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Monologue Mania Day # 169 by Janet S. Tiger Hero (Female Version) (c) July 31, 2014
Hero (female version)
A monologue by Janet S. Tiger
© all rights reserved [email protected]
(A woman walks on hesitantly, shielding eyes from light. She goes to the center of the stage and shakes hands with someone, then stands up straighter, listening, smiling brightly. Then she steps out of her shoes and leaves them, walking to the other side of the stage, as if observing herself.)
Hero. They call me a hero. It is so funny .....look at all those cameras!
(Shakes her head.)
I can't believe I am here tonight! My mother would be so proud - she always wanted me to be in those contests like she did when she was a girl, and now look at all the lights, and the cameras!
(Listens, doesn't smile, then remembers to smile)
Have to remember to keep smiling. Don't want photos online with me all sad, because I am not sad at all! I am ....what did they call me? A hero!
(She almost laughs, stops, keeps smile up)
I'm no hero. I'm just a researcher. A person who sits in a laboratory all day, and sometimes all night.
Science. My mother hated that I went into this, because it had no social life. Look at me now, Mom! (Thinks) Maybe she is looking.....
Look at my children. They are happy for me, too. Too bad I'm not twenty-five any more, the photos would come out better. No wrinkles. Maybe I can use some of the money from the book deal to get some plastic surgery.....
(Listens)
How can they say those things about me?
(Takes a deep breath)
I am a killer......and I love it!
(Smiles and almost laughs again)
What hypocrisy! When I was little, everyone says, 'Do not kill' and then, because we didn't have much money, and we live in a cheap place, the roaches come. Not from us, my mother was very clean, but the neighbors. So we killed the roaches. Any way we can. Poison, baits......my favorite was squashing them. And it was OK, even good to kill them, because you didn't want them crawling into your ears like the Fujisaki's baby son had happen to him.
I didn't do anything special. Yet they give me this prize. All I did was what I was trained to do.
I knew how close we were to figuring it out, and one night, I almost went home, but then, something made me stay and I saw........
(Her eyes light up and she can see the event.)
I still see that very moment I realized in slow motion.....I understood what we had to do!
And it worked!
All those days....and nights! All the missed dinners with my family......all to kill off cells so small we cannot see them without machines!
And everyone is happy I kill them! And they give me prizes and money and pictures and....this is the best moment of my life! And I have saved millions of people! Ok, maybe thousands......
(She stops, thinks, her smile fades)
Is that you, Momma? Why would you say these things? I know so many died before.....if I had discovered this last year, how many less dead? Ten thousand? What if I hadn't gone on vacation two years ago? Twenty thousand?
Hero.
Some hero......I should have worked harder......ooh, I think that gasbag is finally finished......
(She jumps to attention, goes back to her shoes and steps back into them, shakes hands again, taking a plaque or award of some kind. She smiles weakly, nods at the crowd, starts to walk off, then looks back, smiles very large.)
Hero......what a strange word...
(She squares her shoulders, walks off. And maybe the end of one horrible disease.)
Janet S. Tiger 858-736-6315
www.JanetSTiger.weebly.com
Member Dramatists Guild since 1983
Playwright-in-Residence
Swedenborg Hall 2006-8