#the great nyc bedbug crisis of 2010

[themayonnaiseclinic]

The Pains of Sleeplessness

The following is a radio play I wrote for my RADIO DRAMA class in 2010. I wrote it as I was reading Dracula by Bram Stoker for the first time. It was meant to satirize Bram Stoker. I believe??? I literally haven’t read it since I wrote it. Is it good? I have no idea. Should anyone read it? Again, I have no idea. Why the heckin’ hey am I posting it, then?!! Because it’s been on my to-do list since summer since I started rereading Dracula b cos of Dracula Daily. ANNDDDD I wanted a few months ago, to contribute to the art and hoopla and fun of Dracula Daily, and this was/is still the best I’ve got?!????  I just gotta check it off my to-do list OKAY!!??!??! What is love, what is life, baby don’t hurt me!!!!!

ANYWAY WITHOUT FURTHER ADO (IF YOU ARE STILL READING THIS FAR GOD AND MINA NEE MURRAY HARKER BLESS YOU)

THE PAINS OF SLEEPLESSNESS

BY: MAYO CMEK, 2010

NARRATOR: It was midnight, and I had been walking, sleep-walking in a dreamy spot of haze. It was a shivery night under a full moon and a spot of immaculate, white, snow fall. I had just left the ‘Hairy Monk’ - a pub- although as I am not much fond of the drink, I had only one for myself. Make no mistake, the drink has had no effect upon these truthful accounts of which I am about to report to you. They are facts, and those of only the most gravest kind... [ominous pause] After meeting there with my childhood friend and long-time confidant Nick, I was making my silent way home through a dreary and patchy street of Brooklyn, New York. Washington Irving Avenue, I should think was the name of it, although under the brash hands of certain administration I have been made to understand that for “security purposes”, these locations and names must be altered to protect the privacy of the innocent individuals I chanced across. [cough slightly, as if unapproving] This paltry deed I shall do, and we shall instead refer to Washington Irving Avenue as ... Undead Avenue, which is more than appropriate and less than coincidence, as I shall hope to prove to you in time. And these individuals upon which I less than fortunately overheard are not quite the innocent that they may seem to be... [ominous pause, again.] A sound that most greatly resembled a vicious pounding of some plastic bag by the very mad and the very doomed, startled me from my dream-walking, and I looked up into a lit window and saw the waxen face of a brown, spiky haired young lady. Her hair was in utter disarray and she was standing by the open window. Why the window was open during this cold spell I am at a loss to answer, but perhaps, the ladies inside this room could not feel the harsh winds licking at their white skin, the way the rest of us with the lifeblood in our veins and beating hearts can... [another ominous pause.] BUNNY: Jump in bed, cover my head, Santa Claus is coming tonight. [speaks as if to herself, in a bored voice. Sound of hard body colliding with plastic wrapping that encases a newly purchased bed.] Night, Chinny. NARRATOR: I stopped to listen. Her tinkling voice, soaked in the most sorrowful of tragedies, appeased me as it was carried out the window on the crystalised, angelic Tears of God, each crafted in its own individual shape and harmony. Ah, snow, how it soothes me now to even write of your melodic spiraling. But, to the story, I must not stray. [pause.] It was also that name she mentioned: Santa Claus. It sounded familiar to me - perhaps a business associate, I thought at the time. Oh, if only I knew how sorely wrong I was, and how sorely I would pay for this pit-stopping, as they say in the States, from my good-hearted, Christian way. CHINCHILLA: A good night for you, sure. [plastic moves.] And Santa Claus isn’t even coming tonight what are you talking about. BUNNY: I’m only kidding. CHINCHILLA: He’s coming in six nights though I’m so excited! Bat brought me an early present home last night. I can’t waaaaait to play with him! WAIT. I’m going to go right now. BUNNY: What did you name him? CHINCHILLA: [throughout this speech, we hear BUNNY continously adjusting herself on the plastic.] Well, he already has a name, it said so on his tag on the crate, but I don’t really care. I don’t think we should limit him to just his name on the box, you know? He might have really special powers but we’ll see in a few