A Faustian Price

Adelaide: Montgomery, you have wounded me with your unkind words!

Montgomery pauses at the door, bracing himself and hangs his head

Adelaide: Also, you have wounded me with the bear trap that you left so carelessly on the ground. Like you left my heart!

Montgomery turns and gazes at her with a look of complete pathos. As if being forced to smother a bluebird he had raised from a hatchling.

Montgomery: You knew it would end like this, my dearest, greatest, loveliest love. You knew it was all an impossible, silly, beautiful dream.

Adelaide manages, slowly, painfully, to limp closer.

Montgomery flinches. As if the bluebird he had raised from a hatchling and previously smothered had come to back to life, but would never fly again.

Adelaide: How am I to ever love another? You have held my hand in yours. We have held hands many times. No one would have me now. And I want no other. What am I to do? Oh, what am I to do?

Montgomery (angry now): Ask your fiancé!

Adelaide: You mean my father’s new business partner, more like! Oh, Monty. How could you treat me this way? How could you even mention him between us? You KNOW that I hate rich men!

Montgomery: Of course. Anyone who would love a rich man is surely a harlot and if they come from wealth themselves, they are double the harlot. I would never accuse you of such debauchery."

M hurries to her side and takes her in his arms, like a flightless bluebird he had raised from a hatchling, killed, witnessed its resurrection and wants to keep in his pocket and feed berries to forever.

Adelaide: Oh Monty! I knew you could not be so cru-el.

Montgomery: Oh, Adelaide. There is only one way we can be together.Adelaide looks up, tearfully, foot still caught in bear trap.

Adelaide: Anything, darling!

Montgomery: Eat this raspberry.

Adelaide: Why? What does that have to do with…

Montgomery: Ask no questions, there is no time! Your rich fiancé, Bengrammin Fitzgeraldo is on his way. I can hear him even now, mounting the steps to my poor apartment above the general store, where we are at this very moment!

Adelaide: Very well then.

Adelaide eats the raspberry and Montgomery eats one too. Suddenly, she turns very pale. Montgomery also turns paler than his previous gentlemanly pale. They sink to the floor together, still entwined.

Adelaide: I feel cold. So cold.

Montgomery presses his finger to her lips, her lips not unlike the beak of a bluebird, coated in velvet.

Adelaide: Am I…dying?

Montgomery: You’re not…not dying. I also have tasted of the bitterous fruit.Adelaide: At least we shall be together…in heaven.

Montgomery: I’m afraid not. For in return for your love, I made a deal with the fiend.

Adelaide: What fiend?

Montgomery: THE fiend.

Adelaide: Oh.

Montgomery: Yes. Oh. And for the berries that are now seeping our blood away - I paid a higher price.

Adelaide bites her bloodless beak-lips.

Montgomery: I sold my very soul.

Adelaide: Why could you not just pick poisonous berries, instead of turning raspberries into blood-leaching devil sweets?

Montgomery: Damn. I wish I had your brains, Adelaide. If only, but it is too late.

They both die.

Bengrammin Fitzgeraldo (comes through the door, calling): I know you’re in there and it's okay, I completely approve of this union. I will still go into business with your…He sees them, crumpled on the ground. Deader than a dead flightless bluebird who has died from malnutrition and poisonous berries.

Bengrammin: Nooooooooooooo! If only you had waited! I told you I had something I must tell you alone. You have both paid too high a price!Old Scratch: Haha! Raspberries. Gets ‘em every time! I’m sorry, you were saying something about a price?

Bengrammin: What business have you here, devil?

Old Scratch: To collect Montgomery of course! Bengrammin: So he did pay a high price. A truly…Faustian Price.

Old Scratch: Huh? What? Who is…who are you? What’s going on here…I’m supposed to have more lines, aren't I? I mean, come on! “Bengrammin” gets more stage time? What kind of name is that anyway? This is the most ridiculous...

End Scene.