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Hi there! I'm new to playwriting and got rejected from four comps that I submitted too this year (whatever im new to this shit). So I figure ima mess around n post it on new sm. Still a WIP but I thought I'd see what it'd look like on a platform like this. This is a family drama with shades of horror about two sisters reconnecting after the death of their mom.
SCENE 4. CLAYBOURNE
Morning. Over breakfast. Hannah and Jasmine are playing a hand game in the style of lemonade or something. Different lyrics though. Boxes everywhere.
JASMINE & HANNAH
How many shrimps do you have to eat. Before you make your skin turn pink. Eat too much and you’ll get sick.
Shrimps are pretty rich.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Jasmine messes up.
JASMINE
FUCK.
Hannah flicks her on the forehead.
JASMINE
OW.
HANNAH
So what now.
JASMINE
The basement. We’ll need a game plan for that because there’s a lot down there.
HANNAH
Is there?
JASMINE
Like a lot a lot.. I don’t even know where mom got most of that stuff.
HANNAH
The woman loved to collect.
JASMINE
The heavy stuff will definitely require Tommy Boy and I think Scott said he’d come by today.
HANNAH
Ooooo Scotty boy-
JASMINE
-Please don’t.
HANNAH
How is he?
JASMINE
Fine. So i guess for now we can start packing the quilts, silverwares, collectibles and throw em in these two boxes now.
HANNAH
Bet.
JASMINE
Good.
They start taking turns going up and down the stairs into the basement. Jasmine yawns.
HANNAH
You okay?
JASMINE
Yeah. Just trouble sleeping last night.
HANNAH
A lot on your mind?
JASMINE
I don’t know-- its nothing.
HANNAH
What?
JASMINE
I had this weird dream last night.
HANNAH
Oooo I have weird dreams all the time.
JASMINE
I dreamt that someone was breaking in but when I went to go check I didn’t see anyone except mom.
HANNAH
Finally dreaming about her?
JASMINE
And I had this long conversation with her about like wondering if I was like good enough or something. Or maybe it was about something I left at the office. But I thought it was strange that the house was like super cold like if it was the middle of February.
HANNAH
Weird. And no one uh broke in?
JASMINE
No. Everything looked fine when I woke up. You were already here making coffee.
HANNAH
I dreamt about her all the time when she was alive. And you.
JASMINE
Really?
HANNAH
Totally. I’ve had dreams of you guys watching over my funeral. I’ve dreamt of her calling me a failure and a waste. But she did that when she was alive too so.
JASMINE
What about after her death?
Hannah shrugs.
JASMINE
What does that mean?
HANNAH
No. I mean most of my bad dreams happened when she was alive.
JASMINE
I uhm. I’m sorry I never really wrote. You know, during your whole.
HANNAH
You’re good.
JASMINE
Mom said I shouldn’t.
HANNAH
No I understand. I mean my fights with her probably didn’t help that.
JASMINE
What was it like?
HANNAH
Uhhhm. It’s very uh how you say prosaic.
JASMINE
Pro what?
HANNAH
Unromantic.
JASMINE
Wow look at you.
HANNAH
Its quiet. A lot of space. Lot of time to think if thats your thing. If you wanted to sneak stuff in you could usually find someone who knew how. I didn’t want to. I guess I just used that time to observe. I watched people go through detox, I watched people who said they were getting clean lie. I learned how to listen to people who had been through shit you and I will hopefully never experience.
But I guess I came to understand that I wasn’t gonna get better until I let go of shame. The shame that mom put on me, the shame that you put on me. Most importantly my own self loathing.
JASMINE
I haven’t been a good sister have I?
HANNAH
I mean I’m no better. But uhm. I guess until we decide to make peace with that, it can’t get better? Something like that...
JASMINE
Fuck. Maybe we should go to therapy.
HANNAH
Yeah I don’t know how we avoided that for this long.
Jasmine awkwardly goes in for a hug.
HANNAH
Oh. Okay. Sure. Why not.
JASMINE
I love having this time with you.
She still hangs onto her.
HANNAH
I do too.
Beat.
So what happened exactly when you were working with mom?
JASMINE
I mean what’s to say. I got to experience her for who she was. A powerhouse businesswoman. She was incredible to watch.
HANNAH
What does that mean?
JASMINE
She was a real leader. People do what she says. She always had a strategy for every move. Her standards were high though. She liked to yell whenever people would like fumble.
HANNAH
She loved the sound of her own voice, huh?
