judge to get out of a ticket!

Mellissa: Well no, that one is still on my record. But I’m still a virgin!

Darlene: But you married seven different men.

Chris: But you married a Democrat!

(Kimberly enters richly but age inappropriately dressed and appearing to be nursing a hangover enters the stage from where Melissa’s room might be.)

Kimberly:  what’s all the noise?

Melissa: Kim! You’re alive.

Kimberly: not the way it feels but, thanks for the thought. Now what are you doing in my house?

Chris (looking nervous); ahh, about that…

Darlene (trying to be calm): Melissa, I’d like you to meet your new younger sister, Kimberly

Melissa: she’s not my sister, she’s the same age as I am and she’s my friend.

Darlene: Yes dear, of course she is. But since you were leaving for collage and (looking at Chris, beaming) Chris and I love each other some much, we decided to open our hearts and adopt; giving a warm loving home to some poor child who knows only poverty and mistreatment.

 Chris (putting his arm around Darlene): You’re mother always wanted a daughter.

Melissa (throwing her arms in the air): What am I?

Chris: Well we knew that in Christian novels for young adults, the only way an unmarried couple gets a daughter is by adoption.

Darlene: Of course we’re just one question away from being a married couple.

Chris: We considered adoption abroad; maybe some mail order child from a Russian orphanage, but there still Godless commies. I fact we were going to give up and you, Melissa, would have been our only daughter. But then you go marrying this Ed Calkins character and changed every thing.

Darlene: Yes dear, when are you going to learn how to keep minor from dominating novels that are supposed to be about you?

Kimberly (whispers to Melissa): and as far as that ‘friend’ thing goes… Have you heard of sibling rivalry? It’s on sweetheart. (Moving in for a group hug) Ah, my wonderful parents.

Chris: Indeed. We knew the moment that Irish vampire gave us a picture of a poor, neglected, and abused girl that needed a new home that…

Kimberly (putting on a face of a poor, neglected, but somewhat age inappropriate teen)

Melissa: Poor! Neglected! That girl is a spoiled brat…the only daughter of parents that are loaded!

Darlene: Don’t interrupt your father.

Melissa: He’s not my…

Chris: So while you and your truant friends were being questioned by the police, we agreed to take delivery of our new baby girl, Kimberly, the first minute you moved out of the house.

Melissa (outraged): Then? You knew then that Kim was alright and didn’t tell me? You let us think that we were accomplices in an escapade that could have been fatal.

Darlene: We were going to tell you when we thought you were old enough to handle it.

Melissa (screaming): And WHEN WOULD THAT BE!

Chris: Well, by the sound of it, not for many years.

Darlene and Chris (embracing her and glowing): The daughter we always wished we had!

Melissa (trying to make sense of it all): Ok, I get it. If I can marry a middle aged vampire why can’t my mother and her boyfriend adopt the worse example of a daughter I’ve ever befriended and pretend it’s what they wanted? Let’s end the farce. Ok, I not married to anyone and Kim, its great to see you alive, but you have to go home to Grover Park to begin you life sentence of being grounded.

Chris (sharply): Melissa! That’s your sister you re talking about and she is not going home to those dreadful people.

Melissa: But those ‘dreadful people’, the Whineys, have lawyers and their not afraid to use them remember?

Chris: That name is not allowed in this house, Melissa. Besides, your terrorist husband took care of that.

Darlene: I don’t think we have to worry about those dreadful people breaking up our loving home, Melissa. They are too busy in court.

Melissa (Throwing her arms in the air): What did he do, write a limerick about them.

Chris (laughing): No, he wrote a limerick dishing their lawyers and signed it, ‘the Whineys’. Now they are being sued for deflamation of character.

Darlene and Kimberly (rolling in fits of laughter)

Melissa: But Kimberly isn’t a ‘baby girl’. She was seventeen at the time, but now she’s eighteen…an adult too old to need adoption…what do you say to that?

Darlene, Kim, and Chris (getting suddenly quite)

Chris (almost whispering): We were hoping not to tell you. You didn’t seem to notice and we didn’t want to alarm you…

Melissa: Something else you didn’t tell me.

Darlene (fearfully): Honey, something strange has happened to all the young people in Munsonville. Something that we can only call…. Age inappropriate.

