This series will feature monologues from student’s in-class improvisational work from the course “Improvisation for Writers”, which debuted in the Atlanta campus this past fall. A fun, exciting improv writing course that will be offered again in the Spring 2020 quarter.
The Writer’s Corner features poetry, essays, short stories, satire and various fiction and non-fiction from SCAD Atlanta students. To submit your own work for the Writer’s Corner, email features@scadconnector.com.
by Austin Grant
Monologue of Ralph
EXT. THE DOCK – DAY
Early morning. RALPH, 38, in his uniform of industrial coveralls, arrives at work and begins lifting and moving crates back and forth around the Royal Albert oceanfront dock. Ralph sighs. He looks bored.
RONALD, 28, is a lazy guy, very high on all types of drugs. It’s easy to tell from the items around him and the way he gazes out into space, at times mumbling to himself.
RALPH
Man, working the dock this early is pure rubbish, mate.
Ralph lifts boxes, struggling to keep going.
RALPH
That’s one box. This will make two.
Ralph looks tired.
RALPH
Wait a blimey minute, mate. Huh, what, what the hell you doing, Ron, just staring out to sea like that? Here I am, busting my back out, working my clap off while you just, just stand there. Taking in the ocean breeze, the salt of the sea, the natural scent of Venus, or Neptune’s breath on a bad day. Hmmmmm, whatever. Hey, lighthouse bloke. Ron. Ronald, come over here and help lift something other than your eyelids.
He looks at Ronald.
RALPH
Now come on. You grab your end. Okay, now I grab my end and, one, two, three. Lift! Okay, we got it, we got–. No, get your end, Ron. Ron. Ronald, get your bloody mate. Ahhhhh! My foot! My bloody loving foot. Nice one. No really, you muck.
Ralph shakes his head in rage.
RALPH
Hey, hey, cameraman. Would you stop looking at me throwing a wobbly and help me? Okay, mmmman, this hurts. Now lift it when I say. Readyyyy? Ow, ow, ow, ow. Not yet. You’re pulling off my skin. I said get ready. Okay now, lift. Okay, get your end.
Get your end, please. Get your bloody end, mate. Okay, there we go. Almost there. Finally.
Ron, what the seagull mate? All I needed was for you to lift one gobsmacked box. Just one bloody loving thing, but nooooo. You’d rather be high off seagull pee than do any kind of dodgy work. Have you seen, no, actually looked at what your unfocused seagull brain done caused? There’s a gobsmacked chunk of flesh missing from my foot. Leaking blood, guts and somewhat–? What is that? It smells. It’s some white goo? O, Neptune!
Ralph falls to the ground in pain.
RALPH
Ever since the very first day you came here, you have been unfocused and not helpful in any type of way, you wanker. Now that I think of it, I wasn’t the first person injured because of you. There was old man Jenkins. That intern, Sandy. And, o, my Neptune, even a seagull, a newborn seagull. All you have done was laze about, hurting people, animals, and just–. Just stand at the dock, looking out to the ocean.
The sea breeze hits Ralph’s nostrils, and his face changes, as if he realizes why Ron did what he did. Ralph takes a deep inhale of the breath of the ocean.
RALPH
This view of the ocean is extraordinary. I don’t know if it is the pain of my foot, sending my whole body into shock or the crazy amount of my blood I’m floating in. But I know this site. It’s if I was looking at the body of Venus herself. Ronald, you were right to look out to this view. I feel it bathing me with its warmth.
Ronald remains silent. He pokes at Ralph’s lifeless wound.
Ronald tosses Ralph into the sea.
