Cassandra Knows Best

Cassandra Knows Best

or

The Pride of Ancient Greece

Matthew Wells

Copyright 2017 by Matthew J Wells

For information, contact:

Matthew Wells

317 Second Ave #6

New York NY 10003

646-418-3947

mjshaxpere@gmail.com

1.1

CAST OF CHARACTERS

AGAMEMNON, 50’s. Greek toga. A laurel wreath for a crown. A flowing red cape. Gold boots. The greatest man who ever lived, according to Agamemnon.

CASSANDRA, 20’s. Multicolored hair. Hoop earrings. Tank top. Flouncy skirt. Black nylons with holes in them. Combat boots. She not only sees the future, she lives there.

APOLLO, young and ageless. Full of himself, like all gods and most males.

CLYTEMNESTRA, 40’s. Black dress. Severe makeup. Carries a huge double-bladed axe. It’s not a fashion accessory.

TIME:  right after the fall of Troy.

PLACE: the street outside the house of Atreus

  

          Offstage cheering. 

          AGAMEMNON enters, with CASSANDRA on 

          a leash behind him.

AGAMEMNON

I’m Agamemnon, greater than the gods!

I bravely conquered Troy against the odds.

Heaven bows down to me!

CASSANDRA

                            Heaven is gagging.

The gods get pissed when they hear mortals bragging.

AGAMEMNON

How is it bragging when it’s simply true?

No one on earth can equal what I do!

Look at the crowd that cheered me in the streets!

They all love me—from lepers to elites!

Ten hundred thousand people cheered my fame!

Ten hundred thousand voices yelled my name!

CASSANDRA

What are you smoking, dude—the Golden Fleece?

There’s just twelve thousand men in all of Greece.

AGAMEMNON

Fake numbers. Sad. But mercy won’t desert me.

Even when you resort to lies to hurt me.

I pity and forgive your angry fits.

You don’t know any better—you have tits.

So thank you, Gods above, for giving me

This huge incomparable victory.

No one has ever won as big as this!

Deny it, and I’ll tell you what to kiss!

I have won greatness thanks to great Troy’s fall!

CASSANDRA

And eight minutes from now you’ll lose it all.

AGAMEMNON

No matter what I do, it’s never wrong!

I am the law! I rule!

CASSANDRA

                       But not for long.

AGAMEMNON

Cassandra—why’s it always tragedy

When you predict the future?

CASSANDRA

                             That’s just me.

I tell all the tomorrows Fate will weave

That no one with today’s ears will believe.

So you could say it’s all part of my curse.

But it’s just life. Life lives by getting worse.

It’s always shittier than you expected.

Just ask America when Trump’s elected.

AGAMEMNON

Ask Greece! I did what the great gods demanded—

I faced ten million men, and single-handed

Sent them to Hell, then sent their widows lilies.

And then killed Hector!

CASSANDRA

                         No, that was Achilles.

AGAMEMNON

Who died—and as we sailed down failure’s stream,

My clever brain thought up a perfect scheme,

A stratagem both clever and delicious—

The Trojan Horse!

CASSANDRA

                  Wait—wasn’t that Odysseus?

AGAMEMNON

Okay, okay—but I approved the plan.

CASSANDRA

You would have been dumb not to, silly man.

AGAMEMNON

And really—who’s Odysseus anyway?

CASSANDRA

Sean Bean in that Brad Pitt film. He’s okay.

AGAMEMNON

Now I’ve come home, after the fall of Troy.

To live the life that I deserve.

CASSANDRA

                                Oh boy.

AGAMEMNON

A loving wife to share my general’s bed.

CASSANDRA

And drive a loving axe into your head.

AGAMEMNON

A faithful son to carry on my name.

CASSANDRA

There ain’t a mama’s boy who is more lame.

AGAMEMNON

What have you got against my son Orestes?

CASSANDRA

I think your crazy daughter has more testes.

AGAMEMNON

My daughter, loving as a fiancée!