Melissa: Look, Kimberly always dressed like a hooker. That’s just her.

Ed Calkins (off the set and speaking to himself in a forlorn voice): that’s going to get cut I’m afraid. The stuff that follows won’t do any better.

Chris: It’s not just the girls, it’s the guys too. It’s like the age of a youth is not situation specific. You go to any bar and you see the teens drinking after suddenly becoming 21, go to a theater and you see teens by themselves waiting to go to the “r” files after becoming seventeen, but when you think it time for someone to go off on their own and they become minors again. It’s like kids become any age that fits they fancy.

Darlene: It’s crazy. Ann whose should be eighteen is too old for high school, yet too young to get a job or marry out of the house. Tom is sixteen when it comes to driving, but under 12 when it comes to paying adult.

Chris: Yes, it’s strange. All the kids have been affected. Even the twenty somethings are becoming minors again. Getting married and starting a family seemed to help but that didn’t stop Lenny from moving back home and demanding an allowance. He was 24 but now he’s sixteen.

Darlene: Yes. Driving down the freeway you can see the damage. All the fast food places are closing because all the kids become 14 again when the help wanted signs go up.

Chris: Except of course for our baby girl. She works as a waitress in a new place that opened up in an unincorporated area we law enforcement doesn’t have time to worry about ‘vice, It’s fifty miles south of here and called the “Nunnery”. You’d think that nobody would eat there because of how far away it is, but cars are always parked there. But as they advertize its; “Where gentlemen go for the Catholic school girl experience.”

Melissa: And the book flap calls me naïve.

Darlene: So if Lenny suddenly becomes too young to raise his family and moves back in with his mother, Kimberly can be are baby daughter.

Melissa (to herself): can it get any weirder.

(Brian and Snowball enter stage, Brian is wearing a kilt)

Brian (talking in a deep voice and sticking out his belly) I’m a ruthless dictator. Do what I say or I’ll hurt your feelings.

Kimberly: Hey, ya little creep, that my work uniform.

Chris (looking at Brian’s kilt disapprovingly): That’s an awfully short dress to be working in.

Brian (in a deep voice to Kimberly): Whose a little creep?

Darlene: Dear, I’m not comfortable with you having to wear that to wait on tables.

Kimberly: Don’t worry Mom, I don’t have to wear it very long and I don’t have to wait on tables any more. I’m a dancer now.

Ed Calkins (talking to himself off set): I’m about to be censored here. Denise will never put this part up on her website and no body will read this part for a thousand years.

Chris: Kimberly, we can’t let you go out in public in a kilt so short.

 Kimberly: But Daaad, kilts are so expensive; I had to buy my own uniform, so I picked the shortest one.

Brian (still in his deep voice): There once was a sister name Kim

                                                     Who never would go to the gym…

Kimberly: Motheeeer, Brian’s making a limerick about me again.

Darlene: Brian, sweetly, quit being a little creep. Chris, handle our daughter’s dress code will you.

Brian: Aww mom, I wonder if Ed Calkins ever had this problem.

(Chris opens his wallet and gives Kimberly $20)

Darlene (To Chris): That’s you answer! You’re going to give 20 dollars to our daughter in hopes that she dress modestly? (Grabs a few 100s out of the wallet still open in his hand) Kilts are expensive!

Kimberly: Oh thank you mom. (Waving the bills behind her back at Melissa)

Melissa: Wait! You’ve explained nothing. What happen to you Kim the night you disappeared?

Kimberly (Turning to face Melissa): Remember the tour of the Simons estate. When I was looking at an upstairs window, thinking that the mansion was supposed to be deserted, I was a man smoking a pipe.

Melissa: john Simons!

Kimberly: No! It was someone important. I was sure of it. Like, the hair my neck stood up straight. As I looked at him, he was looking back…almost as if he was….

Melissa: Mentally undressing you?

Darlene: Melissa Marchellis!

Kimberly: More like he was mentally undressing me, then taking a pictures and arranging them in a spread. From that moment, every time I looked, I saw that man looking back at me smoking that pipe. I felt drawn to him. It was almost as if I could hear him saying “come to me Kimberly, I’ll make you a star.”

