Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Cletus & Marta

A large sonic boom is heard, shakes the dining room where Cletus and Marta,  Appalachian peasants, are eating boiled peanuts and potatoes by candle light.
Cletus looks at Marta with big eyes and Marta shrugs as if to say she doesn't know what that boom could have been.  Cletus takes his rifle and axe off the mantlepiece, face shadowed and flickering in the candlelight, and opens the front door and exits.
Marta swallows hard and puts down her spork.  She yells for Cletus.  A gunshot is heard and Marta throws her plate at the door, suggesting that she doesn't like Cletus being an axe and gun owner.
Cletus opens the door and steps in, breathing hard, letting the axe and rifle fall to the floor, and proudly holds out the small head of a pygmy tribesman for Marta to see.
Marta looks at it with a disgusted frown.
A thunderstorm starts outside.
Cletus hurls the head onto the wooden table with the satisfied look of someone who killed an evil gnome alien creeping around the forest.
Marta's arms fly up in disbelief and goes stage right and tears a flyer from the cork board and throws it at him.
Cletus looks at the flyer.  He can't read, but his eyes devour pictures of a circus tent, an elephant vs. mouse show, a man-voiced woman operetta, a crab-filled wheel barrow race and .... pygmy tribesmen baring all!
Cletus looks at the head on the table and then at Marta.  Marta explains with her eyes that the circus managers would notice the missing pygmy and consequently investigate, and did he know how much it cost to transport a pygmy to Appalachia?
Cletus closes his eyes, wondering why people just didn't stay where they were born.
Grumbling, he goes back outside in the rain to retrieve the small body and throws it to his goat while Marta pokes the pygmy head with Cletus's spork.
Marta's eyes lock onto the window opposite her.  She thinks she sees something.   The pine trees are moving in the rain and wind.   Then she jumps up, hand to heart, for she sees a spritely pygmy dart past.  She screams for Cletus.  She runs like an ape to the door and bolts it.  
Cletus bangs on the door, crying.
Marta opens it quickly and he enters, an arrow piercing his heart.  Cletus falls on the floor with a heaping thud.  Marta pulls out the arrow as Cletus mumbles something about being such a rotten husband all those years and he begged her for forgiveness as he becomes motionless after a whole body twitch.  
Marta closes his eyes with a solemn hand,  then swings open the door and calls out joyously 'TIM KTAK!'
A pygmy enters, eyes darting around for danger, and she picks him up, draping him over her shoulder like a bride.  Marta exits, the pygmy's face beaming and giggly the final and parting visual.
It is implied that they live happily ever after with the traveling circus.

4 comments:

flutterby said...

OMG sweet Eva! Where in the name of all that is innocent and naive did that come from??? LOL Sporks and pygmies and rolling heads and thunder. You amazed me with this piece and scared me a little too.

Luke Leger said...

Wacky and Wild! I love it. So much fun to read and visualize.

Eva Marie Sutter said...

Thanks y'all! I wanted to step out of the box a little on this one! And to scare Flutterby at the same time :)

Jeffrey James Ircink said...

hahaha. classic. that crazy eva...just like her sister. i love these girls!