Steampunk Opera Libretto

The Dolls Of New Albion: A Steampunk Opera

Act 1:

New Albion 1

(Scene: The steampunk city of New Albion. Our Narrator appears to take us on a guided tour.)

NARRATOR:
Several hundred years before
A gambler and a monk embarked
On a long trek through the endless prairies of the North
They had a fierce debate
About Gd and chance and fate
and to resolve it agreed a game of cards indeed be played

The game went on all day
And through the next and next they played
And around them a shelter was built to shield the rain
A street around the shelter formed
Then a church, a house, a bar
And that is how the city of New Albion was born
That is how the city of New Albion was born

New Albion today
With bustling streets, machines, cafes
And the nice, the wise, the eccentric and insane
The Mafia’s run by
A red haired dwarf with just one eye
Whose affairs he decides with a pair of silver dice

Over the Zeppelin Union Pilots
A castrati boss presides
And we hear his song each afternoon as he flies by
There’s prisons made of lead
And gargoyles of iron shreds
And Annabelle McAlistair who’s raising up the dead
Annabelle McAlistair who’s raising up the dead

The Lodge on Ashland Street
Is where the Alchemists Guild meets
And to join you have to craft a glass pearl from a young girl’s dream
A group of thieves they heard
Broke in the lodge to steal the pearls
But In the morning they were found there sitting staring unperturbed

The twilight fog they say
An aphrodisiac contains
Nonsense, but yet they copulate in doorways anyway
There’s inventors and inbred
In upper classes it’s been said
And Annabelle McAlistair who’s raising up the dead.
Annabelle McAlistair who’s raising up the dead.

Annabelle Raises The Dead

(Scene: Inside Annabelle McAlistair’s laboratory. It’s littered with all manner of Victorian era scientific equipment and machinery. Seated in a chair in the center of it all is a machinelike mannequin. Annabelle is frantically rushing about the lab in preparation.)

ANNABELLE:
Winding all the dials and the wires and the spires and the
tests for the connections and injections still to run
Capacitors and meters and the alkali and beakers
The restating of equations for the phase about to come

Please come back to me there’s so much we could be
Please come back, with voltage i invoke
Please come back from empty cracks and berths of black
Come to me, i’m summoning the Ghost

Be my angel, my angel
Be my angel, rescue me
be my angel, my angel
be an angel be with me

chorus:
Please come back from bowels of black
From silent shores to me once more
Through veils and gates and seas of slate
To blood wet moors where i await ashore

Years of all my theories and hypothesis and inquiries
No gathering cadavers and they kicked me out of school
All alone with theorems and experiments and endless tests
Years in labs and numberlands but now i’ve reached the goal

Please come back so we can have a life at last
Please come back, i grab at heaven’s throat
Please come back, i beckon, beg and cry and laugh
Come to me, i’m summoning the ghost

Be my angel, my angel
Be my angel, rescue me
be my angel, be my angel
be an angel be

chorus:
Please come back from bowels of black
from silent shores to me once more
Through veils and gates and seas of slate
To blood wet moors where i await ashore

(She sings quietly and tenderly to the mannequin construct)

Please come speak to me
Please come speak to me
All the things we can share and conceive
if you’ll come speak to me

I remember you from school
You were dashing and i so uncool
You didn’t know i was alive until that one night
we spoke and you kissed me

But then i was expelled
You married her as well
and now you‘ve died, but i can bring you back to life
and soon you’ll speak to me

(She gradually gets more and more impassioned)

Be my angel, be my angel
Be my angel, rescue me
Be my angel, be my angel
Be an angel be with me (3x)

Please come back so we can have a life at last
Please come back, i grab at heaven’s throat
Please come back, i beckon, beg and cry and laugh
Come to me, i’m summoning the ghost

chorus:
Please come back from bowels of black
From silent shores to me once more
Through veils and gates and seas of slate
To blood wet moors where i await ashore

(Annabelle throws the switch)

Annabelle Has A Doll

(Narrator enters.)

