Scene Nine

Nobody Loves Me? / I Have You, Nobody

Song 9 — “Nobody Loves Me? / I Have You, Nobody”
▶ open on Suno ↗

Circe kept her word and sent them down — and the Underworld is a SUBWAY. Not gloom: blinding fluorescent light, appalling cleanliness, the tile gleaming, the bread smell eternal, the "SANDWICH ARTIST" sign humming. Hell is spotless and open 24 hours. The crew — human again, restored, but hunted and starving — stumbles in. In the last booth, alone under the brightest light, with an untouched footlong and a thousand-yard stare: AGGIE. A shade. The quarterback who won everything.

The stage splits. STAGE RIGHT — a precinct / the streets: ATHENA, and bearing down on her, the CHIEF OF POLICE — her own uncle, and Poly's father — sirens spinning up, the whole force mobilizing because the Cyclops filed a complaint about his eye. Athena stands between the manhunt and her boy.

THE SUBWAY

OZZY (stopping dead) — ...Aggie? Aggie, is that you? You threw the party of the century. You had Helen on your arm, you had the whole—

AGGIE (not looking up, hollow) — Had. (pushes the footlong an inch) She left by Sunday, Oz. Said a trophy's got no conversation. (finally looks at him — wrecked) I won it all. And I'm eatin' a footlong alone in the brightest room in hell.

ATHENA, stage right, turns out as the sirens rise — and the two songs begin to braid.

♪ Song 9 — “Nobody Loves Me? / I Have You, Nobody”

THE WARNING (mid-number, Aggie grabs Ozzy's sleeve)

AGGIE — Listen to me, Nobody. You got a girl back home? A real one? Then you RUN. Don't do what I did — don't chase the trophy, don't take the long way. Get home to the one who loves you before the underworld gets you first.

(This is the pivot of the whole show. Ozzy's flaw — the long way, the horizon over the porch light [Scene 3] — is spoken back to him by the ghost of a man it destroyed. From here, Ozzy stops wandering. He drives for home.)

Button. Red-and-blue lights wash the spotless Subway. "Go, Nobody — go NOW — I've got you," Athena calls across the split; the crew BOLTS for the doors. AGGIE doesn't move — alone in the brightest, cleanest hell, with his footlong. "...nobody loves me." / "...I have you." Blackout — but the fluorescent hum stays on a beat too long. Ozzy leaves the Underworld with a heading at last: home. And a whole police force, driven by a god with a grudge, now behind him.