THE 10TH DISTRICT

by Robert Healy

I don't need anything. The library is burning, the windows have cracked.

--

ORANGE JUICE

Is a man. 48 years old. Carries a slab of tobacco. Works in the mine. Married to THERESA.

THERESA

Makes home in the Burned Gardens neighborhood. Believes in the laws of science. 42 years old.

MAX

THERESA & ORANGE JUICE's dog. A white little thing with a black spot around his heart. Believes in the devil.

--

This rotten scene. Something so foul as to be mistaken for hell. The sky is brown and flaming. Buildings blot out the sky. Factories. Cartons of industry.

MAX + ORANGE JUICE + THERESA live here. In some old rubbled building. Dust and broken bricks collect in their living room.
And here they are in the kitchen, complete with its blasted out windows and absent a ceiling, crusty moonlight clumping in random spaces.

MAX

I must leave this. I must go to the war. I must join the war.

THERESA

Please, Max. The war will be over soon. Our suffering will end and we can return to regular life.

An air raid siren begins to blare mildly, yawning across fields of mud and blood and fire.

ORANGE JUICE

Let him go. His journey has begun.

...

He shall retrieve secrets for us from the frontlines. Like where we eat and where we sleep.

THERESA

Like where we go and what we become.

MAX

I will survive. I have seen it in the sky. Mired in soot.

--

MAX begins his pursuit of the battlefield. ORANGE JUICE follows him, in secret.

--

MAX appears disturbed when he sees ORANGE JUICE in a broken mirror. A turn and a vanish.

--

BACK AT HOME, THERESA watches the NEWS.

NEWS

Just today, Michelle from Montana found a nickel and exchanged it for a grain of sad. Now that's quite a day.

THERESA (Impressed)

Wow...

MAX appears.

MAX

So, has he gone away?

THERESA

Yes. He's gone away.

MAX

Good.

THERESA

I've let him go because all things come out in the wash.

THE END