Popstars of the Apocalypse Act 1 Scene 3

Act 1 Scene 3

A flat in Stepney Green, two hippies and a shell-shocked business man.Sarah Clarke, known to her friends as Quark because she is a bit strange, Russet Clair and John Hampton.

Russet: Oh, I’m transcending

Quark: John,  scatterthe cushions!Her Ka could end up anywhere, I once witnessed a  young accountant by the name of Staffidson who transcended himself into a fridge once.  His higher self sharing a space with the cucumber and cheese spread.

Russet:  I’m flying.

Quark: Quick! Put that incense out. Turn off the whale-song Russ, it’s getting too ambient in here. We don’t want a full on trance.

Quark: What can you see Russet, do you see the butterfly?

Russet: Yes a butterfly, a big beautiful butterfly with a big laughing head. HA HA HA HA it’s so happy and laughing HA HA, Oooer! It’s me. Ooh I’m a big butterfly..

John:    You’re not a butterfly Russet!

Quark:  Don’t say that you’ll  ground her too soon!

John :    Believe me she doesn’t want to be a butterfly. It’s not healthy. A tiny brain and eaten by spiders! Come on.

Russet:  Wow! WOW!

John: What is it Russet?

Russet: WOW!

Quark:  What are you feeling?

Russet plumps down into one the scatter cushions: Ow got a bit of a cramp actually.

John: Is that all? you transcend to a higher vibrational state of being and come back with a cramp, that doesn’t say much for the new age movement does it? Front page news:

I went and communed with the absolute oneness of God consciousness and it made my eyes go funny.

Russet: Don’t be like that.. I did feel something.

John:   What?

Russet: Well, I felt kind of dizzy.

John:     Don’t take this the wrong way Russet but that’s not what people want to hear. Anyone can feel dizzy, it’s not a mystical experience. Why don’t you put it this way:

“I felt my soul vibrate along my body as if I were a string playing an infinite harmonic, I rose higher and higher until.. I FELT A DISORIENTATING LIGHTNESS OF BEING. You see that sounds better than I felt kind of dizzy.

Quark : You’re such a business man  John, she’s not trying to sell you her experience you know. I think she should express herself any way she wants. What about you I haven’t seen you meditate even once yet. What do you feel?

John :   I don’t do that anymore.

Russet :  Why not?

John: It’s too dangerous anything could happen.

Quark snorts derisorily

John: Yeah, I wish it were a joke. But it’s not, there are dark forces at work in these times, and I used to work for them. Since then they’re never far from me, hoping that I will decide to return to dark fold once more.

Russet: But you won’t, you’ll never go back into merchant banking will you John?

John: It’s not just banking Russ, if only it were that simple, if only it were a question of applying or not applying for a certain job, no. It’s the crossroads. Everytime we go through life we step from one crossroads to another, we make certain decisions and this dictates which path we take. Every minute of my life I am faced with different crossroads. There was one just then.

Quark: I didn’t see a crossroads.

John: It was there. Here’s one right in front of me now. Shall I stop talking and go to my room and get me head down, or shall I tell you what happened.

Quark: So which decision leads where?

John: That’s the thing. I just don’t know. I do know that if I start to transcend in mixed company, things start to take a turn for the worse.

Quark:  Examples or it didn’t happen.

John: I used to be in banking as you know. As such I acquired a large portfolio of clients we worked with. One of them was a famous record company. They have these foreign  doos for suits like me every so often. All the lobster and caviar you can eat and great tides of fairly decent free champagne. I used to quite look forward to them. Then a night in a five-star hotel and a little bit of whatever kind of ‘room service’ you’re into, shall we say.

Quark: Oh yeah, what did you have?

John:  I used to ask them to send me a long haired woman with long fingernails and I used to ask her to scratch my back.

Quark: Is that all?

John: Afterwards I had sex with her.

Quark: Oh John, I’m so disappointed in you.

John: What are you supposed to do? It was expected, they’d think you were weird otherwise.

Quark: What’s weird about not having sex with prostitutes?

John: These people, you see they’re…different. Not like you and me.

Russet: What do you mean not like you and me. It’s you you’re talking about.

John: I’m different now. I’ve lived here for eight months, you know me, a Twix and two sugars in my tea, that the limit to my hedonism these days, but back then I was mixing with a very different crowd. These were people with all the money in the world, and to get that money they had had to engage in some kind of morally ambiguous chicanery, so in a sense they didn’t really go in for ideas of right or wrong anymore, because they couldn’t. If they did they would have to give up their fortunes and return all the money from the people and companies and governments they legally stole it from.  So they decide that if they’re going to hell they might as well enjoy the journey, so anything goes…. Anything they think will relieve the boredom of being one of the ‘bad-guys’.

