Category Archives: death

death, love

GOODBYE/HELLO

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[A young black man, skinny and short. He has a calmed stare and a soothing speaking voice.]

“I’ve worked at the airport cafeteria for over ten years now, but my dream was to go to college, become a teacher. And I would have if my very religious father wouldn’t have kicked me out of the house the day I told him I’m gay.

I was barely eighteen; I had to hustle to survive. But I don’t hold any grudges against my father… even though he had nothing to do with me for years.

Well, maybe I do have one grudge against him for not letting me visit my grandmother on her deathbed. He didn’t even allow me to attend her funeral mass.

She had been a very important part of my childhood, of my emotional upbringing, and it hurt so much to know I’d never see her again. I thought I’d missed my last opportunity to say goodbye to her, to let her know how much I loved her.

Although I tried not to think too much about it, I got obsessed… so much so, that every night after my shift at the cafeteria was over, I would walk up to the departures terminal of the airport. There, snuggled up in a corner, I would watch the travelers saying good-bye to their families, their partners, their friends, with hugs, tears, kisses… and I’d imagine those strangers were me and my grandma, saying our good-byes to each other.

It was like therapy; I thought it’d help me close the wound of not getting my chance.

Until one night, right when I was about to leave the airport, I saw a couple hugging in the middle of the terminal. There was something special in the way they were embracing, with desperation, with anxiety. I couldn’t stop staring. I knew that’s how I’d have said goodbye to my grandma, with that intensity and sincerity.

I felt so sad, my eyes started watering.

But then the couple held hands and walked toward the airport exit while the woman insisted on helping the man, who had only just arrived, with his luggage.

That’s when I started crying… out of joy, when I realized that saying hello and saying goodbye were very similar, mirror images of the same experience; two extremes whose mutual attraction keep the cycle of existence spinning.

Anyway…

I now sit in the arrivals terminal each night after work. There, I watch people greeting and welcoming each other, just like grandma and I will do whenever we reunite again.”

Are you an actor or director interested in using this monologue? Contact us in ABOUT MONOLOGY!

 Copyright Abel Gonzalez 2016

death, hate, love, murder

ZOMBIE HATE

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[A seventy-year-old drunk, skeletal and haggard.]

I sometimes wish zombies existed.

And no, I’m not crazy…I just miss my dead daughter.

I don’t want her to come back as a zombie either. That’d be awful, worse than missing her. She didn’t just up and die anyway… she was murdered. There’s a big difference.

Although I didn’t give her much thought when she was alive. I couldn’t.  I was brimming with hate and anger; always shit-faced drunk or just sober enough to make some money for more booze. I was also an asshole to her and to her mother.

But on the day she got murdered, when the police caught the sonofabitch and they told me how he had made my little girl suffer, just out of pleasure… well, I stopped drinking right then and there. It was easy. I didn’t want to drown my pain anymore. I needed it so I could focus it on the murderer, with all its intensity, all its venom.

During the trial, I wished they would let him go free… so I could kill him myself. But they sent him to jail. Many years.

And me? Well, I remained sober, got a job, cleaned up my act. I even started exercising. I just wanted to be alive when that sonofabitch got out. I was tempted by religion too but, again, I didn’t want anything  interfering with my hate.

Thirty years went by. I lived a normal life. Uneventful. I didn’t suffer. Didn’t feel pleasure. I just did the time with him…waiting for mine to come.

And it did.

The day he got out, I followed him into an alley and shot him six times. Then went straight to the first bar I saw and got drunk.

I’ve been drunk since… because as soon as killed that sonofabitch, I knew my hate  wouldn’t die along with him. And indeed, it’s still inside me, more painful than ever.

That’s why I said I wish zombies existed… because if that sonofabitch was one of them, I could spend the rest of my life killing him time and time again.

But I’m afraid this hate of mine is the only possible zombie.

It must be because I don’t see a way to get rid of it.

Are you an actor or director interested in using this monologue? Contact us in ABOUT MONOLOGY!

 Copyright Abel Gonzalez 2016

death, memory

THEY SAID I KILLED A GIRL

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[A sixty-year-old man with messy hair and bags under his eyes. He seems slightly deranged.] 

“They said I killed a girl… But I didn’t remember doing it.

Someone had strangled her near the river and dumped her body in the water. A family on a picnic found it floating downstream later that day.

The police came home looking for me at midnight; they took me to the station, they questioned me about the girl, who, yes, I had seen that day because we had a date… we had met online.

I told the detectives I left her at a café two hours after I met her because I got a call for a job… I used to be a plumber.

The police asked more questions and took lots of samples. And a few hours later, I stopped being a free man for the next twenty-four years.

During the trial, I couldn’t believe the evidence the police had found. My fingerprints around her neck, my DNA at the crime scene, her skin under my fingernails…

And, like I said, I didn’t remember killing her. I still don’t.

Why shouldn’t you believe me? … After all, what would be the point of lying? I already paid for the crime!

Anyway, I was going crazy during the trial. The more evidence the plaintiff put forward, the more obvious it became that I was guilty, even to myself.

I ended up accepting it. I had killed her and, somehow, forgotten all about it. It’s happened before. A kind of selective amnesia triggered by deep feelings of guilt… at least that’s what the prison shrink said.

I changed my plea to guilty. According to my lawyer – who was an ass by the way – that strategy saved me from a life sentence.

I was thirty-five when I got locked up. I’m almost sixty now. I got out yesterday.

The first thing I did was to visit the place where they found the girl’s body.

I did it because my biggest fear, the heaviest load I carried while in prison, was not knowing for certain if I had done it. What if everyone was lying? What if it was a conspiracy?

I needed to know.

And I was hoping that place would help me unearth some buried memories, force me to remember. Because I still wanted to believe I’m not a murderer, that despite all the evidence, I couldn’t have killed that girl…

But nothing happened when I got there. I still couldn’t remember a thing.

Well, something actually happened, something that surprised me because I had never felt it before.

I felt like killing someone.

So I waited  until eventually this woman came jogging by. It was easy to strangle her. She wasn’t very strong. There was no one around. I dumped her body in the river and then came here… I’m waiting for the police to arrive now.

I have a good defense this go ‘round. After all those years paying for something I don’t remember doing, I needed to do it. I had to know how it feels to kill someone… and make sure I remembered it this time.”

Are you an actor or director interested in using this monologue? Contact us in ABOUT MONOLOGY!

 Copyright Abel Gonzalez 2016