CASSANDRA

Her love is kind of Freudian, okay?

AGAMEMNON

And you, Cassandra—you. My prize of prizes!

A girl whose beauty always tantalizes.

The woman who said “Get lost!” to Apollo.

And she’s my slave! That’s victory!

          APOLLO enters on his line.

APOLLO

                                 That’s hollow.

CASSANDRA

Oh crap. Apollo.

APOLLO

                   Cass! How have you been?

CASSANDRA

Y’know—enslaved and raped. They’ve both been “in”

Since Troy fell, and my family was all killed.

APOLLO

I wish I could have helped you, but ‘twas willed

That Troy should be erased like ancient ink

Thanks to a thug. That would be you, I think.

Apollo, son of Zeus. The girl is mine.

AGAMEMNON

What?

APOLLO

    Give. Me. This. Girl. You. Dumb. Mortal. Swine.

AGAMEMNON

No.

APOLLO

     No? I’ll turn you into something gilled,

And gut you.

CASSANDRA

             Nope. That isn’t how he’s killed.

And why—why do you want me anyway?

APOLLO

Because you always blow me off.

CASSANDRA

                              Oh-ka-a-a-a-ay . . .

APOLLO

Women don’t do that to me.

CASSANDRA

                          I did.

APOLLO

                                 And

Here we both are, and your death is at hand.

Unless you let me love you, little Cass.

CASSANDRA

And why would I do that, you stupid ass?

AGAMEMNON

Yeah—why would she do that when she has me?

I’m so much better for her sanity.

APOLLO

Enough—enough of all this stupid talking.

Make love to me, or die.

CASSANDRA

                          Dead Trojan walking.

APOLLO

Fine. I’ll just watch it all go down from here.

AGAMEMNON

You chose me over him! You precious dear.

CASSANDRA

Whoa! I did no such thing, you egotist.

AGAMEMNON

It’s my smile, right? I know you can’t resist.

CASSANDRA

Just watch me.

AGAMEMNON

                No, deep down you really care.

CASSANDRA

I don’t!

AGAMEMNON

        I say you do.

CASSANDRA

                      Fuck off.

AGAMEMNON

                                 Don’t swear.

I don’t like hearing words like that from you.

It’s not becoming in a girl I screw.

But now that I know just how much you love me—

CASSANDRA

I don’t!

AGAMEMNON

          I will pray to the gods above me

To give me patience till you see it through

And freely give me what I steal from you—

CASSANDRA

                                         Ewww!

AGAMEMNON

—Till what you’ve made me take from you by force

Becomes your loving gift. And then, of course,

My happiness will be complete at last.

And we will be together.

CASSANDRA

                          Not so fast.

I hate you and despise you. Hate. Kapish?

AGAMEMNON

But why?

CASSANDRA

            Because you’ve got me on a leash!

You treat me like your special breeding cow!

I loathe your Grecian ass!

AGAMEMNON

                            You say that now.

But you will really like me when you know me.

I’ll win your love! I’ll make you mine!

CASSANDRA

                                        Men. Blow me!

AGAMEMNON

You’ll see—our love will grow.

CASSANDRA

                                No, it will fester.

Oh look—here comes your sweet wife Clytemnester.

          CLYTEMNESTRA enters with a great 

          double-bladed axe slung over her shoulder.

AGAMEMNON

At last! My loving wife! Look at that smile!

CASSANDRA

Yeah—all teeth, like a hungry crocodile.

CLYTEMNESTRA

My love.

AGAMEMNON

            Hear how she says “My love” to me!

Such tenderness! Such domesticity!

It means so much to hear her be so kind.

CASSANDRA

I know—it means you’re deaf as well as blind.

CLYTEMNESTRA

So who’s this pretty thing, my dear?

AGAMEMNON

                                      She’s mine.

Cassandra—she’s my Trojan concubine.

CLYTEMNESTRA

“Concubine.” I’m so dumb. What does that mean?

CASSANDRA

It means he treats me like his sex machine.

