The Bishop of Bones Scene

(HEROD wanders on, coming to a chapel in the fog. As he approaches, he notices with building horror that it is made completely of bones arranged perfectly, none out of place.)

HEROD: What vision is this? Another nightmare to haunt me?

(He enters. There is an empty altar flanked by tall bone candelabra, behind which there is a throne, like the rest of the chapel, made of skeletal remains. On the throne sits the BISHOP OF BONES, dressed in the pure white regalia of a bishop of Catholic church and wearing an obviously rubber skull mask. He is holding an infant's skeleton as one would hold a live child, mumbling to it gibberish in low, dark tones.)

HEROD: You there, masked one, I command you to speak! Where am I, and what is this horrible place?

BISHOP: (ignoring him) Ah a child, a child, a child!
How beautiful one can be:
Free and innocent and loving and kind,
passion's rewards set free!

HEROD: A child? But that child is dead! It is only a skeleton, a shell, a leftover.

BISHOP: (staring at HEROD beneath his mask) Of course, of course it is dead!
How else should a child exist?
Or do you think the rules say otherwise,
deep in this land of mist?

HEROD: (frightened) What...what do you mean? Explain yourself, at once!

BISHOP: The best kind of children are those deceased,
which is what you seem to believe;
otherwise you wouldn't have killed them all
and given your people reason to grieve!

HEROD: But Zahr read the stars and...

BISHOP: (standing and passionate) The stars are silent I must declare,
For they have never spoke to me
and I am a Bishop, of all things,
which I consider blasphemy.

HEROD: What are you saying? What are the words you speak? Has my own trusted advisor, my friend and confidante, lied to me?

BISHOP: (gives a hollow laugh) What is truth anyway?
What importance does it suggest?
When ruling a nation, what does it mean
when truth is impaled through the chest?

It is to a fool I speak,
that doesn't understand his sin,
and when the thirteenth hour strikes
you have no hope to win.

HEROD: A FOOL? I am no fool! I am not the one holding some dead... thing to my chest as if it were alive!

BISHOP: So you say, so you say,
but you do not seem to comprehend
that this infanticide will be your ruin
when your once benevolent reign will end.

But here, as a parting gift,
to say for you I have done naught!
The child you truly deserve
with blood and sword you have bought!

(He dashes the skeleton to the ground where it collapses on impact; the earth shakes and the chapel collapses around HEROD as he attempts to protect himself from the ruin; the BISHOP fades away into the darkness laughing.)