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"Never Bet The Devil Your Head"

by Edgar allen Poe

Adaptation for radio by D. Chapelle

An Excerpt:

CYRUS: I am afraid I must dine and be off as I must still provide my dear Yvonne her lunch.
SIMON: So you must be leaving?
CYRUS: Soon, but we’ll still have ample time for a convivial luncheon.
SIMON: We will?
CYRUS: Think of it, my mon ami. All of those mornings we’ve taken the elevator to our floor, and all those times we’ve walked to our respective offices I could have just as easily extended my hand in friendship to you as you to me.
SIMON: We work in the same office building?
CYRUS: Well, of course we do. We work on the same floor. How else could we be neighbors?
SIMON: I’m sorry. I thought you meant … I thought you meant you lived next door to me.
CYRUS: But I do live next door to you, Mr. Dodger. We are neighbors of commerce. For a third of our lives we are neighbors. It should not have taken us this long to sit down and break bread together. I just regret, truly regret, it must happen with such a dark cloud hanging over me.
SIMON: I’m sorry for … for your misfortune?
CYRUS: It’s a tragedy really. It is truly a tragedy. In this day and age the word is tossed around so frivolously. This disaster is dubbed a tragedy, and that horrid event is proclaimed a tragedy and … and it’s all just so much balderdash. Not the disaster or the horrid events, mind you, but the naming of them as tragedy.
SIMON: And how would you define a tragedy?
CYRUS: You need hubris my friend. Without hubris one cannot have tragedy. Pride goeth before the fall, Mr. Dodger. Satan thought himself as great as God; this hubris cast him into the pit. Oedipus thought himself all powerful and his hubris led him to murder his father and sleep with his very own mother. Do you see?
SIMON: And what tragic event has touched you?
CYRUS: The death of my dearest friend Toby Dammit.
SIMON: I’m … I’m sorry for your loss.
CYRUS: Had you known Mr. Dammit you’d know it was not that much of a loss. Toby Dammit had the distinction and the curse of being a free spirit.
SIMON: Once again, I am … I’m most sorry for your loss.
CYRUS: You are so kind.