Afternoon of the Blood-Sucking Brain-Eating Undead Monsters by Katherine Dubois
The scene is the foyer or lobby of a high school. Corridors branch
off Upstage and Stage Left. A door Stage Right leads to a little-used
storeroom. A long table Upstage Left. A banner or poster on an
Upstage wall reads: "Welcome to Baldwin High School. This month's
core value: Communication." Enter Ally and Ben.
ALLY: My mother thinks you're a bad influence, you know.
BEN: You told your mother?
ALLY: Ms. Rodriguez told my mother. Didn't the school call your
parents?
BEN: They may have thought they did.
ALLY: What do you mean?
BEN: Ally, Ally, Ally. After all this time, I'm surprised you
haven't learned simple precautions like putting your own cell phone
number as your parents' contact number when you fill out the
registration forms in the summer.
ALLY: Ben. Seriously. You did that?
BEN: This is my third detention this semester. My parents think I
stay after school in the Shop department, making wooden toys for
orphans.
ALLY: Why did I ever let you talk me into trying that cigarette in the
first place? It was awful. I felt sick the rest of the day.
BEN: It was your fault we got caught. I smoke back there all the
time, no one's ever seen me.
ALLY: You should give it up. It's a disgusting habit. So now
instead of finishing my Biology lab I have to spend my afternoon
cleaning out seventy-five years of clutter in an old storeroom
nobody's used since the Johnson administration.
BEN: You say that like it's a bad thing.
ALLY: They probably just keep all that stuff in there to torture
students in detention.
BEN: Eleanor Roosevelt visited this school once. Maybe she left
something here and we'll find it and sell it on eBay.
ALLY: What, you think she might have dropped her handbag and not
noticed?
BEN: Suppose there was some sort of guest book and she signed it?
Autographs go for a lot these days.
ALLY: Sure, Ben. Give me the keys and let's get started.
BEN: Why don't we grab a coffee first?
ALLY: Give me the keys.
He does. She starts to unlock the door.
BEN: C'mon, Ally. Studies have shown that four out of five
slackers perform better under the influence of caffeine.
ALLY: And that five out of five slackers can think of a way to put off
starting their work.
She opens the door and they peer in.
ALLY: What a mess.
BEN: Wow.
ALLY: Ben, we'll never make a dent in this.
BEN: Sure we can, Ally. We'll stuff a bunch of junk into that old
trophy case and then pile some stuff in front of it, and the rest of
the room will look cleaner.
ALLY: This is hopeless. Where do we even start?
BEN: With a cup of coffee.
ALLY: You're right. Time to take a break.
They close the storeroom door and exit Upstage. From Left enter
Carli, Dominique, and Elsa. They carry scripts. Dominique stops in
the middle of the foyer and looks around.
CARLI: Why are you stopping?
DOMINIQUE: There's room here.
ELSA: It's not very private. What if we bother people? What if
someone asks us to stop?
DOMINIQUE: There's nobody here now. Besides, how long will it take
us? What do you think, Carli? Won't this work?
CARLI: Okay. We'll do it here. This'll be the great hall of the
castle. Drawbridge and moat off that way, this way to the
countess's private rooms. This door here can be the entrace to the
stairway down to the crypt, where she summons the vampire from. Elsa,
you stand here. Dominique, maybe over near that entrance. You have
to be able to hear the villagers.
She stands with her back to the storeroom door and reads from her
script.
CARLI: "Oh ye spirits of the night, hear my incantation."
ELSA: "My lady, think what you do. You bring the powers of evil
down upon us."
DOMINIQUE: " 'Taint right, Missus, messin' with them thar
spirits."
CARLI: "Silence, both of you. Tonight, I achieve the pinnacle of my
ambition. Tonight I fulfill my destiny."
ELSA: "Spare us, dear lady. You may unleash that which you cannot
control."
CARLI: "Contain your feeble fears."
DOMINIQUE: "Yer grandfather thought as he could control 'em, and
look what happened to him."
