A monologue; one of a Grand Guignol style production ‘Cabaret of Confessions’

Imagine this… to begin… Arson. Murder. Destruction. A child. Alone.
The empty shell of her home reflected in the tears in her eyes, we watch as they fall. The smell, the dry smell of the cinders as they dissolve into ash around her. Choking her… as she crouches. Half lit by the remaining flames. Flickering.
She reaches to her mother. Her body barely visible through the half-lit smoke. Motionless. The child fumbles forwards, hugging the corpse. Rocking. Sobbing. Her sister’s body lies near by, her father is no where to be seen.
Suddenly a near by mirror smashes in the heat… sending glass flying towards her. She screams in pain. We see her scream in pain… but her screams are silenced… drowned even, by the remaining flames as they destroy what is left.

Throughout, the girl’s face is hidden by shadows, but now, as she cradles her mother’s cold dead body the grossness of her own misfortune is highlighted. She is deeply wounded. Wounded by the flames and the glass. Seeping blood, dripping. The richness of the red corrupting her usually pale complexion. Her eyes sparkle…but not with life. They are simply lit by the flames which destroyed her.

The years pass, she finds her prey and her oppressor. After years of hunting the haunted visions and flashes in her mind’s eye. She finds him. And then, imagine this; a man. Unaware of his fate. Consumed and contented with the knowledge he ‘got away with it’ — and many more besides. This man is found by that girl. She, that girl; now this woman.

Posing as a reporter she lures him back to where it all began. She strikes like a bullet out of the darkness sending him tumbling forwards. The room thick; the dust, smoke like. Beams of light fighting to break through. All they illuminate is a free standing mirror and a chair.
She tethers his limbs tightly; the rope cuts him deeply. She turns to the mirror. The mirror is used to show both her reactions and the reactions of her victim. During the dialogue that follows he refuses to look at her, focussing on the floor or the mirror, avoiding her at all costs.
“Look at me! Look! Are you happy with this monster you have created?! Happy? Look at me! Look what you’ve don’t to me!” she lifts the veil and leans into him…her disfigurement pulsing with anger. She screams satanically turning wildly resulting with her colliding her hand with the mirror, Blood seeps from her hand and into the cracks in the mirror as if the cracks are veins. The blood illuminated by the vibrancy and contrast to the duly lit surroundings as it drips into a crimson pool on the floor. Slowly and purposefully she lifts her hand and curls her fingers around the nearest loose shard of glass.
She turns on him. Her pushes her patience. His silence is deafening to her.
“You have ruined me!”
He laughs.
All she can now see is a flash back. The flames high up. Things falling, crashing. Her mother’s body. Motionless. Her sister. She can hear is laughter. He laughs at her. He laughs!
She strikes out as if at the memory. And again. And again. And again. Right then left. Right then left. Then stops. She pulls out the shard of mirror from his chest. Taking great delight in watching the blood boil out of his chest. She kneels on the floor. Letting her head and hands go limp. Blood dripping down her face and off her hands. Both his blood and hers. Her pool of blood matches his. They are connected through the blood. It is the only way they are connected. Her eyes are dead as she lifts her head, smiling with sly glee as she watches him gasp for his last few pathetic breaths. Blood bubbling at the corners of his mouth. Gliding down his chin, running down his neck to meet the floor. Then…

Silence.

(*originally co-written at university but all additional author’s paragraphs were removed for this edit and re-write for the cabaret monologue)

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