JASMINE
But I guess I was sad because I felt like this was who she was all along and if that was her then who were growing up around this entire time. You know?
HANNAH
Do you think she was a fraud?
JASMINE
No. Of course not. Her team believed in every decision she made, good or bad.
HANNAH
No as a mom.
JASMINE
That doesn’t mean she didn’t care about us.
HANNAH
An underachieving addict and an overachieving daughter with low self-esteem doesn’t exactly quell those accusations.
Beat. JASMINE
I didn’t like the way she treated people underneath her.
HANNAH
I didn’t like the way she treated the staff at rehab when she dropped me off.
JASMINE
I didn’t like the way she made me follow her like some pet.
HANNAH
I didn’t like the way she made me feel for wanting to be different.
JASMINE
I didn’t like the way she never appreciated all the times I stayed late for her.
HANNAH
I didn’t like the way she pit us against each other.
Hannah grabs a piece of the old china. She hands it to Jazz.
HANNAH
Do it.
JASMINE
What?
HANNAH
Fuck it. It’s not ours.
Jasmine raises it.
Actually. No. It is ours. We can do whatever we want.
Jasmine raises it again and smashes it.
JASMINE
Woahhhh.
HANNAH
How’d that feel.
JASMINE
Good! Really good!
Dec 30, 2024
Related Recs
I unblocked him today. Stupid, really. A gesture that meant nothing and everything at once—flick of a finger, avalanche of consequence. I don’t love him. I know this the way I know fire burns and poison kills. But there was a time I did. Or at least, I believed I did, which might be the same thing.
And now, in the pit of night, he comes back. Not in memory, which I could handle. In dreams. Those cursed, wretched dreams where love feels like a trick played on me by some malevolent god. We are soft together, whole together. It feels real. Worse: it feels good. I wake up gagging on it. That intimacy, that false safety. My brain taunts me with what could have been, and I can’t even scream back.
So I dissociate. That’s the clinical word for it. But really, I haunt myself. I float through the day like a ghost freshly exhumed, skin buzzing with sleep that clings to my body like mold. Am I still dreaming? Has waking up ever felt this fake?
I ask myself: Do I still love him?
Then a worse question: Did I ever?
And the worst of all: Did I make it up, the whole damn thing?
Because if I did—if I built it all out of nothing, like straw houses and paper people—then maybe I am what he always said I was. A liar. A little girl who makes up stories and calls it truth. My father’s daughter.
And that’s the most disgusting thing of all.
20h ago
The sharp scent of rain tumbles clumsily in as you tease window-hinges wider with the pads of your fingers. A siren trails close behind, uninvited, sears your eardrums, dies off down the block.
Your neighbors are arguing again. Laundry, loans, lack of commitment… like yesterday, like the day before.
You think it would be suffocating to wrap yourself up in someone else’s sheets.
It’s five o’clock. Leaning against the sill and flicking the radio dial with one recently manicured nail, you tune into the local news. Roaring wall of static, then calm conversation between two anchors bubbling up through an old set of Panasonic loudspeakers.
You are feeling incomplete today, like yesterday, like the day before.
Rigatoni boils in the kitchen. You check the leftmost cabinet and find strawberry jam, unopened. You check the cupboard and look over a tub of tahini, a collection of canned soup, and a stack of pie tins. You check the counter, behind the cutlery. Finally, you check the fridge, ducking down to see only your own brown-eyed reflection in one last — now empty — jar of Prego. Your shoulders dip.
You slip on white sneakers, not-so-white-as-they-once-were. Why did you try to paint the front door? It is peeling now, ugly like a fledgling losing young feathers. Flecks of buttery yellow dapple paisley carpeting.
The great outdoors wait for you at the bottom of a cramped stairwell with twin light fixtures, both broken.
A sky like an old sweater is draped above Brooklyn, ready to wring itself out again at any moment.
Once around the block, rubber soles brushing damp cement, you walk briskly. At first you fling yourself against the humidity, then become self-conscious and adopt a slower pace as you near the corner store.
Two dollars, sixty cents. Like last week, like the week before.
You and I, we are looking down at our phones and stumble into each other, halfway home.
It is no one’s fault.
You recognize me from somewhere, you say, and feel like a bad person for lying. You have never seen me before in your life. I ask for your number.
That night you eat too quickly, knowing you’ll wish you’d saved some leftovers.
I come over once, then again.