Melissa: Henry Matthews?

Kimberly: No, this guy was no fruit. I was sure it was someone contemporarily. I was sure it was…

Mellissa: Kellen Wechsler!

Kimberly: Hugh Hefner.

Melissa: That’s ridiculous. What would Hugh Hefner be doing in Munsonville and why would you care?

Kimberly: What he was dong was looking for me; to star in his magazine and become is wife. Why I would care is, the guys loaded and he’s 51. With the way he smokes and chases women, how much longer does he have? I made up my mind that I was going to meet him and become Mrs. Kimberly Hefner, queen of the playboy bunnies and richest woman alive.

Ed Calkins (still off set and still talking to himself.): another great story line that won’t be heard for a thousand years.

The entire cast: Do you mind! We’re trying to act!

 Melissa: So you knew right then that you were going in that mansion.

Brian: Mom, Snowball is hungry again.

Darlene: There’s milk in the saucer.

Brian: But Snowball wants real food.

Darlene: Again! Check the refrigerator. I put two pints of O type blood yesterday.

(Brian walks off stage with Snowball)

Kimberly: I was going to wait until the morning, but I kept thinking that he with all that smoke and being so old, he could die any minute. Then I was going to wait until you girls all went to sleep.

Brian (off stage): Mom, the blood bags are empty.

Chris (shaking his head): I’ll go to the blood bank tomorrow. Jeeze, I think I need to rob the place. How many families go through blood as quickly as we do?

Kimberly: But when that didn’t happen, I decided I waited long enough. I never expected you girls to follow and I didn’t want any competition so I dropped my flashlight and took running to the doorway.

(Brian walks in again with Snowball and a pin)

Brian: Snowball can’t wait. Who wants to give?

Kimberly: I was almost to the door when this old guy wearing a dress was walking around looking for his wife Bryony and carrying a Barbie doll. He said she was called something else these days, but he couldn’t remember her name.

Melissa: Now stop right there! It was almost a month later when I first met Ed Calkins. How could he be looking for me?

Kimberly: Ok, I’d have hoped not to explain this but…. You know that vampires can go back it time right? But they don’t go to the past as it was; they go to how it is now.

Melissa (uncomfortably): ah…I’ve heard that.

Kimberly: because if one were to go back in time as it was….one wouldn’t exist or would be as young as they were and wouldn’t know.

Melissa: But they can’t go in the future!

Kimberly: Well as it turns out, there’s three kinds of ‘pasts’: the past as it was, the past as it is now, and the past as Ed Calkins believes it was.

Melissa: Oh come on. You’re not going to tell me he gets away with this too.

Kimberly: and to Ed Calkins…

Melissa: the next 6 million years are all mapped out as if they’ve happen already.

Kimberly: So there was this dress dude who came back for his wife whose name he forgot on a day before he married her. And he’s like ‘I got to find her. I’m going to an ECPD and I need a wife to come.’ And I’m like…’Dude, I gotta meet Hefner before he dies and all his money goes to his daughter.’ And he’s like ‘whose this Hefner guy’ and I’m like “look up at the window man”. So he’s ‘This isn’t good and you should come with me. I’ll take you to a past that hasn’t happened yet.”

Melissa: Why are you talking so strangely? You’re more incoherent then usually.

Kimberly: yeah…that’s the future. Stupidity hasn’t been invented yet.

Darlene: I sure saw that coming.

Chris: What’s en ECPD?

Melissa and Kim: Ed Calkins Day Parade!

Darlene: Did you marry him?

Kimberly: Marry a man I just met? No. He did ask though. I didn’t marry him till a week later.

Chris: I’m glad one of our daughters has good sense!

Melissa (defensively): But she ended up marrying the same man I did!

Darlene: Fine example you’ve proven to be to your baby sister, young lady!

Kimberly:  So I got the part about no sex and no ceremony, but when he told me that no money was going to change hands, I told him, ‘forget it’.

Chris: very wise.