days I guess. Since I can’t even see him during the day, ever. It’s like... I kind of think his name should be Robert, like after the hottest vampire in the world. [she huffs] I really wish we had HBO and True Blood. SANTA HELP ME AHHHHH. [hear her footsteps run out of the room] NARRATOR: Some people say we do enter freely upon these things, and of our own will, but at this point I was bewitched as if under some supernatural spell. Despite my good-headed nature and shivering fear at the brown-spiky-haired woman’s use of the word ‘vampire’, I could not take a step. The sound of the plastic - assumedly wrapped around the tender girl’s mattress, delivered freshly and neglected in the quiet, mysterious voice’s apparent exhaustion - was irksome on my muffled ears like a warning, and like the sound of frantic spoons scraping against my Grandmother’s fine China in the wash bowl it made my insides cringe. Their words and her face had piqued my intrigue however, and I could not walk away more than I could tell my Grandmother I wouldn’t make it to wash her treasured utensils the next day. Oh, the enchantments women have had over us mighty and masculine men! BUNNY: [plastic shifts, she is sitting up.] Hey, Chin, can your special powers like shut my door and light? Thanks. [more plastic noise.] CHINCHILLA: [from the other room] OH OF COURSE DUH. NARRATOR: As the room went black and the dark headed creature disapparated from sight, I could only see the prim snow blowing ever so gently inside the window - the winds had been snuffed with the light it seemed - and I wondered whether or not the harrowed voice inhabiting the room could feel it upon her brow as she tried to slumber. And what of these special powers, discussed so freely by the two curious girls? And the blood, of the truest red, that was wished to be brought with the aid of this Santa fellow? Santa, who was he and where did I know him from before? These questions plagued my freezing mind, my hat covered in heaven’s feather-like, white teardrops, and I still could not step - my body positioned like the stationary David, forevermore. And suddenly, the light and that ghastly head flickered in the window, back to life. CHINCHILLA: I’m not tired, I slept all day! SOoooOOooOOoo hungover. [she moans as the plastic shifts and BUNNY moves about, frustrated in her bed] And I think I’m going to name my little friend Pattinson. Because he kind of sparkles. Like hot vampires do. I wish I sparkled that would be so cool, and when I go out to hunt men I would like see all these guys and I would be sparkly and how could they look away?! BUNNY: [resigned plumping of the plastic.] CHINCHILLA: RIGHT?! [plastic does not reply.] NARRATOR: This girl posed herself as such a puzzle in my mind, and I fear that I can only now show my deepest regret in the failure of my wit to be called to action at that very moment. She was, I thought at the time, for such an animated and lubricious voice, a very pale and a very morbid looking face. She left the room with that so drained face, and the plastic wrinkled and wrangled underneath her dear friend’s poor, sleeping soul in her absence. The two girls, I thought, looked more painful than my poor Grandmother did, when I most accidentally and severely dropped her favorite purple tea pot onto my sturdy and fibrous foot, - and albeit covered and socked foot, due to a slight excess of hair on the utmost top that my Grandmother finds, in her worn and crude manners to be ‘retch-worthy’. [composing cough, as he comes to find this sentiment as embarassing and unnecessary as the listener does] The speaker forgives her of this, as youth cannot condemn age when he knows not the suffering of age. Still, we bleed. Where was this Santa fool to be when he was so direly needed and so desperately called for? CHINCHILLA: [sound of hard body flopping itself onto the plastic] Whore, why haven’t you taken the plastic off your bed yet it’s been like three days since you got it? BUNNY: I’m too tired. CHINCHILLA: [as she says this plastic bounces up and down with her animated movements.] YOU WEREN’T TIRED LIKE RIGHT AFTER SUNSET WHEN YOU ATE ALL MY BLOODY TOMATOES OUT OF THEIR CAN AND SUCKED THE JUICE ALL UP. You wolfed that shit down, girl. BUNNY: Oh, not really. Not yet. [scratches at the plastic, almost menacing.] CHINCHILLA: SO anyway, Pattinson Robert Cullen is not tired and we are going