Plays 1: Weird Time Blues by Colin Peterson, George O'Sullivan (smart books to read .TXT) 📕

(Referring to Tosst.) He jus’ says I should wash more and stop eating shit.

Tosst: (begging Tunk, moving his hand faster on his head; Tunk is in a trance, drooling.) We can sort out others for you. We have medication for you to deal with other people - it will help. You can still watch shit on TV, you know?

Tunk:(eyes bulging, looking angry.) Cackman, you leave us, you won’t be able to come back.

Cackman: That’s what I want. Goodbye General. Goodbye Doctor.

Cackman exits. Tunk comes in surprise; Tosst cries putting his head in Tunk’s groin in despair, Tunk then pushes Tosst away and runs crying and hugging Lacey, who appears, swaying, they step into:

Scene 10.
Barracks. The troops come in drunk and all happy. Lacey and Choca support each other up. Shitball kisses his hand, licking his palms then tries to eat it. Fringle approaches Choca and kisses him. Fringle collapses on the bed.

Lacey: So, chocsy. Sorry, Choca. Choca. What makes you keep coming back, Choca?

Choca: Don’t get all philosophical on me, man. Cos philosophy is…like philosophical and all that….really complex stuff. Look, now you got me thinking…what you sayin’?

Lacey: Well, if you keep coming back you must like us?

Choca: Look, all I am is a programmed stereotype. And that’s me trying to be cool - is it working? (Lacey shrugs.) I’m the veteran soldier to make you realise your role in the world.

Lacey: What is my role?

Choca: I don’t know! Watch Platoon and try to identify with Charlie Sheen - that’ll be funny. But I’m the vet who knows how to piss off everyone - and get what I want.

Lacey: To look cool?

Choca: No, to die young and stay pretty, fool!

Lacey: I didn’t think of that. (Beat.) Want a smoke?

Choca: (eats the smoke, it's a candy stick.) Sure. Look, I have to disclose to you that you’re a target. That meddling doc -

Lacey: You talking about Dr. Tosst?

Choca: Yeah. That’s the guy.

Lacey: I met him in the infirmary.

Choca: Well, he is a doc. That’s where the quacks hang out.

Lacey: Are you part of the programme?

Choca: No. I’m just a bad hallucination.

Lacey: That’s a cop out; I know you wouldn’t lie to me.

Choca: Look, I’m going to give Fringle a fondle and a good mamma-jammin’. You just get high. You need it more than me.

Choca goes to Fringle’s cardboard bunk, which is a troop-shaped target, and starts trying to fuck her fully clothed with his gun-dick. Lacey takes some pills and finishes a near empty bottle of gin. He smokes, looking relaxed. Lacey smiles, laughing tears well in his eyes, and he looks like he's crying, but he's really happy. We see Fringle and Choca kissing in background on the cardboard troop target, still trying to fuck through their clothes. Cackman enters; Lacey freezes.

Cackman: Don’t be scared. I just want to thank you. You gave me hope. For the first time I feel like a person, who’s really a person. (Lacey looks baffled.) Even though I belong here, I want to help out the rest of you get out of this shit hole. You have no real say in what you really do. They just make you think you do. They aren’t listening. I know them too well. Tunk wants to kill me, so I must move quick. Take care.

Cackman tenderly kisses a frozen Lacey, then exits. Lacey smiles, checking his dick, then an alarm goes off. The lights flicker, as we hear the clanking of a metal, as the lights go red then we hear laser-fire, then the theme from Galaga, which everyone thinks is a rave .Then:

Scene 11.
Multicoloured room, thunder, lightning, then a flickering of lights, then a sun storm. Lacey sits in a room. Fringle enters in a white coat.

Lacey: Hi Fringle!

Fringle: I’m not Fringle. Look, we know you were on some heavy drugs, Derek, but you’re going to have to tell us about this Colony Forty-Six place all over again.

Lacey: Look, it’s really far away - as in far. I can’t remember where. I just ended up there. I really hated Earth and you know how people have to move on. Well, I was going to…I dunno now, it’s so long ago. But I decided to go to Mars. From Mars I got this cruiser then I was at Colony Forty Six. It’s nearer Pluto than Charon.

Fringle: You know, by present technology, it takes approximately forty years to get to Pluto and back. I may be wrong with that calculation but present technology changes so quickly. Well, they must have a hyper-drive like all that other sci-fi shit or whatever. You watched something with Mars in today?

Lacey: I could've. Could’ve been frozen. It might help me work, rest, erm, and -

Lacey farts. Fringle writes some notes.

Fringle: Do you recognise this man? (Puts on a projector showing a picture of Lacey, beaten up and looking very messy.) This man is homeless and has been seen wandering the streets claiming to be from another planet. Claiming an intergalactic war is inevitable. Were you this person?

Lacey: (irate.) No! I’ve been over all this before! I don't eat my own shit for attention and I'm perfectly sane. I told you that when you said I was this person I was under the supervision of Doctor Tosst.

Fringle: There is no Doctor by that name at this institution. (Pause. Checks her notes.) Oh, no you're right there is. My mistake. I'm such a spazzmothicko. There’s a janitor called Tosst. A coloured, hmm? Voodoo-teevo-juju-shit, or gang related shit? Maybe good shit - or shitty-ass bitchin’ shit. Was tha jig up?

