Maxine a 23-year-old female stumbles onto stage releasing a rather robust cough.

Walking towards a mirror she tosses hair back from her face. Facing the mirror with a confrontational glare her legs shake erratically, knees knocking. She presents a daily self-affirmation to the mirror.

Maxine:

“Little tornado, little tornado. Hit the fucker where it hurts. Wipe that smug cackle off the cunts face. Hail the hurricane. Fuck social graces. Lace up that temperament a little more. Little tornado show them all who owns the floor”. 

Maxine steps back then motions rapidly towards the mirror almost headbutting it. Clicking her neck and head back to a more civilised poise she addresses the audience.

Maxine: 

To you, that type of address may seem freaky, even moderately fucked up. But if your life until a week ago was ….timidly monstrous; you’d know why battling the mirror is essential to every day.

The choice that tamed my monster, monsters I guess…. began with a Ruby Tuesday of a dog mauling. On our bench laid a note that pleasantly read. “Gone to Jonnies, Kiah’s with me. Jonny has kids. I want bacon bones for dinner”. A typical Bruce note to the point yet downplaying the reason for their father-son expedition; to lead our dog Switchblade to his final resting place for the sake of a prize pool. That’s how Bruce rolled, model father to one, himself.

At Jonnies corrugated iron sheep shed I found a ring within the cluster of thugs and underage girls. There lay a black devil-eyed Rottweiler courting a patch bling-chain. And there was Bruce….munged and mulled out of his brain.

“Where the fucks switchblade eh”? “And our son is?”

Bruce pointed to Kiah playing with broken off beer can caps; some povo version of matchsticks or marbles. He muttered

“Switchblade did our family proud, he fought with pride”.

Before displaying that staunch upwards chin look and pointing to his warrior….all carcass and simmering into the remains of a bomb fire.

“I have no mana over that. I’m disgusted that I let a fuck-pig like you share my bed. Get one of those rookie suction twats on the block over there to cook you those bacon bones”.

I stormed out, not before looping back to grab that mongrels patch. I held it above my head screaming erratically, “Victory, victory, victory!!” Whilst poking my tongue out repetitively like some Poi E girl.

I awoke relatively peachy yet I still re-scheduled my first New Zealand Lager of the day from 10am to 8am. Sitting on our deck staring at our backyard filled with junk and recycling I projected a vision of a Garden of Eden. A place far from where I was. Reality jerked me as I heard Kiah searching for a lunchbox. I decided to be maternal and make him some jam and cheese sammies for kindy. You see as a mother sure I’ve made lasting mistakes. His home may seem like a sports tavern, but I do try, for him. To understand the importance of Kiah to me all you need to do is look at my upbringing. My folks fled my brothers and me when I was eight…..choosing the highlife… a childless existence over us. We didn’t quite get to live the Party of Five sibling existence; instead, I found myself in my own clichéd ‘Full House’ scenario at Claudia and Tiki’s. It was a home where at one point in every day a Tanner family hug moment sprouted. For the most part, it was pretty ace. Yet as tampons parachuted from bedposts a desire to know my abandoners and solve the two dollar shop Rubix Cube that was my family unit… consumed me. That’s how I found that baboon of a cunt Bruce. It’s pretty naff but Bruce was a friend of my real dads and when we began I thought he was the key to my folk’s backstory. A saviour to my Annie complex. Yet he was more of a domestic warden. One who offered years of kisses with fists and tongues of malice as a reward for non-compliance.

Anyway cut that TV Movie… I opened Kiah’sbackpackk to discover Bruce had used him as a Gunja mule. This time a public erratic outburst would not do. Revenge and a train trek to the city to offload Bruces kinder surprise fund was the scrotum cruncher.

Karangahape rd was my first stop. This place filled me with faith… on this road anyone had the choice to flaunt who-ever they wanted to be. The trannys were a treat for the stoned eye, shouting with a larger than life vigour while holding their brick clad handbags with a staunch edge. Yet I knew I could crack whatever was nestled in those y-fronts. Post K Rd I tertiary accounted the student littered Albert Park, tin-foiled the trust fund Muppet babies of High Street and got Kea pecked right down to my G by the eyes of Ponsonby road. My city stopover was a success but beneath my sniggers at all things metropolitan I ached for my own change of pace.

