This is your latest copy of FICTION-ONLINE. ================================================ FICTION-ONLINE An Internet Literary Magazine Volume 4, Number 3 May-June, 1997 EDITOR'S NOTE: FICTION-ONLINE is a literary magazine publishing electronically through e-mail and the Internet on a bimonthly basis. The contents include short stories, play scripts or excerpts, excerpts of novels or serialized novels, and poems. Some contributors to the magazine are members of the Northwest Fiction Group of Washington, DC, a group affiliated with Washington Independent Writers. However, the magazine is an independent entity and solicits and publishes material from the public. To subscribe or unsubscribe or for more information, please e-mail a brief request to ngwazi@clark.net To submit manuscripts for consideration, please e-mail to the same address, with the ms in ASCII format, if possible included as part of the message itself, rather than as an attachment. 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William Ramsay, Editor ================================================= CONTENTS Editor's Note Contributors "Burn through me," a poem Sydney Anderson "Garden Work," a poem Jean Bower "The Men," an excerpt (chapter 2) from the novel "Ay, Chucho!" William Ramsay "Lust," a scene (#7) from the play, "Act of God" Otho Eskin ================================================= CONTRIBUTORS SYDNEY ANDERSON is a Pasadena, California architect and writer. She recntly won the Scars Publication book contest with her epistolary story, "Autumn Reason." JEAN BOWER is a Washington attorney, founder of a program for legal assistance in child neglect cases, and a poet. . OTHO ESKIN, former diplomat and consultant on international affairs, has published short stories and has had numerous plays read and produced in Washington, notably "Act of God." His play "Duet" has been produced at the Elizabethan Theater at the Folger Library in Washington, and is being performed with some regularity in theaters in the United States, Europe, and Australia. WILLIAM RAMSAY is a physicist and consultant on Third World energy problems. He is also a writer and the coordinator of the Northwest Fiction Group. His play, "Perry's Roots." recently received a reading at the Writers Center in Bethesda, Maryland. ================================================= burn through me by Sydney Anderson now that i've seen you i don't even care if you're with her because now that i've seen you i know you don't love her and i know it for a fact because you look at me and burn through me that way we did at the start and if after so many years we still feel that burn imagine how many years we have together to feel alive ==================================== GARDEN by Jean Bower -- to Betty Just I take my place In the cold heart of spring, kneel on wet grass and separate the stones from earth, one by one, as in the garden just outside of paradise, Eve first found stones and knelt to touch them, one by one, discovering her joy. In this early light -- dark house behind me silent, its ghosts still sleeping off the night before on their weekend passes -- Earth, stone, grass, spring, and I tune up to play Eve's dance. =============================================== THE MEN by William Ramsay (Note: this is an excerpt, Chapter 2 of the novel "­Ay, Chucho!" ) "I want to finish this chapter, and then I've got my poker game with the girls, Chucho." My mother smoothed back her Chinese-orange hairdo at the temples and inserted a long violet-tipped fingernail to prop open her place in her Danielle Steel novel. "I won't keep you, _mamacita_, but you ought to know about my business problems." "Not that again!" Her voice rose to a musical wail. "I've got my own business to worry about." Mama and her often dubious real estate finagles. "And if it's about money again, like I told you, I just can't spare a _thing_ right now. I have some big investment opportunities in the mill." She frowned at a large photo of my father on the far wall, his spectacled face looking plain and bland against the pink and aquamarine wallpaper of her living room. I figured it was all too likely that the "big investment opportunities" had to do with poker, dog races -- and financing her cocaine habit. "It's serious, _mamacita_." She waved my troubles away with her hands as if they were some noxious odor. "I won't do anything without Paco's advice, he has good business sense." My mother was the only person in the world that would think that Paco Santos had any kind of sense about anything except gold chains and white powders. "Oh, Mama, Paco's a big part of the _problem_." "_Ay_, _Chucho_! Can't you men settle this among yourselves? How I wish your father were here, how I miss him!" She spoke as if she were praising a particularly juicy filet mignon at her favorite downtown restaurant, the Firehouse Five. "And what would Papa think about all the cocaine business?" She frowned, pursed her full lips. "Everything changes, _hijo_ _mio_. This is a new country, a new time." She looked at me, daring me to disagree with her and show what an ungrateful serpent's tooth of a child I was. "And it's never more than a little for fun -- don't exaggerate." She hoisted herself up, carefully keeping her rear end tucked in, and gazed into the wall mirror, moving her mouth back and forth, wiping a smudge of lipstick off her front teeth with a rapid rub from the purple-plated fingertips. "Trying new things keeps me young." My mother was all of forty-five going on nineteen. Meanwhile, I was trying to keep from getting old -- or rather dead -- before my time -- and to secure the prospect of _some_ kind of old age for myself. In a sudden moment of fantasy I imagined myself like Jimmy Cagney in "Angels With Dirty Faces," robbing armored cars, banks -- or nowadays maybe convenience stores. But even if I had the nerve for the criminal life, I was afraid I was the type who'd get caught on my first try. Or, worse, with my luck, the bank or Seven-Eleven would turn out to be owned by a friend of the Association -- "The Men." It was Amelia who really initiated the whole crazy idea that led to my meeting with Fidel -- and a lot of other uneasy events. Of course, if I could have seen into the future, I would have just laughed at her and her schemes. As it was, at the time I did come close to laughing, I certainly let slip a snicker or two. "Chucho, we should talk about your father," said Amelia the next evening. "You may want to talk about him, I don't see why the shit I should." We were in her apartment on the bay, looking out as the light faded over the high rises fringing Collins Avenue on the Beach. "Getting him out of Cuba would solve all your difficulties." "So would getting a one-way ride on the space shuttle." "No, Jesus, maybe there's a way." "I'll shoot a few missiles at a few of the hotels in Vedado and maybe knock off Fidel while he's helpless in the arms of one of his Consuelos or Conchitas." "Oh, don't give up so easily!" She punched me playfully on my shoulder. "Whatever happened to the Harrison Ford inside you?" I smiled and stroked my big bushy mustache. "It's Errol Flynn if anybody, and I haven't seen much of him recently. He's probably still out there somewhere flying the Dawn Patrol." She punched me in the gut. "I don't know, Chucho, I think Errol Flynn's still inside you somewhere, waiting to get out." "You bet!" I widened my eyes. "What possibilities! I can see myself as Robin Hood light-heartedly stringing his bow, just waiting for his merry men to show up for the final reel." I ran my hand over her bodice, lightly brushing over the smooth cotton. She shivered. "I'd like to meet your father some time." "That seems very unlikely. You'll probably have to make do with just little old me," I said, lightly stroking her light-brown hair with one finger, finding her nipple underneath the puce-colored blouse with the other, and pressing it firmly, gently. After a few moments, her smile faded and her face became stiff, her eyes half-closing. "Oh, Jesse," she said and sighed. In the heat of passion, she often calls me by my _gringo_ name. Well, we are living in America, you know. This time I made her keep her hands where they belonged. The next days were a nightmare. By this time, I felt completely stymied. Mr. Holbrook at Electronics Warehousers, Inc. gave me what I could detect as a grim smile even over the phone. I reminded him of our last fishing trip, where he caught a hell of a big marlin, and I promised to give him a ride in my Cessna over Easter -- well, it wasn't really my Cessna, but I've got a license and a gang of flight hours, and my cousin Eduardo always let me use his plane. But good old fatso Holbrook sighed and told me he couldn't. All accounts receivable over 120 days were handled by the New York office, no extensions, and so, Jesse baby, payment had really better be coming pretty soon. I figured I could always leave town. But it had to be someplace really distant if the Association wasn't going to track me down and put me away. In fact a couple of days later it appeared that I might have to leave not just the town, but the country too. A big fat envelope arrived from the Internal Revenue Service -- "Withholding Tax in Arrears." Well, you know, in