CARLI: "Spirits of the night, hear my incantation. Stir the dust of
my ancestors. Mold the desire of the darkness. Raise the queen of
the night."
The door behind her creaks open and a hand with red fingernails
reaches out, but Carli doesn't notice. Elsa, wringing her hands and
overacting her part, doesn't notice either. Dominique's eyes
widen. She shuffles over to Elsa and nudges her, trying to stay in
character.
CARLI: "Arise at my call, O Queen. Revive your ancient powers. Do
my bidding, O great one, and come to me."
The Vampire appears behind Carli in a slinky black dress with long
drapey sleeves, which fall back as she lifts her hands over Carli's
head. Dominique has succeeded by this time in attracting Elsa's
attention. They shriek at the sight of the Vampire. The Vampire
retreats quickly out of sight and closes the door.
CARLI: No, no, no, that's not your cue. You don't scream until
the line, "empower me with your deathlessness."
ELSA: C-C-Carli-
CARLI: I'll take it from the top of that speech.
DOMINIQUE: Be-behind you.
CARLI: What?
ELSA: Vampire. Door.
DOMINIQUE: Behind you.
CARLI: Right, that's what I said. That door leads down to the
crypt.
DOMINIQUE: No, no. There. Behind you.
CARLI: Yes.
DOMINIQUE: No.
CARLI: Dominique, what are you talking about?
DOMINIQUE: There really was something.
ELSA: The door opened. Behind you.
DOMINIQUE: Long pale arms.
ELSA: Blood-red fingernails.
Carli glances over her shoulder at the closed door behind her.
CARLI: Oh, right. I get it. Very funny.
ELSA: No. No. We saw it.
DOMINIQUE: We both saw it. Her. Maybe.
CARLI: Look, Dominique, Elsa, I get that the script is corny. But can
we rehearse now?
ELSA: Really, Carli. There's something there.
Carli rattles the doorknob but the door doesn't open.
CARLI: See? Locked. Nobody ever goes in there.
DOMINIQUE: It opened. We saw it.
ELSA: Her.
DOMINIQUE: Maybe. Is there a past tense of "her"?
ELSA: I'm tense right now.
CARLI: Okay, you guys. Really.
ELSA: No, really.
DOMINIQUE: Really.
CARLI: Look, imagination is great and all that for an actor, but-
ELSA: Carli, you raised a vampire. With your speech. With the dumb
corny speech from this dumb corny play we're rehearsing.
CARLI: You know that's not possible.
ELSA: We saw it. Her.
DOMINIQUE: Maybe.
CARLI: No, not maybe. It's not possible.
DOMINIQUE: Let's not stay here.
ELSA: Let's go someplace else. Now.
CARLI: Let's go back to "Spirits of the night, hear my
incantation."
DOMINIQUE: The acoustics aren't very good here. Let's find
someplace else. Please, Carli?
ELSA: Maybe one of the classrooms. On the other side of the
building.
CARLI: Can we please rehearse?
Elsa and Dominique cling to each other as Carli raises her hands to
repeat the incantation.
CARLI: "Spirits of the night, hear my incantation. Stir the dust of
my ancestors. Mold the desire of the darkness. Raise the queen of
the night."
The door behind her creaks open again. Dominique and Elsa make little
squeaking noises but are afraid to scream.
CARLI: "Arise at my call, O Queen. Revive your ancient powers. Do
my bidding, O great one, and come to me."
The Vampire slides out of the storeroom and lifts Carli's hair to
examine her neck.
CARLI: Is that a draft?
She turns and sees the Vampire.
CARLI: You're a friend of Dominique's, right? I don't recognize
you.
VAMPIRE: You have beautiful neck.
CARLI: Look. I didn't pick the play. All right? But can we please
take it seriously?
The Vampire toys with Carli's hair.
VAMPIRE: Long, lovely neck.
CARLI: I'm really losing my patience here.
The Vampire shows her fangs and makes a lunge for Carli's throat.
