Fried Bacon [Part One] (8.9.12)

Prompt: A family is sitting around the kitchen table when one member stands and makes a horrifying confession.

Note: This play was originally called "My Name Is Nora Nobody" but I am now changing it to "Fried Bacon". I don't know if its in the rules that you can't change a play until the end of the challenge but I have a lot of faith in this one so I had to.

 

#9: FRIED BACON

(PART ONE)

Written

by

Sean Pollock

PROLOGUE

(Lights rise on NORA’S MOM and STEPDAD having sex under a sheet on the kitchen table. Her Mom is orgasming very loudly)

STEPDAD: You like that?

MOM: Yeah! Uh!

STEPDAD: You like that you slut? You’re my bitch, huh?

MOM: Oh god, I love it when you talk dirty.

STEPDAD: Do you think Nora’s gonna hear?

MOM: I don’t care about Nora. Tonight’s about Mommy—and Mommy needs to be fucked—oh yeah!

STEPDAD: Your daughter’s such a buzz kill.

MOM: I know…she’s so annoying! Agh! Don’t think about her, just keep fucking me! She was an accident anyway!

STEPDAD: What?

MOM: (louder) I said she was an accident anyway! Just fuck me, dammit!

(Lights fade on them. Enter Nora)

(Lights rise on NORA, a teenage girl. She addresses the audience)

NORA: (to the audience) “Annoying accident buzz kill daughter”. Those are just a sample of some of the many kind words I used to hear from my loving parents before I reinvented myself. However, now life has ended for me. To be perfectly honest, I am dead. I shot myself in the face. It’s a messy way to go, trust me. Looking back I would’ve rather have inhaled hazardous chemicals or drank myself to death. I could’ve probably at least slipped into oblivion by laughing, right? (beat) They used to call me those things before I re-invented myself, which I did when I was seventeen. My life before age seventeen was a miserable existence filed with self pitying and worthlessness. No one wanted me around. And that’s not even me feeling sorry for myself. I was truly never wanted. My parents were never married because I was an accidental teen pregnancy, my Dad split and I was raised by my Mom until she remarried when I was a freshman in high school to a guy she met on the internet. We left my old town and moved in with him. I hated him. And I hated hearing my mom fuck in their room every weekend, which was conveniently right next to mine. My Stepdad had a son from a previous marriage, who for these purposes, we will call “Douche”. (beat) Douche was the golden child. Perfect in everyway. Attractive, Straight-A student, Football quarterback. My mom loved him. I mean, who wouldn’t? He was perfect. He had friends. I had none. (beat) He pretended like he never knew me, and we went to the same school together.

(Lights rise on Douche and his gang of jocks)

JOCK 1: Yo, so are you gonna get it in with Becca tonight?

JOCK 2: Dude, no fuckin idea. She keeps telling me that she’s not ready.

JOCK 3: Then make her ready, dude! Just put it in!

JOCK 1: Yea-uh!

(Jock 1 and 3 high-five)

JOCK 3: Dude, dude, dude—I bet if she won’t get with you, you could at least score lower and get with that busted Nora chick who sits behind you in English. I’d bet she’d give you a ride.

(Jock 2 and 3 howl with laughter)

JOCK 2: (to Douche) Dude isn’t that your stepsister?

DOUCHE: Uh…no.

JOCK 1: Don’t you guys have like, the same last name though?

DOUCHE: Yeah but uh…it’s a coincidence. I’m almost insulted you’d think I was related to her. If that bitch was here, I’d cunt punch her so hard.

(They howl with laughter. Lights fade on them)

NORA: Looking back, I was very jealous of Douche having friends, but I’m not sure if I ever really wanted friends. Just for someone to talk to me. Even for a little while. I was too scared to talk to anyone. I used to spend my days at the Dairy King, smoking cigarettes and drinking cookies and cream milkshakes. Or sometimes just sodas. I’d just spend hours…just sitting there. Literally doing nothing. Just wearing my ray-bans, chain smoking, composing my thoughts in a notebook. Hoping someone would come and talk to me. But then I decided after about two months of loitering at the Dairy King that no one was going to talk to me and I decided I was going to get one last cookies and cream milkshake and then I was going to go home and kill myself. But I didn’t that time because someone finally came up to me that day.

SCENE ONE

(Flashback: Nora sits on a bench with her sunglasses on and her notebook. She is seventeen years old. She is sitting outside the Dairy King with a cigarette, drinking a milkshake. Enter RICKY, an attractive boy, early 20’s with a stubble, sunglasses and a leather jacket. It’s a little after 9:00)

RICKY: Who are you?

