"John Dory"
from the play written by Craig Wright
(Mary has been lost at sea for three long years and has recently lost her only companion. When a strange young man climbs aboard her boat, she tells him the sad tale of how she came to be all alone at sea.)
John: Mary --
(She covers her ears.)
Mary: LA LA LA LA --
(He tears her hands away from her ears.)
John: Mary, I NEED you!
Mary: SO WHAT, I NEED A LOT OF THINGS, I NEVER GET THEM, YOU'RE NOT SO GODDAMN SPECIAL. John: I know that. Mary: We weren't put on this planet to be happy, you know. We were put here to BE here. (long pause; she pulls herself together) John...I ate my FAMILY. My MOTHER. She died first. We all...partook. My BROTHER, next. Then my FATHER. He had me...cut his throat right before he died...so I could drink his blood. It was awful. It was awful in a way that saying "It was awful" can NEVER communicate. It was like being torn open. Eating another person is like being torn open YOURSELF. And the only way I got through it was by believing that at the end of the nightmare, that there would be some life to go on to that would make sense of what I had done; what I had forced myself to do to survive. But that life never came. I never got rescued. I met some GUY...who made me a lot of promises and then broke them, left me for a mermaid WHO DOESN'T EVEN EXIST. And here I am.
John: With me.
Mary: Yeah, but so what, one more pointless encounter with a creep. Sorry, just guessing. But the POINT is, when I die, like, later today...and I go wherever dead people go, I'll have to tell my mother and my brother and my father..."Sorry, I guess it turns out I survived for nothing...FOLKS...and...that you all died for nothing...FOLKS...and all that horribleness...and REAL HUMAN CHARITY, I mean, genuine moment of INVOLVEMENT...with human beings...it was ALSO all for absolutely nothing, it was just a dream in our heads, it was just a big...fat...joke. But thanks anyway, really, maybe next time...oh yeah, I forgot, you only get one life."
John: Yeah, but so what?