Character QnA: Vivian and Muerto

Host. Vivian Belladonna and Muerto Luz are lead investigators for the Colorado Supernatural Investigators Team, or C.S.I.T., as you call it.

Muerto: Yes, because, you see, you sit, and you see better.

Host: That’s Cute.

Muerto: It is true!

Host: You have over four-hundred thousand subscribers that watch your weekly ghost-hunting videos.

Muerto: Also true.

Host: I can imagine that you have seen some scary stuff. Yes?

Vivian: (smiling) Oh, it’s so wonderful.

Muerto: Yes.

Host: To make your videos, you go searching for scary spaces. With this in mind, what is your greatest fear?

Muerto: I’ll go first. For me, personally, my greatest fear is that my beloved with become suddenly bored with me and go running off with a more adventurous man.

Vivian: Never! My love.

Muerto: It is true, mi amor, that is was I am always keeping her on her toes, no? Eh?

Vivian: (giggling) It’s true.

Host: So, Vivian, what are you afraid of.

Vivian: Well, for me, I’m afraid, that I will wake up one day, and all of this will go away. That, all of my loves are just a dream.

Host: That’s profound.

Muerto: Yes it is, and that’s why I love her. She’s the beautiful dreamer. I’m more of a pragmatist.

Vivian: No, babe, I’m definitely more pragmatic than you.

Muerto: In a sense, yes.

Vivian: No, like, in all senses.

Muerto: I guess, then, that I am the dreamer after all.

Vivian: It’s just better that way.

Host: What is the craziest thing that you have done?

Vivian: I married this fool (elbowing Muerto). For context, I was a naive catholic girl with Italian parents, a psyche major from Rutgers. Then, this young Latino Adonis busts into my life talking about ghosts, spiritual dimensions, psychedelic drugs. He was the spring wind in my life that brought the rain and the flowers. He remains the shaman in my life that renews my spirit when I feel lost.

Muerto: You are being too kind, mi amor. Let our host think that I am some kind of scoundrel, no?

Host: And you, Muerto? What is the crazy thing that you have done?

Muerto: (thinking for a while in silence) I would have to say… it was when my colleagues and I were rafting along the Putumayo river in search of an isolated medicine woman. We were in still waters when our raft capsized, and we had to swim to shore without our supplies. There was no shore, only roots, and snakes. We climbed up the tangle of Mangrove roots and found that we had leaches all over our bodies. Well, unfortunately, our matches were all wet, and all the leaves and sticks were wet, so not fire. So, we had to hike through the jungle, with snakes at our feet, mosquitoes, and leaches on our skin and faces, and without our supplies.

Host: Geez, that sounds horrible.

Muerto: But it get’s worse. These tribal villagers found us days later, hungry, no sleep, with vomit on our beards. They told us the only way to get the leaches off was through their ritual cleansing. They were joking with us, of course, but we didn’t know it at the time. We’re were just more dumb Americans to them. I drank a dark, smelly, and bitter tea, as instructed by their medicinal elders. And then, I died.

Host: You died?

Muerto: Yes, it is true.

Host: But you are still here?

Muerto: Like the butterfly from the cocoon of the caterpillar, yes, I am still here.

Host: That sounds… pretty crazy.

Muerto: Mi amigo, the craziest part is what I can not tell you, because words simply can not describe some experiences.

Host: Was the tea, like, a drug or something?

Muerto: (smiling), Oh, the tea was purely divine.

Host: So, who are the most important people in your lives?

Muerto: Oh, is it not obvious?

Host: Not to the audience that can only read this. FYI, they are now holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes. How about, excluding those of us in the room, who are the most important…

Vivian: No, we answered that question. Next?

Host: Yes ma’am. If you could have dinner with any person, dead or alive, fact or fiction, who would it be?

Muerto: Terence McKenna.

Vivian: I would want to find a medicine woman that lived around forty-thousand years ago and study her ways.

Host: That’s curious, Vivian.

Vivian: Not really, I mean, maybe for an institutional domesticate.

Host: A what?

Vivian: An institutional domesticate: someone bred by institutions to reproduce institutions. See, as modern people, we are groomed by institutions to reproduce institutions, and we are not generally aware of the universe of information, of wild knowledge about ourselves and our environments, that was discovered by our pre-institutionalized ancestors.

Host: Can you explain?

Vivian: Sure. Where do you get your food? From institutions. Where do you get your knowledge? From institutions. Money? Medicine? Jobs? Religions? Institutions. You don’t stop to wonder where ancient, pre-institutionalized people got their food, medicine, where they found their spirits and spiritual identities, before some institution told you what to believe.

Host: Fair point. Next question. What are your dream jobs?

Vivian: Well, given that I own the company, if I had dreamed of anything better, I would be doing that instead.

Host: Muerto?

Muerto: I sometimes imagine myself back in the Putomayo, searching for the dark mysteries of the jungle. The tangled web of life has its own spirits, and the jungle, untouched by human hands, contains the most primitive spirits.

Vivian: But… that’s not really a job, ya know? No one is paying you for that.

Muerto: Not yet, anyway. Baby, we’ll talk when we reach one million subscribers.

Host: Final question. Who do you both admire? Not each other, please, because that’s obvious.

(long pause)

Muerto: Know who I admire? I admire the indigenous people of this nation, and the First Nations people of Canada. They put up with so much kaka, excuse me, they survive generations of historical trauma under white colonial hegemony to carry their traditions into the future. Where there is resistance, I see power. Marvelous.

Host: Thank you, Muerto. Vivian?

Vivian: I’m going to make this simple. I’ll tell you who I admire. I admire Mandy.

Host: Mandy… the show producer?

Vivian: Hell yeah the show producer. To put up with all of us? That woman deserves an Oscar. You hear me, girlfriend?

Muerto: No, she can’t hear you right now.

Vivian: I know, Sherlock. I was just being expressive.

Muerto: You should, maybe, tell her sometime.

Vivian: What?

Muerto: What you just said.

Vivian: I do! Like, a gazillion times.

Muerto: Not when I’m around. It’s just, Mandy do this, Mandy do that. You blame Mandy for the cold coffee, Mandy blames me. No one told me I was responsible for the coffee. Besides, I drink la yerba mate.

Vivian: You and your (explicit) yerba mates. Geez, just drink coffee like a man.

Muerto: Stanley likes the mate. Christoph likes the mate. It is just you and Mandy that want the coffee.

Vivian: Gary prefers coffee too.

Muerto: Gary is the only single hetero-male in our group.

Vivian: And?

Muerto: It is not surprising that he wants to be among the ladies.

Host: Okay, that’s all for now. Thank you Vivian and Muerto for taking the time to join us this evening.

Muerto: Well, he does have an eye for Mandy. I thought that was obvious.

Vivian: Okay, too far. We need to end this before we get everyone in trouble.

Muerto’s theme song:
https://youtu.be/YkADj0TPrJA