business you're always having to collect payroll taxes from your employees -- I had six - - and then you have to send them in every few weeks to the bank, the "Federal Depository." So how was I supposed to be able to take care of that kind of thing with all my other problems? _Ay-ay-ay_, as Caesar Romero used to say, hand clasped to forehead at the unfairness of it all. Then too, there was an outstanding claim by the feds that I hadn't reported as income some payments on cellular phone systems that I counted a "deposits." I mean, it's a fine legal point, I think -- but try telling that to the damned I.R.S.! "No Way Out," if you saw that Kevin Costner movie. Trapped in the Pentagonal mazes of Little Havana, that was me. The next Saturday, I took Amelia up in the Cessna, and we flew down to Key Largo. As we passed over the swampy area between the mainland and the key, she said, "I've talked to Paco about it." "About what?" "Oh, what else, my stupid little Chucho. Getting your father out." "What!" That's all I needed. Even if I were going to try to get my father out -- which was a crazy idea -- I didn't want Paco and his pals at the Association to know about it. The Men would never let me out of their clutches to go on a wild expedition to Havana. "He thought it was interesting." Just then the plane hit a small air pocket and we shot up and then dropped down abruptly and then halfway back up again. I jiggled us into a new trim and then eased up on the stick. "He did?" Amelia hadn't moved a muscle during the bump -- no unreal danger ever scared her. "Yes, he wants to call you about it tonight." "Fuck him." "Jesus! -- I mean Chucho!" she said, trying to avoid the appearance of blasphemy. (My first name is confusing sometimes, even for Cubans.) "Hey, look at the sun coming from between the clouds." "Great," I said. "A good omen," she said. And she smiled -- damn her. Paco did call later, after we'd returned to Miami from a nice relaxing day in Key Largo and a smooth ride in the plane coming back. You could hear in Paco's hoarse voice that he had been living up his thirty-seven years two or three at a time. He told me he had arranged a meeting. "Meeting? Who with?" I wanted to say 'with whom," but I was afraid it would only bug Paco -- he thinks grammar is for _maricones_. "I'll pick you up at ten. Before dinner." Then he coughed. I read mystery into the cough, but maybe only because I knew Paco loved mystery. All I could really tell was that he was still an old-fashioned Cuban, dining after ten, for God's sake. Paco pulled up to my place off Collins Avenue at exactly 10:27. I myself am precise, punctual. But I had scoffed down some goat cheese and crackers because I knew that some people, like Paco, aren't. "Why do you live out here with all these people?" he said, meaning WASPs and Jews and assorted non-Cubans. He pulled his Miata away from the curb with a ripping sound of tires that edged into a squeal. Paco is a bigoted bastard -- and he has other reptilian habits that go along with his puffy cheeks and slimy-looking pencil mustache. We drove over the MacArthur Causeway and out the expressway to Coral Gables. The meet was in one of the low Spanish-style houses that seem to go on forever, on a large lot near enough to the Country Club to see the blackness of the greens in the moonlit sky. Going in by a narrow, half-subterranean side door, just as if we were the gardener or somebody, we ended up suddenly in a small chamber, abruptly facing three men. One sat at the table and screwed up his face at us, the indirect lights glinting off his bald spot. He was obviously a Man -- initial cap. -- in his own right. The other two stood in the shadows against the wall, and were evidently not "Men" -- insofar as I understood these things -- but only "men" who belonged to the Man: sort of auxiliary quasi-Men. I shook hands with Senor Gomez -- which I figured in this case might well be the Spanish equivalent of "Jones" or "Smith." "Have you eaten?" said Senor Gomez, and my heart rose up into the empty space in my chest where hunger always lodges, at least for me. "Yes, we're O.K.," said Uncle Paco -- the fink! Gomez looked to be good for a fancy snack -- the goat cheese was now only a memory. Gomez picked up a sandwich from a nearby plate and began eating it. As he ate, he began to turn even uglier looking. I don't know how he did it. Finally he stopped chewing, swallowed, and cleared his throat, sounding like a scow scraping its side against a dock. "Has Santos explained our conditions?" "No," I said, dying from fear and hunger. "Yes," said Uncle Paco. "Hey, wait a minute!" I said. One