"Evan; or, The Witch King of Belmont" by Chris Gonzalez

From TRUTH BE TOLD's September 25th, 2025 show ("Scary Monsters!") Chris Gonzalez's "Evan; or, The Witch King of Belmont" tells the story of a very damaged, very human monster stalking Portland, Oregon.

Chris Gonzalez is a playwright based in Brooklyn, NY, and Portland, OR. He is the playwright for the Portland Experimental Theater Ensemble. Last year, with PETE, he wrote The Americans and Cardiac Organ: A Goth Cabaret. Chris has been an Artist in Residence at CoHo Theater, and has taught devised physical theater at the School of Dance and Contemporary Thought and Portland Playhouse. He has also taught writing for Devised Theater at the Institute of Contemporary Performance. 

TRUTH BE TOLD was created by Susan Kim and David Zellnik and each episode was produced and scored by Eric Svejcar. Logo designed by Joseph Zellnik.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello and welcome to Truth Be Told Season 1, Love and Monsters. Each of these 14 episodes will feature one story performed at Ensemble Studio Theater in New York City as part of the live event Truth Be Told. This story night was created by Susan Kim and David Zelnick and features members of EST and friends who tell heartbreaking, embarrassing, hilarious, true stories based on a theme. This seven-week season draws from our first two sold-out evenings in 2025. First Love, First Lust, and Scary Monsters. And now, without further ado, a story of a damaged monster stalking Portland, Oregon, written and performed by Christopher Gonzalez.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

So I was walking to the weed store, and I was walking to the weed store, and I turned the corner onto Belma, and there he was. There it was, nameless and ancient, his face painted white, holding a five-inch long knife slash poker, with four crow feathers in his hair, radial like a corolla or crown that made him king-like. But he wasn't a king. He was a scary monster. Here's one way to tell if a person's a person or a scary monster. If they're smiling while they're scaring you, if the depth of your fear is proportionate to the height of their enjoyment. But so I turn the corner. By the way, I'm so baked. I'm so baked. Like, not only was I high, I was on my way to the weed store to get more weed to get more high. Which, when you're addicted to weed, the foreknowledge of more imminent weed is so comforting that you relax and feel safe in the knowledge that I can walk right down the street, right down Belmont, be back in ten minutes, and it's raining gently, and that's kind of nice. And ooh, and ah, but then bam! I turn the corner and a knife. And a nameless man with his face painted white, his hair dyed green. As I turn toward him, he's chanting in the rain that drips from the scaffolding above the storefront. He looks like a witch king with these intricate accessories adorning him in his nightcloak. He is a lanky, spider-like bride, spectral, strange, and smiling, with eyes wide and widening, as I he saw me be scared, and his eyes literally widened with joy. He was like that. And I think because he was seeing me seeing him exactly how he wanted. They say love and fear can't exist at the same time, but beauty and fear can. And in that moment did because his costume, it was beautiful. And didn't I uh wait? No, I know this guy, I know his handiwork, I've seen it before, his arts and crafts in Lone Fur Cemetery. I'd been walking three times a day through the cemetery since the pandemic started, and in recent weeks I'd seen crow feathers placed in creepily particular patterns on tree stumps, and I'd even seen some dead crows placed tenderly in clefts of trees or little sacred handmade graves next to twigs twisted into artworks that were scary and pretty. So scary and so pretty, in fact. I took pictures and brought them to the local like oddities store, you know, oddities like shit in jar, like fetuses in jars. So, the local oddity store on Belmont, and I held my phone up to the oddity woman's face, and I scrolled through all the dead crow pictures and I asked her, like, what does this mean? And she didn't take her eyes off the screen. Uh, and she called out for her husband who came out from the back, and he looked at the pictures and then looked at his wife. And they knew something they weren't telling me. Her husband, he said, Yeah, yeah, he uh he lives in the graveyard. And I said, Yeah! I know that. That's where I but not wanting to like betray some confidence, the husband just like walked back behind the curtain and his wife leaned in and said, My husband used to be a really big fan. And I'm like, of who? The namelessness of monsters for me is what adds to their fundamental terror. And when this nameless and yet familiar knife-wielding man started running at me, inside this split second, a series of scenes flash through my head. I saw him in his black veil, confiding to the dead at pre-dawn. I saw him, eyes red, white, makeup caked and cracked, cosmetics that gave him his power back. I saw him beckoning crows and felt his infinite focus as he laid their corpses on two impromptu altars, and I and then bam! Okay, wait, shit, fuck. I may be high, but I'm very fast. I'm so fast. So I ran, which didn't feel great to have to run away from a grown man, but I made it back home unstabbed. Um a pretty low bar to clear for. But the running away, the running away was hard for me to take because uh he clearly took me to be like a low-risk victim. And how had I made myself seem like prey? And I don't mind being afraid, I hate being made to feel afraid on purpose. So my revenge was research. I found out literally everything about this guy's life in like two days. Yeah. Okay, so here's what I found out about the witch king of Belmont. Okay, so one, he has a Reddit page dedicated to him called Knife Guy Portland. Look it up! So number two, he used to be a world-famous visual artist that like presented at Art Basil, and he's like this incredible, incredibly famous artist. Um, his mother uh killed herself when he was 11 years old. Number four, he developed schizophrenia and was addicted to fentanyl. Number five, his father killed himself earlier that year. Number six, he painted his face white so he would look less like his father. Number seven, he did have a name, and his name was Evan. My therapist, my therapist said I shouldn't refer to him as the witch king of Belmont, because it endows him with unnecessary cosmic power and it reifies him, and it makes him an arch nemesis in a fairy book tale. And I say, Yeah, but there is such a thing as malevolence, ancient and disembodied and floating around like Voldemort or Sauron, and it does take shape in human form from time to time. And I'm supposed to like what, because he's like good at drawing, or because his parents committed suicide, I'm supposed to what? Only focus on his humanity? I don't know. My therapist was probably right, but also one cop told me that Evan could turn off being crazy when talking to the cops, which makes me feel less bad about hating him. Because it makes me feel like he's a monster. But no, uh, he's not. He's just Evan. Evan having a hard time. I don't know Evan, or maybe I know him really well, but I don't like Evan. I think I'm pretty sure I don't like Evan. But it's been five years and I can't really tell. Thank you all.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

Chris Gonzalez is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York, and Portland, Oregon. He is the playwright for the Portland Experimental Theater Ensemble and is currently writing an adaptation of the Seagull that will debut at Portland Center Stage in June. Truth Be Told was created by Susan Kim and David Zelnick, and each episode was produced and scored by Eric Svagar. If you enjoyed this, please tell your friends and keep listening. More stories of love and lust will be released every Monday and scary monsters every Thursday. And do hit like and subscribe, it really helps. Till next time, remember Truth Wants to be known. Yours too.