Kimberly: So he’s like ‘Don’t go in there cause that guy isn’t Hugh, it’s this bad guy Kellen Wechsler and I’m like whaaaat? And he’s like ‘just tell me what you want.’ And I’m like ‘I’m running away’ and he’s says I’ll adopt you instead. And I’m like whaaat? And he’s like come to this parade with me and I’ll if you still want to marry this Hugh Hefner guy, I’ll bring you right here one hour earlier than now. If you change your mind I’ll find you a better home’ And I’m like ‘is that Barbie doll for me?” and he’s like ‘it is now, are you coming’ and I’m like ‘a parade in the middle of the night in the future? Duh”

Melissa: He gave you my Barbie doll?

Brian (holding a pin to Chris’s arm): hold still

Chris (not talking his eyes off of Kim):  Ouch!

 (Snowball licks the blood)

Kimberly: So now we’re some time in the future In New Orleans, marching along these crowded streets of cheering festive people and Ed Calkins is waving at everyone, throwing candy at the smiling crowd and loving every minute of it. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that this wasn’t an ECPD, but a Madi Grai that happened to be on the 13^th of Feb and that people weren’t smiling and cheering at him, they were cheering because I took my top off. (Noticing Chris’s frown) …as the law in the future requires of young women.

Chris: those dang Democrats!

Darlene (shrugging): When in Rome…I suppose.

Kimberly; So anyway, I’m in the middle of this parade getting admired and the center of attention and all of the sudden this guy hands me a phone saying its ‘text message to me from Julie’s Wee Gee board.’

Chris: What’s a text message?

Kimberly: Apparently, phones don’t work as well in the future. You can’t just talk; you’ve got to type in what you want to say.

Darlene: The aftermath of WWIII

Chris: At least.  

Melissa: Hey! What did you mean by, “Broke”?

Kimberly: Well I was pretty drunk by then and you guys were asking all these stupid questions. Is anyone there? Duh!  Is the mansion haunted? Double Duh! Is the ghost John Simoms?  In my state, I couldn’t spell Hugh Hefner. And then you ask another stupid question and I just want to tell you ‘I’m Broke. Send money! But you guys hung up before I could spell it all out.

Darlene: No money, you poor dear. Fix it Chris.

Chris (to Kimberly): How old are you feeling?

Kimberly: seventeen and a half?

(Chris gives her fifty)

Kimberly: Oh thanks Daddy, you’re the best! (Waves the bills at Melissa behind her back) So anyway, the parade gets down and its time to go back, but I don’t want to go back and then this Ed Calkins guy decides he doesn’t want to adopt me any more so he tells me. ‘I’ll get you a motel room. Wait there and I’ll find you a home with less restrictive parents.

Melissa: And that’s my Mom and Chris?

Kimberly: So I’m not so sure because that Madi Grau was the best party I’d ever been to. But the next day, no one was around and I had nothing to do. So I turn on the TV set…

Chris: Do that still have TV in the future.

Kimberly: Yea…but they suck

Melissa: Why, not many channels

Kimberly: No. All kinds of channels, just no TV programs. Maybe no one can act in the future, but they must have lots of camera people. So you turn on the set and its all this reality TV were they film people doing things like shopping for dresses, cooking in restaurants, or starving on a desert island. Watching them you get a real idea of how crazy they are all the time. The whole thing made me want to go home to my perverted parents… You know that…

Chris: Kimberly, honey, I know you just came back from the future but in this time we don’t talk about sexual victimization by parents. We find it best just to pretend such things don’t exist.

Kimberly: Really, in the future they put you on TV. You do this Oparh show, where you talk all about it and people cry for you and clap.

Darlene (fearfully): Chris I’m wondering if our bomb shelter is big enough.

Chris: is there anything about the future that’s scary.

Kimberly: Yea! You know, all the boys wear earrings.

Chris: Oh dear…the Democrats take over!

Darlene: Chris, you better dug a deeper shelter, get more guns, and food enough for 12 years instead of two. This WWIII thing is sounding more scarier they we imaged.

Kimberly: Anyway that’s when I find out that my Hugh Hefner hangs on pass 80. Girls still marry him; he keeps them till they get old then dumps them on their twenty fourth birthday. I decide I’m ready to go back.

Brian: Snowball is still hungry. Melissa, I need some of your blood.

Melissa: Don’t stick me with that needle.

Brian: Aww come on Liz, just a little prick.