of the two quasi-Men shuffled his feet, Gomez looked suddenly even less human, as if he had been born of woman at some time lost to the memory of man, and I felt a shiver run down through my lumbar region. "You want me to brief him?" said Paco. Gomez nodded, chewing into what looked like delicious roast beef sandwich. "Yeah." Then he turned his eyes toward me and lifted the hoods on them about half an inch. "Jesus, we're depending on you to get him out." He was calling me by my first name and using the familiar "tu" form of address. "You mean my father?" "Pillo. Your father too. Just see that you don't disappoint us." He wiped his lips with a tissue. "Well yes, but I..." Pillo who? I thought. "I'll brief you," said Uncle Paco, his eyes closed into slits. Gomez stood up, the two quasi-Men came forward, their sleeves bulging over muscles that weren't quasi at all, and Paco took me by the arm. The interview was over. On the way home, my empty stomach was churning, and not just with hunger. I was mad, at fate, at Gomez, at Paco. Then Paco told me that the "Movement" -- the paramilitary arm of the Association -- wanted me to get Pillo, one of their people who was also in La Cabana, out at the same time as my father. "Shit on the Association!" Paco smiled. It was a nasty smile, as if he had been taking lessons from Gomez. "Hey, you know they'll show their appreciation of your efforts, Chucho." "Who is this guy Pillo?" "Jorge Pillo, he's quite a dude, killed a bunch of Fidelista officers when he was a counterrevolutionary guerrilla way back when in the Sierra Escambray." He frowned as if he were thinking, a process with him that I usually though possible but unlikely. "In the slammer in La Cabana now." "Hey, wait a minute." Getting my mild-mannered, harmless physician- politician father out was one thing, getting a wild-eyed guerrilla leader freed was entirely different. "They're really doing you a favor. Expenses -- within limits -- and you can use their contacts." He raised one eyebrow. "C.I.A." he whispered. "Yes, but..." "No, really, they're like this with the Company." He raised his large, manicured fingers, tightly crossed. "Come on, Paco!" "And the interest on your debt won't run while you're working on this." "The interest! What about the debt itself?" Paco bridled, pulling his chin back and looking at me fiercely -- instead of at the semi that was trying to pass us in a narrow gap in the traffic on Le Jeune. "Watch out!" I said. Paco glanced at the semi and speeded up slightly instead of slowing. A whistling squeal of air brakes. "Hey," he said, "your father will be rich once he gets to New York, right?" "Yeah, sure." When and if, I thought. Paco nodded his head, rubbed the back of it with his right hand. His rings glinted in the patterns of the street lights sweeping up over the Miata as it zoomed onto the expressway. "You're lucky, Chucho. The Men have been very understanding." Sending an ordinary young businessman in to pull some kind of jailbreak that they themselves had evidently never been able to manage -- some 'understanding'! "Fuck 'understanding'!" I said. "Oh hell, Chucho, sometimes a guy's got to show a little initiative." "Look who's talking." "Me?" Paco looked like a little boy wrongly accused of smacking his sister. "Chucho, Chucho, you always put me down, you don't know the real me." I knew the real him all right, his idea of initiative was thinking up new ploys to con woman like my mother into buying him linen sports jackets and keeping his bar bill paid up at the American Club. "Why don't you just shut up, Paco?" Paco shook his head violently, as if saying "poor loser!" He speeded up again, and I lay my head back against the headrest and closed my eyes, half- hoping a car crash would put me out of my misery. I felt like a loser, all right. I wondered about plane connections from Havana to Moscow, Tehran, or perhaps Outer Mongolia. Maybe I could squirrel myself under a pile of yak hides in some yurt in a part of the Gobi Desert where no one had even heard of Calle Ocho, Fidel Castro, or the Martyrs of the Playa Giron. "Martyrs" -- yes. I was beginning to appreciate how a person could get so desperate that he could just close his eyes, cross his fingers, and throw himself into the jaws of the lion. And I had the awful feeling that Fidel Castro Ruz might be playing the lion part in my own personal nightmare. So you see, it wasn't my doing. I didn't just drift into the dark currents of the Miami underworld that slip-slopped away through secret drains into the Sargasso Sea of pseudo-Stalinist Cuba. I was pushed. The Association plucked me, gasping, out