NARRATOR:
And so around 3 AM,
a recently deceased man
found himself wound in the land of living again

Bound in a body,
of gears and wheels but oddly
he has no voice and his steel joints barely can bend

The one sound he makes in fact
He streams radio broadcasts
He plays a country station if you give him a pat

Our dearest Annabel is
quite thrilled and ecstatic
She has a friend who just was dead and yet she brought back

(Narrator sings to an oblivious Annabelle who is dressing the life size mechanical doll up to take out)

What may please does not content
all resolves but never ends
all that comforts is not true
all you love does not love you

(Annabelle takes her doll with her everywhere like a romantic partner. The Mannequin itself is quite stiff and helpless.)

ANNABELLE:
I have a dolly and we like to go on walks
We like to stroll around the park all while he listens to me talk
about the people and the places that i never got to see
‘cause i wouldn’t leave my house, but that’s before he was with me

We share a world, which is wonderful to see it’s like a dream
where no one calls me failure if i don’t succeed

I have a dolly it’s like flowers in the spring
and but no matter how i talk to him he never says a thing

NARRATOR:
What may please does not content
all resolves but never ends
all that comforts is not true
all you love does not love you

ANNABELLE:
I have a dolly and he goes with me outside
which used to be a problem for me oh but now i never mind
Ice cream and carriages i always thought were nice
but never had someone to share them with because the lab’s my life

Annabelle no friends you must be brilliant and the best
you must be better and industrious, or you are worthless

But now i have dolly a dear friend with whom i go
out for walk and talks but he’s mute and just plays the radio

(Jasper is playing a song to communicate but Annabelle is unaware of it)

JASPER:
Elysium
The place the when your sorrows end
Why’d you bring me here again

ANNABELLE:
I have a dolly who can keep me company
We go to shows, parades and cabarets though people stare at me
But i’ve shown that i am brilliant and i’ve conquered life and death
The only thing my father said is that one must be a success

And now i’ve got a friend, a silent clockwork double
who can be there for me to lean on when i feel sad and troubled

I have a dolly, and he’s very stabling if not a little just too distant
cause he never says a thing….

(The Narrator tries to give Annabelle advice but Annabelle is unaware of her)

NARRATOR:
What you hold may wish to go
What you believe may not be so
All that brings you piece of mind
may not stay for a long time

What may please does not content
All resolves but never ends
All that comforts is not true
And all you love does not love you

(Annabelle has arrived home, exhausted after so much gallivanting about with her doll. She sits in front of him trying for some kind of real communication)

ANNABELLE:
Can’t you speak to me?
Won’t you speak to me?
All the things we could share and conceive
If you’d just speak to me

(Jasper plays the same song as before but now Annabelle is actually listening and can hear it)

JASPER:
Elysium
The place the when your sorrows end
Why’d you bring me here
Oh why’d you bring me here
Why’d you bring me here again?

(Annabelle is taken aback and understanding dawns on her. She becomes depressed.)

Annabelle’s Lament

ANNABELLE:
Ghosts of dreams, ghosts of memory
that will not leave or lay in quiet
Ghosts that cry about the life
you let go by

Ghosts of pasts of little girls who
learned their math, grasped their facts
Tried their best to reach success
just as they were asked

The girl learns to hide, deep inside
of fractions and facts and worlds of math
A long lonely land she can understand
Annabelle in Numberland

You could have been my angel
been my angel. been my angel and been with me
Could have been my angel
been my angel, been my angel and rescued me

Ghosts of love you never knew, you
just construed like well penned plays
Ghosts of scenes, embraces, things
you only knew in dreamt up days

Ghosts of frowns for little girls when
friends came round to waste her time
Ghosts of creeds, rebukes received
Children are not what achievers need

Fractions and maths, sweet companions,
equations and facts who always stand
by as you go your road alone
Annabelle in Numberland

You could have been my angel
been my angel, been my angel and been with me
You could have been my angel
been my angel, been my angel and rescued me

Ghosts of me, ghosts of who
i could be and been with you
Ghosts of dreams, of who you thought
you’d one day be when you grew up

Ghosts of breath, of little girls
who promised, stressed they’d be their best
Ghosts of days that fade away
as failure holds your hand til Death

And deep in the place you escape where
theorems and thoughts your hopes and plans
all are derailed and then you failed them
Annabelle in Numberland

Liquids and labs, fractions and facts,
are all you had, all that you understand
and as you age all that remains with
Annabelle in Numberland

You could have been my angel
Been my angel, been my angel and been with me
You could have been my angel
My angel, been my angel and rescued me
My angel, my angel
My angel and been with me
My angel, my angel

(Annabelle takes an axe and destroys the doll.)

