Stage (D.E.B.T) excerpt from Dope Dialogue (A gas station robbery that goes wrong?) (C) 2014, 2017

Originally wrote via 1994



Stage
Debt
Dean Earl Barbara Tim

Fiend friends, rob store hold up
All 3 killed by gunfire

(Reap what- gave sermon finished at 10 pm. Sleeps unsteady (dead dreams haunted by his own sermon till his clock strikes 2:oo a.m. and he dies of a heart attack
-You sow)

All die at 2:oo a.m.
Store-Church at the midst of the Crossroads

The small radio setting, next to a clock, the time is 2:00 a.m. Behind the register the radio was omnisciently silent.

All me and my main man wanted was some money to keep our realities fixed. We didn’t intend to hurt nobody. My main man, Dean, walked up, taking advantage of the, dead stagnated convenient store, with his forty-five automatic pistol, now stuck in front of the dumb bitch cashiers face yelling, “Give me the money in tha’ cash register bitch!”
Before any one could make any kind of response, this old guy comes walking through the door. Then the radio starts playing a song, All Along The Watchtower, with Jimi Hendrix singing, “There must be some kind of way out of here….”
Dean being paranoid, thinking the old guy was a cop, quickly turns his gun and shoots the man right in between the eyes. Unfortunately for me and Dean this gave the cashier just enough time to get her gun from behind the counter and “BOOM!” a 357 magnum bullet in Dean’s chest. He managed to retaliate, and guns fire echoing through the room giving the song an added rhythm,

Radio: "Said, the drunkard to the thief there’s too much confusion. I can’t get no relief."
 
                                                                                  as he was falling to his death, perfectly shooting the cashier in her throat. I was frozen in time. Overtaken by all the drastic actions, for a few seconds, the time it took for all this to happen. I started to flee when I heard a voice, “Don’t leave me!” then…I don’t know who fired the shot that hit me in my side. At first I fall to my knees. Then I hunch over and start spitting up blood. Everyone was dead. I was the only one, in the store still alive.
I got to get myself together, get the money and get high. I get up and quickly dash behind the counter. Damn this cash register won’t open. Coming to this realization, I pry the 357 from her dead hands, shoot the register open. Frantically I look for the money. Damn only 50 dollars. Well, that is enough to get really high. I run for the door so clumsily that I slip and fall to the hard tile floor. Maybe I can just rest for a while, well just a couple seconds to…

I feel warm slush in my hands, now covering the money and the gun. It is the bloody brains of the old man. Gun, I don’t need this gun I didn’t hurt anyone.

Radio: There are many here among us who think that life is but a joke.

I throw the gun at the radio and it falls to the ground still playing. I glance across the corpse of the old man. I could get a lot of money for that cross I see a cross around his neck. Now I got the cross in my bloody left hand, and fifty dollars in my right. I imagine how high I could get from all this loot:

The pain of the needle piercing going into my main vein in my arm, the drug goes in, and I feel the heavenly high. Heavenly?

“Hear thee, hear the, reap what you sow.”
What was that sound? Where did it come from? I lay in a pool of blood, but the old man is not beside me. “Hear thee, hear thee, reap what you sow.” I look up, trying to find where the voice is coming from. It’s from behind the counter. The oldman is now standing where the cashier was.
“Hear thee, hear thee! Reap what you sow. I gave a sermon on that just hours ago.”
“Who are you?”
“You killed me and you don’t even know my name. My name is Earl. I preach at Southwood Catholic Church. What is your and your friend’s name?”
“Tim, don’t tell him!” Dean yells to me still on his back. The old man now wears a purple robe.
The cashier frantically paces the floor circling around me. I am shocked and amazed, this is not the same store. No body is dead. There is no blood. I look at my own hands, they are still bloody red. Why? I did nothing? The cashier then says, “So let us not talk falsely now, the hours getting late.”

Dean: “You would have ditched me.” Dean points his trigger hand at me. As if he’s trying to shoot me, but can’t because he is lost in time. That is a lost time in a lost action, in a lost memory.

Earl: “I am here to take all of you to a higher level, if you expect…oh I mean, I am here to take all of you to a higher level, if you accept the Lord!” he hits his fist on the counter.

Barbara: “So let us not talk ….my kids, my kids! My God please take care of my children!...falsely now the hours getting late.” She is very frantic, this has caused her to think speak stupid.

Tim: “This is not real. This is not REAL!”

  “DEBT.”
I step outside myself seeing a sense of strange, overcame all of us, indicating a united word action:
Dean could not shoot me because he didn’t have his gun. Earl expected nothing but a God to save him because he was a preacher man. Barbara, somehow the cashiers name came to me, was lost in words not of her own, with her thoughts interjecting. Tim, my name? but the words exchanged between all of us seemed not to be of our own. My hands are still bloody.


Earl: “Hear thee! Hear thee! Hear the Lord! Reap what you sow!”

Dean: “To hell with you! You old bastard, you know what they say, ‘if there’s hell below we all gonna’ go!” he stood up shouting, face to face with Earl.

Earl: “I am here to judge all of you! This is the purpose of living my life to die, so I can save all of you sinners!” he slams his fists harder. “so let us not talk…

Barbara: “Your no one to judge, only God is. I quit school to work for my husband, who left me, and my kids.”…falsely now the hour’s getting late.” She stops her pacing just long enough to scorn the preacher man, then resumes.

Earl: “Lord please forgive me of my sins, and take my soul.” Then he disappears to where? I stare at my bloody hands.

Dean: “Let go off his cross!” SHAPE  \* MERGEFORMAT

Barbara: “So let us not talk falsely now the hours getting late.”

Heavenly?
  I let go,
drop the cross. I don’t know why.  I am feeling so weak.

Radio: “So let us not talk falsely now the hour’s getting late.”
That damn radio, sits on the floor, below where the clock reads 2:o3 am. The sound of shots still echo in rhythm with Jimi Hendrix. Yet now, sirens fill the air adding to the rhythm. From where? I’m so weak, no I can’t die. Everything will be alright when I pawn this money and get a heavenly high. Everyone is dead, the old man beside me, Dean on the floor, the cashier is behind the counter. Got to get out of here. I’m up and standing, I’ll just run out of the door. Oh shit the cops are at the door! Their guns are aimed at me….
 Radio: “And the winds began to howl!”

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