of their gangland gill net and tossed me into dark waters of deception and intrigue. And there in the watery depths lurked guess who: the Big Fish of the Caribbean, that's who -- Fidel. ================================================== LUST by Otho Eskin (Note: This is scene 6 from the full-length play "Act of God") Cast of Characters JOHN An unemployed actor weak, shallow and self-absorbed. SATAN MAGGIE Young, beautiful, vulnerable and radiantly innocent. AT RISE: The spotlight rises on SATAN, dressed in a tuxedo with a red bow tie and cummerbund. The apartment is as it was in the previous scene except that there is a plate of chocolate chip cookies on a table. SATAN Now you may be asking yourselves what's happening to the rest of the universe while John and I are locked up in this beastly apartment? Has all sin and misery disappeared from the face of the earth? Are New York cab drivers polite? Has the US Post Office improved its service? I'll give you one guess. I've had to learn to delegate. I've got people out there doing my work dedicated people with a real sense of mission: head waiters in expensive restaurants, women's fashion designers, theater critics, oil company executives all my servants. They're out there this very minute causing trouble and spreading misery everywhere. Nevertheless, things can't go on much longer like this. Without my personal involvement, peace and love are beginning to break out. I'm going to put a stop to this right now. (Stage lights go up and JOHN enters.) JOHN I'm not really comfortable about this business. SATAN You'll be surprised at how quick you'll get used to doing evil. Before you know it, it'll second nature. JOHN I'm not sure this will work. Maggie's not like the rest of us. She won't commit a sin. SATAN Maybe not the old-fashioned kind like gluttony or pride and those others. But there are many new and trendy sins I can offer intolerance, prejudice, apathy. There's always a new sin du jour. JOHN She'll never succumb. SATAN All you have to do is seduce her. Leave the rest to me. JOHN I've never been able to get further than holding hands. SATAN You've been using the wrong approach. I've put some champagne in the refrigerator... JOHN Maggie doesn't drink alcohol. (SATAN throws up his hands in disgust.) SATAN We've got to create the right environment. (SATAN goes to the stereo set and searches through cassettes and CD's.) SATAN Do you have Bolero? (The doorbell rings) JOHN That must be Maggie now. SATAN It's party time. JOHN I don't know what to do. SATAN Let me handle this. I'll talk to her. JOHN I thought she couldn't hear you. SATAN She can't. Not yet. She'll think you're doing the talking. It'll be your voice she hears not mine. JOHN What makes you think you can do better than me? SATAN Because I'm more subtle than you. Let her in. (JOHN opens the door.) JOHN Maggie, come in. (MAGGIE enters.) MAGGIE I'm not sure I should have come, John. After our last meeting here... JOHN Everything's going to be fine, Maggie, just fine. MAGGIE You're sure? I have been worried about you. SATAN There's no reason to be, my dear. (MAGGIE, uneasy, looks around the apartment.) MAGGIE You alone? SATAN Maggie, come with me. (In the following scene, SATAN speaks to MAGGIE but she believes JOHN is speaking. SATAN stands near JOHN, as if guiding him. JOHN takes MAGGIE's arm and leads her to the window.) SATAN Has anybody ever told you, you look especially lovely by starlight? (The sound of a slow waltz can be heard, JOHN takes MAGGIE in his arms and they begin to dance. SATAN follows them, moving his hands and arms almost as if he were a puppet-master controlling them. Finally the music subsides and JOHN and MAGGIE stand in each other's arms. SATAN stands at JOHN's side.) SATAN Maggie, you have given me a gift beyond all reckoning. MAGGIE A gift? SATAN Before I met you I was selfish, concerned only with myself. But I've changed, Maggie. (JOHN gently caresses MAGGIE's hair.) SATAN You have taught me to have feelings I didn't know I could have -- to see the world differently -- the colors are brighter, the sky is bluer. MAGGIE I'm so happy to hear you say that. SATAN I'm no longer the man I once was but someone who can have real feelings, who could -- dare I say it? -- who could love. MAGGIE I'm so proud of you, John. (JOHN leads MAGGIE to the couch where they sit close together. SATAN stands immediately behind them. SATAN Without you I am doomed to drift without direction, without goal, without hope. MAGGIE Oh, no! SATAN If you reject me now, I'll once more be the old me wicked, selfish and lost. MAGGIE Don't say that. SATAN Your face is move lovely