We Bid The First Generation Adieu

(Annabelle exits and Narrator enters.)

NARRATOR:
So Annabella destroys her
Doll, her beloved toy boy
And takes all the notes that she made and packs them away

Thus Annabella vows that she
Won’t tell a soul and stay lonely
Defeated now she sadly creeps back to her lab

Thus friends we bid adieu to
The 1st generation, but don’t move
We’ve 3 more Acts to get through, so come let’s ensue

The future beckons and won’t wait
The next generation’s on its way
Dead things and broken love stories for us await

End Act 1.

ACT 2

New Albion 2:

(Narrator takes us around New Albion a generation later.)

NARRATOR:
And so a generation’s passed Annabel married at last
And she had a son she named Edgar but alas
She died when he was 10 his heart was broken but since then
He’s grown and found his darling Fay with whom he wants to wed

The red haired dwarf he had a son when the son turned 31
He stabbed his father so new mob boss he’d become
As his father slowly died he told his son with tear stained eyes
he was the proudest that he’d ever been in his entire life

A cat burglar’s around who is the toast of the whole town
His is the most daring heists ever to abound
In reality in fact it’s two 18 year old girls and
Their pet albatross Simon and a brilliant mouse named Sam

In the Botanist’s Lodge they’ve bred a plant who can think thoughts
It communicates by opening its petals on and off
But alas one day it went into a deep meditative trance
Searching for enlightenment and has not made a move since then

Edgar Gets His Heart Broken

(Edgar appears. He is seated at a table dining with Fay.)

EDGAR:
The restaurant was lovely
The food, the wine, it all seemed
A perfect night and she looked so divine
I poured myself a new one
She says it’s over and done
She says she found someone and it’s goodbye

One day you will learn, and you will burn like my heart burns
One day you will learn, and you will burn like my heart burns

I had the prawns with mango
She had the cod and miso
And says she loved me and she really tried
I would have had the lime pie
But I was dying inside
She left, I sat, pretended not to cry

One day you will learn, and you will burn like my heart burns
One day you will learn, and you will burn like my heart burns

The Old Trunk In The Attic

(Edgar, brokenhearted, mopes around his family manor. He finds himself ruffling through an old suitcase in the attic.)

NARRATOR:
The old trunk in the attic
Where grandmother’s broken heart was tossed
In a box with a ballet shoe
And dead soldier’s cross

The old trunk in the attic
With the candlesticks your great uncle saved
From the girl in the market
Whose mother he once paid to go away

The old trunk in the attic
With a dress for a child but hardly worn
Stained in a memory and tears
For a name you’ll never learn

The old trunk in the attic
Where your grandfather’s glass eye lays to rest
Your sweet aunt’s nostalgia
And Annabella’s formula for raising up the dead
Annabella’s formula for raising up the dead
Clever mother Annabella with her clever head
Annabella’s formula for raising up the dead

Edgar Builds A Business

NARRATOR:
So Edgar tries the experiments he’s read
Annabella’s formula for bringing back the dead
The experiments of course prove a success
And thus a crazy notion comes into his head

EDGAR:
One day you will see
That I can be someone you never thought I’d be
One day you will see
That I can be someone you never thought I’d be

(Edgar goes to the center of town, steps up on a soapbox and proceeds to sell to the crowd.)