Carli screams. Dominique and Elsa scream. They run off Left. The
Vampire gives an angry hiss and chases them. Ally and Ben enter
Upstage. They stand in the doorway of the storeroom.
ALLY: It really is hopeless.
BEN: Look, there's a door to the outside. See it?
ALLY: Where?
BEN: Over to the right. Next to the "Duck and Cover" poster.
ALLY: How do you know it leads to the outside?
BEN: It has a window.
ALLY: That's a window?
BEN: Okay, it's got about sixty years of grime on it, but it's
still a window. Why don't we find Mr. Turner and see if he's got
keys to it? Then we could haul stuff outside without having to drag
it through the foyer here and around the side of the building.
ALLY: That's a good idea. Where's Mr. Turner likely to be this
time of day?
BEN: Let's try upstairs.
They exit Left. Carli, Dominique, and Elsa sprint on Upstage.
ELSA: Have we lost her? It? Whatever?
DOMINIQUE: Not for long, I'll bet. What do you think, Carli?
ELSA: What are we going to do? What if she sucks all our blood? What
if we all get turned into vampires and have to spend hundreds of years
sucking other people's blood?
CARLI: I saw in a movie once where they nailed a vampire into his
coffin and he couldn't get out again. Let's go to the Shop and
get some nails.
ELSA: But where's the coffin?
CARLI: In the storeroom. Where else could it be?
DOMINIQUE: How are we going to lure the vampire back into her coffin?
CARLI: We'll worry about that once we have a hammer and some nails.
All right?
ELSA: Do you think maybe we should tell someone? Like, in the office?
What if-
CARLI: Tell someone in the office we raised a vampire in the storeroom
by rehearsing a scene from a play?
DOMINIQUE: It doesn't sound very probable, does it?
CARLI: Forget the office. We can deal with this. Let's go.
There'll be someone in the Shop, it's not that late.
They exit Upstage. Enter Faye, Galen, Harriet, and Izzie Left.
FAYE: Okay, Galen. Now are you going to tell us why you dragged us
back to the school building? What's this great surprise of yours?
GALEN: Well, I can't tell for sure whether there'll be a surprise.
But first I have to tell you the story.
HARRIET: We had to come back here to listen to a story?
FAYE: Is this a story we've heard before?
GALEN: No. I'd never even heard it before last night.
IZZIE: I love stories. Go on, Galen.
GALEN: First, can anybody tell me what's on the other side of this
door?
IZZIE: I've never even noticed there was a door here before.
HARRIET: I'm sure I've never seen it open.
GALEN: It's a storeroom. Nobody uses it anymore.
FAYE: So how do you know about it?
GALEN: My dad told me. Nobody used it when he went to school here,
either.
IZZIE: Your dad went to high school here?
GALEN: Mine and Harriet's both.
HARRIET: They were best buddies. Apparently they were both in love
with my mom.
GALEN: And according to my dad, they snuck in here once late at night
on a dare, with one of their other friends. The deal was, they were
supposed to break into the principal's office and steal the
nameplate off his desk.
FAYE: Klepto-name-ia!
HARRIET: That's almost funny, Faye.
FAYE: Oh, come on, Harriet. It was brilliant.
IZZIE: I want to hear the story.
GALEN: They came through the window of the janitor's closet in the
basement, they were able to pry it open, and they knew there was a set
of keys there to every room in the building.
FAYE: A keen piece of reasoning on their part.
IZZIE: Faye.
FAYE: Sorry, Izzie.
GALEN: So they got into the principal's office and got the
nameplate, but then they heard footsteps. So they turned off their
flashlights and hunkered down behind the desk, real quiet, listening
and waiting.
FAYE: Hardly daring to breathe.
HARRIET: Were you there?
FAYE: Or so I suppose.
GALEN: The footsteps were coming closer, real slow, and kind of
uneven, like whoever it was was dragging one foot behind him.
Faye and Izzie demonstrate this.
HARRIET: Really, you guys.
