PREDATOR'S SMILE
A play by Matt Russell
for Daniel Cook
Scene One
Scene Two
Scene Three
Scene Four
Scenes Five and Six
CHARACTERS
GWEN. A beautiful alien from outer space.
SVEN. A nerdy nobody in high school.
STAN. A popular class mate of Sven, and drummer of Sleaze Pleaze.
FRAN. Stan's bitchy girlfriend.
THE ROCK BAND, SLEAZE PLEAZE:
FLOYD, the singer.
ELRIC, the guitarist.
ALOYSIUS, the bass player.
GROVER, the keyboard player and Stan's best friend.
BETSY, a teenage girl.
HELGA, her friend.
THE TIME
Right now, this instant...And a little later.
THE PLACE
A park, a garage, and an apartment in the land of suburban white trash.
SETTING: The park, at night. There is beauty in the trees and the moonlight, but there is also an ominous feeling as the trees cast dark shadows on the park benches, lined with newspaper.
AT RISE: In the darkness, we can hear two young men in an intense physical struggle. In a moment, a bleak, somber, ominous form of lighting, possibly a strobe, slowly comes up on the two figures, downstage center. SVEN and STAN are in a brawl. STAN is winning. SVEN "fights like a girl", while STAN punches and kicks the shit out of him. They curse at each other. After a couple moments, a bright, but confined light appears from upstage right, and an elegant , beautiful female figure occupies it. It is GWEN. She slowly walks from one side of the stage to another, casting a permanent gaze on the two men. She slowly approaches the two men, and the lights quickly blackout.
(Lights come up in the park, and SVEN is lying on the ground, apparently unconscious, as GWEN kneels over him.)
GWEN: Wake up, earthling. He's gone. (Pause.) C'mon. I'm gonna give you a couple kicks
myself if you don't get up. We got work to do.
SVEN (Half dreaming): Leave me alone! Why do you keep...(Screams.) Stop it! Get away! What did
I ever do to you? Help!!!!!
GWEN: He's gone, stupid. Can you hear me?
SVEN (Groaning, waking): Ohhhhhh my....Oh my oh my oh myyyeeee........
GWEN (Taking his hand, pulling): C'mon, sit up. Can't lie there all day; the ants have been
feasting on your blood. They've gone to tell the others.
SVEN: Um...Who are you?
GWEN: Tell ya in a minute. First, I gotta get you up on this bench.
(GWEN manages to get SVEN up on his feet, and they slowly start to approach the bench.)
GWEN: Easy now.
SVEN: Oh God I must have sprained my ankle. How did I do that?
GWEN: What'd ya mean how'd you do that? I thought you were gonna kill each other. Now just sit
down on this bench and we'll see what we can do about that ankle.
(She sits SVEN down on the bench, and kneels at his feet. She takes off his right shoe and sock.)
SVEN: What are you doing?
GWEN: Just shut up, okay?
(GWEN puts her hand around SVEN's ankle and a red glowing light shines from where her hand is placed. SVEN nudges himself backward a bit in fear and amazement.)
SVEN: Holy shhhh--
GWEN: Shhh. I need to concentrate.
(She stares hard at SVEN's ankle, and weird spacey noise is heard in the background.)
GWEN: Ombi socni gundi guze. Ipsi spripsi fnankny bwuze.
(In a moment the light goes out and she releases her hand from SVEN's ankle. She stands up and has a seat on the bench next to him. SVEN moves his foot around to test the healing.)
GWEN: Go ahead. Stand up. Walk on it.
(SVEN does as he's told with ease.)
SVEN: Wow. That must be the new holistic medicine.
GWEN: No, not exactly.
SVEN: Magic.
GWEN: No.
SVEN: You're not...an...angel?
GWEN: Oh no, don't be silly.
(SVEN, embarrassed, sits back down.)
SVEN: Sorry.
GWEN: Don't worry about it.
SVEN: Well, thanks anyway.
GWEN: Don't mention it.
SVEN (After brief pause): So...Who exactly are you and...why are you being so nice to me?
