Necromas: A Story of Terror and Parrots
The following script will be performed at Bellarmine University at some point in either March or April. Dates unknown yet.
A single light goes up stage right. We are inside of Sarah and John’s home. Through the single light we can see only the front door, a coat hanger just to the side of it and a small lamp table under that. The door opens. Enter Sarah, from outside, carrying a bag of groceries. She places them on the table. She is wearing a winter coat and scarf. She places the bag on the table and takes off her coat and scarf as she speaks.
SARAH: John! I’m home!
There is no answer.
SARAH: John? John!
Still no answer. She turns to look around the stage, giving her first genuine look at the home. She stops suddenly, aghast.
Lights up on rest of the stage, though dim and dark.
John lies on the floor of the home, dead.
SARAH: John?! Oh my God!
Sarah runs to John to shake him, checking his pulse. It is no use. He is clearly dead.
SARAH: John! Oh God, no…JOHN!
She hovers over the body for a moment, too shocked to perform any act short of hysteria.
SARAH: Oh God! Oh my God! No! No!
She panics for another moment, pacing briefly and then collecting herself enough to run to the phone on stage left. She picks it up and dials 911.
Lights go down except for a single one over Sarah, focusing on her panic as she explains what has happened.
SARAH (into phone): Hello?! My husband is dead! I just found him dead on the floor! He-what? My name is Sarah Collins! I don’t know! I don’t know what happened! I just came into the house and he was dead on the floor! He said he felt-What? No, there’s no pulse!
Another light goes up over John’s body, syncing with a scary music cue.
His arm moves menacingly as if it were gripping the floor to support his rise.
SARAH: Yes I checked! I don’t know what happened!
JOHN begins to rise, slowly, forcefully, frighteningly.
SARAH: Since the Christmas season has started he’s been complaining about stomach cramps but that’s it. He doesn’t have any medical issues at all. No, no blood. No vomit either.
As JOHN finally stands fully erect, the light above him begins to strobe slowly. He moves upstage and out of the light. It continues to strobe for a beat to show his absence.
SARAH: He hasn’t even had a fever. The only thing he’s eaten today has been egg nog but we just bought it this morning. The expiration isn’t for two weeks.
Farther upstage, near the door and coatrack, a strobe begins again revealing JOHN standing in front of the lamp table, wearing a coat, a bowler hat, a scarf and wielding an umbrella. There are but a few flashes of the strobe to give minimal image of this before the light goes black again.
SARAH: No allergies, no illness, no history of stroke in his family, I didn’t hear him yell or scream or fall! Just the egg nog. And what’s weird is that since the Christmas commercials have started airing he’s been complaining of stomach cramps, but they only seem to be during Christmas commercials.
As SARAH speaks, a strobe light begins blinking directly next to her as creepy atmospheric music is heard and JOHN appears in the light, approaching SARAH.
JOHN, now a complete zombie, stands staring at SARAH for just a moment. The strobe light blinks for a beat only, then goes to a solid stream of light.
The two look at each other for a beat as the music above hits a crescendo.
JOHN suddenly snaps out of it, becoming human. But the moment it does, he breaks into song.
JOHN (singing with a British accent): It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Toys in every store! Come on, honey, sing along!
JOHN continues to sing “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” to SARAH, dancing and improvising with the umbrella as a prop.
SARAH stares on in horror and drops the phone.
JOHN continues dancing and singing. As he dances he edges toward the door. He stops.
JOHN changes his demeanor from christmacy-cheerful to menacing zombie.
JOHN: …Brains…
JOHN opens the door and walks out, leaving the door open. He is gone for a moment before jerking his head back inside.
JOHN(singing as human): Toys in every store!
He darts back out and closes the door.
SARAH’s eyes begin to tear. She shakes.
SARAH gets up and runs out the door.
SARAH (calling): JOHN!
SARAH rounds the edge of the backstage wall to come downstage, the front of their home. She keeps calling for John, who has moved far to stage left. As she approaches John, a man enters from stage right, wearing a business suit and wielding a pair of binoculars. This is AGENT 1. He approaches SARAH quickly and stands absurdly close to her, following her while still watching her through binoculars despite being too close to need them. SARAH notices them.
SARAH (turning around, startled, angry): Can I help you?!
AGENT 1 makes a small shriek and runs away. SARAH continues to stare on at him in confusion. He runs to a corner of stage right and crouches, continuing to look at SARAH through binoculars.
Ignoring him, SARAH continues on her path to JOHN, who is still singing about the joys of Christmas.
