SETTING
Darkness. A dirty cage. Sawdust. Food dish with no food. Water bottle attached to cage filled half-way with LSD. 4 Piles of rat shit North, East, South, and West. ± 8 Rat skeletons North-East, South-East, South-West, and North-West (~ 2 in each direction).
CHARACTERS
RAT A: Female, one broken hind leg.
RAT B: Male.
HAND: Absent the duration of Play.
RAT A and RAT B share the same tail, they cannot separate.
RAT A and RAT B sit in the dead center of the cage and do not move for the duration of the Play unless specified.
***
RAT A: Another night.
RAT B: Another day.
RAT A: Verification? For objectivity’s sake. We are needing this.
RAT B: Alright. The fuchsia sunspot has come into this…we’ll say… world… slanted and has illuminated the Bottle. Crystals condense on the sides and build castles. The castles will soon clog the whole apparatus. Soon we will tongue the metal ball and no liquid will seep. Long and long, the sunspot diffracts through the crystals and diffuses into the cage. The sun. Is there anymore verification needed to say “another day?”
RAT A: Yes. For duration’s sake. Talk more of the sunspot and maybe the ball. I love the ball.
RAT B: The sunspot illuminates the skulls and bones of the deceased Others. The sunspot glacially dances through the bottle like drowning water. Fuck I miss water… The diffracted light spirals on the shit piles. The light ignites the sawdust into black flames. Fuck I want this shit to burn. I’m wasting energy thinking… Do you need anymore objectivity? I’m hungry.
RAT A: Eat more shit.
RAT B: We can’t eat anymore. It’s the shit of a shit of a shit of a shit ad Infinium. There’s no nutrients left in it.
RAT A: A true observation. Back to the water bottle. Talk of the ball. The licking of the ball.
RAT B: No. I am depleted. The minutes accumulate like shit.
RAT A: Fine. Fuck you. Take a whiff of that.
RAT B: [Sniffs the air] Why?
RAT A: That’s time, baby. Pure time. I gauge the days by smell now.
RAT B: What time is it then?
RAT A: 3:33 pm if your conjecture about the sun is correct.
RAT B: It is.
RAT A: I will eat you at some point today.
RAT B: I will eat you at some point today.
RAT A: Very good. Then it is settled.
RAT B: Settled like the black mold in our lungs?
RAT A: More like settled like the mold on the shit piles. More objective. I judge the weeks and their passing by the millimeters of mold on the shit piles.
RAT B: Go on. For objectivity’s sake.
RAT A: Every week, the mold spikes 5 millimeters crawling towards the dark.
RAT B: Crawling? When was the last time you crawled?
RAT A: About 10 millimeters ago. When the HAND came. And gave us our FOOD. Our last supper. Been starving since then. I don’t crawl around anymore to conserve energy like the good bottom-feeder I am. By the way, quit masturbating. You are wasting our energy. Why am I to suffer for your need for desire?
RAT B: We are crucified at the veins. We are going down together. Why are you really so opposed to my rubbing?
RAT A: You used to fuck me. Then you lost desire. I’ve been crying and drinking my tears for 20 millimeters.
RAT B: Desire dies. You just wanted to reproduce. Why?
RAT A: I get lonely.
RAT B: Another rat on the pogue wouldn’t guarantee comfort. There is no guarantee that they would meld into our tail. They might eat us without any dialogue.
RAT A: Possible.
RAT B: We would have to rub it’s tail against ours like sticks trying to spark.
RAT A: That would be lovely.
RAT B: But that would require energy. Energy from food we don’t have.
RAT A: Yet, and always yet, The HAND might come back.
RAT B: Fuck the HAND. And its switch blade nails. How I wish it would cut itself and bleed into the cage. Nutrients would soak into the sawdust. We could gorge. Hold on… I have an erection. [Begins to masturbate]
RAT A: Hold on… When you come let me drink it. I need the protein.
Intermission One: Rat A drinks Rat B’s Sperm. After, they stare and schizophrenically mutter at the audience for two minutes.
***
RAT B: Do you think it’s coming back?
RAT A: Your erection?
RAT B: No. The HAND. The HAND that feeds?
RAT A: That fucker. That is difficult to ascertain.
RAT B: Remember how its nails would glitter in the dark? Remember the screams of some rotating cylinders that would accompany it. Remember the glorious gravity of the food. Remember the finest ground cockroaches. The thinnest cuts of feral dog shank. DMT crystals… Hold on… my erection’s back… No… it’s over…
RAT A: From my LSD-sharpened sense of time, I have gauged the HAND hasn’t returned for 10 millimeters. I have concluded we’ve been abandoned. Left to die in this. This? What was the word it boomed once? When we were a pulsating, rhizomatic, writhing mass of us… All of us joined at the tail… Those were the days… Those were the nights… All us virile and ravenous… killing… eating… drinking… fucking… and shitting… All in one furious mass… Then, when the food ran out came the teeth. Remember how we slowly ate each other? Down to where tail met tail. I digress. What was the word? It started with a “C,” yes a “C.” I can see it clearly in my third eye…
RAT B: “CUNT?” [Uses quotation gestures]
RAT A: Maybe… Cunt… Yes… We are left to die in this cunt… This cunt with rusted bars. This cunt with a small square opening overhead for the food. These red encrusted walls. Yes. It must be “cunt.”
RAT B: This is our rusty cunt… We must cherish it for it is the only cunt we’ve known.
