No Fault of Your Own

Do you think you'll ever hope someone you once loved might die? An impossible play about feeling trapped.

For two people and many, many bodies.

No Fault of Your Own
A Play written by Sean Dance Fannin

Jerma, a woman dressed in many shades and textures of grey.
She hasn't washed her hair in months.
She wears a hat and sits at a breakfast nook.
She stares into the middle distance and stirs her tea.
Certain portions of the room have been burnt with little fires.
Skeletons are stacked deconstructed in the corner organized by bone type and size.
It's clean, as if it's there to be studied.
There are windows on every corner of the space where green grey light seeps in.
Jerma thinks.

JERMA

Oh no

A body falls out of the ceiling. It screams.
Just as it's about to hit the floor it vanishes.

JERMA

Not that

The same body hurls through a distant window and ragdoll rolls out onto the floor.
It evaporates and the window melts into empty space.

JERMA

That makes more sense.

Karl enters through an invisible door. He's the living incarnation of the body.

KARL

Awful shit rain isn't it.

JERMA

You're not wrong.

It's not raining.
Jerma still stares.

KARL

Did you get a lot done today?

JERMA

Some.

KARL

How much is some is it a lot some or not enough some

JERMA

Some as in a portion of a little bit

KARL

Did you hear the news?

JERMA

No.

Thunder. The wind picks up.
Karl turns into a body.
It rains in a downpour, but only above the body as it looks up.
 Agape.
The body drowns.
As it falls to its knees it disappears and the rain stops on a dime.
The sound of spring outside.
A late-afternoon sun on its way out the sky.

JERMA

That's nice.

Karl enters through the open window.

KARL

I mowed the lawn.

JERMA

It's not your house.

KARL

You looked like you could use it.

JERMA

The lawn?

KARL

No you look like you couldn't handle it.

The floor opens beneath Karl.
As he steps into it he becomes a body.
The body is chewed by a series of gears and is thrown violently to the ceiling.
It disappears just out of view above the space.

JERMA

Conditioned air.

The wind outside comes in.
Sounds become less natural and more calculated into a cacophony of unbearable weather.
Themes that have nothing to do with one another play simultaneously. Music and horrible sound at once.
Sounds that shouldn't exist. The breakfast nook gets smaller as Jerma lights a cigarette.
The sacred has become profane.
Karl enters through a very real door.

KARL

Can we talk?

The lights dull and more can be plainly seen.
There are no bones. There are no burn marks. The windows are unbroken.
Jerma wears a new outfit.
She stares.

JERMA

Would you like a cup?

KARL

No. For the talk?

JERMA

Why not.

KARL

I don't think it'll take that long and I want to leave room for you to process if you want me to leave afterward.

JERMA

That's ridiculous.

KARL

I have a tough question for you.

JERMA

...What are you about to put on me.

KARL

No, I just think you'll think it's weird.

Jerma looks at him and becomes more present.

JERMA

I don't think you're weird.

KARL

I know but I haven't said it yet.

JERMA

Can I ask you a favor first?

KARL

Sure. Anything.

JERMA

Don't. Don't ask me. 

Whatever it is don't ask me.

I'm getting a horrific vibration from you and I don't want to invite that in to what I've already got going on so. 

Yes; no, no I don't want you to ask me anything you have to preface "I have a question to ask you" with. Insane. 

Too much for me. 

KARL

It's not for you it's for me.

JERMA

Oh well if it's for you.

KARL

You don't even know what I'm about to ask yet.

JERMA

You're not about to that's the thing.

KARL

Have I ever been violent to you?

Distant rolling thunder.
It stops in the middle.

KARL

Have I?

JERMA

Is that what you have to ask?

KARL

Yes.

JERMA

Why are you asking that.

KARL

Do you see what I mean?

JERMA

Yes but you have to know I want to know why.

KARL

Because I want to apologize.

JERMA

For being violent?

KARL

Have I ever been violent?

JERMA

...No. Not that I remember.

KARL

Wouldn't you remember?

JERMA

Yes. I think so.

KARL

Then I haven't been. Yes?

JERMA

Please get to the point I don't like where we started and I can't see where we're going.

KARL

I've had violent thoughts.

JERMA

...

KARL

About you.

JERMA

Me specifically?

KARL

Yes.

JERMA

Name one.

KARL

"I want you to die."

Beat.

JERMA

Like right now?

KARL

No it's not that specific.

JERMA

You want me to die.

KARL

Not right now not really that's the violent thought I've had.

