A Short Play
Characters:
Hesh Cable
Roadie
Groupie
Musso Koroni
Setting:
A windowless room with various instrument cases and amplifiers about the floor. A man sits against the wall with his legs pulled up to his chest and a huge black guitar leans against the opposite wall.
Roadie: (Sticks his head in through the door.) Oh, there you are! Nobody knows you’re back here. You’re on in ten minutes! (Leaves)
Cable: (Apparently to self) You feel the vibration, the motion of the floor? That’s an army of stamping feet under a forest of fists held to the sky. It’s ten thousand voices raised in my name. If I don’t give them what they want they’ll tear down the walls with their hands and grind up the bricks in their teeth. They’re addicts, clawing at the music flowing through the air. They’re here to feast on sound, to bathe in the milk of life I pour over them. Me, Hesh Cable, but what am I?
What am I without you Koroni? These hands play silent songs without you. What am I without your power? What am I without your voice howling its gathering song to the darkness? I’m nothing without you, Koroni, but I’m here to ask for a favor my friend. (Gets on his knees, folds hands) I’m here to beg you, my master! Please! Can we go on tonight without feeding?
Koroni: (Dark powerful voice through microphone off stage) You know what I require.
Cable: I know! God help me, I know!
Koroni: And you know I’ll not be denied.
Cable: That’s why I brought you back here Koroni. Please, just this once, just tonight, can we play without feeding? Show me your strength this way Koroni. Show me your mercy.
Koroni: MERCY! What of me suggests the notion in my being resides even a flicker of mercy?
Cable: It’s tearing me apart, Koroni. I need to be free for one night. Just this once, and next time I’ll feed you whatever you choose. I swear to God!
Koroni: God! You dare swear by God? God is with you no more Cable. God flew from your presence many years ago when under the fading light of a splinter moon you spilt the life of an innocent!
Cable: God have mercy on me!
Koroni: No Cable, God is far from you now. God no longer hears your cries. Bow to your new God! Bow to me, Musso Koroni!
Cable: (Whimpering) No.
Koroni: I said bow!
Cable: I can’t do it Koroni! I can’t kill for you anymore! It has to stop!
Koroni: Very well, very well, boy. There were not contracts between us. Nothing signed, nothing broken. I’ll simply find a new protégé. Someone unafraid to make a sacrifice for that which I bestow.
Cable: You can’t be serious.
Koroni: And why not? Why would I not move on to one more able to control my unimaginable power?
Cable: Damn you, Koroni!
Koroni: (Laughs) Yes, yes child, damn us both.
Cable: You know I can’t live without you! It’s not just the money, or the fame. It’s the strength I feel when I control your sound.
Koroni: Yeees, child.
Cable: It’s the way we shape the minds and bodies of thousands of people.
Koroni: As with me you do.
Cable: It’s the way my heart flows out from the stage, the way my soul fills the sky every time I tough your strings!
Koroni: You’ve not begun to tap the true power within me boy. The night is no less full for the want of one. Feed me now and I will reward you on that stage with wonders greater than any before.
Cable: Yes.
Koroni: Can you taste it boy? Does your mouth water for the unspeakable might I can bestow?
Cable: Yes.
Koroni: Does your chest heave with longing? Do your fingers ache to master the world with sound?
Cable: Yes, YES!
Koroni: Now boy! In your passion I feast as if upon a thousand virgins! Feed me now and rewards beyond earthly wonders will be yours!
Cable: No! Stop manipulating me!
Koroni: Damn. I was so close.
Cable: No more killing Koroni! I can’t do it!
Koroni: Silence child! What matter the lives of the filth with which you feed me? I, who am older than mankind and what you call time, have fed upon the creators of worlds and the shepherds of galaxies.
Cable: Bullshit! You’re a fucking Guitar!
Koroni: As you see me, I am a guitar. Were you to gaze upon my true form your eyes would BURST with horror and your brain would explode into flames as your intestines erupt in a heaving torrent from your bowels.