RAT A: Wait. One of the thousand voices in my head tells me that cunt is close to the word we’re looking for. There. Let us rub our skulls together to get the word.
RAT B: Who gives a man’s ass what the fuck the word is called. Besides, we can’t waste the energy.
RAT A: Very well. I will eat you. This is eating me up.
RAT B: Fine. If it will make the time pass. Let’s try to find the word.
RAT A / RAT B: [Rubbing skulls together] CAGE.
RAT A: The word is “Cage” not “Cunt.” How could we be so close? We’re slipping in our emaciation.
RAT B: Three hairs off. That’s pretty close.
RAT A: We are fools. I always get the ordering wrong. FIRST, our world was a cunt, THEN our world is a cage.
RAT B: Don’t meat yourself up about it. It’s only three letters; three hairs out of twenty-six on the same animal.
RAT A: Now I’m fixated on this cunt thing…Do you remember Mother?
RAT B: She’s in the North-East corner of the cage. We ate her.
RAT A: No… no… no… BEFORE we ate her… When we were jammed like fingers into her cunt?
RAT B: I remember warmth… I remember pink light… I remember fluid… Nutrients came by passively then… those were the days. Those were the nights… We incubated with C, D, E, F, G, H, I, and J. It was an eviler time… Then we were birthed into the sawdust writhing and screaming. Mother ate I and J right away but kept the rest. I hate her for having thrown us into this. She should have eaten us. [RAT B looks around the cage]
RAT A: I have come to that conclusion as well.
RAT B: Want to piss on her skeleton again?
RAT A: No… We need to drink our piss.
RAT B: Then what is to be done?
RAT A: Maybe you should masturbate. It will calm your nerves.
RAT B: I will.
RAT A: Let me catch the drippings.
Intermission Two: Rat A drinks Rat B’s Sperm. After they stare and schizophrenically mutter at the audience for two minutes.
***
RAT A: I’m so insane right now. I’m nauseous and numb. I’m going to prostitute myself.
RAT B: Don’t be silly. To who?
RAT A: To Anyone. I will back my cunt up to the bars of this cage.
RAT B: It’s only me in here, babe.
RAT A: For fuck sakes, don’t remind me of you or your feelings. I’m insane right now. How much could I get for my cunt with this busted leg. I need FOOD. You fight tooth and nail with me and didn’t even share the last supper. Or the last Other.
RAT B: This breaks my heart. I would help if I could. But I’m in the same drowning air as you… I want to kill myself. I love you.
RAT A: How? With what?
RAT B: I would eat you then strangle myself with your tail.
RAT A: Good luck killing me fuck face.
RAT B: Or I would eat all the shit and saw dust until I choked. Or put my neck between the bars of the cage and jump to break my neck. Or ram my skull into the walls of the cage. Or I could tear at my skin until the organs flopped out.
RAT A: OOOOOOOOO… do that one. I would watch in amusement then have the last last supper.
RAT B: Or I could dash my brains out with a thigh bone from one of our Others… Or better yet, I could chew and sharpen one of the thigh bones of our departed others and impale myself on it. Or I could drink all the LSD in the bottle and O.D.
RAT A: OOOOOOOOO… do that one. I would watch in amusement then have the last last supper and get high. Really fucking high.
RAT B: No. I won’t give you the satisfaction.
RAT A: Well it wouldn’t be the first time. Besides, I already have prostituted out myself. 10 millimeters ago. You remember RAT C and the last supper? Well when you two fuckers attacked me and broke my leg and left me for dead under the water bottle, RAT C came back and offered 100 strips of dog jerky, in what he camouflaged as a pile of shit, for a fuck. I was so low and sad and insane, I said yes. I thought 100 strips of dog jerky sounded fair, so he dragged me back to his corner, and proceed to rape and sodomize me. After he made me taste his come, my own ass shit and blood he pushed my skull into his pile of shit which was really a pile of dog jerky. I spat out his come and gorged myself through tears.
RAT B: What was I doing when this was happening? I would’ve murdered him.
RAT A: You were having your post-dinner masturbation in your corner.
RAT B: I would have murdered him.
RAT A: We did that. 0.5 millimeters ago. His skeleton is in the South West corner.
RAT B: This is breaking my heart. I want to kill myself.
RAT A: Don’t worry I didn’t get RAT AIDS or anything. Well at least I don’t think I did or anything.
RAT B: This is truly an exquisite pain I’m feeling. To love a prostitute. I’m going to kill myself out of jealously, rage, and hate. I hate survival and I hate myself. I am going insane. I want to die.
RAT A: You will. Oh you will. This is finishing.
RAT B: I want the HAND to kill me. I can’t bear the pain.
RAT A: Maybe it will. But I say let life take you. If life’s a bitch, make her swallow you.
RAT B: Ha ha ha.
RAT A: Yeah. Ha ha ha.
RAT B: You eat me.
RAT A: No. You eat me. [RAT A spreads her rat cunt towards RAT B. RAT B moves towards RAT A and begins to lick RAT A. After RAT A orgasms, Both RAT A and B attack and eat each other slowly, until they both die at the same time]
Rat Queen is out of print from The Blasted Tree Store.
Featured by The Blasted Tree: February 14, 2020
Tyler Hayden
Contributing Author
Rat Queen by Tyler Hayden is a Blasted Tree original drama.
ISBN [Digital]: 978-1-987906-54-7
Stage Map by Alix Au
Cover Design by Kyle Flemmer