Eggshells

By Cory Plimo

"Eggshells" is a play set in a young University in Ngaza, a fictional province in Kenya.

First year students are just about to begin their studies when they notice an abominable stench issuing from within the lecture room...

Diabla, the once virtuous lady, turns dangerously carefree and the perfidy that follows her life, together with her bosom friends', leaves theatregoers drop-jawed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cory Plimo
• Release date: Dec 11, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370699735

Cory Plimo

I was born at the turn of millennium with a passion for literature. At 14 I read Joseph Heller's "Good as Gold" and thought I had arrived. Since then I have not been able to quench the literary thirst, and so I made the bad habit of putting down three to six books a year, it's worse than addiction to weed. I have written "Eggshells" (play), "Cinders" (novel) and "Little Things" (poetry) all in the hope of bringing this habit under control. I hope to put them all on Smashwords.

Book preview

Eggshells

A Play by

Cory Plimo

Copyright 2017 Cory Plimo

Smashwords Edition

For Stella

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Contents.

Act One

1. Scene One

2. Scene Two

3. Scene Three

Act Two

1. Scene One

2. Scene Two

3. Scene Three

Cast.

1. Felix Kellani, student.

2. Diabla Angela, student.

3. Alicia Ang'ine, student.

4. Mino Meno, student.

5. Rugimo Kemumu, student.

6. Ngimo Tembu, student.

7. Eli Kudo, student.

8. Steven Dim, student.

9. Okinda Teteni, student.

10. Eunice, student.

11. Karen, student.

12. Aggie, student.

13. Amick Kiiko, student-pastor.

14. The Cleaner, casual worker.

15. Anna Bofani, secretary.

16. Prof. Ndiko Katano, lecturer.

17. Prof. Okongi Erika, lecturer.

The play is taking place in a young university in Ngaza Province, a fictional region in Kenya.

ACT ONE.

Scene One.

(Boys and girls, in their early twenties, some of them are under twenty, are conversing in a tiny assemblage on the veranda, next to a ruinous door. DIABLA, slightly buxom, ebony black, clad in scanty apparel, but of expensive effulgence, waddles towards the knot of youths. She steadies the strap of a girlish bag on her shoulder.)

DIABLA: (Shaking hands with a gesture of disdain playing on the edges of her lips.) How are you, guys?

MINO, NGIMO, RUGIMO, DIM, and ANG'INE: We're fine madam.

DIABLA: (Glancing at a faint sign etched into a wood plank above the door. Doubtfully.) Is this L.R.3? (Silence. The others exchange quick glances.) It isn't even clear which room this is.

DIM: We figure the hall for your lecture is this one, madam. There's no other L.R.3 in the C Building insofar as the time table is right. It has got to be this one. (Points at the label.)

DIABLA: (Grinning.) Resembles an abandoned workshop of some metal artisan. And stale air hovering around, what could it be? (Attempts to cross the threshold, then stops suddenly in mid-step, retreats, makes an askew face and presses her nostrils together, swiveling her eyes from person to person.)

KUDO: (Alarmed.) What's up?

MINO: (Peers into the room--dingy and dusty. The floor is decorated with potholes. Steel pews are muddled up together at the centre, held in place, perhaps, by an obedient entanglement of cobwebs. Shards of window panes belitter the floor.) Oh! There's a lot of disorder . . . (Pushes the battered door in, a plank comes off and slaps the floor. He strides in, cupping his nose. Ominous fat coloured flies buzz above a black polythene bag on the immediate left corner and zoom out the windows and the door, some hitting him. He picks up a streak of wood chipped from the timber and pokes the bag, a strong stench issues and the disturbed flies hum some more.)

KUDO: (Crinkling.) Can you see the flies. (Averts his face from the door. MINO pushes it close.) A wet stench has indeed been lingering around here since I came, and it had petered out. Let's check it's provenance. (Calling.) Ngimo! Ngimo!

NGIMO: Yes.

KUDO: Oh! (To NGIMO.) You are Ngimo? (NGIMO nods.) What's the guy inside called?

ANG'INE: He's Mino.

MINO: (Reappearing.) I'm Mino. (Fumbles in his trouser pockets, draws a handkerchief and blows his nose.) There's a mysterious bag in here, madam, come all and see. I can't believe this is supposed to be a classroom. (They file in after him.)

DIM: (Fanning his nose with an open palm, scans the room.) Oh my! Nothing but the fundamentals of insanitary squalor, the very emblems of rottenness. (He stomps out.)

KUDO: (Poking the bag.) What in the name of hell's dirty belongings could this really be? (They stare with oblivion wrapped on their faces. Lifting it with a stick, whitish, thick, mucous substance elongates downward from several points, and drips to the floor in doleful blobs. They gather around him in amazement, then turn their faces instinctively at once to the door. A woman stands gazing at them, almost immobile, a broom in hand and a moper stands from a bucket.)

THE CLEANER: (With a drawl of contempt.) Excuse me, we aren't done with this building yet. (DIM re-enters.)

DIM: (To DIABLA.) Methinks we should to be having a lecture going on in here right now.

ANG'INE: I'm under the same conviction too, given what the timetable reads. (Consults her phone.) We are late by half an hour.