My friends step right up, i have brought you a thing,
Why it’s a miracle process that you will never believe
Your grandma, your parents, your child i say who
yes whomever you’ve lost i can bring back to you

You doubt me of course, think i’m out of head
but this week i’ll choose 5 folks and bring back their dead
and i’ll put them in quality, mechanical dolls
life sized, yes for free and you’ll see it’s not talk

(The crowd responds enthusiastically to his offer . We then see him some weeks later)

My friends, can you hear me, the crowd’s grown so big
and these orders, why i’ll tell you i i barely know how to keep
up with, so i must tell you, i’m building a store
where your dead ones can be brought to you folks once more

With all this success i can offer new deals
Their bodies now come in different colors and feels
like mahogany, lilac, and deep oaken red
Seven models to choose from to fit your dear dead

(The crowd continues to go crazy for his business. We see him then sometime later, no longer on the street but in a boardroom)

Gentlemen welcome, will the board please sit down
our profits this quarter are almost beyond count
We’re opening new factories, starting new ads
We’re making our fortunes, so i’ve one thing to ask

There’s a man they call Sillof and he once stole my girl
I want him destroyed, all he has in this world
His business his home and his carriage all crushed
I want him left penniless, face down in the dust

(Narrator enters and attempts to give Edgar advice which he is oblivious to)

NARRATOR:
All your intentions take their toll
All you hate enthralls your soul
When you win you sometimes lose
And all you love does not love you

(Somewhere quiet, possibly at the original dinner table, Edgar is before his ex-fiancée Fay)

EDGAR:
Fay, good to see you. I asked you here so
you could listen to what i want to offer to you
That man who you left me for, you know he’s in ruins
a broken down wreck, but Fay my fortune booms

And i have a surprise, your dear long dead dad
i have taken the liberty of bringin him back
he sits now in my parlor, but Fay the only way
you can see him or talk to him is to come back and stay.

(Edgar leaves and Fay remains)

Fay Considers Edgar’s Proposal:

FAY:
Once we saw a band play
Years ago I hardly
Knew you like I came to in our day

I was so excited
I fussed to hours prior
And when you knocked my heart nearly gave way

When does intimacy
Become so cruel and petty
Become a pit of loathing, disgust and hate?

One day you will learn, and you will burn like my heart burns
One day you will learn, and you will burn like my heart burns
One day you will learn, and you will burn like my heart burns
One day you will learn, and you will burn like my heart burns

End Act 2.

ACT 3:

New Albion 3

(Narrator returns to show us New Albion a generation later.)

NARRATOR:
And so the years they fly, a generation goes on by
And new faces, new places of New Albion arrive
The doll that Edgar brought back for Fay well sure enough
He’s Jasper, the same one that Annabelle herself called up

Edgar and Fay had a son, a young man who’s named Byron
And he’s inherited the Doll, his dear Jasper whom he loves
After years and years of folks bringing back their dead ones, droves
Of Dolls fill the city in streets slums and homes

Yes, there’s slums just full of dead, they don’t walk or talk instead
They’re like blank slates on which they’re friends and relatives project
The big subculture in these times is Voodoopunk and every night
Byron and Amelia are immersed and acolytes

The red haired dwarf’s son ran the mob for years and years but then
He was run out by 2 women and a brilliant mouse named Sam
The voodoopunks, to mock the world, for city mayor run a Doll
They show up at the rallies and attempt to rile the crowd

(BYRON and AMELIA and other Voodoopunks are hanging out)

The Movement 1

(BYRON and AMELIA and other Voodoopunks are hanging out)

BYRON:
In the movement, In the nights of dead and dance
In the movement, The haunted held within our hands
In the movement, Jasper, love is why I do
In the movement, the love I never get from you

In the movement
Come and dance through the night
In the movement
Ridden by the blinding light

At the crossroads and the barrow
We have come to court the shadow

BYRON and AMELIA:
In the movement
Loa live within our hands
In the movement
Our voodoo opens other lands
In the movement
Drugs and dance and spirits whirl
In the movement
And we reject our father’s world

In the movement
Come and dance through the night
In the movement
Ridden by the blinding light