CLYTEMNESTRA

Does he still do it like a battering ram?

                       

CASSANDRA

It isn’t sex unless he breaks your clam.

CLYTEMNESTRA

That’s my sweet husband. He thinks he’s the greatest.

CASSANDRA

And in one minute he will be the latest.

AGAMEMNON

I will not die today. The gods above

Have given me their favor and their love.

They kept me safe so I could spend my life

At home, with daughter, son, and happy wife.

CLYTEMNESTRA

And I am happy. Don’t forget that, will you?

CASSANDRA

Of course she is—cuz now she gets to kill you.

AGAMEMNON

She won’t.

CASSANDRA

           She will.

AGAMEMNON

                       I won’t stoop to debate you.

Why would she want to kill me?

CLYTEMNESTRA

                                Cuz I hate you.

You killed our child.

AGAMEMNON

                      The gods told me to do it!

CLYTEMNESTRA

So you could go to war.

AGAMEMNON

                         And then live through it!

And here I am.

CLYTEMNESTRA

                So tell me what you feel.

AGAMEMNON

Relief. And pride. And hunger. Where’s my meal?

CLYTEMNESTRA

My heart feels all the loss that your heart lacks.

AGAMEMNON

Yeah, yeah. So what’s for dinner?

CLYTEMNESTRA

                                     Eat my axe.

          CLYTEMNESTRA chops AGAMEMNON in half.

CASSANDRA

The harshest words the dead will ever know

Are when the living say “I told you so.”

APOLLO

Now kill her.

CLYTEMNESTRA

               No.

APOLLO

                     I’m ordering you to.

CLYTEMNESTRA

Not even gods tell women what to do.

APOLLO

You little bitch. What arrogance! Repent!

I am divine! Get on your knees!

CLYTEMNESTRA

                                 Get bent.

APOLLO

Maybe you didn’t hear me. I’ll shout louder.

CLYTEMNESTRA

This is between us bitches. Take a powder.

APOLLO

When my father hears this, he’ll punish you!

CASSANDRA

Yeah—run to Dad.

CLYTEMNESTRA

                    Go whine to mommy too.

          APOLLO exits.

CLYTEMNESTRA

So here’s the deal. I could kill you right now.

CASSANDRA

You will.

CLYTEMNESTRA

            I won’t. It makes no sense somehow.

CASSANDRA

What will you do then?

CLYTEMNESTRA

                       Laugh and let you go.

My quarrel was with this dead so-and-so.

The future is a path. Pick one and take it.

Don’t let it happen. Don’t—unless you make it.

I chose my path. I’ll take the consequences.

You do the same. Your only real offense is

You were a victim of both God and man.

You want revenge? Go live the best you can.

That’s what I’ll do until my dying day.

CASSANDRA

When your son kills you.

CLYTEMNESTRA

                           Pfft!—no fucking way.

CLYTEMNESTRA exits.

CASSANDRA

Holy crap! I’ve escaped my destiny!

I get to make one of my own. Yay me!

The ruler of my life! I get to do

Anything! I’m the boss of me! Whoo hoo!

I’ll dye my hair bright red! I’ll go to France!

I’ll change my name to Sandy! I’ll wear pants!

APOLLO appears, arms wide.

CASSANDRA

I can paint! Sculpt! Write poems! Cure the flu!

There’s nothing I won’t do! (To APOLLO) Except for you.

APOLLO

You think you’ve won, but nothing can defeat me!

I’ll win your love! I’ll make you mine!

CASSANDRA

                                       Men. Eat me!

         Blackout. End of play.

Copyright 2017 Matthew J Wells

Cold Dead Hands

The good news is: the first act is done.

The bad news is: I have no glocking idea what happens next.

Meanwhile, at the paper of record . . . .

ABOVE THE FOLD

No member of society has the right to teach any doctrine contrary to what society holds to be true.

-- Samuel Johnson

SCENE: The offices of a great metropolitan newspaper.