JOHN: Have you heard?! Have you heard the joys of the most wonderful shopping season! It’s Christmas! Christmas! We can all go to our local retailers and purchase assorted goods and services for our families and loved ones! Sales are going on now!
SARAH approaches.
JOHN: Honey, Honey, have you heard?! It’s the most wonderful of shopping seasons!
SARAH: John, what’s going on?
JOHN: It’s Christmas!
SARAH: John, you didn’t have a pulse. You should be dead.
JOHN: Dead?…(sounding zombified)…brains…
SARAH: John.-
JOHN (still zombified): Chestnuts roasting on…brains…
SARAH: JOHN!
JOHN: Honey! It’s you! Have you heard about what season it is! Quickly! Go to the store and purchase things! Many things! Things with lights and colors and (zombiefied) brains (un-zombiefied) and merriment!
SARAH (horrified): What is wrong with you?
JOHN: I love shopping! Especially during Christmas!
SARAH: John, just wait here, okay? I’m going to call an ambulance. Just wait here.
She heads back inside. As she approaches the phone there is a knock at the door.
SARAH: Dammit.
She heads to door and answers it. Standing there is LESLIE, looking horrified.
SARAH: Not now Leslie, I’ve got a problem.
LESLIE: Sarah?! Something’s wrong with David!
SARAH(suddenly interested): What do you mean?
LESLIE: I think he’s a zombie.
LESLIE pulls DAVID into the doorway. He is clearly also a zombie, dressed similarly to John but carrying an oar in one hand an a parrot in the other. He dances his way into the house singing “Winter Wonder Land.”
DAVID pauses, stops his singing, and looks at the parrot.
DAVID: Brains.
DAVID eats the birds head.
LESLIE: He just ate my parrot.
SARAH: I didn’t even know you had a parrot!
LESLIE: Yeah, his name was Storm. Do we even know each other? Anyway, what are we going to do? He’s eating flesh and plus there was this guy outside our window with binoculars and I think her followed us here.
SARAH: I think I’ve got the same problem. Look at this.
SARAH grabs DAVID by the arm and leads him and LESLIE outside to look at JOHN.
LESLIE: What happened?
SARAH: You tell me.
LESLIE: Well, we were at the mall buying Christmas gifts and David kept complaining about it. Then when we got home he went to the bathroom, and I found him dead on the floor. Except then he started singing and dancing and eventually he ate my parrot. And before that he ate a sandwich that he kept calling “Brains.”
SARAH: Well what are we going to do?
LESLIE: I don’t know. Why don’t we ask those guys?
LESLIE points behind SARAH. SARAH turns around.
There are now two men with binoculars crouching in a corner on stage right. AGENT 1 and AGENT 2.
SARAH and LESLIE approach the men with a sense of authority.
The two agents, now aware that they are being approached, stand up and turn around, pointing off into the distance and adlibbing lines about grout work and hedge trimming.
SARAH grabs AGENT 1 by the arm and spins him around to face her. When she does he loses grip of a small black satchel and sends it sliding across the stage. LESLIE goes to pick up the satchel.
SARAH: What are you doing?
AGENT 1: We’re…uh…We’re a figment of your imagination. We don’t exist.
LESLIE opens the Satchel and reveals its contents: a syringe and a bottle of fluid.
SARAH: What are you doing watching us?
AGENT 1: Nothing!
SARAH(pulling the agent closer to center stage and pointing to her husband): What’s happening to our husbands?
AGENT 1 (pointing to AGENT 2): It was all his idea.
SARAH: What?
AGENT 1: Look, maybe we’re just ad executives and our new marketing program is to infect random citizens with zombism of a particular mutation that influences them to actively promote and enact in enthusiastic holiday shopping, and maybe we’re not.
AGENT 2: It was all my idea.
SARAH: Wait…WHAT?!
AGENT 1: We’ve injected your husbands with a serum that turns them into zombies. Bloodthirsty, godless, shopping zombies. Not just hungry for brains, but hungry for bargains.
AGENT 2: Delicious bargains.
AGENT 1 begins to speak and as he does the lights go down so that only he and SARAH are seen.
AGENT 1: From now on they’ll do nothing but promote seasonal shopping. They’ll change their mannerisms for every new shopping season. Come valentine’s day it will be love songs and eating brains. And come Independence Day it will be All-American savings and brain feasts! And my God, can you imagine the sheer awesome sales of the President’s Day Sales Zombies?!