to go take a walk and maybe pick up some hotties. AW, balls, it’s still snowing out! I don’t want to get wet. Snow, go away! [plastic loosens as she gets up.] NARRATOR: A chill swept over me. A chill that had nothing to do with the divine snow still yet piling itself up onto my hat, almost like a Halo, a small ring of protection, and in retrospect now, I may attribute this holy sheathing to my fortunate escape. But rather, the chill came from the sudden termination of the snowfall, just as the brown-head cried it so. She stepped gracefully, but in this grace there was a sort of inhuman quality, a sort of malice that indulged in its own sleekness. She was at the window now, and I shuddered. [Silence for a short period of 10 seconds.] CHINCHILLA: Oh my God! Some drunk guy is peeing outside our window! Look! NARRATOR: I was not peeing! [SUPER OFFENDED AND DEFENSIVE! then, regains his posure, and tries to be polite once more, with effort, but fails. Voice starts slightly composed but crescendoes as the speech goes on and is almost at an angry screech by “Hell”.] I mean to say, this Madam ‘Chinny’, was - a - liar. The falsehoods that she began to utter gave way to her unmasking, and they will only land her in the dankest pits of Hell! I, a refined man of upstanding valor, would not be caught even tempted by Satan to be relieving myself on the streets, in which the public so often take refuge. It would be a crime, a crime punishable by law. [remembers purpose of story, as he was somewhat side-tracked in his attack of CHINCHILLA and resumes his ominous tones.] And here, I will say, it is a crime. Much like the crimes, oh, the gruesome crimes the missus will commit. The crimes that I, being of such courageous heart, must have been preordained by God to witness and thus bear their splintering, wooden crucifix upon my back; the crimes that are yet to come...[ominous, foreboding, back in his thought-train.] BUNNY: What, oh, wow, cool. [not shifting, the plastic lies still.] CHINCHILLA: Did you HEAR ME?! Some drunk guy is peeing outside our window. NARRATOR: [in a mumble, an undertone.] I still maintain I was very well not. CHINCHILLA: And now the snow’s all gross and yellow yuck. Did you hear me? Okay. I think he left. Or at least he’s crouched behind something like a little hunchback weirdo. NARRATOR: Excuse me, for I must interrupt. I would again, like to recall to the listener than certain words and events and names have been compromised. These words, slanderous words, are not what one first-hand historian would call fact-based. CHINCHILLA: GOD NARRATOR shut your stuffed pie hole and let me get on with the story! It’s my turn to talk. NOW Bunny, alright, alright. I’m sorry, I know I’ll let you have your little time to yourself sleep whatever you want to call it. Good night. [steps leaving. plastic rattles a little and BUNNY finally finds her resting place. All is still. Silence.] NARRATOR: [coughs, indignantly.] The stillness from the room above elicited a morose shiver down my spine. I moved my feet, the plastic sounds which intuited the movements of the body above moved in accordance with my steps. I say again, I was not in movement to relieve myself of excrement of any sort, rather, I had finally begun to understand the hellish fires that burned with the lights above, the lights above that the flakes of God could not even quell. It was then, in my course of circling below, crossing myself - and I am not as of usual a superstitious, flimsy, sort of man, by Jove - then I was able to see. God be with me, I thought. This Santa, I remembered then. I dredged up from my pool of ghastly memories; memories from catechisms and prayers whispered in hallowed spaces of Churches in towns of my travels; Santa was a man who wore only red, and visited the world only a single, grim, night a year. Saint, they called him. Saint of the red-nosed, Saint of the black, plastic bag in which gifts are carried to be given to those devoted to his pagan occult. Santa, was no doubt, a shorthand for Satan. ‘God be with me’, I said as I crossed myself from marble-smooth forehead to sinwey shoulder and back to the heart, the ‘bloody tomato’ that which these women so wanted to possess. These women, hardly can I speak of them as girls any longer, after I had enlightened as to what they were. Indeed, the white and waxen, star-crossed abominations: these women were