GWEN: Not used to people being nice to you?
SVEN: Well, no, actually. Only when they want to borrow a pencil. (Pause.) God, you wouldn't
believe what a pile of crap my life is. I wish you hadn't found me, maybe I would've died.
GWEN: You know, it takes more strength to smile than to sulk. It takes more courage to fight
than to complain.
SVEN (Looking affectionately): It takes something special to even talk to me.
GWEN: I must be from another planet.
SVEN (Laughing): Yeah. But seriously...
GWEN: What?
SVEN: You know...Who are you?
GWEN: Didn't I just say?
SVEN: No, you said you must be from another plan--
GWEN (Completing his thought): Planet, yes.
SVEN (Incredulous): You think you're an alien?
GWEN: To you, yes, I am an alien, but to me, you are the strange one.
SVEN: Strange? What...There's no difference between us, other than I'm a guy and you're a girl.
GWEN: What did ya think? We were all little and green?
SVEN: Not necessarily. Just different.
GWEN: Why? It would surprise you, then, to learn that life on other planets is just the same as
it is here.
SVEN: It can't be. The aliens at Roswell didn't look human, and all the abductions reported...
GWEN: Those are fake. Halloween costumes. And Roswell...You can think of that as a kind of play
we put on for you guys. We have to distract you people somehow. If you guys knew we looked
exactly like you, that would mess everything up. We have to cover our asses just like you
humans do in covert military operations.
SVEN: How do you account for different climates, temperatures, minerals...?
GWEN: It takes a certain combination of factors to produce what you would consider
"intelligent life", and that's what ya got right here. And it's what we got on our
planet as well, which produces intelligent beings that look just like you.
SVEN: But we're not all the same. You got those powers.
GWEN: We're just a little farther in our evolution. And there are of course other small
differences, but nothing worth mentioning.
(Long pause. SVEN stands and starts to pace around.)
SVEN: Where are you from? What planet?
GWEN: Uvnuc, in the Draco constellation. That was named pretty well too, cos we still have
dragons on our planet, and some of us take on certain dragon-like characteristics ourselves.
For instance, our eyes turn red and we spit fire. But only when we're mad. Or sometimes during
sex.
SVEN: How far away is the Draco contellation?
GWEN: A long ways. Several million light years.
SVEN: You know, one of us is out of their head.
GWEN: Well, you can believe that if ya want to, but we still gotta get to work, and when
everything comes together according to plan, your uh...faith will fall into place. Right now,
it's not that important.
SVEN: Plan...What plan?
GWEN: What is that you people say...? You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.
SVEN: What? Cos you healed me, now I have to do something in return?
GWEN: No, no. The healing's free. But I wouldn't mind a thank you.
SVEN: You want to make some kind of deal.
GWEN: What I want is to help you. But I need help too. By helping me, you can help yourself.
SVEN: So...Spill it. What are you talking about?
GWEN: That young man...
SVEN: The one that beat the crap out of me?
GWEN: Yeah. What's his name?
SVEN: Stan.
GWEN: Stan. Okay. You don't like him, do you?
SVEN: No, I don't like him.
GWEN: He got a girlfriend?
SVEN: Yeah. Fran. She's a bitch.
GWEN: Is she, now?
SVEN: She makes fun of me.
GWEN: Oooh, nasty. Hmm...
SVEN: Does this plan involve them?
GWEN: It might, Sven, it just might. Sit down, son.
(SVEN sits.)
GWEN: It goes like this: all the hype about alien abductions and experimenting on humans is
true. It just doesn't happen exactly like you hear about it. Anyone you ever saw on TV claiming
to have been abducted is either lying or one of us making it up. We don't just randomly pick
people to abduct; we're more civilized than that. We take time to carefully evaluate who would
be a loss to the society and who wouldn't. It's a long, tedious selection process. (Lights up on STAN's apartment. He is there, reading a magazine and half-listening to FRAN.)
STAN: What was that, dear? (Fade to black.)