Kimberly: that reminds me, I have to call my boyfriend.

Melissa: Mom, can you get Brian away from me?

(Knock at the door)

Chris: Brian, why don’t you see who it is?

(Brian leaves the set. Mumbled words come from off set, the Brian returns with two roses and one Barbie doll)

Kimberly (taking a rose): I believe this is mine.

Melissa: How come you get a rose, and I get a doll.

Kimberly: Because I’m special!

Darlene: of course you are darling, but you never told us why you married Ed Calkins.

Melissa: Yeah did he agree to you two bit asking price?

Chris and Darlene (angry): Melissa!

Kimberly: No, but I needed a limerick for court when I got busted for solicitation.

Chris and Darlene (glaring at her)

Kimberly: …when I was…ah selling vacuum cleaners door to door. I didn’t know it was illegal and I really needed the money.

Darlene: poor girl. Chris gives her a few fifty dollar bills

Chris (already opening his wallet): I’m on it.

Darlene: Thanks daddy you’re the best! (Waving the bills behind her back at Melissa)

Melissa: Give me a break. In these modern times you’d be too young for Ed Calkins to marry you.

Kimberly: Yes, you’d be right except I really needed a limerick and couldn’t think of anything that rythmed with ‘Thomas’. I though I was cooked but then I see the man in the dress and something very strange happened. I feel my face started to crinkle up, and all my parts start to droop, and I get a sudden urge to knit and listen to classical music…

Brian: Wow, gross!

Kimberly: Yeah, I know right away that it’s the age inappropriate thing, but I’ve never gotten that old and I’m afraid I might die of old age. But Ed Calkins spots me and says “You don’t look so good now, maybe you’re desperate enough to marry me. I tell him he has to write a limerick first.”

Brian: Uch! How old were you?

Kimberly: Thirty one

 Melissa: Wow, that’s older then mom

Darlene: Drop it Melissa… 

Kimberly: and that’s just what Judge Thomas did! The limerick was so good; he told me I had time off on my next solicitation charge.

Melissa: Ed Calkins didn’t write me a limerick and I married him first!

Chris: Hey, Melissa, maybe both the rose and the doll are yours. I can think of anyone else…

Melissa (looking confused): definitely not, if I’m old enough for a rose, I wouldn’t need a doll (see’s her mother blushing)….Mom?

Kimberly and Brian: Mother!

Chris (shocked and hurt): Darlene, how could you? What about us?

Darlene (getting very angry): Don’t you ‘how could you’ me, Chris Smith! (Pulls out a copy of Bryony) We should have been married before Melissa left for school! I waited, you never asked! I hinted, you ignored my hints. I let you play ‘father’ to my children and let you be the family hero, but did you step up to the plate?

Chris (defensively): I was going to ask, I was just waiting for the right time, like when some terrible fire ruined the family legacy and you’d be more vulnerable thus more likely to say yes! I even bought a ring! I was going to give it to you the day the Mansion burned to the ground thus covering the fact that I’d never done any work because two vampires told me they intended to burn it after they have a huge fight over a beautiful host and one of them killed the other.

Melissa: So all this time you were supposed to be restoring…

Chris (more defensive): What would you do? Slave away at a structure you know is marked for vampire demolition?

Brian: Cool!

Darlene (slightly calmer):  What were you doing, instead of working?

Chris (nervously): playing bridge with vampires.

Darlene: What, you had time for vampires but not for planning a wedding?

Chris (begging): Honey, try to understand. I was going to ask as soon as the fire happened. But then these two guys start getting along. John Simmons starts thinking that if his wife can marry another vampire, maybe its ok for the guy that murdered him to take a bite out of his wife once in awhile and he can put off becoming a normal person. This Henry Mathews start thinking that maybe he doesn’t want to stop living just yet…and they put me off. They tell me, ‘today’s not such a good day to start a fire. Maybe next month. Then Ed Calkins shows up with our beautiful daughter, who has only the clothes on her back and no accessories….

(Kimberly flashes a diamond ring)

Chris: What did you expect me to do?

Kimberly (look underprivileged) Mommy, you’re not mad that I have your diamond ring, are you?

