Written by Lois Bea Thomas
Illustrated by Anonymous
Partly inspired by a Miranda July short story of the same name.
Transitions are indicated with hyphens but will be facilitated by music and lighting.
Women enter the stage from stage left; she taps the button on the security alarm and holds. She waits for a moment and then seats herself across the stage at a desk covered by paper, with a framed picture of the pope. A moment passes as she orders her thoughts, when the sound of a key in the lock becomes audible, another person enters through the door but does not press the button on the security alarm:
Scene 1:
The play begins with the sound of wind rattling against windows and the slamming of doors. The stage is washed with a blue light. Esme is alone on stage, panicking and tapping the buttons on a security system on stage right whilst muttering to herself. The security system will be facilitated by a small box, which makes noises when touched. There is a ghost in the flat, it wants her to leave.
The flat is in a rococo parisian style, with a suit of armour and two delicate, carved wooden chairs around a table on stage left.
Esme: This is stupid
Turning away from the security systems, Esme goes to stage left to a table with a single chair, she collects some papers, and puts up a photo that has fallen over.
There is no such thing as ghosts
A door slams, Esme yelps
I’m sorry! She shouts in apology, with indignance
Now turning to the audience, speaking freely to them in a way she cannot to others, whilst delivering the monologue, Esme is sure that someone is watching her.
(faster pace, struggling for words)
I’m haunted, I’m being haunted. Every time it’s here, it feels like déjà vu, or like when you walk into a familiar smell and it’s disorienting, because you can’t remember what you’re remembering. It’s more than nostalgia. It’s concrete. I hear it, I’m always alone, and when it’s over, I am left with a warmth like fear. But also, like love. Like I’ve wet myself.
I constantly wonder if I’ve made it up, as a punishment. For living in such a nice flat. For not having to pay for it. But it’s not insane to believe in things you can’t see. I know there’s a ghost, whether I made it up or not, it’s here.
(as the monologue closes, Esme begins to tidy the loose sheets of paper from the floor, kneeling by the table stage left)
Scene 2:
There is a knock off stage, the lights turn to a daylight wash, another person enters through stage right but does not press the button on the security alarm:
Sam: Oh Yes, Hiya!
Esme: Sam, oh wait Sam can you press —
Security alarm starts to blare, filling the stage with piercing sirens.
Esme: SAM!
Sam: Oh fuck! HOW DO I TURN IT OFF?!
Esme: JUST PRESS THE BUTTON WITH THE HOUSE ON IT
There is an attempt
Sam: WHAT?
Esme: THE HOUSE, THE HOUSE (gestures a roof over her head)
Sam: IT’S NOT WORKING
Esme: HOLD IT DOWN (slowly maneuvering herself off the floor)
Sam: I AM (starts punching the security alarm)
Esme: STOP IT!
Coming over, pushing Sam out of the way, and holding down the button
Sam and Esme eye up each other, Esme is visibly put out, Sam looks sheepish for a moment
Sam: HOW ARE YOU?
Esme: JUST WAIT I CANT HEAR YOU
Sam: (mouthing) How are you?
Esme: WAIT
Sam wait’s then begins to laugh.
Sam: (laughing) I LOVE THIS SONG!
Begins to dance a jaggedy, techno esque dance in time with the pulses of the siren
Esme: WHAT?!?
Sam: I LOVE THIS SONG! (Dancing still, Esme begins to smile, Sam takes her hands trying to get her to dance, unsuccessfully but removes esmes hand from button)
Alarm cuts off mid dance move, Sam relaxes, goes to speak – Alarm starts back on – for a comedy beat – and then stops when esme hits the security alarm, hard.
Sam: thank fuck
Esme: quite the entrance
Sam: sorry, sorry, I know you told me. (Sam wraps her arms around Esme)I thought you were joking when you said you’d installed a security system.
Esme: that would be an odd joke
Sam: (enjoying hug) hmmm
Esme: You never read my text messages
Sam: that’s because I can’t read at all, aren’t security systems for people with things worth stealing?
Esme: (releasing herself from hug) I’m not worried about the robber, I’m just trying to be safe
Sam: (laughing at Esme’s turn of phrase) the robber? What about the killer?
Esme: and by the way there is a lot of stuff worth stealing in this flat
Sam: too true, you live in the poshest place I’ve ever seen, (Taking in the room) no one is coming to get you, it’s a very safe area, though you could maybe tone down the gold of it all.
