A play by Huma N. Being 

ACT I, SCENE I 

An unremarkable house (but it is distinctly a house, not a flat or a cottage or a tent) 

With the middle-of-the-road average family (the kind you conjure up in your mind’s eye having just read that) 

Two human parents (However you’d like to imagine them) 

Their two human children (one a fully legal adult, the other a few years short) 

And a canine named Trixie (the breed is irrelevant for the purposes of this scene, but I personally enjoy imagining a feisty Pomeranian or a happy-go-lucky Italian Greyhound) 

A birthday celebration is afoot. The unremarkable house filled to the brim with extended human family of all ages. The scene begins with the younger human child of the parents taking refuge in the quarters that have been designated as their room. This act is punctuated with a loud bang of a slammed door, followed by the creak of furniture chafing against hardwood floor as a whole human weight is thrown upon a bed in a terribly dramatic style. The canine, having had the same thoughts of seeking out a calm space much earlier, cocks its head to the side, observing the curled-up figure of this human from the safe distance of the very cozy canine bed (also known as a pile of clothes stacked onto a computer chair). Soon its eyes dart to the door, which opens much gentler this time over, and the elder human child of the two human parents slips in. 

“Oh wow. Let me guess. Mom sent you up here to persuade me to participate in the celebration—Well I’m not interested; the whole thing is bizarre at best and low-key macabre at worst. 

-- 

Oh, co-me on, if you opened your eyes for just five seconds you’d see this is so pointless. She won’t even remember a thing. She thinks she’s our mom, like, literally, she just called me by mom’s name. She doesn’t even remember her husband’s been dead for the last two years. Keeps asking everyone where he is and when he’s going to come home and—Good—God— 

-- 

No harm done? Are you actually being serious right now? You start working in a big-time business job with your briefcase and your…your…I don’t even know what those are—suspenders? Are you wearing suspenders? Anyway, in no less than a year you just lose all your human decency? She’s an 85-year old woman who has no idea that the love of her life is six feet under because half our family convinced them that alien overlords were trying to microchip humanity for nefarious purposes! They have the audacity to come over, say happy birthday, bring gifts and demand we all participate in this farce by catering to them with cakes and polite conversation…It’s so fucked up. No, because if you think about it,  it’s literally like a funeral—you know—the way they walk over to her and pay their little tributes, and she just waits for him to walk in—so you tell me, how do you expect me to come downstairs and play nice when everything about all that is going on under this roof—actually all that is happening on this cursed space rock—makes me want to flip my shit.  

-- 

That is such a classic—Yes, I have the attitude issue—Of course, it’s not that we’re all stuck being a part of some weird play where we just collectively ignore the excruciating fucked-upness of everything around us, or the fact that mom still insists I help with the baking and the cooking while you do what? No—because what is it that you do? I dare you; I dare you to walk into that kitchen and look at the youngest and oldest person in there and then everyone in between…what’s the common denominator? Uh huh, yeah, that’s exactly what I mean. Let me know how the exhilaratingly important sports remarks between you manly guy dudes go…. What do you mean dramatic and unrelated? Have you watched the news lately? It’s not even an exaggeration to say the world is on fire. It’s literally on fire. Or, or, how about the fact that my whole life I’ve worked my ass off to get into med-school after I finish this purgatory known as high school, all the while people suddenly decide science is a hoax? Why should I bother? And honestly… with the way things are going, I wouldn’t be surprised if they stopped us ‘dramatic’ women from becoming doctors in the name of traditional family values or some similar crap sooner than later.  

-- 

Yeah, yeah, I’m the one being ridiculous! Obviously, because no, you know what, I am the only sane one here—And honestly, it feels like I’m screaming into the void of everyone else’s collective delusion. Because if I come downstairs and behave in the way that is truthful to me, I’ll get called an entitled Gen-Z brat who should eat less avocado and Tide Pods by people who literally managed to get Polio back on the monopoly board by devaluing actual scientific research, oh and let’s not forget about how if I bring up the fact that I will be bankrupt by the time I finish my future degree, I’ll get told to order less Star Bucks and to cancel my Netflix subscription—that’s a bunch of bullshit too because I’m HBO all the way—but do they care? No, it’s just talking for the sake of talking…making a void that is sucking everyone close to it into the depths of complacency. It’s like blah, dead eyes a la Other Mother in Coraline…. 

-- 

No, I really can’t. I cannot go downstairs because I will deck one of our uncles and I will not lie to grandma because not only is lying wrong, but it’s especially shitty seeing as it is her birthday and she’s lived long enough that even if she’s becoming less of herself every day, she still deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. So, I’ll stay up here with the dog, and you can do what you want, but you’re going to have to tell mom sending you up to convince me to behave or tone down my ‘attitude’ was a bad idea. Because all it did, was convince me that you don’t understand. And I’m really scared that once I grow older, I’ll stop understanding too. Because I know you used to get it. I looked up to you, you know. You used to pull no punches when it came to righting wrongs and being a stand-up person; in elementary school you used to include everyone in the games and when that mean girl—yeah, the one with the obsession with the barrettes—stole my Bulbasaur Pokémon card, you made sure I got it back… and then in high school you were the most popular kid in your year but you still talked to everyone and never thought you were better than the rest…and I don’t know. You were decent.  But I guess the world out there really is far more toxic than I realized, because I never expected you to go along with stuff like this—and I never expected you to call me dramatic, or to ask me to tone myself down in order not to rock the boat. It is pretty thick after all, coming from the guy who started the great Fish Stick revolution of 2015.

-- 

No, please don’t even. Just go downstairs and tell mom I’m  a lost cause. Insufferable and selfish with my inability to shut up about how impossible it is for me to keep doing little mundane things like baking a cake or having polite small talk with people I can barely put up with while the void is all around us, echoing trauma and hate and war and poverty and femicide and degradation and distractions and depression and environmental crisis that is being ignored in the name of profit all the while spewing out rejection letters from jobs you’re overqualified for… 

-- 

Don’t look at me like that Trixie. I’m just so tired. It’s tough yelling into a void. Oh man, I hope someone yells back soon. Until then, I guess we’ll just keep listening closely” 

END SCENE I 

AUTHOR’S NOTE: 

VOICES SCREAMING BACK  

1. Anceliga Andström: Letter to Sebastian Booker; Growth 

2. Hanna Ojala: 13 Ideas for Summer Fun in Helsinki on a Student Budget 

3. Annika O’Connor: When Life Gives You Lemons 

4. Sara Penttinen: Rapunzel, Let Your Hair Down 

5. Sini Pesonen: That Street Over There