of the militia of the Un-Dead. And HBO, why, I gathered then must have been another shorthand, standing for Human Blood (type) O. It was, at this point, clear to me what I must do. But before I could enact the plans that were bountifully blooming in my head, I heard the plastic shiver once more, and the brown-haired voice call out: CHINCHILLA: [calling from the other room, the plastic wrinkles softly.] HEY. BUNNY. That Aunt Jemima in the fridge, is that yours? Can I have some? NARRATOR: I prayed. Poor, poor Aunt Jemima, for whomever were her nieces and nephews, they would never be to look on her sweet face ever again. BUNNY: [sighs, and hits furiously the plastic covering her mattress.] CHINCHILLA: Does one hit mean yes and two no? Yes? BUNNY: [hits plastic once more.] CHINCHILLA: WHAT? BUNNY: [hits plastic.] CHINCHILLA: WHAT? BUNNY: [hits plastic, harder this time, with both hands.] CHINCHILLA: WHAT?!! BUNNY: [kicks plastic furiously, hard, like beating a dummy or a scarecrow.] CHINCHILLA: ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT, I get it. Lots of hits means hell yes, take a chill pill. Good answer though. Thanks. Goodnight. [still, sounds of the plastic being rolled over upon and wrinkled and slapped can be heard outside the window.] NARRATOR: I saw the diabolical Miss walk into the room once more, she lit the room and so her face was, light and bright with a fervor that can only be inspired by a spiritual madness. She was about to drink, something dark, something thick, from a red-capped bottle. I had to strip my fine, leather mitten off and stuff it in my mouth to keep from screaming, much like my fine, dear, Grandmother had when I stumbled with my socked feet upon her lower back as she was performing some Coney Island, circus-like stunt she called ‘yoga’. I feel learned in my saying that the horror and sin of the drink the women were about to share - Oh, and mistake me not, for it was blood in the bottle, human, mortal blood - would have tormented any man to histrionics, even I, most lion in heart. Oh, their deviant, zoophagus longings made me want to cry out, screech like an owl out, to a God that I now doubt. CHINCHILLA: HEY. [plops on plastic.] This is so good. It’s like delicious and yummy and mmmm. Thanks so much I’m so hungry all the time every night lately. OH my god, I should see if Rober- [sounds of body hitting the plastic moving wildly, and being thrown about on it.] BUNNY: [makes grring and roaring and howling noises.] I am going to kill you! [plastic thrashes about wildly again and it is all we can hear.] NARRATOR: [still hear the playing around of the plastic in the background.] The flowing, red-head yet unseen reared, and I could look no more. I ran, and I ran, and I ran until my legs could run no more. The thrashing of the plastic and the hard, sensuous bodies atop it were a rattle of a coming death. Coming for me, coming for the ones I loved. And I ran, as any man must do in a position such as mine. I ran, far, to get away from those creatures of the so grotesque underworld in which all men of faith must abhor. [plastic thrashing quiets but does not fade away altogether.] And so here, and of the now, I abhor them; I yet again, cannot leave them. [bodies on plastic makes one more feeble turn, and then all is quiet, silence again. Hold for 5 seconds.] The girls, haunt my dreams. The cold faces and the dark, creamy red that they feast upon trickles down their dream-chins and they never let me sleep a wink. ‘How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads, to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams.’*

As much as I pray, as much as a man may beg, that these events of this most potent evil had never happened to fall, plunking, onto my head, I must believe that there is a scientific order and purpose to all. Dear Listener, I implore you, take heed of my story. Do not walk the avenues alone, lest of all late in the hours of darkness, and believe with every piece of your innocent and God-fearing soul that these wicked monsters have not died, and will - nay - cannot die. And they will want you, and they will and very well haunt you, as they, every day that I have left on God’s greenest earth, haunt me.

And Grandmother, if you are listening, I will be home around seven, and your supper shall be prepared to sup upon around eight.

*quote comes from Bram Stoker’s Dracula.