Hallucination

In Hallucination, Becky, 87, Lester, 87, and Ben, 65, sit in chairs representing, in the first scene, the front seat of Lester’s truck, in the second a sofa in Becky’s trailer and a chair in Ben’s house, and, in the third, the sofa.  In the first and third scenes, Ben is in the dark and Becky and Lester are in the light, while in the second scene, Ben and Becky are in two circles of light and Lester is in the dark.  As if in the truck (no steering wheel), Becky complains that her children never call her.  Then she screams because she thinks she sees a cow in the middle of the road.  But there is no cow.  Then she screams that there is a brick road in the middle of the road, and Lester says he is going to drive right through it.  Becky says she has been seeing things, faces of horrible old men and women, like a layer of reality between her and everything else.  Lester says he is going to drive her to the doctor.

     In the second scene, Lester eats walnuts in the dark as Ben and Becky in the light talk as if on the phone.  Ben tells Becky she is not losing her mind, that the problem is in her optic nerve.  She says the doctor gave her a shot in her eyeball but she wonders how she can trust her brain if she feels the hallucinations are real.  She says she is a better person than she used to be, better than when she ran off and left Ben’s father.  Ben says his father had phantom pain after his leg was amputated.  Ben says he hears voices before he goes to sleep and when he is writing.  He says Becky might learn to enjoy the experience.  She says it could be like a vaudeville show in her head, except that she couldn’t control it and wouldn’t know what’s coming next.  She asks Ben if she is real and he says she is.  “Not for long,” she says as the light fades on Ben and comes up on Lester.

     As they watch television, Becky tells Lester that Ben told her to enjoy her hallucinations.  She complains that her children never call her and says she sees the red eyes of a panther in the dark.  She says that everyone who loved her is dead.  She says the panther is kind of beautiful and tells Lester to look at the panther’s eyes.  Lights fade out.