SCENE 1

                                                                                  Lights up. ELIZABETH, a 30-something, tired
                                                                                  looking woman in an old fashioned skirt, stands at a
                                                                                  grocery store check out. She places a basket
                                                                                  containing some apples and a box of Strawberry
                                                                                  Shortcake band-aids on the conveyor belt. A bored
                                                                                  looking cashier scans the box of band-aids.

                                                                           ELIZABETH
Oh! I have a coupon for those!

                                                                                  ELIZABETH hands CASHIER a coupon. CASHIER
                                                                                  squints at coupon.

                                                                          CASHIER
Ma’am, this expired in 1993.

                                                                          ELIZABETH
Oh, I’m well aware. My mother gave it to be. Handed it to me when I skinned my knee on the pavement and told me to buy some more plasters. I never did though. I’m sure you could’ve guessed that from the coupon! I’m still bleeding now, actually.

                                                                                   ELIZABETH lifts her skirt, her knee is bleeding
                                                                                   profusely.

Do you see the scar? I got it when I was 5. I fell off my bike and skidded down the road for miles. The skin is just... gone now. Lying somewhere in the road. I wonder... if I found it again, if I could reach out and touch it? Would that skin be more real than the skin I’m wearing? Or would I not deserve to touch that skin either? I didn’t even want to ride my bike in the first place. I wanted to stand in the grass and photosynthesize but my mother told me to go and move around like how kids my age SHOULD. Trees are strong. Trees have bark, not skin. I wanted to be a tree. Ash to be specific. Now I think I just want to BE ash. I don’t want my body anymore. I don’t want autonomy. I don’t want to be able to touch my own flesh. I shouldn’t be able to feel my own skin. It’s not my skin to feel. I don’t deserve skin, I don’t think. Either way, sorry, I’m bleeding all over your nice establishment, I didn’t have any band-aids at home. Would you mind applying one for me? I don’t like touching my own skin.

                                                                                  CASHIER starts scanning the apples.

Apples? I thought I bought oranges. I like oranges better. They’re sweeter. They’re citrus. They’re acid running through my veins, dissolving me slowly one bit at a time. One acre of skin at a time. You peel them, painfully. In strips. Until they’re nothing but pulp and innards and intestines, sweet and sticky.

                                                                         CASHIER
Would you like to trade them out for oranges instead?

                                                                         ELIZABETH
Oh, no! I’m allergic to oranges. They make me break out. I get hives all over my arms and the itch so bad I just scratch and scratch until I’m a bleeding mess— and you know how much I hate touching my own skin!

                                                                         CASHIER
That’ll be $14.50 ma’am. Do you want the apples in a bag or to go?

                                                                         ELIZABETH
In the bag please, I don’t like touching the skin.

                                                                                   CASHIER places the apples in a bag and hands
                                                                                   them to ELIZABETH. CASHIER takes a single
                                                                                   band-aid out of the box. ELIZABETH smiles. Lights                                                                                    down.