Thing and Nothing

Thing and Nothing home Listen to MP3 samples Learn about the characters Read the script See the pictures of the characters Read reviews About the players Purchase a CD Read the foreword by D.A. Nash Click on the names to download MP3 files. Right+click to save to your hardrive. The Year the Clouds Hated the Ground Robots & Humans A Crazy, Madcap Day The Day the Fish Grew Brains The Science of Rape Humans & Robots Baby, I1m a Star Bookend I Mashpee Mungquack1s Sales Pitch Enter Captain John Barneveld to Buy the Game Mashpee Plots with Captain John Enter Simon Still Looking for a Lover Mashpee Makes his First Offer Simon Refuses the Whores Mashpee Mungquck Delivers Christmas Simon Accepts the Offer Simon Still is Fucked Captain John Harrasses Simon Simon Makes a Boat Simon Starts to Understand Captain John Takes Advantage Captain Johns Final Arguement Simon & Captain John Decide to Meet Later to Kill Mashpee Mungquack Simon Realizes What He Must Do Simon & Christmas Enter the Quiet Wood Wine Runs Down Her Sleeves The Confirmation Beautiful, Naked Love Journey to the Grandstand to Kill Mungquack Enter Mungquack, Unafraid Mashpee Reveals Christmas Simon's First Blow The Ill-Starred Head-Scotch Simons Final Blow The Death of Mashpee Mungquack The Game is Done, The Deal is Still Open & Simon Quits Bookend II

By D. Austin Nash




Simon rose from the corner of the room and shuffled to the window overlooking the gray street. The people looked strange, less like people than cartoon characters. Hunched over and going about some sickeningly trivial business. Simon imagined what he might say if he was forced to speak to one of them. They looked cold in the dying light of day; it was January; it was starting to snow.Simon turned his dreamy gaze to the machine, now silent and gray like the street. Sometimes it seemed more alive than himself, and the words "I love you Simon" now owned part of his consciousness. He looked over his drawings of Christmas scattered across the floor. She was pretty, but she was missing a dimension now. She looked flat and made of plastic, lying there on the floor smiling but run dry of life. Who was she? Simon had deemed himself wise to refuse Mungquack"s overripe trollops and in retrospect, had made the mistake of revealing what he would like to find in the perfect girl. He had held her for a time and a price, and she was good. Simon realized that through loosing peace of mind, dignity, and a piece of his frozen blue heart, that he had less than he had started with. And no money. He had a theory on peace of mind; to gain some, somebody else had to loose some because peace of mind is a finite quantity. Sombody was sleeping better now. Simon winced with the agonizing realization of the way he had been suckered by Mungquack and he wondered if people would be able to read it on his face. Be able to tell he was still completely in love with a once full dripping flower now pressed flat, and dried under an artificial sun. Simon had been out of food for three days and he was afraid to go outside. And Captain John? Where had that fuck gone? Was he really there or was he one of them? When the final battle for Christmas" freedom had taken place, Simon had looked behind him for John and found only the face of Mungquack laughing, and Christmas crying, over and over like mirrors in a funhouse. Simon shook off a chill and felt that he could no longer tell what was real; neither the city, the stores, the whores, nor their assholes and the wonderful tricks they performed for the lonely and the weak. Everything had seemed purposeful and so in the right place for a moment. Then nothing. These things so palpable in the faces of real people were never, in fact, real at all. Fuck. Thing became nothing in a single trip over a crack in the sidewalk. The shattering of thousands of years of a million unquestioning believers ...in nothing. Mungquack had said, ÎIt"s all bullshit anyway". Well Üit is all bullshit.

Simon sat down in his ugly old chair and pulled the dull blue blanket from the floor around his bare shoulders, and ran a hand lovingly over the contour of the machines ultra modern architecture. He saw his reflection in the monitor. He saw the faces of Christmas, John, and Mungquack mixing and shifting over one another in a strangely organized chaos not unlike a kaleidoscope, blurring out his own. And even Christmas was laughing.

Simon leafed back to a moment as a child when he built tracks out of grooved wooden blocks and watched colored marbles trace their design. He remembered holding the marbles close to his eye and against the sun, finding himself in a brightly colored universe where he was king. He thought about the time he saw a group of kids on bicycles. Simon had never ridden a bicycle. He thought he would like to own a bicycle now and learn to ride it. He thought about his first adventures with his machine and how the games they played had made the bicycles nothing. Simon could now ride a bicycle while asleep on the toilet. He remembered the big people being excited about the powers to be harnessed in the age of suckling machines. He had just finished being one of them.