We go out for dinner at tacky restaurants, where art deco posters from the nineteen-thirties have pinned themselves up in scattered flocks across worn-out drywall and the menu is printed with strange font on laminated placemats. The appetizer sample photos are unnerving; the bruschetta cowers like a scared animal awash in excessive camera flash. I make a joke about it, and you laugh.
We order dishes to share. The food is always better than I expected, but not quite as good as you wanted it to be.
You don’t mind.
We talk for hours.
We agree, ballpoint pens are better.
I hold you, and the ten p.m. bus pulls you out of my arms and through the dusky streets, past crowds and utility poles.
I hold you, and we rhyme our steps. Burgundy is around us in the leaves and in the dirt. You wear a coat I gave you.
I hold you, and we swat flies out on your porch. The days are getting shorter.
I hold you, and we watch blu-ray CDs you found on sale. Soft light from the flatscreen plays across your face as you fall asleep. I keep the movie on a little longer.
I hold you. In December, we bring a blanket to Long Island and listen to the sound of snow falling on the dunes.
You call in sick for work too often.
I hold you, and you know my callouses well.
We share the same sheets; we are wrapped up in each other.
I hold you, and kiss your hair.
You smell like candied oranges.
The afternoons eat away at one another. Dishes pile like uneven layer-cakes in your kitchen sink, crested with suds.
You say you feel uninspired.
Now we argue about laundry, and the sounds of your unhappy apartment are heard through half-open windows.
You shout, eyebrows furrowed like the pages of a book. A white plate soars from the grip of a trembling hand, misses an upturned chin, and interrupts us with its shattering.
This time, it’s different.
Sleep escapes us ‘til the sun is already planted on the easternmost rooftop.
I hurt you the way I learned to, and stay awhile, but don’t know why I stay.
We sink into sweet, heavy things: the saxophone in “Charcoal Baby”, shared creamsicles on hot Saturday evenings.
I see you less and less, and remember less and less of you.
Will I see you next week?
Yes, if you text me.
You forget,
just like we’d both hoped.
Sep 17, 2024
🌪
She says there’s a tornado watch, and I shrug it off as I turn another page to my book. I just want to be reminded of what used to be real for a while before I join her to bed. I have 90 minutes before the dreams take me back for what I owe them.
In the meantime, I’m with Ultra and Andy. I’m back in a place where the shitty instant movies meant something, not because they inherently meant something, but because a soup can was empty enough for the public to carry. Carry it they would, with enough means to make Ultra regret her own full stomach. The cans she had Andy sign could’ve funded her retirement, but the Factory was hungry. I’ve yet to create my food art that gets people interested in my shit movies.
The wind starts growling against the windows in a way I haven’t heard in the decade I’ve lived here. The rain sounds sideways. I wake her from the bathroom as the wind has caught me on a break, and the living room is more window than wall. We’ve taken to sleeping on an air mattress in the living room floor by the windows. It was lovely under the tree in December, but now there’s no hiding why.
It feels too real for a moment. I ask her to double check the radar. She says it’s fine, and she goes back to sleep. She already has me put on rain sounds with another apartment view on the TV nightly, though I don’t think either of us would have heard a difference had I turned it off now. Andy believed we would prefer the simulation. I‘m afraid he may be right. I’m afraid because I can’t control the one with a remote. Yes, that’s usually true, but for the moment I’m more afraid of the one outside my actual window that has no remote. Pontificating about simulacra or not, I’m afraid.
As the storm starts to calm, the red light hitting my blinds from the LEDs is flashing. A fire truck is outside my window. Are these red lights more real, more meaningful? Do they make my fear more meaningful? The fire truck leaves (me).
My 90 minutes have become 3 hours. My debt is greater. I can’t hide, and I’m afraid. It’s time to pay. I’ll simulate another violent death, wake up, and feel a little less convinced I’m about to be killed again since we’re in the living room. The lights help me see less of what isn’t there. I can see the front door bar intact with my own eyes. I’m safe enough to die in my sleep again. Good morning.
Feb 16, 2025
Top Recs from @mattyepez
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Watching these two films this week has really pulled me out of a funk and reminded me of the type of work I wanna put out. Film is not just content and algorithms, it is living and breathing through the efforts of bold and daring artists.
Dec 30, 2024
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by Carmen Maria Machado is a collection of short stories that really got me back into a reading kick. My fav is the one set during a pandemic and a woman documenting a series of hookups and how each one differs from the other as a virus slowly consumes society. Would recommend
Jan 2, 2025
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Also wtf???? I love the energy of this site.
Dec 30, 2024