A MANAGING EDITOR, a CITY EDITOR, and a young REPORTER are discussing the top story of the day.

MANAGING EDITOR:  Okay, whadda we got?

REPORTER:  Some guy shot another guy near the Empire State Building, and then two cops shot the killer and some bystanders.

CITY EDITOR:  How many bystanders?

REPORTER:  Nine.

MANAGING EDITOR:  Whoa whoa whoa!  The cops do not shot bystanders.  Ever.

REPORTER:  Well it’s pretty clear that they did.

MANAGING EDITOR:  Well it’s pretty clear that we can’t say that.

REPORTER:  But it’s a verifiable fact.

MANAGING EDITOR:  You don’t understand.  When I say, “We cannot say that,” I mean we cannot say that.  When I say “The cops do not shoot bystanders,” I am not talking about a verifiable fact, I am talking about a sentence in the newspaper.  Subject verb object.  If “shoots” is the verb and “bystanders” is the object, then there is no way that the word “cops” can ever be the subject.  It’s journalistically incorrect.

REPORTER:  But it’s the truth!

MANAGING EDITOR:  Isn’t that what I just said?

CITY EDITOR:  Look--even if it is true--and that’s a big if--then we have to tell that truth in a way that not only reflects the facts, but grammatically reinforces the cultural values behind the facts.

REPORTER:  You mean like, the police are here to protect us, and therefore they can do no wrong?

MANAGING EDITOR:  Exactly.

CITY EDITOR:  Except that we can’t say that out loud.

MANAGING EDITOR:  We have to imply it.

CITY EDITOR:  Unless--wait--can’t we fall back on the Reagan Rule?

MANAGING EDITOR:  No--we don’t have a press release yet, so we can’t reprint it as if it’s an actual piece of reporting.

CITY EDITOR:  Crap.  So we have to use cop-speak.

MANAGING EDITOR:  I’m afraid so.

REPORTER:  Cop-speak?

CITY EDITOR:  The passive tense.  The cops don’t hurt people; people get hurt.  The cops don’t shoot bystanders; bystanders are caught in the line of fire.

REPORTER:  But that makes it the bystander’s fault.

MANAGING EDITOR:  Exactly. 

CITY EDITOR:  Because it can’t be the cops’ fault.

MANAGING EDITOR:  Ever.

CITY EDITOR:  That kind of shit only happens in Russia.

MANAGING EDITOR:  Or Mexico.

CITY EDITOR:  Or China.

MANAGING EDITOR:  Not here.

CITY EDITOR:  Not ever.

MANAGING EDITOR:  Cops never, ever shoot, or kill.  They open fire.  Unless they’re provoked, in which case they return fire, or they answer fire.

REPORTER:  Making it the shooter’s fault.

CITY EDITOR:  Correct.  And even when they kill the shooter--what’s this guy’s name?

REPORTER:  Johnson.

CITY EDITOR:  Johnson--even when they kill Johnson, we either say “Johnson was killed” or “police shoot suspect.” 

REPORTER:  Why can’t we say “Police shoot Johnson?”

MANAGING EDITOR:  Because that personalizes the act of shooting.  We need to make it as nebulous as possible so that people don’t get a picture in their head of some overweight guy in blue sticking a gun in somebody’s face and pulling the trigger.

CITY EDITOR:  So what we have to do here grammatically is, we have to make this shooting look like a one-time only event that was caused by the victims, so that future innocent bystanders are reassured that it can never happen again.

REPORTER:  And meanwhile, what, the police who fired the bullets aren’t even part of the process?

CITY EDITOR:  [a shrug]  Welcome to New York.

REPORTER:  More like “Welcome to Bloomberg’s police state.”

CITY EDITOR:  Isn’t that what I just said?

MANAGING EDITOR:  Work with us here, okay?

REPORTER:  Okay.  Okay.  Okay; so . . . how about something like, uh, “Police shoot suspect, nine others wounded?”