SARAH grabs AGENT 1 by the shirt, moving her face close into his.
SARAH (furious): Fix him you son of a bitch!
LESLIE: And my parrot.
AGENT 1 (choking, pleading): The serum is permanent! There’s no turning back!
SARAH: For the love of God, fix him or I’ll kill you! Tell me how to fix him!
AGENT 1: Never!
LESLIE hands the opened satchel to SARAH.
LESLIE: Sarah-
SARAH takes the satchel and looks at the contents.
SARAH: This is the serum isn’t it? Tell me how to fix him or I’ll inject you with this!
AGENT 1 is overcome with fear.
AGENT 1: Okay, okay! Look, there’s no antidote. And he’ll keep eating brains and selling bargains for as long as he exists. The only way to fix him is to kill him. Look, if you inject him with over 80ccs of the serum, he’ll overdose on holiday cheer. It’s the only way to save him. And you.
SARAH (almost too shocked for words): You unthinkable son of a bitch-
SARAH stands in shock and contemplation for a moment and then injects AGENT 1 with the serum. He yells. She injects AGENT 2. He yells.
AGENT 1: Do you know what you’ve just done?!
SARAH pushes him away as the lights come back up. The Agents slowly walk away, defeated. On stage left we now see JOHN and DAVID standing over the body of dead bystander, JOHN bent over and chewing on the bystander’s head. SARAH approaches him, looking on with pity as a tear falls down her face.
As SARAH approaches the lights again go down to show only her and JOHN, who gets up and begins to address his wife, his face smeared with blood.
JOHN: It’s Christmas, Honey! It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Think of all the bargains!
SARAH (crying): Give me your arm, John.
JOHN holds his arm out.
JOHN (excitedly): Okay!
SARAH: I’m going-…I’m going to inject you with this.
JOHN: What is it?
SARAH: It’s-…it’s Christmas cheer.
JOHN: Why, I love Christmas!
SARAH: I know.
SARAH inject more of the serum into JOHN.
She walks backward a few steps and is now the only person on stage with light on them. Standing there, alone, she begins to weep, her head down. She does this for a beat and then brings her head back up. When it raises a noise like a balloon popping is heard.
When it’s heard, a wave of tinsel flies from out of the darkness and smacks SARAH in the face.
SARAH: Oh, he exploded in Tinsel.
All lights down.
THE END.
A single light goes up stage right. We are inside of Sarah and John’s home. Through the single light we can see only the front door, a coat hanger just to the side of it and a small lamp table under that. The door opens. Enter Sarah, from outside, carrying a bag of groceries. She places them on the table. She is wearing a winter coat and scarf. She places the bag on the table and takes off her coat and scarf as she speaks.
SARAH: John! I’m home!
There is no answer.
SARAH: John? John!
Still no answer. She turns to look around the stage, giving her first genuine look at the home. She stops suddenly, aghast.
Lights up on rest of the stage, though dim and dark.
John lies on the floor of the home, dead.
SARAH: John?! Oh my God!
Sarah runs to John to shake him, checking his pulse. It is no use. He is clearly dead.
SARAH: John! Oh God, no…JOHN!
She hovers over the body for a moment, too shocked to perform any act short of hysteria.
SARAH: Oh God! Oh my God! No! No!
She panics for another moment, pacing briefly and then collecting herself enough to run to the phone on stage left. She picks it up and dials 911.
Lights go down except for a single one over Sarah, focusing on her panic as she explains what has happened.
SARAH (into phone): Hello?! My husband is dead! I just found him dead on the floor! He-what? My name is Sarah Collins! I don’t know! I don’t know what happened! I just came into the house and he was dead on the floor! He said he felt-What? No, there’s no pulse!
Another light goes up over John’s body, syncing with a scary music cue.
His arm moves menacingly as if it were gripping the floor to support his rise.
SARAH: Yes I checked! I don’t know what happened!
JOHN begins to rise, slowly, forcefully, frighteningly.
SARAH: Since the Christmas season has started he’s been complaining about stomach cramps but that’s it. He doesn’t have any medical issues at all. No, no blood. No vomit either.
As JOHN finally stands fully erect, the light above him begins to strobe slowly. He moves upstage and out of the light. It continues to strobe for a beat to show his absence.
SARAH: He hasn’t even had a fever. The only thing he’s eaten today has been egg nog but we just bought it this morning. The expiration isn’t for two weeks.