Darlene (eyes soften): No Darling, it looks lovely on you. (Eyes harden as she looks at Chris): But your sleeping on the couch! (Remembering her kids)….like you always do when you stay over, of course.

Melissa (thinking): But wait. Bridge is a four person game! Ed Calkins doesn’t play Bridge.

(Brian approaches Melissa with a needle.)

Chris (looking uncomfortable): We fake it. Anyone wants iron supplement pills.

Kimberly: yummy

Darlene: Do I ever!

(Chris pours pills into a bowl and everyone expect Brian and Snowball starts munching)

Brian: Come on Melissa. Give Snowball some blood. You haven’t given yet…

Melissa (still munching): Come off it, little brother, I won’t have enough blood for John Simmons….

(Every one looks at Melissa. Brian drops the pin. Everyone can hear it.)

Darlene (shocked): So you’re the beautiful host that those two vampires are fighting over. They were biting you right in this house and you never said anything.

Kimberly: John Simmons let you go back in time as his wife in exchange for your blood.

Chris (really angry): Well it’s over now, young lady. You’re time as a vampire’s harlot is over!

Darlene: Chris, that’s my daughter!

Chris: Well she’s a daughter that’s seen vampires for the last time. You are FORBIDEN from EVER letting a vampire bit you again. DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?

Melissa: What can I do? If John Simmons decides to bite me, how can I stop him? He was biting me before I knew it.

Darlene: Dear, you could stop asking for it.

Melissa: But that won’t change anything. If Simmons decides to be a gentleman, Masters could bite me.

Chris: Masters? The school teacher?

Melissa: He’s really Henry Mathews.

Chris and Darlene (pointing at Brian): You’re getting home schooled!

Brian: Boy, thanks a lot, sis.

Kimberly: to be fair, Masters is not a school teacher any more. He never was. The publishers thought it to risqué

(Darlene starts thumbing through her copy of Bryony.)

Chris: if he’s not a teacher, what does he do?

Kimberly: He’s a tattoo and piercing artist. He has a shop right in the mansion.

Chris: Tattoo parlor? There’s not a naval base or dock miles from here, how does he make a living?”

Kimberly: Its really big In the future. I’ve got two tattoos from Masters.

Brian and Chris: Gross!

Kimberly: Not really. (Moving her hair) see this butterfly on my neck?

Darlene: Its beautiful dear.

Melissa: where is the other one, sis?

Kimberly (looking uncomfortable)

Chris: Nice try changing subject, Melissa. But you are not to see those vampires again; I don’t care how far from here you run away!

 

Melissa (straightens herself and act older): Well, I feel a little age inappropriate right now and I’m 23 and old enough to decide who bites me and who doesn’t.

Chris (mock fascination): Really? That’s very interesting. Twenty three are you? We are you sixty four yet?

Melissa: I’m not that old.

Chris: Well that means you’re still GROUNDED!

(Melissa looking hopeful and starting to her er Kimberly’s room)

Darlene: How’s that going to help.

Chris (recovering from his mistake): …From playing with any of your toys

Brian: If Liz can’t play with em, can I play with her Barbie doll collection.

Chris, Melissa, Kimberly, and Darlene: NO!

Brian: Awww, why not?

Kimberly: cause it will make you weirder that you are ready are.

Chris: Boys don’t play with dolls, young man.

Brian: What if I call them ‘action figures’?

(Darlene looks questioningly at Chris)

Chris (pulls out a book ‘How to Raise a Young Republican’): Yeah…its all right if you use the figures to in act some kind of manly activity such as war.

Brian: What about the French Revolution?

Chris: That will work, sport.

Brian (grabbing a doll and speaking in a high voice): I’m Maria Antoinette. Let them eat cake.

Melissa: How does Brian know so much about the French Revolution?

Chris: I could make him a toy guillotine.

Darlene: Go ahead Chris. That will get you off stage, thus leaving a female perspective on an otherwise male bias society that women allow to give men the impression that they are in charge.

Brian (to his Barbie…er action figures): all of you harlots are going to the guilotine.

Chris (calling from off stage): you’re not going to say anything you wouldn’t say if I was there are you?

Darlene (calling out): No Dear. (To Kimberly and Melissa) I don’t know what got in to him. I’ve never seen him so angry before.

