VIV THROUGH THE NIGHT by Jared Egol Contact: Derrick Eppich/LSE
[email protected] April 2017 In silence. A vanity mirror bisects the reflection of a brunette’s smiling face into two times: LEFT HALF: BRITTA MORAN (39), face faintly pitted by acne scars. Crying and dry-heaving as her features arc deceitfully into a pained, airless grin. RIGHT HALF: BRITTA MORAN (6), flushed with jubilation as she watches her father: the shirtless, bespectacled BILL (20s), nearly seven white feet tall, rotating through a hammy “chicken dance” in the doorway behind. His crotch-cutting, early-80s Florida Gators shorts help the scene. Clapping beside or, perhaps, beneath him is the gracile young mother, VIV (20s), who barely reaches the height of her husband’s chest. Bill slinks up behind little Britta, hugs her shoulders. He whispers something that rockets her smile to a higher amplitude, a cackle. This continues while- LEFT HALF: The grin strains with torment, exacerbates. Older Britta’s arm winds up and PUNCHES THE MIRROR so that it CRACKS, eliminating the little girl, the father and the fun. And we’ve become totally older, totally ailing within our own faded FLORIDA GATORS t-shirt, its snug fit redistributed in our athletic twilight. Scrub bottoms dangle a DR. MORAN -- CHIEF OF ANESTHESIOLOGY hospital badge. We eye Viv through the MIRROR BREACH: Now in her sixties, bald, cannula in her nose and reclined in near-death on one side of an extra-long king bed. Her face sallow and bloated by the weight of CHEMO replacing her: a pump siphons slaughter into her clavicle port, and has helped make everything below her neck a wisp of what once was.