Stigma part 1

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Title Page-Stigma

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(Young boy with a cross around his neck is accosted by an older guy in black)

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(The two go off together.)

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Table of contents

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1 Stigma: disgrace, dishonor, shame, or the marks thereof. A stain.

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A Glass of Brandy
'It's easy enough to discard your past and just live'
Only the lonely are allowed this form of nothingness called 'freedom'

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'Hey- Jigii, right? Haven't seen you in a while,'
the barkeep said to me when I walked into his place. I made some kind of answer. It seemed that Jigii is the name I go by in this town.
Town before that I was 'Tooi', one before that Wood, or Killy...

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I have no past. Well, to put it bluntly, I have no memory. Maybe I dropped it by accident someplace. Or maybe I threw it away myself.
One day I woke up and I was lying in a garbage dump, buried in "the piled up remnants of the past", and looking like a worn-out old rag.
If I could come to that, I couldn't have been any kind of decent person.

But still, if you go on living, here and there you come across the person you were. Like the barkeep I just mentioned. But still, generally all they know of me is how I look and my fake names. I've been traveling for a year or so, picking up pieces of my past that have no truth to them. Wonder where I'll go from here.
...wonder where I came from?

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If you go on living sometimes you find other things besides your own past.
She was a whore.
Cause of the drugs she'd sometimes mouth off to clients and they'd hit her.
She liked brandy better than whiskey.
She was kept by a pusher and had to sell herself.
"Ne- you ever seen Heaven, or Hell?"

"Me, I'd need three roundtrip tickets between them just for one day," she said, smiling.
I wasn't much interested in getting a woman for money, but she said she'd do it to pay for the brandy.
"Fact is, I kind of like you."

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She asked me what my name was and I said unfortunately I didn't have one. She only murmured 'oh' like that was perfectly normal.
"In this town there's no such thing as the truth, or even a full glass. So you can call me what you like as well."
When I called her 'Brandy' she smiled in my arms, like a flower.
It was the morning of the next day when they found her body lying in a back alley.

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Sitting in the same bar and emptying my glass, I happened to hear these guys talking, sitting diagonally behind me
"Up to now if she just hooked like I told her, I gave her all the drugs she needed. But then she goes and says she won't do it any more. Well, one or two dead whores is par for the course. Tomorrow morning no-one will remember."
"That damn stupid woman and her taste for brandy"

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The smell of alcohol and blood and gunpowder reached right inside me

>

mixing all together in the middle of the screams like something splitting apart,
The barkeep yelling something at my back
"Jigii!!"
But that isn't my name, so I didn't turn around

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She'd picked the one-way ticket. But it wasn't to heaven or to hell, just to a world of nothing. I don't even have a ticket, so where am I to go? Where did I come from, who know all about blood and gunpowder and women's skin?
I haven't yet even found the truth of a full glass of whiskey.

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2. A weak point; indication of something outside the rules or the ordinary (some mark or sign)

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Me and the feather and the boy 1

The sky feels lousy today too

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There's this word, 'blue sky.' But who can doubt that this ash-gray color, faded, petrified, is what's normal now?
Why did we make this blank sky? Maybe to mock the transparency of that blue sky that was suddenly gone from us?

Pant pant pant

And I too wander from town to town as ever
Live through my random and inorganic days
Why did I lose my past? Could it have been to mock myself after all - like the blue sky that we discarded?

Voice: There he is!

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When I think to notice it
I'm always looking at the ground
Am I afraid of catching sight of my past? Or am I looking for the 'me' I dropped somewhere along the way
All I know is how low the sky feels and how near the ground is
(He sees a green feather lying on the ground and picks it up)
A feather from a 'bird'?
Boy: Uncle! Move!

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thud
Boy: Thank you.

When I looked up at the sky after so long something totally unexpected came falling out of it. Like that living thing called a 'bird' that this world lost when it lost its 'blue sky.'

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Me and the Feather and the Boy II
This boy, who dropped out of the sky. Me, who dropped my past somewhere along the way. A minute later the men who'd been chasing the boy showed up. Without thinking we took hands and ran away together. Because behind the boy's smile I thought I could see the 'blue sky' that should have been long gone

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Pant pant pant

Boy: I'm *tired!*
The fallen feather belonged to the boy. It's a valuable thing in this day and age. That's probably why the men were chasing him. "I'm Tit. Who are you?" I told him I don't have a name. Tit didn't say anything more, as if I hadn't said anything myself.
"You looking for something?"

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"A bird."
"Bird?"
"Have you ever seen one?"
"No... I thought they were extinct."
"Um. Everybody says that."
"...but you're still looking for one?"
"Well, there might still be some somewhere."

"They told me I'm named after a bird myself."
"Uncle?"
"Mh?"
"You got something you want to go looking for?"
"...Yeah. Probably."
"OK, let's look together,"
Tit said happily and smiled at me again. Talking about things that have disappeared, the blue sky and the birds and my own past are probably all about the same.
But we still have to look for them.
"You don't have a name, right? Then I'll give you one."
"Umm- ahh--"
"Stork."

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"What's that the name of?"
"One of those big birds with long legs."

(Stork stalks off)
"---Stork!!"
"...what?"
Under a sky without color, the two of us set out to find the things we'd lost.

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3. (archaic) A mark burned into the skin of slaves and criminals. A brand

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It's terribly dirty in there
Full of the smells of life and death
People, all different colors, giving off a smell like rotting garbage
The garbled words from their mouths like a radio that's almost dead
I feel just a little dizziness, a little dislike, a little drunkenness
And without lifting an eyebrow I...

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Tit: Stork!
Foggy Screen
...........
"You were having a bad dream."
"...Yeah."
"A nightmare?"
"Yeah, maybe."

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We met a month ago, this boy who's looking for a bird though all the birds have died out, and me who's looking for my past that I lost somewhere
He said he didn't have a home to go back to. I suppose I don't either.

It doesn't matter where we go, it doesn't matter how far we go, we can't get away from that gray sky. Still we go on wandering through this colorless world, like a cat looking for a place to die

(Tit holds up Stork's briefcase)
"Ne, Stork, is this important?"
"Why're you asking?"
"Well, you carry it everywhere you go."
"...I need it but it isn't important."
"Are things you need and things that are important different from each other?"
"...I don't know."

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"5,6... Thank you, that's it exactly."
"You're on a long trip? It's pretty dangerous around here. Traveling with a child will be tough for you, Father."
"Uhh--"

A passing man grabs the briefcase from Tit
"!? Hey-!!"

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Tit: Wait!!
Stork: Don't go after him, Tit!
Thief: pant pant
(looking in briefcase) Wow, look at that!
Tit: You give that back!!
Thief: Agh--!
(pulls knife)

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Stork: Tit!!

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Tit: Stork!!

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(Stork shoots the man in the leg instead.)
That day I woke up on a garbage heap.

(talking to Tit) "I had no memory. No nothing. Only this briefcase lying beside me.
...I don't know who it belonged to. All I had left to me was this mountain of paper money."
Gripping my hand hard, hard, giving me a gentle warmth and the faintest pain.
Your fingertips blamed me a little, and all I could do was squeeze your hand back, gently

Under an ash-gray sky that goes on forever, we two have no home to go back to. And so we can go anywhere at all.

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