Tryst Six Venom by Penelope Douglas

can I expect to do this for life?
“Well, break a leg,” she tells me.
I smile tightly, too afraid I’ll puke if I talk. She passes by in her black
jeans and flowing, white peasant’s blouse, a black military jacket with gold
buttons covering it, and her hair spilling down her back. I wish I could’ve
rewritten the script like I rewrote the set and costuming, but that was a fight
for another day.
I look down at my phone as if I’ll see something from Clay, but I won’t. I
still have her blocked.
Walking back into the dressing room, I pass the nurse—Evie Leong,
taking over my role—and tuck my phone away, heading out to the curtain.
Lifting the flap, I peer through the peep holes, watching the house get seated
as the lights dim.
The snow begins to fall, a perpetual night as the backdrop of the
Kingdom of New York looms on the horizon, and the swords are changed out
for bows and kung fu.
The audience quiets, the narrator enters from stage right, walking past the
audience, finishing her monologue just as she disappears into stage left. The
theater darkens, thunder cracks, and lightning glows behind the cathedral and
skyscrapers as the houses of Montague and Capulet enter crowded Central
Park.
Sampson and Gregory speak, bantering with each other. “Therefore, I will
push Montague’s men from the wall and thrust his maids to the wall!”
And then the other, “The quarrel is between our masters and us their
men.”
“’Tis all one,” Sampson replies. “I will show myself a tyrant. When I
have fought with the men, I will be civil with the maids; I will cut off their
heads.”
That line alone was what first got me thinking I wanted this role. I’d
enjoy entering stage and playing one of the production’s most enigmatic,
male characters and showing them that the ‘weaker’ sex would get a few cuts
in herself.
But standing here, watching the story play out, and my entrance grow
closer, it doesn’t feel like I thought it would.
I’m not even nauseous anymore. I peek out to the audience once more,
smiling when I see my brothers slouched and clearly bored, Army and Iron
sitting quietly, and Trace already asleep. Army will wake him when I come