Esme: I’m not worried about someone getting in
Sam: you’re worried about someone getting out?!
Esme: yes. No. Stop it! (Esme turns her attention back to the papers on the floor.)
Sam: but it’s just you in the flat es ( following Esme to the table)
Esme: I’m not so sure/
Sam: /is that the pope?
Sam picks up a framed picture of the pope from the table, and looks at it a moment, before turning to show it to the audience.Meanwhile Esme leaves stage left, looping back to exit stage right through the door. As the monologue progresses, Esme enters through the door amongst the audiences and approaches the stage.
The lights change to Sam’s colour, orange
Sam: I’m horny, which is frustrating because me being horny is Esme’s least favourite thing about me. Sometimes she looks at me like I’m a zoo animal. Like when we used to go dancing
Dance demonstration, making friends
I’d love to sidle up to people, get in there, feel the warmth and when I look over, Esme pulls one of these
Dance demonstration, peering, judging by leaning forward, then snapping back to the slow, awkward, horrific sidestep
All the energy I used to put into being good at stuff now just goes into being horny. I’m as poor as ever and I’m gagging at the bit. Which is a ridiculous combination because it’s a very poor thing to feel. To need something like that, or to have to want something before getting it. Esme doesn’t do that.
She could never live so precariously, because she’s rich, and rich people have a complete incapacity to live in the present.
They only talk about what’s happened or what is just about to happen
“And what school were you at? Oh really, Westminster, is really very good, my friend Mimi went there, oh yes, she’s just signed her contract ahuh ahuh” (sharp inhale)
Having rich friends makes me horny, I do think about other things, but I can’t talk about anything else, having a body is like the only thing me and Esme have in common.
In an effort to shake off the sadness I talk this stuff into reality, we get on, she tells me things, confesses stuff, like
Scene 3: Lights shift to a warm pink colour, signifying that this is a memory. Esme has reached the front of the stage, or by the stairs, leaning, relaxed.
Sam picks up chair, moves to stage right.
Sam: how did you lose your virginity?
Esme: oh, it’s weird
Sam: It can’t be that weird, I’ve heard it all
Esme: well
Sam: Yes?
Esme: When I was like 12 or 13, I got my first period
Sam: so far so normal
Esme: yeah, well, I wasn’t ready, I don’t know why but I really hated pads, they made me feel heavy, like I was wearing a nappy again, so mummy told me to start using tampons which would have been great, except I couldn’t fit them in
Sam: oh la la
Esme: something about my hymen being too thick
Sam: oh no
Esme: So, my mum took me to the doctor, and they said that my hymen was too thick –
Sam: no
Esme: and that it needed to be removed, surgically
Sam: no
Esme: so I guess, I lost my virginity then, in the strict sense, to that doctor, when she surgically removed my hymen
Sam: Fantastic!
Esme: medically deflowered.
Sam: I suppose that’s why you’re a lesbian
Esme: I’m not sure that’s how it works
Esme: I know a girl who broke hers whilst horse riding, and when that horse died, she had a spontaneous orgasm.
Sam: I cannot do anything with anecdotes about horse riding
Esme: Now that’s classist
Sam: I don’t think that counts as losing your virginity
Sam: I think I broke my hymen with a makeup brush, It didn’t hurt though so maybe I never had one.
Esme: so do you think that one day you’ll have a spontaneous orgasm at a Sephora?
Sam: no, maybe a Boots but not a Sephora. Did they let you keep it?
Esme: what?
Sam: the hymen?
Esme: ew! No!
Sam: back to the audience as Esme returns to her position by the table After leaving home, I lost most of my poorer mates, they misunderstood my feeling that there must be a better life than on the estate, as me thinking I was better than them, and I don’t and I’m not.
Scene 4: Lights change back to the natural wash of the opening scene. Sam stands up again, with the pope photo in hand, Esme stays seated.
Sam: Esme, is this the pope?
Esme: yes, that is the pope
Sam: is that a suit of armour?
Esme: yes, that is a suit of armour
Sam: I think I had a nightmare in a place like this
Esme: well, since I live here for free, I am not making many complaints about her interior design choices
Sam: I wish I had a dead aunt
Esme: You do have a dead aunt
Sam: She’s no good, she was broke
Esme: christ Sam, how’s work?
