Sam Pink - The Self-Esteem Holocaust Comes Home

THE MAN WITH THE RIPPED FACE: [rubbing face slowly] It feels like the red is on my face. Are you sure it’s not on me? Please take it off [louder] Just take it off me now. Take it off and let’s drive away. Just, I am so tired and I want to be tucked in. Take the red off my face [screams] Please.

The driver turns on the headlights. A deer walks through the bushes and stands in front of the car. It stands on its hindlegs. All of its skin is gone. The deer is just muscle. And up the abdomen runs a long laceration — no organs inside. Red light drapes the deer in pulses. All stare. Everything quiet.

THE DRIVER: [looking at his hands on the steering wheel, red] Answer me. Come on. Did you steal the gum? Be honest with me. Don’t let sixty-eight cents divide us. Tell me, did you steal it?

The man with the ripped face nods. The deer is still facing them, unmoving. Then it returns to the woods, walking backwards with slow precision.

THE DRIVER: Alright [nodding] I appreciate the honesty. Thank you.

They pull back onto the road. The forest preserve goes miles wide on all ends, soundless. Slow red flashes.

THE DRIVER: I don’t know why, but I don’t listen to the radio anymore [firmly] I just can’t do it [looks in rearview]

THE MAN FROM THE LIGHTLESSNESS IN THE BACKSEAT: [coming into view in red flashes] Me neither. When I hear commercials or really shitty songs I feel like all my nerve endings are becoming bruised and my testicles are withering [seems to forget conversation] I’m always worried that other people are trying to kill me. But I know that everyone else was put on the earth to become my own. Not for me to be theirs. I believe there are little pieces of myself everywhere.

THE DRIVER: Yeah?

THE MAN FROM THE LIGHTLESSNESS IN THE BACKSEAT: Yeah, and I have to cancel every piece I find, so I become smaller and smaller. Always incomplete.

THE MAN WITH THE RIPPED FACE: [quietly] And do you want to be too small to see? I don’t understand [coughs, moans]

THE MAN FROM THE LIGHTLESSNESS IN THE BACKSEAT: I don’t. I definitely don’t. I never want to fully cancel-out. I want to continue getting smaller, never actually ending. Otherwise I’d have nothing to do. I’m here to kill everything. Never actually ending.

The man with the ripped face coughs and lets his head rest against the fogged window. He winces as the coughing undoes the formative scabs along the inside of his mouth, all the way to his ear. There is quiet. And they drive on, little bumps as they go deeper along the gravel road.

THE DRIVER: [staring forward] Humans and homes and trees all look the same to me.

THE MAN WITH THE RIPPED FACE: [coughing] My fucking face. Fuck. Can you two still see me? [decidedly] That’s it. I’m dead. Can either of you see me? Just tell me. Talk to me please. Tell me please [leans forward, rests forehead on the dash] Fuck can we just keep talking. I don’t want to hear the quiet. I believe that other people are the most important thing you can see, or hear. I do.

Blood taps between his legs into the wet floormat. He coughs. He groans after each cough. The driver looks over and sees the bottom row of teeth through the wound, lit green by the light of the dash clock.

THE DRIVER: No one’s listening to you [alternating between the road and the teeth] Hey, hey now there is green light on your teeth. Does that hurt? The green ghosts in your mouth? You are green and red. You are my Christmas-friend. Does it hurt to be Christmas? You’re my friend for always and always [quietly] A friend is important when you realize how terrible everything is without someone to talk to constantly. You are my Christmas gift. Friend, you are a gift.

THE MAN WITH THE RIPPED FACE: [looking up] I am the blood that dripped from the Virgin when she was shaking from birthing a waste. Cattle gives birth then sleeps in the barn. Merry Christmas.

The driver laughs. They all laugh. The driver puts his fingers into the passenger’s ripped face and touches the bloody teeth. He keeps laughing.

THE MAN FROM THE LIGHTLESSNESS IN THE BACKSEAT: [taps both their headrests] I think we all just learned together.

THE DRIVER: Let us all be scared in quiet now.

Quiet and cold air. They drive on. Somewhere deep in the forest preserve, the driver pulls over again. There is a speed limit sign, a gravel shoulder, and a portable toilet on the side of the road. Next to the car, a big metal garbage can. Everything becomes visible in red flashes, timed.

THE DRIVER: [both hands on steering wheel] Oh wait. Forgot one. I have another belief. It is that all the humans on earth are here to hold the earth in place. Otherwise the earth would float up to the ceiling of space where there is no air and no friendship.

THE MAN WITH THE RIPPED FACE: Can we fix my face now? [resting his forehead on the dashboard, breathing slow] I’ve been a good boy. I will sit and be a good boy while you clean me. But you have to promise to clean me [looking up, trying to smile] If I leave the earth there is one less person to hold it here. Aren’t you scared of the ceiling of space? It is where no one should be.

The driver exits the car and the others follow. The man with the ripped face sits on the hood while the other two wipe his face clean with a diaper they find in the garbage can. And they hold out their lighters in front of them to make sure they do the job complete. Bleeding soaks the diaper.

THE DRIVER: [throwing the bloody-diaper into the darkness] Hold on, I have to piss.

He walks out of sight, into some bushes.

THE MAN WITH THE RIPPED FACE: [leaning against the car] Do I still look pretty though? Please tell me. What are your thoughts on my prettiness? [coughs, spits — holding his face]

THE MAN FROM THE LIGHTLESSNESS IN THE BACKSEAT: You have never looked more beautiful. I would purchase a poster with your face on it and I would write to my diary how cute you are every night if that were a possibility.

THE MAN WITH THE RIPPED FACE: [sullenly] That is not a possibility. I don’t remember having my photograph taken to then be made into a poster. But, I still accept your apology.

THE MAN FROM THE LIGHTLESSNESS IN THE BACKSEAT: I didn’t apologize for anything you motherfucker.

A sound from the bushes. The driver returns.

THE DRIVER: [breathing clouds] I feel better now. Much better. Now there is no more filth inside my body. The filth tries to fill my body and I try to fill the earth. You two mean very much to me. And I appreciate it.

Then the driver slams the man with the ripped face against the car by the throat, pressing hard, strangling. The man from the lightlessness follows and they press their four hands in hard, strangling. The flaps from the ripped and screaming face bleed onto their hands as they strangle, teeth rows visible through the tearing.

THE DRIVER: [turning, still strangling] I can’t understand him. He’s speaking blood. I am feeling an emotion and I don’t know what it is [motions with head] Hey, use your thumbs more.

THE MAN FROM THE LIGHTLESSNESS IN THE BACKSEAT: [turning and wincing] My fingers kind of hurt. Maybe that’s the emotion.

THE DRIVER: Yeah, mine do too. Let’s stop.

THE MAN FROM THE LIGHTLESSNESS IN THE BACKSEAT: You go first. I’m more of a follower.

They take their hands off and the body falls. The driver holds up his bloody fingers, then splays them.

THE DRIVER: Do my nails look nice? Like a pretty girl at prom?

THE MAN FROM THE LIGHTLESSNESS IN THE BACKSEAT: Yes [kicking gravel shyly] They do. Do you want to dance with me?

They laugh. The man from the lightlessness in the backseat lifts the body onto the window’s track by the hair, neck down. The driver gets into the car.

THE DRIVER: Hmm. He is maybe dead or maybe almost there [pauses, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel] He was one of God’s choices. He will make a nice tree and I will hang a wreath on him.