Paul Bomba
Dramatic
LISA, 26
LISA is talking to JEFF. She is a strange woman who likes to jump on the subway track and lay down flat while a train passes over her.
LISA Well, I had a fantasy too. I dreamt of throwing myself on the tracks. And once I was with you, but you were some other guy with some other problem and he also looked into my eyes as he grabbed that pole. I reached out for him and he slipped away and took the leap. That leap that I’ve been somehow fucking preventing myself from taking for the last eight, nine years. It’s in slow motion, the way he moved . . . This hauntingly beautiful dance where the soul vacates the body and a powerful negative force propels this empty, mobile husk. One step and . . . I tried not to watch . . . but I was compelled to. Coerced by those tortured green eyes that spoke wordless to me not six seconds before. Just that one step and he seemed to . . . to just float there, balanced in the air for just this hair of a time. Just long enough for me to see a flash—a flash of regret in his eyes. He was looking at me asking me why I wasn’t ready to save him, and I didn’t have the answer. I could only stare into the depths of someone who was making that most permanent mistake. And I just . . . Time starts again and there’s a terrible sound, the train grinds to a screeching halt, and the conductor runs out, yelling, “MAN UNDER MAN UNDER MAN UNDER!” like him shouting louder and louder was gonna raise the dead. The blood was splattered all over the platform and I started to hate that . . . I could’ve helped. Reached out. But I was only able to watch as a horror unfolded in real time right in front of me . . . With those green eyes . . . After a moment, I reached down for this . . .
[Takes off glove.]
The other one, well, it was down there on the tracks, probably mangled and broken like the rest of him. But this was saved, and it fell at my feet, like some kind of offering. The damnedest things happen when the human body is obliterated at high speeds . . . Physics, you know? Gloves come off. [Pause.] So that’s it, now you know. And now you know why I needed to save you, see? You’ll never be the man under. I won’t let it happen. Because I’m loving you and holding on. And we’ll never be able to regret anything. Because we’re in some kind of . . . Some kind . . . of love.