[In this, the play’s opening scene, P, Horrible Child’s father, and Q, its mother, are talking.]

ACT I

(P and Q)

P
Horrible

Q
Horrible, what it is

P
Unbelievable

Q
Incredible, it’s like a bad dream

P
A nightmare, like having a miniature Caligula
in the middle of our home

Q
In the middle of the living room

P
Horrible

Q
Horrible. When it was born we hired a professional
courtroom artist to do sketches in the delivery room

P
This is how it thanks us

Q
The artist died of shock — why not we?

P
No such luck

Q
Horrible. I can’t even bear to look at them anymore,
those sketches

P
Professional drawings! My spouse can’t even

Q
I can’t, I won’t

P
look at them anymore because of the horrible

Q
When I think of the agony I endured giving birth to that

P
that

Q
that

P
that

Q
that

P,Q
That Monster! That Horrible Monster!

(PAUSE)

P
Do you remember the rose petals we scattered
on our stomach when we found out we were pregnant?

Q
Do you remember how we danced the night after
the afternoon we learned we were with child?

P
I remember the gold filling in the doctor’s rear-left mouth
the moment he said the word:

P,Q
PREGNANT

P
How it glistened during the first syllable

Q
PREG

P
and expanded and burst like a star

Q
the entire cavity of his mouth, bright

P
blinding — How he yelped, his mouth scorched,
light flying from his mouth, filling
the entire office with the second syllable

Q
—NANT!

P
crashing through the window, shattering glass

Q
cascading out into the still, crisp air

P,Q
that late Thursday afternoon in winter

Q
on this unmoored continent adrift in the seas

P
of this spherical clump of matter in space

Q
how the word thawed the ice
on the windshield of our automobile
as we sat there in the parking lot that Thursday

P
how we sat there holding hands

P,Q
pregnant

Q
as the word did its work
loosening the molecules of ice as we sat,

P
As we sat

P,Q
as we sat there pregnant, and full of hope —

P
Deceitful memory.

Q
False harbinger.

P
Vestigial joy.

[In the coming months, Lawrence Krauser will make the complete text of several of his plays available on McSweeney’s. To read “Horrible Child” in its entirety, click here. ]