Count Them, I Dare You

Lights up on a blank white stage. A woman is sitting in a chair, front and center. Her eyes are wild, her hair a wreck, and her clothing needs to be either entirely black (for a modern, clinical look) or bizarre (for the crazy look.) During her monologue, she can glance about, muscle spasms kind of thing, or just noticing something and reacting abruptly. She can interject a "OH MY GOD" and then sit, trembling, for a few seconds, before continuing her monologue from the point she left off, wherever she feels most comfortable.

JANE DOE: I used to be as happy and sane as you. I started to notice them when I was a young woman. Perhaps I was still a child. It's hard to tell for me. I need rules, you see. If there is no rule to define something, there is no definition, and there is no way for it to exist. I have to have rules, now. It wasn't always that way. I remember butterflies. I was fifteen when the numbers started. Whenever I looked at the sky or a page or even people, I counted things. Obsessively. It began as a game, and ended as a mental illness. I counted the buttons on a jacket and the stains on the shirt before I even made eye contact with the person I was observing. Then numbers became complicated. I tried to understand what my teachers were saying, that numbers were really letters in disguise, and that sentences made with the numbers were what held the bricks and mortar of the world together, but I knew they were lying. I knew that numbers were just imaginary. Real numbers were as imaginary as imaginary ones. And they were my friends, so easy to account for. I began to count the freckles on my skin, then the hairs on my arms, and finally the hairs on my head. It was more than a game, now. It was an obsession that began to eat through every part of my social life. I graduated, barely, and went on to college. Not a good one, of course. My grades suffered to the point where I barely was registering the material taught in class anymore. The numbers were everywhere, when I looked at anything, when I opened or closed my eyes. I had rules to control them, too. If there were too many, I would simply shut my eyes and scream until they went away. If there weren't the normal amount, I would do the same, but scream with my eyes open. Other patterns were part of it too, sure. The screaming was what annoyed my roommates, though, I think. At any rate, I'm surviving right now by submitting myself for experimental drugs. They tell me this will be the new wave of anti-depressants and OCD meds. I don't believe them, but I have no money, no job skills, and I have to count the numbers or everything will go away. If this works, they tell me the numbers will stop counting and I can sleep at night.

Lights out immediately on the last word. JANE, taking her chair, exits in the darkness, and two doctors come forward, one on a stool, the other on a lower chair. The first doctor is sitting on the stool. He is older than the second doctor, and more cynical.

FIRST DOCTOR: She died ten minutes after taking her first dosage.

SECOND DOCTOR: Was it anaphylaxis?

FIRST DOCTOR: No, surprisingly. It was a heart aneurysm.

SECOND DOCTOR: A heart--!

FIRST DOCTOR: That's what I said at the time.

FIRST DOCTOR leans back in his chair, running a hand through his hair.

FIRST DOCTOR: Whatever was driving her finally caught up to her, I'd guess. It scared her so much that her heart stopped.

SECOND DOCTOR: That's insane.

FIRST DOCTOR (laughing softly): No, no. She was insane. That's merely crazy.

The doctors laugh together, and the lights snap off midway through their laugh, so it continues in the dark.
End.