Lucifer’s Last Dance

This is a story of a condemned prisoner about to be hanged. The condemned has no name, and is talking to a priest. These are the moments before the prisoner walks out of the condemned cell and to an inevitable fate. These are the last moments to reflect on life. How different these last moments are perceived to be when the condemned is a woman rather than a man. It is your choice.

The conflict between these two characters becomes a dance with the devil as the prisoner confronts her religious beliefs.

However, the priest dialogue allows the flexibility for this story to be also told by two people of any gender combination, male/female and priest/nun.

Scene 1: To be punctual and punctuated.

The scene is a dim, sparse room with a table. Spreading across the floor is the silhouette of bars from a window leaving no doubt that this is a prison cell. A prisoner stands, back to the cell door, holding a bible and looking up at the window. Many pages of something written are spread on a table, and among them is a candle. The cell door opens and then closes but the prisoner doesn’t turn towards who has entered.

Condemned: I’ve always been punctual.

The length of the shadow tells me the time of day.

I see it move every fraction of every inch ― every second of every minute ― every hour of every day.

Punctuality is important, don’t you think; today particularly?

Priest: Yes. I’m sorry.

The prisoner now turns to confront the visitor.

How many visits is this and you still don’t know me? You read what I write and yet you only comment on the punctuation. Is that all these pages say to you; do you see them as merely marks scratched out to pass the time? Do they tell you nothing, no matter what they say?

The prisoner turns away and, as if by habit, flicks the pages of the bible.

Priest: The bible’s a comfort to you?

Condemned: It’s the book that’s the comfort, not that it’s a bible.

I got my first book from a dead man with the Devil in his eye.

I know what you’re thinking and no, I didn’t kill him. He was a vagrant like me; the only difference – he was old and I was a child. And the book was taken from me on my first visit. Only bibles allowed here.

Priest: Why were you imprisoned the first time?

Vagrancy! ― a crime even when you are eleven years old. Still, by then I’d memorized that book. Chapter 6, page 66, “The essential thing in education is to know the meaning of words and phrases, so that one cannot be spellbound by somebody who juggles with these things. We may mean what we say but we cannot always say what we mean.”

Today will have meaning: and tonight, Lucifer will dance alone.

The pathway to Heaven is sometimes impossible to tell from the pathway to Hell, don’t you think, and too often the decision is made for us; but not this time.

Priest: I understand what you say but I can help you. I can help you to make that decision. You just have to let me in. Let me stand alongside you in the decisions you now make. It need not be so impossible.

Condemned: You are but a gateway to heaven. You swing open and it is my choice to walk through. But what would it mean if I walked through your gate now?

Life’s punctuated by decisions. Get your punctuation wrong and the whole meaning of life changes.

Scene 2: Neatly in order.

The prisoner moves back to the table, and without letting go of the bible gathers up all the pages placing them deliberately in a neat pile, in a precise position, as if ready to be read.

Priest: Do you write for the children?

Condemned: The children?

I write for me, no-one else.

This is the time to sort everything.

This is the time to put everything neatly in order.

A record.

Priest: It’s more than a record – much more than just everything neatly in order.

But you know that.

Yes I comment on the punctuation ― that’s what you want me to do. Your writing is sophisticated. Your thoughts and ideas are layered with meaning. And when you choose to punctuate you do so perfectly.

But what am I really supposed to take from those marks scratched out to pass the time? What do you really want me to know?

Everything anyone wants to know is contained here, between the lines on the page.

Priest: Maybe. Yet you offer few clues. You use a swinging gate as a metaphor for my access to God, but any gateways into the real Esther Blackwood are kept locked. In all the weeks we have come together, all the meetings and all the conversations we’ve had, you’ve come to know me almost as well as I know myself.

Esther begins to move about the cell as if showing herself off.

Yet I’ve learnt little of the real you.

Where have you come from?

What journeys have you taken to come to this?

Who are you?

Esther Blackwood shows signs of satisfaction on her face although she says nothing.

Priest: Who should I tell? Who will want to mourn for you?

Condemned: No-one will mourn. I leave none with any affection for me. Such has been my life. Such has been my – punctuation.

Priest: Let me pray for you?

Condemned: I want nothing from you.

You offer nothing. You’re here out of a sense of duty to those you represent. Your flock ― isn’t that how you refer to them? Those who you expect to follow like sheep.

Priest: That’s not how it is.

Condemned: Oh, you say not, but that’s what it is; a duty to your faith; a duty to your religion; a duty to those who follow your lead.

What you offer is not for me but for them. This is you keeping order. Save the soul and don’t allow the untidy complication in seeds of doubt.

Priest: I’m sorry that you feel that way. And even if you really do believe that I am just keeping order, I’m not the one who matters. It’s your relationship with God that matters. That is something between you and him. Shut me out if you like, but God loves you.