Farther upstage, near the door and coatrack, a strobe begins again revealing JOHN standing in front of the lamp table, wearing a coat, a bowler hat, a scarf and wielding an umbrella. There are but a few flashes of the strobe to give minimal image of this before the light goes black again.
SARAH: No allergies, no illness, no history of stroke in his family, I didn’t hear him yell or scream or fall! Just the egg nog. And what’s weird is that since the Christmas commercials have started airing he’s been complaining of stomach cramps, but they only seem to be during Christmas commercials.
As SARAH speaks, a strobe light begins blinking directly next to her as creepy atmospheric music is heard and JOHN appears in the light, approaching SARAH.
JOHN, now a complete zombie, stands staring at SARAH for just a moment. The strobe light blinks for a beat only, then goes to a solid stream of light.
The two look at each other for a beat as the music above hits a crescendo.
JOHN suddenly snaps out of it, becoming human. But the moment it does, he breaks into song.
JOHN (singing with a British accent): It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Toys in every store! Come on, honey, sing along!
JOHN continues to sing “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” to SARAH, dancing and improvising with the umbrella as a prop.
SARAH stares on in horror and drops the phone.
JOHN continues dancing and singing. As he dances he edges toward the door. He stops.
JOHN changes his demeanor from christmacy-cheerful to menacing zombie.
JOHN: …Brains…
JOHN opens the door and walks out, leaving the door open. He is gone for a moment before jerking his head back inside.
JOHN(singing as human): Toys in every store!
He darts back out and closes the door.
SARAH’s eyes begin to tear. She shakes.
SARAH gets up and runs out the door.
SARAH (calling): JOHN!
SARAH rounds the edge of the backstage wall to come downstage, the front of their home. She keeps calling for John, who has moved far to stage left. As she approaches John, a man enters from stage right, wearing a business suit and wielding a pair of binoculars. This is AGENT 1. He approaches SARAH quickly and stands absurdly close to her, following her while still watching her through binoculars despite being too close to need them. SARAH notices them.
SARAH (turning around, startled, angry): Can I help you?!
AGENT 1 makes a small shriek and runs away. SARAH continues to stare on at him in confusion. He runs to a corner of stage right and crouches, continuing to look at SARAH through binoculars.
Ignoring him, SARAH continues on her path to JOHN, who is still singing about the joys of Christmas.
JOHN: Have you heard?! Have you heard the joys of the most wonderful shopping season! It’s Christmas! Christmas! We can all go to our local retailers and purchase assorted goods and services for our families and loved ones! Sales are going on now!
SARAH approaches.
JOHN: Honey, Honey, have you heard?! It’s the most wonderful of shopping seasons!
SARAH: John, what’s going on?
JOHN: It’s Christmas!
SARAH: John, you didn’t have a pulse. You should be dead.
JOHN: Dead?…(sounding zombified)…brains…
SARAH: John.-
JOHN (still zombified): Chestnuts roasting on…brains…
SARAH: JOHN!
JOHN: Honey! It’s you! Have you heard about what season it is! Quickly! Go to the store and purchase things! Many things! Things with lights and colors and (zombiefied) brains (un-zombiefied) and merriment!
SARAH (horrified): What is wrong with you?
JOHN: I love shopping! Especially during Christmas!
SARAH: John, just wait here, okay? I’m going to call an ambulance. Just wait here.
She heads back inside. As she approaches the phone there is a knock at the door.
SARAH: Dammit.
She heads to door and answers it. Standing there is LESLIE, looking horrified.
SARAH: Not now Leslie, I’ve got a problem.
LESLIE: Sarah?! Something’s wrong with David!
SARAH(suddenly interested): What do you mean?
LESLIE: I think he’s a zombie.
LESLIE pulls DAVID into the doorway. He is clearly also a zombie, dressed similarly to John but carrying an oar in one hand an a parrot in the other. He dances his way into the house singing “Winter Wonder Land.”
DAVID pauses, stops his singing, and looks at the parrot.
DAVID: Brains.
DAVID eats the birds head.
LESLIE: He just ate my parrot.
SARAH: I didn’t even know you had a parrot!
LESLIE: Yeah, his name was Storm. Do we even know each other? Anyway, what are we going to do? He’s eating flesh and plus there was this guy outside our window with binoculars and I think her followed us here.
SARAH: I think I’ve got the same problem. Look at this.
SARAH grabs DAVID by the arm and leads him and LESLIE outside to look at JOHN.
LESLIE: What happened?
SARAH: You tell me.