Sam: I hate it and I wish I would die
Esme: I remember you saying that you loved it and wished you would live
Sam: true, actually something very exciting is happening at the pub, they’re building a pizza oven in the —
Creaking floorboards, eerie wind sound, Sam sits back down in fright
Sam: What was that?
Esme: uh
Sam: that’s one mean draft. Does that happen often?
Esme: yes
Sam: but we’re in a block of flats
Esme: it happens when something pisses her off
Sam: her?
Esme: the ghost
Sam: the ghost. why would my pub building a pizza oven piss the ghost off?
Esme: It’s not always as clear as that, I think she reacts to energies, you have an intense energy, she was very conservative.
Sam: (concerned) Esme?
Esme: lighting changes blue, Esme stands up
Sam can hear it. Though, I might have made her up too, Sam doesn’t feel real, but Sam is real, she knows me and besides Sam’s too strange to come from my head. Drawing her chair to the front of the stage She’s always talking, saying things that distract me, sweet things, things like:
Lights change to pink, this time esme is standing and Sam stays sat.
Sam: you know the other day I saw this drawing of a white cat that had been poured into a glass and the kid who drew it called it “meowlk”
Esme: or like
Sam: isn’t the name Emerald Fennel just two shades of green?
Esme: Or like, (To Sam) Sam, you remember that girl, Zoe, we went to uni with, the one who just won that award
Sam: yes, she was cool, I liked her book about Nun Suicide, a bit weird but good
Esme: I think she’s awful
Sam: Well yeah, she once referred to me as “rags to riches” when we got the same grade, but I thought she was okay, misunderstood
Esme: I think she had a little bit of evil in her
Sam: Oh yeah?
Esme: like a bit of green glass lodged in her heart
Sam: oh god! Bit harsh es
Esme: no, it’s a relief really, knowing that being awful wasn’t her fault, she just had evil in her, it must happen all the time.
Sam: you remind me of her a bit you know, not the evil part, you’re both writers
Esme: you’re just saying that because we have similar hair
Sam: No! it’s the talent
Esme: I’m not like her, I don’t work that hard
Sam: you do sometimes
Esme: yeah, I do sometimes
Sam: sometimes working hard leads to nothing
Esme: I already have “nothing”
Sam: and me?
They hold eye contact, esme speaks out whilst keeping eye contact whilst delivering the first few lines
Esme: We met soon after I first moved here, whilst working at the bookshop on campus. Sam had charmed her way into the job no doubt, my uncle owned the store. She ignored me because of that for a long time, until she quit.
Turning to the audience
It was a Thursday and this customer had come in, asking after books on techno-feudalism, he looked completely normal, but had an awful BO smell, which I didn’t think was enough reason to raise any alarm, but it really was intense, it wrapped around every shelf we had.
He was looking at the books on techno-feudalism, Sam was filing orders upstairs, when he fell over, (esme falls) straight down like a plank, onto his face. Sam ran over, brushing past me and started talking to him, asking if he could feel his left arm, looking back at me for reassurance.
The thing was that he wasn’t having a stroke, he was licking the floor like a dog. Lick lick licking and then looking up at Sam for a few seconds and then Lick Lick Lick. I started to really worry then, that maybe this man wasn’t well, dangerous even, so I dialled 999 under the desk. Sam was swearing when he started saying, (in esme’s own voice) “don’t call me sir, call me dog, you need to get a collar for me before I escape” and Sam really couldn’t stand that. She came up to me, hung up my call for the ambulance and said, “if he stands up with a boner I’m going to fucking quit”, (begins to stand) and so he did, and so she did. We became friends after that; it was easier for her to be around me when she didn’t live off my uncle’s money.
Scene 7:
Sam standing up from chair, now they’re both standing, facing each other, speaking past each other.
Sam: I guess I didn’t know that i was poor until we met. Thats the embarrassing part, me having been happy with nothing. I suppose I knew private-school-people existed, I just thought i’d never meet them, like they were mythical creatures or something.
Esme: /I took sam to an exhibition once, it was my favourite. This artist had strung up a decaying oak tree like a body/
Sam: /like a corpse. A tree. Esme took me to this exhibition, which I had to pay for, to see this tree, hanging from the ceiling.