At the crossroads and the barrow
We have come to court the shadow

AMELIA and OTHER VOODOOPUNKS:
In the movement, In the nights of dead and dance
In the movement, The haunted held within our hands
In the movement, All for love is all I do
In the movement, the love I never get from you

In the movement
Come and dance through the night
In the movement
Ridden by the blinding light

At the crossroads and the barrow
We have come to court the shadow

BYRON:
Can’t you speak to me
Can’t you speak to me

All the things we could share and conceive
if you’d just speak with me

My friends these elections this season to come
Your capitalists, socialists, facists and bums
Your left and your right are both out of their heads
So this year for office we’re running the dead

Vote for our Doll for his stance never bends
He knows we are equal when it comes to the end
Your money and taxes, your debts and your gains
One day at the end we will all be the same

Your government robs you and bleeds you and now
My friend’s one day soon will come break your door down
Instead of the system my friends walk away
Come ride at the crossroads come do it today

You think that this world you live in is all?
Come feel the spirit the Baron he calls
Don’t be a zombie vote dead all the way
Vote voodoopunk we dance with you on your grave

Voodoopunk

(Scene: A popular nightclub among the Voodoopunk subculture. It caters to their subculture and their club dancing is a voodoo ceremony. Amelia is dancing and chanting as high priestess.)

VOODOOPUNKS:
Ya ko, hoo-o-la-oh A-hee-lay-oh-la-hey
Ya ko, hoo-o-la-oh A-hee-lay-oh-la-hey

The Sidhe are coming over, the Sidhe are pass back over
The Sidhe will come back over, doll-ay doll-ay

AMELIA:
Anwen open, Anwen open to me
Anwen open, come oh Sidhe

Doll-ay doll-ay, doll-ay doll-ay
Doll-ay doll-ay, hey

The Movement 2:

AMELIA:
In the movement
In the nights of dead and dance
In the movement
When I’m offering out my hand
In the movement
I don’t need you to pretend
In the movement
all I ask for is a friend

In the movement
Drugs and dance and spirits whirl
In the movement
As we flee our father’s world

At the crossroads so it goes we
Need a love you cannot show me

Can’t you reach for me?
Can’t you reach for me?
The burdens I bear that you never do see
If you’d just please help me

BYRON and OTHER VOODOOPUNKS:
In the movement
Loa live within our hands
In the movement
Our voodoo opens other lands
In the movement
Drugs and dance and spirits whirl
In the movement
And we reject our father’s world

In the movement
Come and dance through the night
In the movement
Ridden by the blinding light

At the crossroads and the barrow
We have come to court the shadow

(BYRON goes to podium at the political rally continues to bait the crowd)

BYRON:
My friends look around at this world that you’ve known
The leeches are sucking you dry to the bone
The zombies are letting it all get away
So vote for our Doll and throw it away

You don’t need a master, no government who
Will take all you’ve earned, tell you what to do
Our Doll will not lead you, he’ll not bleed you dry
Nor bribe nor coerce nor fail you nor lie

There’s coming a time not so far from right now
When your rights will be gone and they’ll make you bow down
We stand at the crossroads and offer a way
To ecstacy, freedom, a path, a new day

This welfare of zombies is come to an end
For zombies, your children are out of their heads
They’ve left you for sex, drugs, drums and the dead
Come now and join us, come join us my friends!

NARRATOR:
Over years jasper’s taken
Words and instrumentations
From the music he channels night and day

And he’s used them to make
A new song he can play
To the crowd as he tries to communicate

(Jasper takes center stage and all else but him fades.)

Elysian Night

JASPER:
Elysium
The silent sighed lost lullaby
Elysian night

Elysium
The child who climbs the edge of time
Elysian night

The place the child you hardly knew
Sailed to in his wooden shoe
Past the last star in the sky
Where wishes never wished go lie

Elysium
The child who climbs the edge of time
Elysian night

The place where all the love you shared
Went day by day til none was there
Where yearning and forgotten dreams
Are nursery rhymes the quiet sing

Elysium
The silent sighed lost lullaby
Elysian night

Elysium
The child who climbs the edge of time
Elysian night

The childhood friend you knew was there
But never saw or touched and where
They went when never called again
The place their loneliness all ends

All the sorrow, guilt and shame
Burdens borne and karma paid
In one soft breath like candlelight
Dispersed in endless Elysian night

Elysium
The silent sighed lost lullaby
Elysian night

Elysium
The child who climbs the edge of time
Elysian night

The Suicide

(Narrator enters and takes us from Jasper into a small flat in New Albion where one of the most prominent girls from the Voodoopunk party is sitting alone in her room listening to an old fashioned radio.)