than the evening star, your eyes the color of sunrise. Enchant me, mistress of my soul. Weave your magic and cast your spell upon my heart. Maggie, I love you. MAGGIE I think I might be able to learn to love you too, John. SATAN We must give ourselves to one another freely, selflessly, without condition. Stay with me tonight so we may hold one another until time and space dissolve into unending love. MAGGIE (Doubtfully) I don't know. SATAN Together we can sail across the face of the universe and scale the pinnacles of infinity. MAGGIE If that's what you really want, John, ... SATAN Seize the moment... (JOHN stands up and walks away, agitated.) MAGGIE What is it, John? SATAN (To JOHN) What the hell do you think you're doing? JOHN I can't go through with this. SATAN and MAGGIE What did you say? JOHN I don't want it not this way. MAGGIE What's wrong with you, John? I thought you loved me. JOHN I do, but this isn't right. It's not me you're hearing. It wouldn't be me that you loved tonight. MAGGIE What are you talking about? SATAN You know what you've just done? You've blown it. You'll never get her in the sack now. (MAGGIE becomes conscious of another presence.) MAGGIE He's here, isn't he? JOHN Yes, Maggie, he is. (MAGGIE shivers and holds her arms around her body as if cold.) MAGGIE I think I sense him too. SATAN Get out of here, John. I want to talk with Maggie -- alone. JOHN No! I refuse. SATAN I'm pulling rank. You have no choice, JOHN Maggie, I want you to leave. MAGGIE What's happening? SATAN (To JOHN) Shoo! Shoo! (SATAN forces JOHN into the bedroom. JOHN tries to resist but cannot.) JOHN Please go, Maggie. It's not safe for you here... (SATAN closes the door firmly on JOHN. SATAN turns and studies MAGGIE.) SATAN Can you hear me, Maggie? Can you see me? MAGGIE Yes. A little. SATAN I must apologize for that seduction scene. It was not worthy of me. It was not worthy of you. I must be losing my touch. (Looks around the apartment.) Do you suppose it's the seedy surroundings? MAGGIE You remind me of someone. SATAN Who? MAGGIE Mr. Considine who taught me piano when I was a little girl and used to put his hand on my knee and make me cry. SATAN (In an unctuous voice) You must practice harder, Maggie. MAGGIE You're Mrs. Phelps, the woman who lived at the end of the block who poisoned the neighborhood dogs. SATAN (In a mean, woman's voice.) Horrid little things yapping and fouling the lawn. MAGGIE I'm frightened. SATAN The only thing you should be frightened of is ignorance. (SATAN takes the plate of chocolate chip cookies and offers them to MAGGIE.) SATAN Have some chocolate chip cookies they're delicious. Made them myself. An old family recipe. MAGGIE I don't think I'd better. SATAN There is something you long for only I can give. MAGGIE Nothing! SATAN You once said the one thing you truly wanted was truth. MAGGIE You're confusing me. SATAN Don't deny your heart. MAGGIE Please don't. SATAN Say it, Maggie, say it. MAGGIE I want to understand. SATAN Learn from me, Maggie. I will teach you to snare the vagrant wind in the circle of your fingers, teach you to hear Leviathan's song and see the secret of the cosmos in a raindrop. Anything you want to know, I will tell you. Ask me, Maggie. MAGGIE Why was my father killed by a drunken driver? Why, one summer evening, did my friend Norman hang himself? Why is my friend Jason dying of AIDS? SATAN I'll tell you the truth about your father, about Norman and Jason. (SATAN passes MAGGIE the plate of cookies.) I can reveal it all. (SATAN snaps his fingers.) Just like that. Are you ready? MAGGIE I think so. SATAN Have a cookie. (MAGGIE takes a cookie, hesitates for a long moment, then flings it away.) MAGGIE No. SATAN Do you want to live in ignorance? MAGGIE I'm not strong enough for the truth. If you answered my questions, I would change. I would no longer be me. I don't know what kind of person I would become but it would no longer be me. SATAN Innocence is a lie. Do you want to spend the rest of your life living a lie? MAGGIE The price you ask is too high. (SATAN studies MAGGIE for a long time.) SATAN John! Get the hell in here. (JOHN enters.) JOHN Are you all right, Maggie? MAGGIE I'm all right. JOHN Have you changed? MAGGIE No, John, I'm just the same. SATAN Now listen, kids, we have a problem. John and I are condemned to stay in this apartment for ever unless we can meet the conditions of the spell. As I see it, we've got two choices. John, all you have to do is agree to my terms. I can get you a job as a TV weatherman in Altoona. MAGGIE Don't listen to him, John. JOHN I've told you, I'll do business with you only if you give me a