Kimberly: Maybe he’s jealous of Melissa, getting to live the high life in a time with wealth was so in fashion.

Darlene: I don’t think so dear. It can be hard to envy Melissa with how naïve she is at times.

Melissa (very upset):

Kimberly: well, I don’t envy Liz. Does she think she’s the only doing a thing with a vampire. How do you think I paid for those tattoos?

Melissa (clearly unhappy):

Kimberly: That’s right, Liz. Mathews is biting me. He bit you once. He bites me almost every night. And to inspire him, I wear this to bed (taking off her jacket to reveal a hot pink t shirt with “Bite Me” in bold print.) What do you think of that?

Darlene: Very sexy Kim…a little forward, but very sexy

Melissa (trying to upset Kimberly in retaliation): Kim, does it bother you that our mother is a sexual woman.

Kimberly: Melissa, that’s just gross. Women that old don’t think of such things. Besides our mom is too vanilla

Melissa: What does ice cream have to do with this?

Darlene (hurt): You realize I’m in a relationship with Chris, right?

Kimberly (laughing): Yea, he cooks for you every night. (Swishing her wrist)

Darlene: That’s because he’s a liberated man. I am sleeping with him, you know!

Melissa: Mother!

Kimberly: Sure you are. He’s as gay as a blade.

Melissa: He is not!

Kimberly: Let me wise you up, little girl. A man doesn’t give you a ring like this (flashing it) without expecting sex, unless he’s gay. Mom’s too straight laced to know any better and you’re naïve. Read the book flap.

Melissa: but he’s your father!

Darlene (whispering to Melissa): don’t go there. See why we adopted her.

Kimberly: and what father buys his daughter a diamond ring unless his gay or doing her.

Melissa (whispering back): I’m beginning to, but this part of the play won’t be acted for a thousand years.

Darlene: But I go to bed with him every night! I’m not married to him and I’m sleeping with him.

Kimberly: Yea? When is the last time you went to bed with him…?

Darlene: Last night!

Kimberly: …and didn’t sleep?

Darlene:

Melissa: Mom?

Brian (tying the ‘action figures’ wrists behind their backs with rubber bands and speaking falsetto): Unhand me you vile beast!

Darlene: Ed Calkins is biting me!

Kimberly (shaking her head in denial): No…no I can’t handle that.

Darlene (looking dreamy): Its true! I go back in time to be the Celtic Queen Boudicca. I get to sleep with kings, ride in a chariot, and hack down Roman soldiers!

Kimberly: this can’t be. Melissa, fit this.

Melissa: maybe she just thinks he’s biting her. The guy makes ever one crazy.

Darlene: and in my other life, I got two real daughters how know how to handle a man…

Kimberly and Melissa: Mother!

Darlene: on the battle field or in bed and men in that time don’t fall asleep on you!

Kimberly: Too much information.

Melissa (calling off stage): Censors? Can we get some black ink over here?

(Voice for off set): handle it, we just do the lighting!

Melissa: Wait a minute. Ed Calkins might marry at the drop of a hat, but he only bites armed police women.

Darlene (smiles broadly and reaches in her purse while her daughters look horrified. She puts out hand cuffs, then a police cap, a riot baton, then a pistol, and finally a toy store police badge. Then she speaks impishly twirling the baton): who do you think wrote him that ticket! Now who’s jealous?

Kimberly: Oh no!

Melissa: Just because she acts like a police women doesn’t mean Ed Calkins bites her?

Darlene: Oh yea? Then why would he buy me this (Takes of her overcoat revealing a green t shirt with larger print “I’ve Been Bitten By Ed Calkins/ Steward of Tara/ Ruthless Dictator” then turns her back to reveal “Bryony/ It’s all about me”

Kimberly: I can’t handle this.

Brian (falsetto): Commoners! You can’t handle the true! (In a deep voice pounding the floor with his fist): Guilty! Off with their harlot heads.

Darlene: You can keep the diamond ring dear, I’ll take my chariot any day.

Kimberly: Well, I’m not jealous because I’m not just being bitten by Mathews; I’m also getting done by Simmons

Darlene: You son of a…! That’s my vampire, my mansion, my servants, my garden, and I’m the only Bryony!