NARRATOR:
Jasper’s song that he made
All the Dolls in the town play
And it broadcasts all throughout the day

Amelia lives in a small flat
With a cruel father who’s quite sad
And she listens and feels a deep compassion

(The sound of the song Elysian Night is heard playing over the radio. It’s interrupted by the father violently yelling at the girl. After it finishes she sings quietly.)

AMELIA:
A place I cannot bear to be
Where loneliness, brutality
And days of endless, dismal sky
Just go by and by and by

Another place I never knew
A distant, silent, sweet refuse
With razor, rope and no lament
I go to where my sorrows end

Elysium
The silent sigh beyond this life
Elysian night

Elysium
The girl who cries her last goodbye
Elysian night

(Amelia kills herself.)

Bonfire Of The Dolls

NARRATOR:
Beside the girl’s body her suicide note
and the words from the doll’s song was all that she wrote
It was published in papers, discussed, yet despite
this the dolls kept broadcasting all day and all night

(The sound of Elysian Night playing over radio)

Columnists bantered, parent groups fumed
and distrust, fear and anger rose, spread and loomed
The dolls were derided, distained and decried
and everyone waited for the match to ignite

BYRON:
It won’t be too long folks til our doll runs this town
We’re voting him in and it’s happening now
We’re all at the corssroads where worlds connect
And your kids are all dancing each night with the dead

NARRATOR:
Kill the dolls kill the dolls everyone screamed

BYRON:
Now my friends just hold on, that is not what we mean

NARRATOR:
But whatever he meant no one cared or would hear
There was blood in their eyes and a riot was reared

The streets are chaotic as bonfires glow
In the alleys and flames fear and furor just grow
The dolls are picked up and then thrown in the fire
and the fever of violence and panic conspire

Poor Byron he runs to find jasper his love
as the dolls are torn limb from limb, torched and burned up
No one ‘s left to listen to his speeches or cries
He’s fanned the flames that kill his dear doll tonight

BYRON:
Where’s my angel?
Where’s my angel?
Where’s my angel?
Where’s my angel?

(They city is exploding in a fiery riot. Citizens are throwing dolls on bonfires. Byron is frantically trying to find Jasper. He finally sees him being carried by some rioters towards a bonfire. He races after them trying to stop them. He arrives just as Jasper is being thrown and leaps to stop it.)

End Act 3

ACT 4:

The Ballad of the Gambler and the Monk

NARRATOR:
You remember at the start, the Gambler and the Monk played cards?

(Music has a rustic folk feel)

Years before a Monk and Gambler embarked
On a long trek right through the great lands of the North
They had a debate about Gd, chance and fate
And agreed it be settled through just one card game

Day after day they sat there and they played
As the weeks and the days and the months passed away
Travelers came in just to watch and drink gin
And bet on which one would eventually win

As a whole town was then slowly built round them
The Gambler pot rose and Monk’s pot went down
And thus came to pass the final hand came at last
But before it was played the Gambler’s heart it gave way

He hollered and cried right out ‘for he died
A curse from his lungs: the game was not done
He swore they’d be back to finish at last
And fist to the sky the Gambler died.

