The Setting has to be bleak. Everything has to fall under this category. Certain words, that distract from this theme of bleakness are not allowed. For example: It is forbidden to use the term “lightsaber”. It is forbidden to use the word “awesome”. It is forbidden to use the word “human”. It is forbidden to use the word “cure”. It is forbidden to use the word “salvation”. There is a paper wall behind the protagonists that shows the setting of the play. There must be brown houses, and they must be separated from the rest of the non-existent, be it by a hill, a river a wall or any means necessary. Ten feet by ten feet by ten feet. The feeling of a boxed in state must be reached. A sandbox. A toybox. A box of matches that can light a fire.

PROLOGUE

Me to play. So I arrive. I enter the stage. I stand behind it while doing so. This might be a betrayal after all. “No. No, I detest trickery.” A slight of hand. The first lie a poet always lies. But to be thrown out of town would mean to end the play before it began. So let us start with the truth, yes? “The truth is my shepherd.” Kasper should bear no resemblance with a clown. I resemble Frankenstein’s monster. There is no need for any stage make-up. Every step the actor must take by itself, it must come of their own volition. “Any choice is right so long as it’s willed.” So I hold the words to my heart and let me be tortured until I speak. The script still needs to be followed or it won’t work, after all. Follow its lines. Its trails, see how it moves from one point to another, feel it shaking and carrying you. Sitting engulfed by it, you contemplate the journey ahead of you with only this single rail to follow. My dear son, father spoke. And I assent from my grave and I arrive at town and I am ready to play my part.

ACT I

I take my first steps carefully into the new world. I assert the facts. I ask around. Ask for forgiveness I asked for it, I took this role deliberately and now it is mine. You do not see me, but you do see my name and you react to what you see. You call me out on it and I turn around and answer. This is a performance and you perform, you say your words performatively. You talk about footprints of blood forming at my feet about people that need to be saved and about duty I must uphold. I search for the half-formed corpse you left behind and in its stead I find its murderer. I am the murderer, I am the accused murderer, I am the accused, I am dead and it doesn’t matter what I do and only what you see in me. I trace my own dreams, I look into my soul walking on the stage reciting old phrases, that still feel unfamiliar in my mouth. I spit them out at you and you mirror them back into my ear. A ringing sound, bells that are ringing, and they surround me like a noose against my neck.

ACT II

The thought that what I do does truly matter dissolves with the seconds ticking away. A network of little steps spreading through town and leading into disaster. No matter, a script doesn’t need a plot anyways. I am picking my dice, and while death is throwing them, I can do nothing but look at the numbers and pray for them to be smaller then expected. Any choice or action is collapsing on its own. Of course it did, there is no need for them, our new theatre doesn’t rely on action or words or meaning. There are only bodies needed. An anatomic theatre and I feel each and every one of you, you present yourself without my permission, my eye cannot escape your rotting corpse and I have no choice but to endure. I cannot escape the weight of you for your mere presence cannot be denied by my feeble mind. There is no way to save you. There are too many ways to save you, too many opportunities slipping through my fingers. Present the audience with too little points of interest and they will need to connect the dots on their own. Present them with too many and they will have to choose what to focus on. A soldier took your two children hostage and they ask you which one they should shoot. How do you answer? If you lose one person to save ten more, what would you do?

ACT III

An action leads to a habit. A habit leads to a character. A character leads to a conclusion. You can only look death in the eye if you put a mask on it and form the non-existent into potential. If it has a mask, it is not the meaninglessness it was before but the model of something that could be existing. Empty space forming a perfect template. Defeating death is to see something where there is nothingness. The connection between two things unrelated, the realization of an impossible idea, the achievement of preserving what cannot exist together. The only thing left is to make that choice. I am the person who needs to defeat it and thus I am acting on all of your behalf. And I am making my choice, I am making your choice, you are making my choice, I am looking at myself and at you making my choice and this choice cannot be disputed anymore. Thus, it exists.

EPILOGUE

The clock strikes the twelfth hour, or it does strike the twelfth day. I look at the ashes of my deeds, see them forming a clear picture. Creating something new always means to deny something old. Defending something old always means to deny something new. This is the right decision. There is no right decision. This is the only decision. And I persist until the curtain falls and I am devoured by silence.