Rough Sleep – a play by Alysse Aallyn

JAZZ
Time to forgive yourself.

CHASE
Oh, that’ll be easy. Walk in the park.

JAZZ
I’m still here.

CHASE
You’re scared to leave because Bex is out there.

JAZZ
That’s not it. I’m here because I want to be. I can handle Bex. His pride is hurt but he’s basically lazy. I don’t matter that much to him. He spent all our time together trying to convince me I was worthless and making him look bad.

CHASE
Sounds like my dad. Except I really was all he had. His only son.

JAZZ
You’re not responsible for him. Bex wanted me to believe that I was stuck with him, but he wasn’t stuck with me, that I owed him a debt that kept mysteriously increasing.

CHASE
Ouch. I need a shower. Want to come?

JAZZ
Oh, no you don’t! We’re not finished yet! Why come after Corso? Why pick this college?

CHASE
You really want me to roll in it, don’t you? Can’t you just be a good soulmate and fill in the blanks?

JAZZ
Total honesty. Full disclosure. Tell each other everything, don’t you agree?

CHASE
Maybe.

JAZZ
So when Bex bothers me you want me keeping it secret?

CHASE
Hell no! Point taken.
(forcing himself to reminisce)
I just couldn’t get it out of my mind that nothing bad happened to Corso. No jail time! No publicity. No fines even. They made him promise not to work with children, but he’d graduated to teenagers by that time anyway. I gradually realized the money was to control me, so I wouldn’t tell the police. Blood money. What a bad deal that was. He wasn’t controlled! Rewarded, if anything. I might as well have been protecting him. When I looked him up – there he is running “perceptual studies” at a prestigious college! That sound like “punishment” to you?

JAZZ
That would be punishment for me, but I get what you mean.

CHASE
So I decided to kill him. It’s the only way. I mean, Corso’s a monster, right? And he’s only getting worse. I grew up, I bulked up, I legally changed my name, I disguised myself every way I could think of. I mean, he hadn’t seen me since I was a squeaky-voiced platinum haired tot of thirteen.

JAZZ
But let me guess. He recognized you right away.

CHASE
He just assumed I couldn’t live without him. I was there to bring him souls!

JAZZ
You confronted him?

CHASE
He says the university knows all about his “spot of bother.” There’s no official record. To hear him tell it, we were co-victims!

JAZZ
Co-victims!

CHASE
Yeah. Of religion. Of repression. Of the fifties, of his parents – you name it. But he’s fine now. Happily married, to a nice older lady who just happens to be rich! He’s “freed” himself, see, from his horrible past and he just wants to liberate everybody else.

JAZZ
What a bastard.

CHASE
So either I get the goods on him or I kill him. There aren’t other options. If that makes me a monster, then, that’s what I’ll be.

JAZZ
Hard luck on me, having a monster for a soulmate. What did I do to deserve this?

CHASE
Clearly you attract monsters.

JAZZ
You sell us both short. If you wanted to be a monster, you would be one already. You’ve been here four years!

CHASE
I got distracted. College is interesting – wrestling, debate club, research, biofeedback… Suddenly I found myself in a much bigger world. But whatever avenue I went down… he was always there ahead of me. Like, he’s the creator of everything and I’m just his mutant, the cuckoo on his clock. I want a world without Corso, a universe to call my own, but… he’s polluted everything.

JAZZ
So he still holds you hostage.

CHASE
He’s inside me. He’s like, taken over the inside of me. Robbed me of my self. I always seem to know exactly what he’ll do, or say, so in some sick way it’s me doing it. There’s no “me” any more, as long as he’s alive. My only hope is to off him.

JAZZ
That’s stinking thinking. If you kill him, he still wins. You’d be linked to him forever. I refuse to lose a perfectly good soulmate. You’re nothing like Corso. He’s soulless and that’s why he collects souls. You’re real. Without a self, how could you have a soulmate? Knowing him just makes him easier to trap. If we’ve learned anything, it is that he’s up to no good. He’s a predator- parasite. We’ve got to keep that straight. Trust?

CHASE
If only I could believe in souls. I don’t feel indestructible. I’m staying alive by the force of my resistance.

JAZZ
You woke me.

CHASE
That’s what we have in common. You resisted Bex.

JAZZ
I’ll say! He worked so hard to keep me down. We recognized each other. We’re the same.
(passionately kiss)

CHASE
It’s only our worlds that keep changing.

JAZZ
It’s love.

CHASE
And we keep falling into it. “Falling” seems more than a metaphor.

JAZZ
If we’re in the middle of something extraordinary, we’ve got to stop looking with ordinary eyes.

CHASE
But everything’s corpses. Corso threatens life itself.

JAZZ
Murderers do tend to round up the refugees.

CHASE
He’s poisoning us. The question is whether it’s terminal. I wish I knew what was in that stuff he gave us.

JAZZ
Who cares what he gave us? He wants you to think he’s some scientific mastermind wielding a secret weapon. We’re the ones with the secret weapon.

CHASE
Some amnesiac, like scopolamine or propanolol. Without memory, he assumes we lose identity. But stress-based experiences are processed like dreams – we keep having flashbacks.

JAZZ
And flash-forwards. But we all formed new memories – some of them pretty crazy I admit – but others right on target. Look at Soliz falling through my window, Zane at the toxic dump, Koo with her body-bags. Something happened to us and he doesn’t want us to find out what. Bex wants me thinking he’s all powerful and everywhere so I’ll feel weak and helpless and give up, and Corso’s exactly the same. You must have gotten close –that’s why he fired you.

CHASE
He didn’t reckon with us happening.

JAZZ
We have a superpower!

CHASE
I’m scared the universe is setting us up, just to knock us back down.

JAZZ
But the universe loves creators, and lovers are the ultimate creators.

CHASE
Creation takes so long and destruction lasts forever.

JAZZ
Doesn’t the green growth keep coming up?

CHASE
Death is inevitable. It’s life that’s the surprise. In wrestling your attacker takes himself down. We need to find Corso’s weak spot –

JAZZ
He’s not immortal, is he?

CHASE
God, I hope not.

JAZZ
I mean, if he keeps swelling up with everybody else’s souls he’s going to explode. The universe will take care of Corso.