(In FLOYD'S garage, the band SLEAZE PLEAZE is rehearsing.)
STAN: Alright, we're doing "Pitter Patter Flatter Flitter". 1, 2, 3, and--
(The MUSIC begins; it is awful. It is not even written. No one can play worth shit, but
they go on anyway. FLOYD steps to the microphone and starts to sing.)
FLOYD (singing): Pitter patter flatter flitter / Shitter snapper slapper slitter /
Banished beast basted in butter / Flip and flop flings Fopling Flutter. (Pause, then
yelling...) Stop!
(The MUSIC stops.)
FLOYD: Something’s not right, I can’t tell quite what it is. (This dialogue fades out as a pair of teenage girls, BETSY and HELGA, enter from stage right.
They are walking down the street, near the garage.)
BETSY: So the waiter comes up to me and hands me this book called Hedda Gabler, and I'm
sayin' "What?" (The MUSIC resumes, and the girls approach the garage and notice the rehearsal.
FLOYD (singing): Master crapper trapper blaster / Plaster diaper wiper faster /
Dreamer teamster weener screamer / Weeder beater wonder gleamer.
(BETSY and HELGA glance at ELRIC.)
BETSY: Oh my God, is that Buddy Holly?! (The MUSIC goes on a moment longer as the girls rock out. Then the song is over, and
the girls approach.)
HELGA: You are awesome! (ELRIC, BETSY, and HELGA walk off. ALOYSIUS lies on the floor and goes to sleep. FLOYD
starts to exercise.)
STAN: Well, somebody scored. (STAN and GROVER share an evil laugh, and the lights blackout.)
SVEN: Why don't you just empty some prisons?
GWEN: It's important to get specimens from all walks of life, all ages and socioeconomic
backgrounds.
SVEN: What do you do? I mean, in the experiments?
GWEN: Oh just your typical rectal-probing, castration for the males, cross-breeding and
fertilization of the females.
SVEN: Do you have human males breed your kind?
GWEN: No, not anymore. We tried it once, and the combination of human sperm and our eggs
produced an unforeseen side-effect, creating a bit of a disaster.
SVEN: What kind of disaster?
GWEN: The ebola virus...Started not by monkeys, but by monkey business.
SVEN: Wow. (Pause.) So why do you experiment on us?
GWEN: Oh, for lots of reasons. To find out more about us, what we have in common, and what,
indeed, our differences are.
SVEN: So, uh...Are you telling me you want to use Stan and Fran as specimens?
GWEN: Yeah, if you don't mind.
SVEN: Mind? That's great!
GWEN: And I figure that will get those two off of your back. I been watchin' you two fight the
last several days. He always seems to start it, which made me conclude that you were the
civilized one.
SVEN: You came to the right person, believe me.
GWEN: But I never quite figured out what it was all about.
SVEN: The fighting?
GWEN: Yeah.
SVEN: Before I got to know Fran, I thought she was kind of pretty and...
GWEN: You asked her out?
SVEN: Yeah. And she said o.k.
GWEN: What? She did?
SVEN: Yeah, I almost couldn't believe it myself. She told me to stop by her house at 7:00 one
Friday night, so I showed up three minutes early, but...
GWEN: What?
SVEN: It wasn't her house. It was Stan's apartment. He was waiting for me, and he put on a show
for her. She laughed and ate popcorn while he beat me up.
GWEN: Did you know she had a boyfriend?
SVEN: Are you nuts? Of course not. I would've known what kind of man that would be.
GWEN: I've heard enough. Sounds like this pair is just what I need for the type of experiments
I'll be doing.
SVEN: What about the long tedious selection process?
GWEN: I'm in a bit of a hurry. My pet bytopra--kind of a cross between your dog and rat, I'll
just call it my dog--has suddenly become allergic to his food. I tried another brand, but it
gives him gas. All the other kinds are too expensive, so I'm working on a new formula. And the
poor bugger is starving until I come up with something, so there is a slight urgency. That's
why I need your help. My conscience won't allow me to take two decent people. But my dog is
waiting for me to save it. Now...I need two young human bodies. I can go to another high school
to get them. But I'd much rather have yours. It's better for you. It's better for me. (Shrugging
shoulders) And who cares about them?