Brian (Calling of stage.) Hurry up with the guillotine, Chris. The audience is impatient to understand the title of this thing

Kimberly (mocking): Such a righteous girl! You think I get the same as you. I’m not John Simmons’ wife, I’m his madam! That’s right! All those women he cheats on you with; I supply them. Do you think all the money he makes only provides for a single mansion far off in the country? I own whole islands for the money I make on your husbands hunger. What was he supposed to do when you went away, huh? Actual he’s glad you’re gone becomes he doesn’t have to hid seeing me.

Melissa (enraged, putting out a pistol, and pushing it against Kim’s forehead.): You little slut!

Brian (pulling a wagon and roughly tossing the ‘action figures’ on it): (falsetto): This is my kingdom (deep voice) Shut up you little slut, Time for the chopping block

 Darlene (very loud): Children! Enough! What did I tell you about guns? Huh?

Kimberly (sheepishly): That they don’t kill people.

Melissa (hanging her head and dropping her hand holding the pistol): That guns don’t kill people, jealous teenagers kill people.

Darlene: And how do we stop teenagers from killing people.

Kimberly: We bring back the death penalty?

Darlene: And?

 

Melissa: We give everyone a gun.

Darlene (handing Kimberly an assault riffle.): There you go sweetheart.

Melissa: Oh brother.

Darlene: There, see how it works.

(Kimberly sprays a round and Melissa drives for cover.)

Darlene: Kimberly! Don’t you know better? Squeeze the trigger, don’t pull it.

Kimberly: Yes mother. (Continues firing while Melissa returns fire from behind the couch.)

Brian (falsetto): My courage will not fail so close to my troubles end! (Deep voice): Shut up slut, its time to lose your head! Ouch! You stepped on my toe!

Melissa (still firing): How did he learn so much about Maria Antoinette?

Chris (still off stage): I’ve got it. It should be just the right toy for chopping of action figure heads.

Kimberly: Daddy, Liz is shooting at me!

Chris (Enters the stage and gives Brian the toy gulitone. He’s wear a hot pink shirt that say “Bite Me” just like Kimberly): YOU LITTLE SLUT!

(Chris pull out pistol and starts shooting, Darlene does the same with the pistol in her purse.)

Brian (puts action figure in guillotine): Take that you little slut! (Pulls lever and blade comes down. Action figure hear rolls across floor)

Chris: At Kimberly, who he’s shooting at): You think I’m going to spend my whole life fixing broke doors and windows. Oscar Wild was teaching me how to act. I was to be the first Rock Hudson!

Darlene (lights a flare and waves it around): STOP THIS! LOOK AT US!

(Guns fall silent)

Darlene: Don’t you see what’s happening here? We’re letting the vampires not only take our blood, but our home, our family, our future, and our very lives. Look at us fighting over them. They should be fighting over us. We’ve become so focused on the imaginary lives they bring us to, that Melissa drops out of college, Kim settles for being a stripper, I sleep with a man that won’t marry me, and Chris doesn’t restore the Mansion he’s paid to restore. And why would the vampires do anything differently when we’re willingly providing them with all the blood they could ever want?

(Chris, Kimberly, and Melissa think while another action figure’s head rolls on the floor)

Kimberly: So we should put the guns away and stop trying to kill each other?

Darlene: That would be a start.

Chris: and then?

Darlene: We all give blood just the way we’ve been doing it. I’m burning Camulodunum down to its foundation tomorrow.

Kimberly (To Melissa as she puts her arm around her and walks towards the room): What do you say to my giving Mathews blood tonight and you can feed Simmons?

 Melissa: What about Chris?

Kimberly: Hell, they’ll both bite him later (swishing her wrists) what do you expect from vampires that wear ruffles shirts?

Brian (finished beheading the last action figure): Mom, Snowball is still hungry, can we go to Julies were I can watch Snowball chase her around?

Chris (puts his arm around Darlene): What about the restraining order?

Darlene: I’m taking on the whole Roman legions, Chris. Do you think I care? (To Brian): Do what you want Honey, Chris and I are going to bed.

(Brian and Snowball are left alone on the stage. Snowball smiles revealing fangs.)