JERMA

You want to kill me.

KARL

My therapist said it would be good for us to talk about this.

JERMA

You imagine killing me.

KARL

No.

JERMA

...

KARL

You've almost got it.

JERMA

... You imagine wanting to kill me.

KARL

I imagine you dead.

JERMA

Is it graphic?

KARL

Sometimes.

JERMA

Do you see it happen? Do you plan it?

KARL

...No.

JERMA

While we're being honest.

KARL

While we're being honest it's helped my creativity.

JERMA

Uh... ...oh.

KARL

Yes because I started to run out of ideas.

So I kept trying to think of new things.

I thought if I could think of all of them I'd run out or get bored. But it's been...a while now.

JERMA

How long.

KARL

A while.

JERMA

Long?

KARL

Long while yeah long while.

JERMA

...Come sit.

KARL

I'm not invading?

JERMA

You're not doing anything come sit.

Karl sits.
They both relax.
Jerma stirs her tea as she stares back into the middle distance.

JERMA

Our lives are so intertwined, they take up so much of each other, our lives. 

Imagining a situation at no fault of your own doesn't feel that impossible. It feels easier to grieve over.

KARL

I don't really want you to die. It would kill me.

JERMA

Otherwise you're grieving for your own life. Which seems less difficult. 

Grieving for a given part of you instead of the entire potential of you. 

One of those seems easier and you know it. I know what it's like to grieve over everything you could be. 

Everything you can't be because of what you are. I know what that's like.

KARL

So you understand?

Jerma shrugs.

KARL

...Do you still want to live together?

JERMA

I don't see why not.

KARL

That's good. Whew.

Karl begins to relax.
He tips his chair back.

KARL

I thought for sure I'd have to move out. Or you would.

JERMA

It's not like we could really be rid of each other.

KARL

True. True true true.

JERMA

The only ways out are tragic. 

That's really what you're thinking about when you think about that. There's no way out. Too inextricably bound.

KARL

Even then...

JERMA

Even what?

KARL

Even then the memories are there too. 

So even if we were to die. Or to be not around in any way. We wouldn't be free even then. 

It's not just that were pieces of each other. We are. We are each other.

Never breaking eye contact from the middle distance,
Jerma uses her foot to gently tip the foot of Karl's chair a bit too far.
He falls.
He breaks his neck.
Jerma doesn't look.
Karl gasps, choking on gurgles.
He never gets a word out but the closest he comes to it is something of "Help."
It is slower, and somehow more graphic than the others.
It takes a very long time.
Karl dies and turns into a body.
Jerma looks at the room she's in for the first time.
She remains still.
Then...

The following happens all at once, there is no blood:

• A body falls in pieces from the ceiling
• A body smashes through a window and clears the entire space, exiting on the opposite side
• A body rams its way through the floor, head first
• A body walks on stage, decomposing step by step, leaving behind their foot, then leg, then foot, then leg, then torso, then head.
• A body enters from the opposite direction and removes its skin piece by piece.
• A body smashes through a window, slicing itself in half.
• A body is shot from a cannon in the back of the house, it flies over the audience and busts through the back wall of the space.
• A body smashes through a window, swinging by the waist from an invisible chord
• This image does not, and will not, simulate hanging by the neck.
• A body crawls on its back and screams until it prolapses by way of the mouth until it is fully inside out.
• A body with no hands flails until it levitates, writhing
• A body scales the back wall, knocked off by the cannon body, shattering its back on the ground.
• A body smashes through a window, feet first, sliding clear across the space until it falls off the proscenium.
• A body with broken bones walks with learned difficulty across the space, breaking new bones with each step.
• A body hangs by one toe from a bungee chord and bounces from the ceiling
• A body chokes on their tongue
• A body shits itself until it quickly dehydrates
• No visible shit.
• A body loses its heart and collapses
• A body loses its lungs and collapses
• A body loses its stomach and collapses
• A body loses its blood and collapses
• A body loses its brain and collapses
• A body slams into a door
• A body slams between the door
• A body is chasing its scalp as it kicks its way across the stage.
• A body is frozen.
• A body is on fire.
• A body is inverted.
• A body smashes through a window three or four sizes too small, and the body squeezes through anyway, squishing and breaking.

And finally:

• An enormous, superlatively large naked body falls from the ceiling and consumes all the bodies.

The bodies are gone. 
Jerma is alone. She stirs her tea.
It rains blood indoors.
It covers every inch of everything until it's all the same shade of red.
Jerma is finished with her tea.

End of play.