(Nora doesn’t respond)

RICKY: I see you here almost every day. Do you recognize me? My name is Ricky, I make your milkshakes.

(Nothing)

RICKY: Not much of a talker, huh?

(Nothing)

RICKY: Mind if I bum a cigarette? I’m on my break.

(She hands one to him)

RICKY: Got a light?

(She hands one to him. He lights up)

RICKY: So tell me, what’s your name?

NORA: Nora.

RICKY: She speaks! Nora, huh? (beat) So tell me, why do you come here all the time?

NORA: It’s close to my house.

(A silence)

NORA: What.

RICKY: Why do you wear those sunglasses?

NORA: I don’t know. They help me blend in.

RICKY: Blend in? They kinda make you stand out.

(No response)

RICKY: Give me your phone.

NORA: What?

RICKY: Give it to me.

(She does)

RICKY: I like you. You’re quirky. I don’t have a phone number but I want you to have my address and stop by sometime.

(He puts his number in her phone)

RICKY: Wow.

NORA: What?

RICKY: You only have three contacts in here.

NORA: I told you, I have no friends.

RICKY: Mom, Dad, and Douche.

NORA: Yup.

RICKY: Ah. Well, now you have four contacts.

NORA: Thanks.

RICKY: I’m assuming you don’t have a car, so you just want to take the #5 out to Plainsfield, and then walk about two miles straight to the trailer park. Mine’s the pink one with graffiti on it in the very back. Can’t miss it.

(He puts out his cigarette. He exits. Nora addresses the audience. Note, Nora should take off her sunglasses every time she addresses the audience so we know that it is the present Nora talking and that we are no longer in a flashback)

NORA: (to the audience) Ricky was cute. He was charming. He was the first boy who noticed me. And maybe he didn’t even think I was cute at first and just curious as to why I had just been creepily sitting there for a whole two months but he made me realize something: I was wasting my life. I thought I was nothing. But I realized it wasn’t me who was the problem. It was my family.

SCENE TWO

(Nora exits. Enter Mom, Dad and Douche at the kitchen table, getting ready for dinner. Mom is setting the table)

STEPDAD: So Douche, tell your mom about the big news…

MOM: Ooh, what’s the big news?

DOUCHE: I’ve been nominated for Homecoming King!

(Mom squeaks)

MOM: That’s so great! I’m so proud of you!

STEPDAD: You are truly the shining star of our family, Douche.

MOM: Oh, you’re so accomplished, Douche! First stop homecoming king, next stop king of Wall Street! Oh, you are absolutely amazing at everything you do, Douche.

DOUCHE: Yeah, I know. It’s not a big deal.

(Enter Nora with sunglasses and a jacket)

MOM: Nora, did you hear the news? Douche has been nominated for homecoming king!

(She sits down. A silence)

STEPDAD: Nora, don’t you have anything to say to your brother? A ‘congratulations’, maybe?

(She stands up)

NORA: I fantasize about killing all of you.

(A silence)

MOM: Nora don’t say things like that. It’s disturbing.

DOUCHE: You hear that? She fantasizes about killing all of us. No wonder she’s so quiet. The quiet ones are always the crazy ones.

MOM: Nora, why would you say something like that?

NORA: I mean it. Each night, when I go to bed and I think about how Douche doesn’t acknowledge me as his own stepsister, and when I think of how (to Stepdad) you fuck my mother and call her dirty names, it makes me want to drop dead. But then I realize it’s not me who should drop dead. It’s all of you. You’re all disgusting excuses for human beings and I really think world would be a better place if someone killed each and every one of you disgusting motherfuckers. (to Douche) Congratulations on Homecoming King, asswipe.

STEPDAD: Now that’s just out of line, missy!

NORA: I’m not out of line. You’re what’s out of line.

(She takes out her “gun” from her jacket pocket. It should not actually be a gun, but rather her hand in the form of a gun)

NORA: Dead.

(Stepdad dies. Douche and Mom scream. She kills Douche)

NORA: Dead.

(Her Mom begs for her life)

MOM: Please Nora…I’m your mother!

NORA: Give me another reason.

MOM: Nora…I’m your MOTHER!

(She kills her)

NORA: Dead. (beat) The correct answer was, because I love you.

(She addresses the audience)

NORA: And with that, I packed my bags and went to Ricky’s trailer.

(Lights fade)