The Accident
A one-act play detailing the terminal joyride and subsequent death of a 1987 Ford Scorpio, the only car I will ever love.
CAST:
TB: An ambitious college student, home for the summer after a tumultuous and long freshman year. He is bearded, and somewhat imposing. His hair is an electrical storm.
The Family: An assorted crew of sisters, mothers, and fathers, they support TB in times of need and danger.
(Curtain rises. We are on a highway, heading towards the city of Baltimore from a suburban exit in a 1987 luxury sedan. The sedan is missing a cylinder and is barely pushing fifty. One can only assume that, at this stage, it is kept alive solely through the affection of its passengers.
Suddenly, without warning, the hood of the car unlatches from its frame, lifts up with the wind, and slams into the windshield, cracking the glass into a sea of jagged lines and arcs. Against the brown of the hood, it looks like a nebula.)
TB: !
(He pulls to the side of the road, and notifies his family. Within minutes, they arrive.)
The Family (in choreographed unison): Are you okay?
TB: Yeah, a little shaken.
(Everyone hugs. TB's father finds a bungee cord in the backseat and ties the hood to the frame. TB drives the car home. It is left in the driveway for a week, and then sent to a junker. The junker processes it and sends it to a landfill. Over time, the landfill grows, and grows, and grows, until it topples into the sea. The leftover battery acid poisons the world's water supply, killing all humans. They are replaced by robots, then dinosaurs, then mammals, then a race of super Neo-Humans, then robots again. More time passes. Soon the world ends, and then the solar system, and then the galaxy, and then the universe itself is sucked into a giant hole of nothingness. After thirteen billion years, all is silent again. Curtain.)
With perhaps the removal of a few expletives, that's pretty much exactly how it happened.
CAST:
TB: An ambitious college student, home for the summer after a tumultuous and long freshman year. He is bearded, and somewhat imposing. His hair is an electrical storm.
The Family: An assorted crew of sisters, mothers, and fathers, they support TB in times of need and danger.
(Curtain rises. We are on a highway, heading towards the city of Baltimore from a suburban exit in a 1987 luxury sedan. The sedan is missing a cylinder and is barely pushing fifty. One can only assume that, at this stage, it is kept alive solely through the affection of its passengers.
Suddenly, without warning, the hood of the car unlatches from its frame, lifts up with the wind, and slams into the windshield, cracking the glass into a sea of jagged lines and arcs. Against the brown of the hood, it looks like a nebula.)
TB: !
(He pulls to the side of the road, and notifies his family. Within minutes, they arrive.)
The Family (in choreographed unison): Are you okay?
TB: Yeah, a little shaken.
(Everyone hugs. TB's father finds a bungee cord in the backseat and ties the hood to the frame. TB drives the car home. It is left in the driveway for a week, and then sent to a junker. The junker processes it and sends it to a landfill. Over time, the landfill grows, and grows, and grows, until it topples into the sea. The leftover battery acid poisons the world's water supply, killing all humans. They are replaced by robots, then dinosaurs, then mammals, then a race of super Neo-Humans, then robots again. More time passes. Soon the world ends, and then the solar system, and then the galaxy, and then the universe itself is sucked into a giant hole of nothingness. After thirteen billion years, all is silent again. Curtain.)
With perhaps the removal of a few expletives, that's pretty much exactly how it happened.