Chosen theme: whatever crap came into my half-delusional mind.
I. Super-cali-fragi-listic-expi-ali-docious from Mary Poppins
She might as well be speaking gibberish for all that he hears. It isn't for lack of trying. He wants very much to hear each honeyed syllable falling from her lips, taste it in all its sweet glory, but he gets distracted merely by the sound, and forgets to hear the meaning of the words.
"Benjamin?" Lucy asks with a melodic laugh and a tap upon his shoulder. "You're not listening to me at all, are you?"
He smiles.
II. Bye Bye Bye by N*SYNC
He couldn't do it. He had to leave.
Certainly Benjamin didn't want to be sent to Australia, forced to leave behind his family, all that was worth living for.
But if he stayed, if he were forced to spend one final day staring into that stoic mask of a face – those eyes like the calculating ones of a vulture, always analyzing, always planning, always cruel – then he knew that he too would turn into something hard and unfeeling. Something that would lust for blood.
Benjamin did not want to become that man, and he knew he would if not forced to leave London. So perhaps it was a blessing in disguise.
III. Big Rock Candy Mountain by Tom Chapin
The lash of the prison guards burns like fire. Maybe worse. He wouldn't know. He's never experienced fire. It's one of the few horrors he's been blessed enough not to meet face to face as of yet. The only hell he does not know.
xxx
From the way she screams when he throws her into her oven, the flames must hurt just as much as the prison lash. The thought makes him smile.
IV. Prima Donna from Phantom of the Opera
"If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times – "
"Have a heart, dear," Lucy wheezes, grasping Nellie's hands in the shriveled things that pass for her own fingers.
Nellie wrenches away and flaps the dishtowel at her. "I told you. I don't have any money for you – or for myself, much less."
"Witch!" Lucy shrieks, cowering as she flees. "Witch!"
Oh, if only she were. Then this woman would be gone from her life and Benjamin would be home again and Nellie Lovett might actually be happy.
V. Council Meeting (Instrumental) from Pocahontas
Benjamin spits upon the street and watches as his spittle and blood mingles with the sewer water. He hates biting his tongue and tasting blood. He vows to never taste it again.
VI. Number One by John Legend
It isn't adultery if it's two different people than were originally married.
That's what Nellie Lovett tells herself, anyway.
She can't be considered as leading him into committing adultery. He's not Benjamin, after all. If there's one thing he's certain about amidst all the uncertainties in his wretched life, it's that fact. And Lucy's certainly not who she once was either.
They wouldn't be married now, not this monster and a madwoman. So she being in his bed instead of his precious Lucy – it's no sin.
Not that she could stop even if it was.
VII. Someday by All-4-One
Someday, the judge promises himself as he watches her through the window. When she sees him, she instantly turns away, tears spilling from her eyes, the rose-petal lips pursed in a bud that refuses to bloom. No matter.
Someday, she will be his.
xxx
Someday, the barber promises himself as he sweats out in the field. The guard's lash periodically flicks out in the air like a snake's tongue, waiting for one of the prisoners to blunder.
Someday, he will escape this hell and return to his beautiful family.
xxx
Someday, the wife promises herself as she again turns away from the window, shaking, nauseous. He will return. He must.
He can't.
She grabs the arsenic vial.
Someday isn't going to come.
VIII. You Can't Win by Michael Jackson
Lucy is dead.
He can cut as many throats as he pleases. He can stare out the window for as many hours as there are in a day and beyond. He can gaze at her picture or hurl bodies into the bakehouse or curse the God he no longer believes in.
It doesn't matter. She will still be gone.
Sometimes he wonders why he still bothers. Sometimes he wonders why his own throat is still whole.
Death would be easier. Death would bring rest. Respite.
But he does not deserve that. Not when he abandoned her as he did. It isn't much, what he does for her each day, but he does it willingly, because it's all he can give her and it still isn't enough and he'll make every being there is bleed upon the earth before admitting that she's indifferent to the sacrifice.
IX. Molokov and Anatoly from Chess the Musical
Johanna is a prisoner.
The judge is the jailer. Yet her mind consists of the bars.
Fifteen years locked in his mansion. She didn't know how good she had it until she was thrown into the asylum.
Asylum. A word meaning sanctuary, rest.
How far from the truth.
Maybe she would appreciate the irony of the word if she didn't have to hear the screams all night long.
X. Let Me Entertain You from Gypsy
Toby Ragg sometimes doesn't know if he has it worse now or if he had it worse at the workhouse.
But whenever he begins to wonder, his stomach decides for him. At least Pirelli feeds him more than cold gruel.
His lungs chime in too. At least he gets to breathe in fresh air while doing these sideshow stops.
So when two pale-faced, smirking crowd members begin to challenge this new life of his, declaring Pirelli a sham, it's all he can do to hold it together.
Sham or not, his money is not fake.