On my return another post it note of my artless parenting sat cross legged on my front lawn reading an issue of Harpers Bizarre, insect repellent by her side.

“No mace today Claude”?

Claudia my frivolously bourgeois adopted mother ignored my comment, instantly smothering Kiah before pulling a trolley load of groceries from her car. While smug stares were always part and parcel the joy that a Claudia visit filled Kiah with made tolerating Nina Garcia’s tusks worthwhile. Post reading Kiah a book she began battling with dishes, nattering about my kitchens flaws.  After giving Kiah his respiratory ventilation pump; a side effect of my healthy pregnancy regime of reduced smoking, tailored drinking and portioned pot. I noticed Claudia was missing. I found her outside kneeled under our clothesline on a patch of grass, head in her hands…wailing almost. When she raised her face she merely muttered.

“I should have been there more for you”. Instantly I realized where  I was and what I always knew.

“You were a mother to me Mum, I may not have let you be one, but you were my mother”.

Today’s visit from Claudia did not disgruntle me. It highlighted my mistakes with a vibrant pink fluro. The adopted nest that I fled as a teen was the rimu tree that I should have returned to the moment my urine turned a piece of plastic into Kiah.

The night was not yet done with me however. After putting Kiah to bed the period, pardon the pun crept out. I’ve coined this moment, when blood stained carpet spoke back to me. It was business as usual in our mouldy wonderland. Pot fumes intoxicated me as I left Kiah’s room and a new round of tongue boxing began.

“You started driving that spot the second I left the room. Sigmund the fuck’n pot monster”. Bruce’s chatter-rings of dominance began to rattle. Bullshit like….

“My house… My rules are binding. If I want to party I can”.

The partygoers moved on, he planned to exit too. As he prepared to leave the kitchen he scoffed at me “later offal hole”.

I picked up a hot spot knife cementing it flatly into his neck.

“So how does it feel to be cattle marked?”

It felt so fuck’n liberating. A hustle began. Shoving…screaming…we somehow moved to the hallway. I gave a final blow.

“Don’t take your hibernating erection complex out on me Pops”.

His fist connected with my face. I fell. I heard the footsteps of his exit …front door slammed shattering the glass pane. Pain sinks in….not from his fancy fist work but awful stomach pain. The carpet begins to speak.

“To busy sipping from the nectar of a can and the head of a bong to realise you were murdering one of your own…”.

A pool of blood lay beneath me… I screamed so loud, the silence of our empty home silenced my screams…No neighbours knock… To them this is the nightly static of us…

A child was on the way and I was oblivious. Nothing numbs you more than a death at birth. But to do it alone….your son being cradled by a nurse…that’s an amber alert that broadcasts through every crevice of you.

Blood dried and I ran. I got dropped at the top of that gravel drive. Through the darkness I walked its windy turns, Kiah asleep on my back. As the fists and demons, bruises and bad choices parted the New Zealand lager sea the beaconing light from Claudia and Tiki’s front porch drew me to its hope.

Claudia opened my knock, silk night gown clad. Face no longer wearing that Meryl Streep scowl of disapproval. She opened her arms, holding me with the kind of warmth given to me as a child when that mutant from The Goonies kept haunting my dreams. I sat on their deck all night…. Watching my head full of wishes stretch across the star riddled rural sky. …Lying in the land that I came from…..this place that was chosen for me all those years ago. It somehow felt right…like my own choice of step ladder to lead me towards a new life. I knew that here beneath the willows; immersed in those hillsides of nothingness… that I Maxine Ruakura could be a pretty choice mother to my little monster…And that at home on the branches of Claudia and Tiki’s family tree I could honestly be all that I could be.

I monologue performed by Virginia Frankovich as part of the Monster Monologues theatre showcase. 

Written by Samuel Elliot Snowden