Shall Die

 (A One Act Play by Bob Zolnerzak)

 

There was a light like from a kid's sparkler, only it was green. Jack blinked. The little figure in the middle of the green light grinned up at him and said, "Hi, Jack, my name is Ozmyranda."

Jack looked up and down the dark street; there was no one else there. He blinked again. The little figure shuffled towards him. "I said, 'Hi,'"

"Hi."

"That's better."

"Who are you?"

She cocked her head up at him. The top of her little black cap came about up to his neck. "I ALSO said, 'My name is Ozmyranda.'" Her voice was exasperated, but her grin remained.

"Oh." He stopped and swallowed. "Are you a witch?"

"Anh," she said, "what's in a name? A rose by any other name is a rose is a rose."

"Haven't you gotten that mixed up?"

"Gotten what mixed up?"

"Those sayings."

"I said it, and I can say it any way I WANT."

"Yes, I guess you can." Jack wasn't frightened so much as uncomfortable. "What do you want?"

"That's MY line."

"What do you mean?"

"What do YOU want?"

"What do I want?"

"You catch on quick, Jack." She paused, but it became obvious he wasn't going to say much, at least not until he fixed the lower part of his face, which was now hanging rather loose. "Tonight is a night for seeing, doll." She giggled.

Jack was so surprised at seeing Ozmyranda that his surprise hardly increased when he heard such a youthful giggle. The silence lasted so long he felt he had to say something. "What can I see?"

Her head tilted up and he caught a glimpse of smooth chin. It was not the mass of bristly wrinkles he had somehow thought it would be. "You could see the dark of the moon or the bottom of the sea. You could go to the top of the highest hill or to the inside of a snail. You could see Adam and Eve, or Cleopatra, or your great-grandson. You can see Paris or Baghdad or Pompeii or Nineveh."

Each phrase, each name, she whispered into the night air, where it hung for a second, shimmering, until it faded into the next. His imagination was seized for a moment; then he laughed, a harsh uncertain laugh, and she touched him. Her long sleeve had fallen over her hand so he felt only the material of her dress, which was a cross between a graduation gown and a muumuu. It was not a coarse burlap feel as he expected, but a silky velvet, or a velvety silk. About this time all his preconceptions faded: he began to expect nothing and be surprised by very little. He was like a tourist after the third or fourth year.

"Speak up, don't be shy. You weren't shy back there." She glanced back over his shoulder. Jack looked back to see a young man doing just as he had done a minute before meeting Ozmyranda. This young man looked back up at a different bedroom window, of course, but he checked the street in both directions and then took off quickly in the direction where the traffic was lightest.

Jack didn't ordinarily blush, but very little was ordinary about this night. "How did you---how could you---WHAT did you say your name was?"

"Oz-myr-an-da," she repeated patiently. "I'll answer the question you didn't ask, too. I can see anything, anytime I want. But with you people it's different; you can only see at special times, and with special guides. Like me." She looked at him sideways and gave him a fey little push with her hand. "Since I'm doing nothing but saying everything twice, may I repeat: tonight is a night for seeing."

"Look, Ozman---Ozminian---"

"Call me Ozzie."

"Thanks. Look, Ozzie, I'm kind of tired tonight---"

"You should be," she said, and tried to click her tongue, but only a wet burble came out.

"I don't think it's very polite of you to poke your pointed hat in where it doesn't concern you." In his anger he ignored her comment that she had taken her hat off while watching them. "Didn't it occur to you that we might have wanted some privacy?"

"It certainly did. But calm down, lover, it's only because I poked my pointed hat---and it's not pointed, kid, this is the latest style aerodynamically designed for speed---in that I'm talking to you now. I liked what I saw. I don't ordinarily talk to strangers." She settled her non-pointed hat on the back of her head. "Now, what would you like to see?"

He was willing to assume that the question was valid. If she could sit quietly, and he hadn't heard anything, watching him for the past hour, she could expect an answer to her question.

"I'd like to see Paris---no, WAIT---"

"Don't get excited, doll, nothing's going to happen until you want it to." She hid a semi-obscene smirk with her hat brim. "This gimmick's for your pleasure. I couldn't show you Paris, anyway, it's too big. We have to deal with specifics."

"Decent of you. Not Paris, because I can see that anytime, on my own." He glanced at her. "What about the fertility rites on some undiscovered island unsullied by the ravages of the white man?"

"I thought you were tired. You sound like a grade C travelogue."

"No wait, what about the past?"

"Fair game. You didn't think I was going to show you Pompeii as it is today, did you? The future, too."

His lower jaw unhinged again. "The future, sure, that's what I want to see."

"Congratulations, all of it, or only the next three or four million years."

At that moment a square little man passed them with a contented smile festooned between his ears. There was no debating where he'd just come from. "I'd like to see what---houses like those look like in the future. Do they change? Are they legal? What are the, uh, girls like, say, a million years from now?"

"That's a nice round number. Where do you want to see them a million years from now? Remember, in a million years things happen: the oceans change their levels, sea coasts change, the civilization which once needed---"

"Never mind the canned commentary, I'm interested in some big city---where they speak English, of course---"

"Language is no problem," she said in a low voice.