Quarantine the play will be posted on here for public feedback and review as Euginia writes for the next few weeks. The Google Doc can also be accessed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eKNAeAFOjgluewXPGfNissWO6meg5p6VKgsfFxZq_pk/edit?usp=sharing
Quarantine
A daughter attempts to negotiate a murder on her mother during their time of quarantine.
Mother
Daughter
Scene 6
(continued from previous entry)
The next day. Mother is tidying the house.
Daughter is making a meal.
Daughter: I don’t feel good about this.
Mother hums.
Daughter: Mother, I said. I don’t feel good about this.
Mother: Well, cook something else then.
Daughter: Not the food. You know what I’m talking about! The plan!
Beat.
Daughter: The plan for later? When the radio comes? How do we even know…
Mother: They’ll come at the same time.
Beat.
Mother: You seemed to think it was a good idea last night.
Daughter: Because I was tired, and wanted to sleep! So I just went along with it!
Mother: Then stay here. I’ll do it myself.
Daughter: How…
Mother: I’m going to. Nothing’s going to change that.
Daughter: And the body? Do we just leave it there? You haven’t even thought it out far enough!
Mother: There’s too many of them. They wouldn’t care about one person.
Daughter: Yes, but they’d come to find out sooner or later!
Mother: Then we just… Let it happen. Look at us.
Beat.
Mother: A single mother, driven out of her mind. Her only child, forced to depend on no one else.
Beat.
Mother: They’d let us off easy. What’s the worst they can do? And in times like this…
Beat.
Mother: Any death not caused by the virus would just be… another death.
Daughter: That’s how you’ve thought of us all these years? Like some kind of crumbling unit?
Beat.
Daughter: Has it worked to your advantage somehow? Thinking of us as some…. disempowered state of being?
Daughter finishes cooking.
Daughter: We should eat something.
They sit down to eat.
Daughter: If they come before the meal, we…
Beat.
Daughter: We finish eating after we do it.
Mother: This tastes good.
Beat.
Mother: So you do want to do it.
Daughter: Are you going to answer me?
Beat.
Mother: Could use a little pepper.
The door opens. A package is about to be dropped in.
Mother and Daughter spring into action.
They rush out the door and grab the guard who has dropped off the package.
Mother takes out a knife. She wounds the guard. The guard is slightly weakened, tries to struggle back.
Daughter: (begins to cry) Mother, I can’t… I can’t….
Mother continues hurting the guard.
Mother: The only way to get by in this world, sometimes, is to be seen as useless! As weak!
Daughter: Why couldn’t you answer me just now…
Mother: I had to survive! I had to… (begins to break down) Do things I didn’t want to do…
Daughter attempts to hurt the guard.
Daughter: Me too, me too…
Mother: Your father was but a common man… I couldn’t believe he had it in him to leave our life…
Daughter now hurts the guard more confidently. The guard starts to yell.
Daughter: You both were common people… I can’t believe you’d decide to add to this miserable place…
Mother: And you, a common child!
Daughter: What’s my name then, Mother?
The guard is heavily wounded at this point. More guards come. Mother and Daughter are surrounded and restrained.
Daughter: Children lose their names to their parents too.
Mother: Girl, the air… Can you smell it?
Daughter: Yes… It’s….
Mother: It’s fresh. Like you said. It’s clean.
Daughter: They lied. You all lied to us!
Mother: I love you.
The guards sedate them.
Scene 7 will be up on Wednesday and the entire play will be published on 22 May.