The Voices in My Head
TW: THIS CONTAINS SELF HARM AND SUICIDE
ACT 1
SCENE 1
The scene is set in a teenage boy’s messy bedroom littered with half burned papers and ripped up books. On stage left is a door acting as an entryway to a closet with clothes hanging on a rack. JAMES is cowering in his room, crying and scratching his wrists as the lights focus on JAMES, wearing pajamas, a large bruise over his eye and a cut lip. Whispers fill the room, loud and undecipherable.
JAMES (looks up, confused) I-Is someone there?
VOICE 1 No one is here.
VOICE 2 No one is here.
VOICE 3 Only one is here.
JAMES (James jumps on top of his bed, grabbing a trophy off his wall, ready to use it as a
weapon) Who said that?!?!
VOICE 3 You said that.
JAMES I did not say anything!
VOICE 1 You just did.
JAMES (He pauses and looks around) Who is talking to me!
VOICE 1 You are.
JAMES What? I am NOT talking to myself! (Several seconds of silence goes by) I am not
talking to myself…I am not talking to myself. This is ridiculous. I’m going to
sleep. (James lays back in his bed)
VOICE 2 Is red not the most beautiful thing?
VOICE 1 (whispers) Red. Red. Red.
JAMES (James jolts back up, sitting upright in his bed) What the hell are you talking
about?
VOICE 2 So pretty. So Pretty.
VOICE 3 The world flows red.
VOICE 1 (whispers) Red. Red. Red.
JAMES (James starts looking around the stage for the origin of the voices) WHO IS
TALKING TO ME?
(The voices laugh with mischief.)
The three cloaked figures enter. VOICE 1 enters from stage right, dressed in white, no skin showing, fog hiding its entrance. VOICE 2 enters from stage left, dressing in deep green, entering from the shadows. VOICE 3 descends wearing black to center stage via a harness and lands next to a panicking JAMES.
VOICE 2 Hello James.
JAMES (James screams and dives under his bed in fear)
VOICE 3 Ah yes- hide and cower in fear. Act like the child you are. (The other cloaked
figures laugh) Hide away, just as you hide from all your troubles. Hide away just
as you hide your deep scars.
VOICE 1 Hide away. Hide away. Hide away.
VOICE 3 Pathetic. You are a pathetic, insignificant creature.
VOICE 2 Meant only to rot and die. Food for the worms.
VOICE 1 reaches under the bed and pulls JAMES out by his ankles, JAMES crying in fear.
JAMES Help me- please help me! (He cries to the audience)
VOICE 1 Face us. Face us. We will help you.
VOICE 3 Face us you pathetic creature! (JAMES faces them)
JAMES L-leave me alone! Please leave me alone! (he takes of running off stage left and
runs into the arms of VOICE 2)
VOICE 1 You cannot run from yourself.
VOICE 3 You will never escape. Never escape this madness. Your madness. Never.
VOICE 2 Come. Come with us. The pain will go away.
JAMES W-what do you mean?
VOICE 1 Succumb to death’s warm arms. She will greet you and take away your pain.
JAMES I-I d-don’t want t-to.
VOICE 3 Yes you do. Don’t deny yourself this one last pleasure.
JAMES I- I feel like the walls are closing in on me.
ALL VOICES We know.
JAMES I can’t breathe most of the time. The world has lost all of it’s light. My mind, a
mind that was once a place of freedom. A place of color, of light, of joy, of
stories, of worlds not yet discovered, of people who never existed…a place of
magic, has become nothing more than an arid, desolate, depleted wasteland. My
mind that was once full of a writer’s creativeness has now become that of a
child’s, illiterate and barren. My worlds of magic and adventure, turned to ash by
my mother and father. (He gestures to his room). Everything I have lived for has
been destroyed. My works of literature…trashed. I have nothing and no one. This
world…is brutal. I have learned to hate myself over years of being told I am
nothing and no one. I have learned that I only leave a negative impact on this
world. I have learned that everything I have done and written has been for nothing
and no one.
VOICE 1 This world does not deserve you.
VOICE 2 Come with us.
JAMES I- will I be free?
VOICE 3 More free than you have ever been here.
VOICE 1 You can fly through the worlds you designed. Meet the people who never existed.
JAMES I can?
VOICE 2 If you come with us. You will be free.
VOICE 1 You will be free.
VOICE 3 You will be free.
James nods his head and walks back to where he had be positioned at the start of the act and pulls out a prop knife that had been hidden behind his back, making a slicing movement across his wrists as the lighting turns red. VOICE 1, 2 & 3 chant.
VOICES Red. Red. Red. (x3)
JAMES I will be free. Free. Free.
The final white light, that was positioned over JAMES, goes out, bathing the stage in red as JAMES takes his final breath. The three voices lift him up and carry him across the stage then through the audience and out the doors in the back, as the curtains close.
