I was slipping away, that’s what it felt like. Life was leaving me, but I wasn’t afraid. Then I remembered: “There was something I was meant to do, somewhere I was meant to be.” I was in the blue horizon between heaven and earth.
The days were unchanging and every night I dream the same dream. The smell of damp earth. The scream no one heard. The sound of my heart beating like a hammer against cloth and I would hear them calling, the voices of the dead. I wanted to follow them to find a way out but I would always come back to the same door.
And I was afraid. I knew if I went in there I would never come out again. Nobody, nobody notices when we leave. I mean, the moment when we really choose to go. At best you might feel a whisper, or the wave of a whisper, undulating down.
My name is Salmon, like the fish. First name: Susie. I was 14 years old, when I was murdered, on December 6, 1973. I was here for a moment. And then I was gone. I wish you all a long and happy life.
This is a Dramatic Monologue called “Lovely Bones” performed by Maddie Howard.
Watch her video on YouTube. She was born in 1997, so she would have been 17 there. An impressive performance! The text is from “The Lovely Bones” by Alice Sebold.
“Susie Salmon, a young girl, narrates her murder and her journey in an in-between world, reflecting on her life and the lives of her family from a unique perspective.”
Here’s a clip “Susie Salmon | She’s dead isn’t she?” The last line is also the last line of this performance. And here’s the trailer for the film The Lovely Bones (2009).
My addition to all of this is, unfortunately, a bit mediocre. The YouTube performance is what it is, a powerful monologue, and with my music pattern behind it, it’s… something else.