LESLIE: Well, we were at the mall buying Christmas gifts and David kept complaining about it. Then when we got home he went to the bathroom, and I found him dead on the floor. Except then he started singing and dancing and eventually he ate my parrot. And before that he ate a sandwich that he kept calling “Brains.”
SARAH: Well what are we going to do?
LESLIE: I don’t know. Why don’t we ask those guys?
LESLIE points behind SARAH. SARAH turns around.
There are now two men with binoculars crouching in a corner on stage right. AGENT 1 and AGENT 2.
SARAH and LESLIE approach the men with a sense of authority.
The two agents, now aware that they are being approached, stand up and turn around, pointing off into the distance and adlibbing lines about grout work and hedge trimming.
SARAH grabs AGENT 1 by the arm and spins him around to face her. When she does he loses grip of a small black satchel and sends it sliding across the stage. LESLIE goes to pick up the satchel.
SARAH: What are you doing?
AGENT 1: We’re…uh…We’re a figment of your imagination. We don’t exist.
LESLIE opens the Satchel and reveals its contents: a syringe and a bottle of fluid.
SARAH: What are you doing watching us?
AGENT 1: Nothing!
SARAH(pulling the agent closer to center stage and pointing to her husband): What’s happening to our husbands?
AGENT 1 (pointing to AGENT 2): It was all his idea.
SARAH: What?
AGENT 1: Look, maybe we’re just ad executives and our new marketing program is to infect random citizens with zombism of a particular mutation that influences them to actively promote and enact in enthusiastic holiday shopping, and maybe we’re not.
AGENT 2: It was all my idea.
SARAH: Wait…WHAT?!
AGENT 1: We’ve injected your husbands with a serum that turns them into zombies. Bloodthirsty, godless, shopping zombies. Not just hungry for brains, but hungry for bargains.
AGENT 2: Delicious bargains.
AGENT 1 begins to speak and as he does the lights go down so that only he and SARAH are seen.
AGENT 1: From now on they’ll do nothing but promote seasonal shopping. They’ll change their mannerisms for every new shopping season. Come valentine’s day it will be love songs and eating brains. And come Independence Day it will be All-American savings and brain feasts! And my God, can you imagine the sheer awesome sales of the President’s Day Sales Zombies?!
SARAH grabs AGENT 1 by the shirt, moving her face close into his.
SARAH (furious): Fix him you son of a bitch!
LESLIE: And my parrot.
AGENT 1 (choking, pleading): The serum is permanent! There’s no turning back!
SARAH: For the love of God, fix him or I’ll kill you! Tell me how to fix him!
AGENT 1: Never!
LESLIE hands the opened satchel to SARAH.
LESLIE: Sarah-
SARAH takes the satchel and looks at the contents.
SARAH: This is the serum isn’t it? Tell me how to fix him or I’ll inject you with this!
AGENT 1 is overcome with fear.
AGENT 1: Okay, okay! Look, there’s no antidote. And he’ll keep eating brains and selling bargains for as long as he exists. The only way to fix him is to kill him. Look, if you inject him with over 80ccs of the serum, he’ll overdose on holiday cheer. It’s the only way to save him. And you.
SARAH (almost too shocked for words): You unthinkable son of a bitch-
SARAH stands in shock and contemplation for a moment and then injects AGENT 1 with the serum. He yells. She injects AGENT 2. He yells.
AGENT 1: Do you know what you’ve just done?!
SARAH pushes him away as the lights come back up. The Agents slowly walk away, defeated. On stage left we now see JOHN and DAVID standing over the body of dead bystander, JOHN bent over and chewing on the bystander’s head. SARAH approaches him, looking on with pity as a tear falls down her face.
As SARAH approaches the lights again go down to show only her and JOHN, who gets up and begins to address his wife, his face smeared with blood.
JOHN: It’s Christmas, Honey! It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Think of all the bargains!
SARAH (crying): Give me your arm, John.
JOHN holds his arm out.
JOHN (excitedly): Okay!
SARAH: I’m going-…I’m going to inject you with this.
JOHN: What is it?
SARAH: It’s-…it’s Christmas cheer.
JOHN: Why, I love Christmas!
SARAH: I know.
SARAH inject more of the serum into JOHN.
She walks backward a few steps and is now the only person on stage with light on them. Standing there, alone, she begins to weep, her head down. She does this for a beat and then brings her head back up. When it raises a noise like a balloon popping is heard.
When it’s heard, a wave of tinsel flies from out of the darkness and smacks SARAH in the face.
SARAH: Oh, he exploded in Tinsel.
All lights down.
THE END.