Jack Ketchum - Triptych: Three Short Plays by Jack Ketchum

Three Short Plays by Jack Ketchum A Macabre Ink Production Macabre Ink is an imprint of Crossroad Press Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press Smashwords edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press
Copyright 2012 / Jack Ketchum Partial cover images provided by: arkytraveler.deviantart.com 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 person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. Jack Ketchums first novel, Off Season, prompted the Village Voice to publicly scold its publisher in print for publishing violent pornography.

He personally disagrees but is perfectly happy to let you decide for yourself. His short story The Box won a 1994 Bram Stoker Award from the HWA, his story Gone won again in 2000 and in 2003 he won Stokers for both best collection for Peaceable Kingdom and best long fiction for Closing Time. He has written twelve novels, arguably thirteen, five of which have been filmed The Girl Next Door, Red, The Lost, Offspring and The Woman, written with Lucky McKee. His stories are collected in The Exit at Toledo Blade Boulevard, Peaceable Kingdom, Closing Time and Other Stories, and Sleep Disorder, with Edward Lee. His horror-western novella The Crossings was cited by Stephen King in his speech at the 2003 National Book Awards. He was elected Grand Master for the 2011 World Horror Convention.

Book List Novels: Hide and Seek Joyride Ladies Night Off Season Offspring Red She Wakes Stranglehold The Girl Next Door The Lost The Woman (with Lucky McKee) Novellas: Im Not Sam (with Lucky McKee) Old Flames Right to Life The Crossings Non-Fiction: Book of Souls Collections: Broken on the Wheel of Sex Closing Time and Other Stories Peaceable Kingdom Sleep Disorder With Edward Lee The Exit at Toledo Blade Boulevard Authors Website

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Note: Thanks to Kaddy Feast and Theo Levine. K ILL was the final stage play I ever wrote. Other than OLIVIA: A MONOLOGUE, and unless you count a handful of unfinished fragments, it was the last time I wrote for the theatre. It was written in December of l972 with the New York Theatre Ensemble at 2 East 2 nd Street in mind, an off-off-Broadway black-box theatre group who had previously produced my one-acts THE PROGERIAN the year before and DRIVE-IN MOVIE that October.

Four years before that I'd seen THE BOSTON STRANGLER appropriately enough, in a theatre in Boston with Henry Fonda, George Kennedy, Sally Kellerman, and Tony Curtis as mass-murderer Albert DeSalvo, in easily his best performance since THE SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS. You didn't see many movies based on true crimes back then and this one was pretty good and thought provoking. What can you expect from a society that spends 44% of its tax dollars on killing? It moved me to seek out the book of the same name by Gerold Frank. Frank had peppered his book with long sections of the recorded confessions between DeSalvo and Detective John S. Bottomly, much of which made fascinating reading. Confessions are in the public domain, so it occurred to me that I wouldn't be ripping off Mr.

Frank if I sliced and diced them and pitted these two guys against one another on a stage. I changed the names to make it seem moreuniversal. A kind of Everyman mass-murderer and an Everyman detective. With only a proposed note at the bottom of the program to let you know it was based on the real thing. At least that was the idea at the time. NYTE accepted it but before we even started casting, the theatre folded. A German producer recently asked me if I had anything in my trunk I'd like to have translated and staged.

I dusted this off and tinkered a little. We'll see.

A confession for the stage * Characters: JOSEPH ATTERLEY A CHORUS OF THREE MEN Time: The present Place: A room * KILL is based on the Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo - John Bottomley confessions. The names have been changed. All dialogue, though edited, is as transcribed. A room.

Bare, stark walls. Center stage, a long wooden table, a chair at either end, and upon the table a houseplan, pad, pencils, pens, cigarette pack and ashtray. Lights dim to black. ENTER JOSEPH and ATTERLEY, seating themselves at the table. Lights up on JOSEPH, a small man powerfully built, dressed in white shirt and faded pants, both now in disarray. JOS I told Hildegard, I said I was going fishing.

That was my excuse for getting out of the house. I had a fishing net, it was weighted down with three lead pipes. PAUSE And a fishing rod in the back of the car. Lights up on ATTERLEY, tall and thin, his once careful grooming hours behind him now. PAUSE JOS To the left would be a kitchen, then the bathroom about ten feet on. The light would be on.

I see a sewing machine, brown, a window with very pretty drapes, light tan, a couch, and a tan record player with darker color, you know, cocoa-color knobs. Lights up to full on both men and all surrounding areas. A sensation of intense heat throughout. PAUSE JOS I told her, I'm going to do some work on the apartment, and she said, this is the first I've heard about it, and I said I'm supposed to check all the windows for leaks and I'm going to do some interior painting. Well, it's about time, she said. He reaches for the pack of cigarettes, takes one, searches for a match, looks at ATTERLEY.

ATTERLEY finds a pack of matches in his in his shirt pocket, slides the pack to him across the table. JOSEPH lights up. Then: JOS I grabbed my right hand behind her neck. She was a heavy-set, big-breasted woman ATT Did you have to bend over? To grab her? JOS No (beat) We were standing near the bed. She went down right away. She fainted, passed right out.