New Albion 4

NARRATOR:
Meanwhile we come back to the fourth and final act
Byron got himself a trophy wife and had
A daughter who he named Priscilla and she came
To age in a city that is now a police state

New Albion today is a harsh and martial place
The riots destroyed buildings, streets and throughways
The City took control through a state of martial law
That remains to this day as troops of armored cops patrol

(We follow a young recruit being accepted into the militarized police service)

SOLDIER 7285:
And on this day of my enlistment
I shed my skin of will and innocence
I pledge allegiance and devotion
I’ll be the power that you flex

I am your arm of execution
I am the trigger of your gun
I am the binding and the order
My duty to you has begun

NARRATOR:
Random searches are the law, looking for remaining Dolls
And if found execution is immediate for all
Any token of the dead, whether relative or friend
Is forbid and if found you may or may not be seen again

Jasper’s still around and he’s with Priscilla now
They sit and hide together deep within the family house
The spend their days resigned from the brutal world outside
And play a never ending game of cards to pass to time

Priscilla and Jasper Play Cards

(Scene: A dimply lit, windowless room deep in the McAlistair Manor. Priscilla and the doll Jasper sit and play cards. Jasper is naturally awkward at it, but Priscilla is patient and the game manages to be played.)

PRISCILLA:
Club and spade I raise, here in this parlor in this never ending game we play
And we hide, just you and I, as day fades into day
Hidden in our room, with a game that no one ever seems to win or lose
And the shades of flames remain from a world we keep far away

JASPER:
Ghosts of towns, ghosts of cities
Games that brought its sad demise
The only way to end the game
One who plays must sacrifice

PRISCILLA:
Diamonds now I raise, outside we’d die and there is nowhere else I’d rather stay
In the scrawl beyond these walls in a cold and coarse and vicious place
Here where there’s no time, there’s no loss or lies or need to speak of sacrifice
It’s no way to win a game and why else would a person play?

JASPER:
Ghosts of games, you’re always caught in
Games you play but cannot win
The only way the game can die
One who plays must sacrifice

(The scene shifts to the outside world. The young recruit is out in a three police man squad raiding homes and executing guilty citizens)

SOLDIER 7285:
And on the day we come it’s over
And you will have your fate laid out and spun, it’s execution
And you may pray if you get comfort
It’s on that day you’re duty’s done

(Return to the Manor where Priscilla and Jasper play cards)

JASPER:
Ghosts of Fay, the child I loved
Whose eyes and smile you remind me of
In the years I’ve been trapped here
Only you I’ve come to love

A ghost am I, one if they knew of
Who, with you, they’d come and kill
Ghosts of death I wish to die
But sacrifice so you might live

Ghosts of love, of little girls you
Talked and watched as they grew up
Ghosts of things and rings and gifts
You give to them so they might live

Ghosts of towns, ghosts of cities
Games that brought their sad demise
The only way to end the game
One who plays must sacrifice

PRISCILLA:
Hearts and now I fold, you can’t mean that you just dream of death and wish to go?
You’re my soul, my angel
The only thing that keeps me whole

How can you want to die? All this time and all these years that slowly pass on by
You’re alive so I don’t die?
What kind of twisted sacrifice…

(Scene once again shifts to the young police soldier, Soldier 7285, carrying out his duties)

SOLDIER 7285:
And on the day we come it’s over

And you will have your fate laid out and spun, it’s execution
And you may pray if you get comfort
It’s on that day you’re duty’s done

Priscilla Considers

(Priscilla leaves Jasper at the table and goes to the side of the room to reflect)

PRISCILLA:
Some speak about love in a sweet way
Enchantment, romance and dizzy dream states
And some just wait and pace their cage

Some speak about love as a passion
As rapture and cries and sighs and gasps and
Some resign to yearn inside

These odes of tear stained banter and dew eyed candor
That wither in the world, the world that
Just deceives you and beats and bleeds you
And leaves lonely little girls

And some sacrifice, anyway
Some sacrifice, it all away
Ah, the fallen and the burdened and the wreaths upon their grave
When they’re broken there’s no assurance they made a better place

Some speak about love in a kind way
The friend that won’t leave and makes your day sane
As you bide and cringe and hide

Some wait for a stranger to touch and fill them
Some wait for the stranger who will kill them
And some just pace their lonely cage

With one dear doll who keeps you from crying but cries too
Silently inside
Some speak of love and kindness and clutch in blindness
And take and hoard and hide

And some sacrifice, anyway
Some sacrifice, it all away
Ah, the fallen and the burdened and the wreaths upon their grave
When you’re broken there’s no assurance you made a better place

(Priscilla picks up the phone)

Hello, police? Hello, police? A felony, you need to see

(Priscilla puts down the phone and returns to Jasper who has seen and heard what she has done)

(skip to next page)

The Day They Come

NARRATOR:
Circles never stop themselves, nothing that you’ve ever held were you promised or reneged and sometimes when you lose, you win.

