Debbie (Female):
I put wall-paper paste in the coffee machine at work.
Beat.
You know the powder, you buy the powder in, while no one was looking I put it into the machine and stirred it all in and left it and it clogged up the machine and they all stood around it staring at it, hurt, like it was a dead puppy.
Beat.
When you print orders at work, they come out face up with the address on, on, on the front and you never see the backs until they, you know, come back from the clients completed, the order form is on the back, you see, so you never see the, until, so I stayed late one night and I photocopied the word ‘cock’ on the back of all the order forms, with a big picture of a cock and balls that I drew in magic marker, and then I put them back in the printer, and the next day they sent out thousands and they got hundreds of
complaints and lost their two biggest clients.
I keep falling asleep in meetings and no-one’s noticed yet. They think I’m concentrating.
Last week I caught a mouse in my flat, I have mice, which is something I don’t really, I don’t really like that, I have mice and I caught this one on glue paper, you know, the glue traps, I’ve tried everything else and that’s the only thing that works and the worst thing is that when you catch them they’re still alive so you have to, you know, despatch them, so I put a cloth over it and I hit it on the head with a cup, a mug, but it took quite a few, you know, hits and it was screaming and I felt sick and I was crying and everything and then I peeled it off the paper, you have to be very careful because the body’s quite delicate, and then I took a scalpel that I have for handicrafts and I slit its little belly open and I tugged out all its insides and I stuck them and the body onto this Christmas card, so that it was splayed open with the guts out into this Christmas tree design, and I sent it to my boss with writing cut out from a newspaper saying ‘Thanks for all the hard work and good luck in the new job cunt-face’. They called the
police.
Beat.
I wanted to be a newsreader when I was a little girl.
Pause.
She picks up the card. He stares at her
Thank you for this site. I became an actor thirty years ago, plied my craft for a number of years and then fell off the tracks as life got in the way. I’ve been singing and songwriting in the years since I stopped pursuing acting gigs, so I’ve kept my hand in the arts, but I’ve recently come to realize that without practicing and working on the craft of acting there’s a terrible void in my life: my Rip Van Winkle moment. I came upon your site looking for monologues to go on my first pro theatre audition in sixteen years, What a great resource. I appreciate your hard work and dedication.