Lacey: Shut up about shit. Please! (Pause) Well, I think you’re trying to fuck me. Like in those movies. I see it in my mind. And what I watch in public. You know I ain’t seen anything for ages. Not since I been in here. Look, I’m telling the truth….I just want to be free. I volunteered for research, I… my…then I was in the army then…I’m so tired, all tha time, now I’m here. It’s all a bit of a blur. I’m ill? I knew it.

Fringle: (takes her own urine sample, stirring it with a plastic stirrer.)Sounds like sound a self-drug induced stereotypical drug psychosis. I think you’ve infiltrated what you thought as cool and your brain is telling you it’s cool, so your dying - that’s cool for us all! (She laughs in his face. Lacey doesn’t respond.) When the music’s over eh? (Winking at him, sticking a finger up her arse for fun and pouring a cup of her urine over Lacey; Lacey ejaculates, as Fringle nose-fucks him with her shitty finger, then forces it into his mouth, Lacey sucks hard on her soiled finger.) Tell me about this guy called “Choca“. I want to meet him.

Lacey: He’s a holographic legend. If he was in a graphic novel, I might hire it from a library. I might nick it after a while. But he went off to fight the war; he was a free agent, invincible. So he came back to the colony complex to train and sometimes he would takes us to the entertainment complex and we’d all get hammered, I never remember how, though. Fucking wicked. I loved it. Choca went off to fight the pirate terra-formers…I‘ve told you all this - haven‘t I?

Fringle: What happened to Choca?

Lacey: You know! YOU KNOW! FOR FUCK’S SAKE YOU KNOW!

Puppet orderlies run into the white room and protect Fringle and they wrestle Lacey down to the ground. They drag him away.

Scene 12.
A space station: a semi-modern complex, which is made of cardboard and looks quite depressing. Automatic doors open and close, pulled by Shitball and Choca. No-one comes in. An Old Man called Bagoo enters, shuffling slowly, followed by Lacey, but dressed in clothes too young for his years - he almost could be mistaken for a tweenie, as he is dressed in a spacesuit style romper suit and bib. Lacey carries a bowl of slime, which slops around. It has ‘MUM’ written on the side of the bowl.

Bagoo: Son, I’m proud of you. You wouldn’t think, would you? All them years you bleed me dry with your education - trying to get things easier for you. (Hugging Lacey, intimately.) No, you were a burden; I wanted you to die. (Cheerful.) I would’ve been popular. (Seething; grits teeth, while smiling, putting his hands around Lacey‘s neck, caressing his throat.) But you kept going, draining my life-money. (Faking it, smirking to the audience.) My precious money - my shitty life!

Lacey: (casually, in Bagoo’s face.) Cheers Dad. You’re a dick head, and you’ve fucked me up, before I could even fuck myself up!

Bagoo: Well, you’re going off to war. Good - isn’t it? You better protect that Colony from those pesky rebels - it’s all our energy reserves! Sorry - is that too much info? As in: (Shouts in Lacey’s face, globules of spit fly.) INFORMATION D.I.P-SHIT! (Lacey nods, yawning.) We can’t live with people who want the same things - that’s all. (Sniffs, wipes away a fake tear from his eye.) No, they have to be poor, go without. That’s life.

Lacey: Oh, right. I always thought we could all work together and come to a mutual solution to live with each other.

Bagoo: Silly boy; it’s not that simple! Why - you’re straight out the propaganda department! I know a spy - I was James Bond during the war, of course.

Lacey: Dad: I don’t really want to go to war. I’m sorry, but I can’t handle it. I don’t want to kill other people. So what if these rebels are just poor people trying to survive without the permission of the state? They made their own stuff; they do everything themselves. Who cares -

Bagoo: YOU’RE GOIN’ TAH WAR BOY-EE! (Looking to the skies.) What would you’re Mum say?

Lacey: Nothing much - I haven’t turned her communicator on yet. She’s still in stasis.

Bagoo: (grabbing the bowl; slopping the bloody liquid everywhere as they struggle.) Give me you’re mother! Turn her on! Turn her on! TURN YE FUCKIN’ MUMMA ON! (The liquid goop slops out onto the stage.) Stupid boy! STOOPID BOY-EE! Yah killed your mother!

Lacey: She was already dead!

Bagoo: (in tears, smiling, shaking Lacey.) FUCK YOU! YOU LITTLE SHIT! Fuck off somewhere, anywhere! (In Lacey’s face, kisses him on the cheek, tries to bite him; growls.) I don’t need to see you again.

Bagoo spits into Lacey’s face; Lacey smiles, wiping the phlegm away casually.

Lacey: I take it I can’t come home? I’ll put Mum down the bog.

Bagoo: (wiping the slime from the floor with a handkerchief and smelling it, kissing it.) Just fuck off. FUCK OFF!

Lacey walks down a corridor, giggles, then skips away. Bagoo follows Lacey, looking shocked, as Bagoo starts to cry.

Bagoo: Fucking machines!

Darkness, as the distant stars glow.