JASPER:
Prisiclla, what’d you do?
When You come for me
You know they’ll also kill you too
You’re young, your song unsung
There’s too much still for you to do

PRISCILLA:
All these years you’re here, you suffer quietly, it’s barbarous to think that’s fair
There’s no one who thinks of you
The game is gonna end right here
I’d help you to
Die, if I could, but…

JASPER:
Prisiclla what’d you do?
now they’ll come and you must
run or else they’ll kill you too

Your life so I can die
is wrong and you must know that’s true

ghosts of life, ghosts of lives
I’ve watched fall and pass me by
Ghosts of all the selfish, vain
All the blindness, all the pain
All the fool and petty games
All the shallow all the same

PRISCILLA:
I’d help you to die if I could , love
Some sacrifice anyway
Some sacrifice it all away

(Soldier 7285 and his 2 other squad members burst into the room)

SOLDIER 7285:
And on the day we come it’s over
And you will have your fate laid out and spun, it’s execution
And u may pray if you get comfort
It’s on this day your duty’s done
And on this day you’ve been caught guilty, the sentence citizen is death
It will be carried out this instant
Say any prayers that u want said

JASPER:
One day you will learn
And u will burn like my heart burns
One day you will learn
And u will burn like my heart burns
Ghosts of all the selfish, vain
All the blindness, all the pain
All the fool and petty games
All the shallow all the same

PRISCILLA:
Some speak about
love, in a sweet way
Some sentiment of
bliss and dream states
Some speak about love
in a kind way,
some sentiment of rapturous states

and some sacrifice
some sacrifice
some sacrifice
some sacrifice

JASPER:
Please, my angel, my angel
Please my angel, my angel
Please, my angel, my angel
Please my angel, my angel

SOLDIER 7285:
I am the arm of execution
I am the trigger of your gun
I am the binding and the order
It’s on this day you’re duty’s done

PRISCILLA:
Please go back to
Berths of black
To silent shores
from me once more
through veils and gates
and seas of slate
and blood red mores where I’ll
see you once more

I Will Bring You Down

(The room fades and Soldier 7285 is left)

OTHER SOLDIER: Soldier 7285, why didn’t you fire?
OTHER SOLDIER 2: Soldier 7285, why didn’t you fire?
AUTHORITY: Soldier 7285 you are hereby notified of your court martial for negligence of duty
OTHER SOLDIER: Why didn’t you fire?

SOLDIER 7285:
I saw her eyes, I’ve never faced
That kind of look that haunted grace
The way she died so willing just
To die for love, to die for love

What kind of masters must I serve
That make this into such a world
Where one must kill such beauty and
Bring this to pass with such cruel hands

Soldier 7285
is who I am it is my life
But I perceive another place
And it must be built upon your grave

And I will bring you down
I will bring you down
I will bring you down

And if I fall someone will see
The way I went, just like she
With eyes of love and heart of light
They too will fight, they too will fight

Today I say it will begin
Today i will begin your end
Today the wind that comes, portends
Will be your end, will be your end

And I will bring you down
I will bring you down
I will bring you down

(Soldier 7285 exits)

We Bid You All Adieu

(Narrator enters)

NARRATOR:
The revolution that rises has stories for another time
Our tale for this evening comes to a close
So we bid adieu to our players and of course you
We hope this little history lesson we’ve shown

Has been illuminating, our facts have been kept straight and
Names and situations all remain unchanged
Alas friends we cannot stay, the future is always on its way
Thus ends our little passion play as played today.

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