FEMALE PROTAGONIST:

 

What are we even doing here angry ghost lady? You don’t really wanna kill me.

No…no. I hear you, I do. I hear you groaning and creaking… stop

that, please…crawl out here where I can see you, okay? Or you could stay

there. Okay, just stay–I know. I know you can kill me. You never forgive.

You never forget. Yep. But… hear me out: it’s the patriarchy you should

be worried about. That’s right I said it.

 

See this–all of this is exactly what the white man wants. No offense, but

by the looks of you I don’t think integration was a big thing in your time.

Women fighting women. I’m trying to exorcise you, you’re trying to drown me

at the bottom of a marsh surrounded by water-rotted wind up toys, all the

while forgetting how we got here. Forgetting who THE REAL enemy is. No-

hey, you leave that lightbulb alone! I want to look at your face. Oh god!

I mean, let me guess what happened to you: your husband left you when you

found out you were unable to have children and left alone you hung

yourself, or maybe he killed you or took away your children, or maybe your

father locked you away way out here so no one knew his daughter was crazy.

maybe you had to take care of your poor old dad–maybe he hit the Laudanum.

Maybe he hit you? Or maybe as a girl with no prospects you had to come up

to this place as a governess only to be raped and then killed by your

employer? Who knows? Who can say what horrible things happened to you? But

what I do know is this: it sure as hell wasn’t a woman who did it to

you. It was the patriarchy. They are setting you up to be so fixated on

people like me wandering into your midst so that you’re too distracted to

really take vengeance on what actually got you here.

 

You’re angry and that’s okay. It really is. Hell, I’m angry too. I’m angry I

got tricked into buying this property. I’m angry that your property was so

cheap. You–you deserve more you angry female-identifying Casper. I’d kill

people too. You’re shamed, hurt, trapped. Your story is the story of women

everywhere: discounted, pushed to the shadows—

 

Yeah? Okay- yeah, I get it, I shouldn’t make jokes.

 

Wow, yeah, that is a really nice wind up monkey. But the point is, you can stop it.

 

Come, take my hand, you and I and we could leave this place. Think about

it, you and I. Possess me, travel over the water like a ghoul. I don’t know

how you travel, but come on, think about it! We could be unstoppable! You be

bad ghost, I be the rhetoric–we could change the world. I mean god, how

many people have you killed? Think about how all that drive could be

focused on shattering the glass ceiling and I know you like shattering

glass. I mean, think of all the bogs you could see. I know you’d LOVE New

York. Is that a smile I see–yeah? Let’s forget about this and, you know, be

a real example and have a healthy female friendship, we’ll go back to my

place and we’ll watch Mean Girls and–

 

Oh, shit–damn it, you’re still gonna kill me aren’t–

*

Katy Koop is a recent graduate from Meredith College with degrees in English and Theatre. She currently works at a movie theatre by day and tries to do theatre and get freelance writing jobs by night (also Netflix and general internet procrastination by night). She has a website at katykoop.com and can be found trying to be funny or trying desperately to get advice from celebrities on twitter with the handle @katykooped.