GALEN: And they heard soft grunting noises. And then the noises and
the footsteps both stopped right in front of the office door.
FAYE: The suspense was so thick you could eat it with a knife and
fork.
GALEN: Then the door flew open! And they could just make out the
outline of someone standing in the doorway. And then the figure
sniffed, like a dog after a scent.
Faye and Izzie demonstrate sniffing after a scent.
GALEN: And my dad whipped out his flashlight and shone it right in the
guy's face, figuring they could blind him long enough to get past
him and out of the building.
FAYE: Temporary ocular disablement!
GALEN: But the guy's eyes had this real unfocused look and his flesh
was all rotting and part of his cheek was ripped away and just hanging
down from his jaw and there was blood at the corner of his mouth-it
was a zombie!
HARRIET: A zombie!
IZZIE: A zombie!
FAYE: An evil, walking, flesh-eating corpse!
IZZIE: They're not evil, Faye, they're just misunderstood.
GALEN: It had sniffed them out, and all of a sudden it started
lurching toward them.
Faye and Izzie demonstrate the zombie's lurching.
GALEN: My dad and his friends tried to get past it, but it got hold of
their friend Steve and started gnawing on his arm. They had to bash
its head against a wall to break its hold and then they ran but it was
chasing them and they were so scared they accidentally ran into the
storeroom instead of out the front door and it had them trapped but
they were able to push it into an old unused boiler room and move a
big old piece of furniture in front of the door and pile a whole bunch
of stuff against it and they trapped it. And as far as anybody knows,
it's still there.
IZZIE: What happened to their friend Steve?
GALEN: They took him to the hospital and at first they told the doctor
at the Emergency Room that a dog had bitten him but the teethmarks
weren't right so they made up a story about sneaking into the
gorilla's cage at the zoo and then they were afraid the zookeeper
might have the gorilla put down on account of their story so finally
they told the truth but of course the doctor didn't believe them.
FAYE: He didn't believe their tall tale because gorillas are
tail-less. Which undoubtedly put them into a tailspin.
GALEN: And the bite got horribly infected and in the end they had to
amputate Steve's arm at the elbow. But I don't think he ever
turned into a zombie.
IZZIE: Wow.
HARRIET: I cannot believe my dad has never told me about this. And
here I've always thought he was the most boring person in existence.
Who knew?
FAYE: So what are we doing here, exactly, Galen? You and me and
Harriet and Izzie? If you were trying to replicate their harrowing
hair-raising, we should have come at night.
GALEN: Yeah, Faye, but building security is tighter now than it was in
our parents' day and that might turn out real badly. But I figured
by now there wouldn't be much left of the zombie, maybe just a few
bones, but it would be way cool to find them.
HARRIET: Excuse me? "Way cool" to find a zombie?
IZZIE: I say that's just what this school needs, is a sexy vampire
or a dreamy zombie.
HARRIET: You watch too many movies, Izzie. What if the environmental
conditions in the boiler room were just right to preserve the zombie?
FAYE: A mummified zombie? It staggers the imagination.
Faye staggers about a bit as a mummified zombie.
GALEN: Well, at any rate, it couldn't still be dangerous, right?
HARRIET: Are you seriously suggesting we should go looking for a
zombie? An actual zombie that ate our dads' friend's arm off? Am
I the only one who thinks this is a bad idea?
FAYE: Harriet queries whether it's a good idea to look in this
storeroom for a possibly mummified zombie.
GALEN: Probably just a few bits of bone.
FAYE: I say absolutely it's a good idea.
IZZIE: So how are we going to get in?
FAYE: Try the door?
She pulls the door open. They peer in.
FAYE: What an amazing mess. There must be stuff in here that dates
back to the Eisenhower administration.
GALEN: There. That must be it. My dad said it was the old trophy
case that used to stand near the main office. Look, you can just see
the top of a door frame behind it.
IZZIE: What are we waiting for?
HARRIET: Common sense?
[end of extract]