leading role on Broadway... MAGGIE John, how can you even think...? SATAN (Turning to MAGGIE) As for you, little lady, how about choice number two. If you're as concerned about John as you pretend, why don't help him? Make a deal with me and John is free to walk out of here. JOHN I won't let her do that. I won't let her sacrifice herself. (SATAN winces in pain. He seems to shrivel and take up less room. When he speaks, his voice is weaker, more uncertain.) JOHN Maggie, I'm sorry I ever got you involved in this. Please go now, before it's too late. MAGGIE I can't just leave you alone with this....this thing. SATAN Which is it to be, my friends? Dealer's choice. JOHN How much does the TV job pay? MAGGIE Don't listen to him, John. JOHN I can't stay here like this forever, Maggie. I mean, how bad can Altoona be? SATAN Now you're thinking. You don't have any other choices. MAGGIE Those aren't our only choices. Look at him, John! (JOHN looks at SATAN, who grows increasingly uncomfortable. The lights on SATAN fade slightly.) MAGGIE He's weakening, can't you see? JOHN I can't see him clearly. MAGGIE When you told him you wouldn't let him have me, you took some of his power away. Don't you see, John? He doesn't really exist. If we deny him, he can't do anything to us. JOHN But Todd saw him. So did Childress and Townsend and Father Damien. He's right here with us. MAGGIE He's not out there, he's in our hearts. But we're not helpless. We can destroy him. All we have to do is deny the evil in our hearts and he can do nothing to us. SATAN This is all very sweet, young lady, but don't kid yourselves, you can't hurt me. MAGGIE John, try and rid yourself of selfishness and pride... SATAN Dream on, lady... MAGGIE Think of good things, of kindness and generosity and beauty. JOHN This is kind of hard. MAGGIE Remember the hurt you felt when he said he wanted to take me? (MAGGIE takes JOHN's hand.) Feel that again! Try, John! Try! SATAN You're wasting my time. Which one of you is it going to be? Which one will do the right thing? MAGGIE Harder, John! I can feel him weakening. (Gradually the lights on SATAN fade.) SATAN You guys are beginning to try my patience. Stop what you're doing. Right this minute. MAGGIE Can't you sense it, John? He's losing his power. JOHN You're right, he's beginning to fade. SATAN Stop it! (Becoming desperate) Don't do this. Maggie, you wouldn't do this to me. It's too cruel. MAGGIE Fight him, John. Fight him. (The lights continue to fade and SATAN can hardly be seen.) SATAN Hey, John, old buddy, remember all the good times we've had together? We had a few laughs, we had a few thrills. Tell her to stop it, Johnny. Please stop it. JOHN We've won, Maggie. We've destroyed him. MAGGIE Not yet. Don't stop yet. SATAN Please don't do this. I'll give you whatever you want, just stop. You don't understand what you're doing. You're destroying me. MAGGIE Concentrate, John. Be pure. SATAN Do you really want a world where I don't exist? A world without art and music and organized religion. Do you want to live out your existence in self-satisfied bliss without guilty pleasures and longing and desire and regret. They are what give spice and meaning to your lives. (SATAN vanishes. Only his voice can be heard.) You really want to spend eternity in a cosmic Disneyland? It would be so boring. (Voice fades) Why don't you reconsider this whole business? I'll behave myself, I promise. I've learned my lesson. Honest. Stop. Please stop. Oh, this is so embarrassing. (There is a long silence.) JOHN Is he gone? MAGGIE I think so. JOHN He's disappeared, vanished. MAGGIE Try the door. (JOHN goes to the front door and steps through it into the hallway beyond.) JOHN I can leave! The spell is broken. (JOHN and MAGGIE hug each other jubilantly.) JOHN I'm free! MAGGIE We've destroyed him. He couldn't leave your apartment because of your spell and when we stopped believing in him, he ceased to exist. Come, John, let's go outside and see the world for the first time free of sin and evil and death. (Arm in arm, MAGGIE and JOHN go out the door, leaving the door ajar. After a brief pause, the front doorbell rings. A man tentatively opens the door.) NEIGHBOR Hello? Is there anyone home? (NEIGHBOR looks around the apartment.) I'm your downstairs neighbor and I want to speak to you about the noise you've been making this last week. Hello! Anybody here? (The lights rise and SATAN can be seen upstage wearing clothes identical to those worn by the NEIGHBOR.) SATAN Allow me to introduce myself. SLOW FADE TO BLACK CURTAIN ============================================ ============================================