THE CLEANER: You must be first-year students, I'd bet anything for that matter. (NGIMO, MINO and DIM turn to look at DIABLA, as though expecting her to talk. She's not forthcoming, and averts her eyes.) An advice for free, freshers, is by tradition lectures never begin in the first week. (Derisive smile, elbows her way in, lifts the moper, stops short and rolls her eyes from Kudo's face to shoes and lifts them back to his hands.) What do you think you are doing, young man?

KUDO: Dispose of it. (Drops the stick with the bag, the substance spills on the floor.)

THE CLEANER: You can as well be as good to dispose of it as I. (Turns, lifts the bucket and strides to the furthest corner of the room, skirting the pews.) You students tend to think you are princes and princesses who wouldn't lift a finger to put in the right place a cup from which you've just drank. (She starts sweeping the floor, often spitting.)

DIM: You can say whatever itches you but what is curved in stone is what you're paid to do. And I see you got unflinching passion for it, or you wouldn't go about barefoot and without appropriate garb.

THE CLEANER: (Without looking up.) Who cares?

KUDO: It's your health that's at stake, you ought to care.

DIM: Woman, pay a visit to the HR office and, while at it, exhibit that outfit. Tell them cleaners should be clean before they venture into cleaning floors and pavements and lawns.

THE CLEANER: (Recovering from a lungful guffaw.) Freshers! You have hardly settled and you have embarked on patronising around. Haven't you any shame that you know quite little or nothing whatsoever about HR office? You may have come across it in high school. Even so, that was only classroom theory, seldom applicable in the school of life, which I'm sorry to say welcome. You don't know how immodestly they treat whoever goes lumbering up to them. I pity you so much, freshers. In high school you were pampered, you approached life passively, subjectively, like amateurs. You were taking siestas on the cushions of your mother's laps, which high school is. Meet the real negligence of individual, or even collective, needs here. (She stops sweeping.) To put it succinctly, mind the pursuits which brought you here. So do I. You may not find it interesting to be told that I got a Bachelor's degree in commerce from a notable university, not from a backstreet campus, or what some people call briefcase college stashed in the midst of snake-infested sugarcane plantations . . .

ANG'INE: Oh please, enough now. Watch where you tread on.

RUGIMO: We do not give a damn whether you have a degree or not. Incidentally, who knows but heavens you might have secured it through fraud? (THE CLEANER resumes sweeping, faster, slowly, then faster again.)

KUDO: (Emphatically lifting the bag again with the stick.) Well, you guys don't fuss about irrelevant things, simply let it go. (MINO inspects the substance, picks another stick and pierces the bag which splits. A mass of thin, translucent rubber tubes with whitish mucous contents hits the floor with a musty splash. They jerk backwards.)

DIM: At least we now know!

THE CLEANER: (Who has stopped sweeping, moves closer to them.) Haha, you now know better. (Gutteral laughter, giggles.) What a warm hospitality you have received in campus, freshers. A stinking dozen of male sheaths with rotting infill has ushered you. A grand welcome, the newest fashion of hospitality.

DIABLA: (With twisted lips.) Very, very salubrious.

RUGIMO: (Walking out.) Oh guys, I wouldn't dither my preference of hell to this place. (They all walk out, except THE CLEANER, in silence.)

THE CLEANER: (Hollering from inside.) The best way to say welcome. This is the real thing now. You are facing the real thing. (Forces the battered door to close.) Hey, freshers! (Pokes her head through a window.) Why can't you dispose of it for me? (Extends to them a tube dangling from a stick, they stop to glance back.) They say virtue is its own reward. Come baby, come help me. After all it's man's, so a man ought to mind its disposal. (No one seems to volunteer. She hurls at them, the stick hits MINO but the tube drops halfway along, with a splatter on the veranda.) Go away, no classes until the fourth week.

MINO: (Infuriated.) You square headed scallywag, why would you contaminate me? I'll squash your little brain! (Evidently provoked, he scurries towards her but KUDO restrains him firmly. Meanwhile THE CLEANER is laughing.)

KUDO: Leave her alone, man. You never know what she has in mind. She could be demented, what with being a jobless holder of a Bachelor's. (Pause) So what now?

DIM: The lecturer did not come.

KUDO: Don't say that, it seems we've all missed our first lecture, suppose it took place in another hall.

DIABLA: (Doubtfully.) And who knows The Cleaner isn't a scrupulous lecturer who wanted to test the capacity of our minds?

ANG'INE: Quite odd, quite improbable.

KUDO: All the same, we should double check the time table. Just in case.

DIM: My alma mater is far better built than this place—with state-of -the-art architecture—an heaven on earth, precisely. How ashamed I am to reminisce it now that KUCCPS has tucked me here, away from the contemporary society, despite the high scores I got in the final exam. I would not have worked harder had I known before that I’d study for Bachelor's at an institution little better than an elevated high-school.

RUGIMO: I never had the faintest idea a university could be anything like this.

KUDO: (Diversionary.) Come on, guys, and stop lamenting. Why can't we consult the time table a little more keenly? We all might have misread it and subsequently the lecture took place somewhere.

DIABLA: (Enthused.) That time table is amaze! Seemed to me to have purposely been designed to puzzle! But all of us can't have possibly misread it anyway.

NGIMO: No way! We might have, or we wouldn't be this few here. Where else do you think our fellow course mates