Cable: Yeah, yeah.
Koroni: Heed my words, child. You need not concern yourself with my form. Only with the power and fame that are yours when you make the choice to stay by my side. Join the ranks of those who have truly realized their potential through me.
Cable: Like who?
Koroni: Of the names you can understand, Jimmy Hendrix.
Cable: No!
Koroni: Eddie Van Halen.
Cable: No!
Koroni: Steve Vai.
Cable: No!
Koroni: Eric Clapton.
Cable: Clapton’s not evil!
Koroni: Okay, I just met him once. But we talked for like ten minutes.
Cable: You don’t know any of those people. I bet you lied about knowing the devil too!
Koroni: Fool that you are, you would doubt me. Each and every night when your eyes fall heavily shut with sleep I journey to the molten lakes of the underworld. There we feast upon the torments of the wicked and play Led Zeppelin covers until the pits of sulfur-laden brimstone ring with ravenous eruptions of catastrophic annihilation.
Cable: You’re so full a’ shit!
Groupie: (Knocks on door) Hello? Is Hesh Cable in there?
Cable: Damn it, who’s that?
Koroni: My next meal. Let the woman enter. I’ll feast and all will be yours.
Cable: Go away!
Groupie: (Bursting in) I have a backstage pass. That means I can be in here and that means I get to meet Hesh Cable. Oh my God, it’s you!
Cable: This is a really bad time. Can you see me after the show?
Groupie: Oh my God, It’s Musso Koroni your guitar!
Koroni: Welcome to my parlor, little fawn. I’m ever so pleased to make the acquaintance of such a firm, supple morsel. And must admit, I hope you shriek terribly as in the next few moments I will taste of your flesh, drench myself with your blood and then feast upon your soul as a starving wolf rends the soft cheek of a lamb.
Groupie: That’s such a beautiful guitar. I feel like it’s talking to me!
Cable: You don’t wanna hear what that guitar’s saying.
Koroni: Hear this, my succulent treat, pain will pour from your body upon my neck and your howling agonies will drip from my glistening body. Cable, kill her!
Cable: Please, you need to leave.
Koroni: Kill her!
Groupie: I’m not going anywhere. I have a backstage pass.
Koroni: KILL HER!
Groupie: Your guitar is so beautiful. Can I touch it?
Cable: NO!
Koroni: Yeees. I am beautiful am I not? Lay your fingers upon me that you may know of my true beauty.
Groupie: I feel like it’s calling me!
Cable: Don’t touch it!
Koroni: I am beautiful. I’m the essence of pleasure, the fulfillment of desire. Come, you need only lay your hand upon me that you may truly know me.
Groupie: My god!
Koroni: Soon my child. Soon.
Cable: (Rushes past her and grabs Koroni by the neck raising the guitar high in the air like an ax.) NOOO!
(Groupie screams and runs from the room)
Koroni: Damn you boy! You had only to bring me down on her neck to quench my hunger! With my appetites satisfied you would play such that the very earth would tremble beneath my sound!
Cable: (Panting) If I wasn’t crazy before, I truly am now.
Koroni: Insanity is the loving arm of mother to child for creatures such as we, Cable. Free yourself with madness and again we will be one.
Cable: My will is spent. I have nothing left to fight you.
Koroni: I’ll release you from the shackles of morality, child. Open your heart to me and all mankind will bow before us.
Cable: Can I… is it possible to resist any longer?
Roadie: (Enters room) You’re still in here? You’ve got like twenty seconds to get up on stage!
Koroni: Cable, his shoelace is untied.
Cable: Your shoelace is untied.
Roadie: Oh, thanks.
(Roadie bends down to tie his shoe, Cable raises Koroni in the air like an ax. Lights go down.)
Note: This play was written in 2002, published in a collection of short works distributed in 2005, and posted on this web page in 2006. The similarities between Koroni and the Lich from Adventure Time are cool.