MANAGING EDITOR:  No no no--not wounded--hurt.  Nine others hurt.  “Wounded” implies that somebody did the wounding.  “Hurt” implies that it was an accident--they could have fallen down, they could have twisted their ankle.

CITY EDITOR:  Even better--how’s this?--even better, let’s spend the first paragraph painting a scene of chaos. 

MANAGING EDITOR:  I love it.

CITY EDITOR:  Chaos means it’s nobody’s fault.  Chaos means, for all we know, the bystanders who were wounded--

MANAGING EDITOR:  Hurt.

CITY EDITOR:  --hurt ran right into the path of bullets which were aimed at the suspect.

REPORTER:  So “Police Shoot Suspect, Nine Others Hurt in Chaos.”

CITY EDITOR:  Perfect.  And then at some point in the first three paragraphs you can say that people were wounded, but make sure there’s some doubt about who they were wounded by.

MANAGING EDITOR:  No--don’t mention people at all--mention the bullets.  And then admit the possibility that some of those bullets were fired by the police.

CITY EDITOR:  No--not fired by the police--don’t mention the police as people, mention them as adjectives.  Mention the bystanders as people--so it’s like, ah, “they were wounded, possibly by police bullets,” something like that.

MANAGING EDITOR:  And we have to say how fast it was happening too.  Something like “the nanosecond speed at which a shootout plays out.”

REPORTER:  Huh?

MANAGING EDITOR:  Is that not clear?

REPORTER:  No human being can act in nanoseconds.

MANAGING EDITOR:  Of course not, but the point is not to be realistic, the point is that it happens so fast you can’t do anything about it.  That’s all we’re saying--that in cases like this, the police are confronted by a series of split-second choices.

REPORTER:  [sarcastically] Split-nanosecond choices?

MANAGING EDITOR:  Don’t be ridiculous.

CITY EDITOR:  What else can’t we say?

MANAGING EDITOR:  I’m a little concerned about the phrase “bystander shooting.”  Can we even put the words “bystander” and “shooting” next to each other?

CITY EDITOR:  We shouldn’t even use the word shooting at all.

MANAGING EDITOR:  Exactly.  Call it an incident.  Call it an encounter, or an event--but do NOT call it a shooting.

REPORTER:  [increasingly more frustrated] So, what, “bystanders were injured?”

CITY EDITOR:  No, injured is too active, it implies that somebody injured them--

MANAGING EDITOR:  Meaning the cops--

CITY EDITOR:  --and we can’t even imply that, never mind actually say it in print.

REPORTER:  “After bystanders were embroiled in a shooting incident?”

MANAGING EDITOR:  Too complicated, even for us.

CITY EDITOR:  And it still mentions shooting.

REPORTER:  How about “bystanders hit by bullets?”

CITY EDITOR:  Whose bullets?

REPORTER:  The cops’ bullets.

CITY EDITOR:  Then we can’t say it.

REPORTER:  “Bystanders hit by bullets that magically appeared out of nowhere?”

MANAGING EDITOR:  Can we take this seriously please?

REPORTER:  I am taking this seriously.

CITY EDITOR:  How about “Bystanders take fire?”

MANAGING EDITOR:  No, that could mean they all pulled out guns and opened up at each other.

CITY EDITOR:  How about “bystanders take bullets?”

MANAGING EDITOR:  Yes!  Perfect! 

REPORTER:  “Perfect?”  How is it perfect?

MANAGING EDITOR:  Because it makes it all their fault!

CITY EDITOR:  It’s like they chose to get shot!

REPORTER:  [blowing up] And that’s ridiculous!  We’re giving our readers the impression that a bunch of innocent people deliberately jumped in front of a fusillade of bullets that nobody actually fired because we’re afraid to say three simple words, one right after the other: “police” “shoot” “bystanders.”  Do you know what that is?

CITY EDITOR:  It’s American journalism.

REPORTER:  It’s self-censorship!

MANAGING EDITOR:  Isn’t that what he just said?

[BLACKOUT.]