Esme: It was beautiful, a tribute to impermanence/
Sam: so I asked her, (in sync with esme) what kind of person would do this?
esme : what kind of person would do this? She asked as if it was offensive, so i looked at her to explain and she was crying, in public, I didn’t understand what had made her so upset
Sam: Why would you take a living thing and trap it like that, it was horrible.
Esme: What does sam have more in common with a tree than I do? How did she make my thing about her?
Sam: Esme hated that I cried because I’d embarrassed her again.
Esme: Sam can cry, she can take up all the air in the room, and no one questions if she deserves to or not. There’s nothing about me that I can show her that isn’t about the things that I own. She looks at me and she sees fancy clothes, travel, theft.
Sam: but I need Esme, to keep me here.
Esme: Sam looks right through me, like I’m not there at all
Scene 7: esme moves to the back of the stage, near the table, to lean and to watch
Sam: When we were at uni, I would call her straight after I’d had sex, about these boys I’d bring to my halls, like this guy Pablo, who was awful and wouldn’t stop talking about this film he had made, really self-obsessed, it was a film about a man who had a talking penis, like the hole where the wee comes out would be moving and telling him to do things, I have no idea what, but it must have been pretty existential because he would get all melancholy when he was telling me about it, and couldn’t really get it up, which is fine and normal, but he had these huge hands, hands as big as a Guinness world record book, and so he just fingered me with his thumb, thumbing me like this (making a cup like shape with her hand) like I was a puppet
“Right” she would say, or like this other time with Harry, who’s willy was so big, that he said he didn’t really enjoy sex because when he got hard he started to feel faint, since all the blood has rushed from his head to his dick
“I see” she would say, or that time when I went for a pint with this guy Oscar and he said really quietly, (mumbling) “it’s really small by the way”, and I said what? And he said “oh don’t worry about it”, and I said “did you just say it’s really small by the way”, and he squirmed in a way I really liked, but when we did it he said he wanted to make me bleed, which I didn’t like, so I kicked him out. I was quite mean, mean about the size of his penis.
Esme liked ones like that, when I was mean, as I spoke, I could hear her breath speeding up, getting heavier, sharper, until she’d finished herself off, until she’d come, and then I would just listen to her breath for a bit, and say, “I love you” and then she’d hang up.
Scene 8:
Esme: walking downstage so in line with Sam, Sam watches now
It started like a knock on the door, which is what I imagine anxiety is like for most people, you walk around your day as normal and if you have something on your mind it might knock on the door once or twice, knock like a postman.
Then maybe the next stage is when you have something that needs to be done, like an exam or a confrontational conversation, so the knocking increases, knock, knock, knock, which isn’t nice but motivates you to get the thing out of the way.
Then there’s more of that knock knock knock knock and then there’s what I have, where the knocking stops being knocking and becomes more like a thrum, a constant carousel of the Same worry coming back and back and back again like a rolling drum beat.
When it started, I made garlands to hang around my bed that said “hello ghostie”, “I mean you no harm ghostie”, but it didn’t work, acknowledging I could hear her knocking just made it louder, the ghost didn’t go away, she kept slamming doors, moving my things, changing the pope’s face in his picture.
I have all this family going back for centuries, and they’ve left me completely alone with all their history, and all their money, their ghost, their stuff. Knock, Knock, Knock.
Sam’s here, it will like her better. Take her instead of me.
I’ve often dreamt of Sam dying, and how it would ruin my life, and the complete serenity I’d feel if it did.
Scene 9:
Back to daylight wash
Sam: Hey can I have your phone, I wanted to show you this song, snatches Esme’s phone out of her hand, quickly pulls up a song, doesn’t it sound like your alarm?
Esme struggles to get the phone back off of Sam, Sam laughs, the music plays, Esme struggles, and then the struggle becomes more like an embrace, Sam moves down Esme until she is rejected, Esme snatches back her phone and Sam is left knelt centre stage
Esme: No Sam, it doesn’t work like that, don’t be so transparent, you’re going to piss off the ghost again, she’s a Catholic. Exits, lights dim.
Sam: (toying with a note of spite) you’re insane.
Sam scoffs unconvincingly, shrugs, and puts her hands down her pants. She is not successful. So, takes the photo of the pope from besides her and places it on her chair, begins wanking again, it falls, places it back, begins wanking again, lets out a singular gasp, cue for actor playing Esme to slam the clapper, signalling a ghost slamming a door off stage.
Sam: no!