Some people start to get into perversion for its own sake, they start not even to enjoy life but just try to commit as many atrocities as possible before their life is over and the accounts have to be settled. They see that their ledger is already full of bad marks so they decide they might as well, to quote the Rolling Stones: ‘Paint it black’.

Quark: And the most perverse thing you did was get your back scratched?

John: That’s about the size of it. I found out about what was going on when I saw a couple of Thai children being led to a room down to corridor from me. That was when I decided to get out.  It’s not just the music business, it’s the film industry too. In fact anywhere there is money power and influence, you will also find this kind of mentality of fellow passengers on the bus bound for hell. That’s why you get these stars every so often caught in the dragnet of paeodophiles, and also you get the odd star who says how he or she was sexually abused when they were a child by someone in the industry. Though it doesn’t happen often and for good reason, who wants to admit that they were abused as a child? There’s a great feeling of shame about it and many people refer to hide this pain and never refer to it. Also anyone speaking out risks never working again in ANY industry, and also there are other, more brutal methods of dissuasion which can be employed to silence people.

Quark:  So what happens when you meditate?

John: Strange things.

Quark: Such as?

John: Well Iwas initiated into a cult called the Knights of the sacred Trousers...

Russet: laughingThetrouser lords? You’re joking?

John: The trouser knights are no joke Russet believe me, they are a very dangerous and very deranged group of people.

Russet: Why are they so into ‘trousers’, it all seems a bit camp.

John: Hardly that, it’s an all male organisation, the trousers are their symbol of their bond of brotherhood. They have abilities that are not of this world. While working in Japan, and I learned how to communicate with the hidden masters of the Trouser Knights. We were told to meditate and clear our minds and the Masters would appear to us.  Initially I saw vague colours and moving shapes when I closed my eyes, then with time I started to hear a voice. As I became tuned into this voice it seemed to grow stronger until I was carrying out regular conversations with this ‘master’. And then one day, it appeared in my penthouse flat while I was sat on that tatami floor meditating as I used to. It emerged from the cupboard where I used to keep my futon. It was like a moving shadow, as if something from the darkness inside the cupboard was moving out into the room. As I watched the moving shadow the  sunlight which was streaming into my room was suddenly stifled and a heavy cloud must have passed over the sun, plunging the room into a temporary darkness, darkness is the element this beings need to move and manifest. In the best Biblical tradition they flee the light of God. And it came upon me. A cockroach. Urgh! But the cockroach was just puppet theatre compared to its master. The shadow entered me and possessed my will.

Quark: Sounds like David Icke territory. What size Tin foil hat would you like? Tall or venti?

John: Mockery is a very human reaction when confronted with uncomfortable truths but it’s no joke. I wish it were. Oh how I wish it were just a merry and foolish flight of fancy, or an ego comforting delusion. But it wasn’t, it isn’t. These beings rule the world.

Quark: Cockroaches?

John:  Clark, if you’re not going to take it seriously.....

Quark: Sorry John. I was just messing about. Of course I take you seriously. Like you say, you lay heavy stuff about disembodied demon beings and mind control on someone, on a Tuesday afternoon, then what do you expect. Tuesday afternoons and tales of inter-dimensional beings don’t sit too well together. You should have saved it till Friday night. Anything’s possible on a Friday night.

John: Yeah I know, I’ve seen you dancing but never mind trying to rationalise it.  Face it, it’s real. There are beings out there. Invisible to our eyes. The stuff of myth legend and mystery; most people go about their lives completely oblivious to them. Living and dying without ever really understanding what is taking place on planet earth right now, and what has always been taking place on planet earth.

Quark: What?

John: I can’t tell you. Yet.

Quark: You’re no fun at all today John. Well I’m gonna turn the telly on.

Quark switches on the TV and the 9:33 o’clock news flickers into life.

Newscaster:  Good evening, my name’s Sarah Serious and this is  the news at 9:33. Miss Naomi Spence, known to her fans as Player Attitude, has been reported missing without trace half way into her opening night concert at the O-No arena in East London. Miss Spence had left the stage briefly for a costume stage before a series of encores but failed to respond to knocks on her dressing room. When the door was opened there was no sign of the famous singer, nor any clue as to her disappearance.

John: standing up. Good heavens! They’ve struck again!

Quark:  Who has?

John: It’s best you don’t know child. I need to make a phone call.

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