SVEN: So how do we get them?
GWEN: Well, to start, you are going to ask the lovely Fran out on another date.
FRAN: If you would put down that stupid magazine, I will tell you.
STAN (Putting it down, annoyed): What?
FRAN: I said a had a very strange thing happen today.
STAN: And what would that be?
FRAN: You'll never guess who asked me out?
STAN: Uh...That dude on QVC you like so much, what's his name...Rod?
FRAN: Ron, idiot. No, how would he ask me out? He doesn't even know me.
STAN: I thought you might have got on the phone, you know, on the air.
FRAN: Jeez, you're kind of a dumb shit, aren't you?
STAN: Careful, babe.
FRAN: Sven.
STAN: Sven? What about--
FRAN: Sven asked me out.
STAN: When? Today?
FRAN: Yes. An hour ago.
STAN: That's impossible. I beat him up just three hours ago.
FRAN: I could tell. What is that, the seventh time you've beat him up?
STAN: Ninth.
FRAN: I don't get it. Why would he ask me out? Does he want to get killed?
STAN: Maybe he wants to be put out of his misery. What did you say?
FRAN: Yes, of course.
STAN: Did you invite him here?
FRAN: Yes.
STAN: He should know better than to come here again.
FRAN: He seemed okay with it.
STAN: Good. What time is he coming over?
FRAN: Eight o'clock tomorrow night.
STAN: Good. Maybe I will kill him this time.
HELGA: Hedda Gabler?
BETSY: Yeah, and he says, "That's what you wanted, right?"
HELGA: Why would anyone want that?
BETSY: Good point. And I said, "That's not what I ordered. I wanted apple cobbler."
And he's like, "Sorry, I didn't hear you right", or somethin' like that.
HELGA: Wow. Sorry I missed that.
BETSY: Yeah. He was cute though.
STAN: Alright, let’s try it again!
HELGA: No way!
BETSY: Oh I gotta meet him.
FLOYD (singing): Smother lover motherfucker / Undercover blubber sucker / Trash
compactor firecracker / Convict tracker fudge packer.
BETSY (To Elric): Especially you.
ELRIC: Rave on!
HELGA: Do you think we could learn how to play like that?
ELRIC: That’ll be the day!
BETSY: You could come to my place and give us some private lessons.
ELRIC (Looking at the others): It’s so easy.
GROVER: Looks that way.
STAN: And somebody else just might.
GROVER: Oh yeah? Fran feeling frisky?
STAN (Lowering his voice so no one else can hear): It's not Fran.
GROVER: Oh no? You got someone on the side you're not telling me about?
STAN: I'm tellin' you now, dumbshit.
GROVER: Oh. Sorry.
STAN: You should be. Anyway, I met her today, at the station. Fuckin' gorgeous bitch! She pulled
in and said, "Fill 'er up". I said, "With pleasure." She said she liked the
way I handled my pump. Said I could fill her tank any day. I asked her to meet me tonight, after
my second shift.
GROVER (Hopeful): So, uh...What's Fran doin' then?
STAN: Oh, she'll be busy tonight. Sorry.
GROVER: Oh, that's okay.
STAN: Yeah, she's going to have Sven over.
GROVER: You gonna beat him up again?
STAN: Well, that was the plan, before plans changed. Before I met this girl. I figure I can beat
up Sven anytime.
GROVER: Well, I could go and beat him up for ya.
STAN: Thanks, bud, but actually, I thought you might want to hang around the park tonight.
GROVER: The park? Why the hell would I hang out in the park?
STAN: Because that's where this chick and I are meeting.
GROVER: I see, I see.
STAN: And if you're discreet about it, and follow us to the hotel, you might just get some
yourself.
GROVER: Ah man, you're a pal.
STAN: Don't say I never did anything for you.
© 1998 Matt Russell.