A Play A Day #287

What Grammar Attacks At

Cast:
Hop
Luke

Setting: Stable


(Lights up, Hop and Luke, young cowboys, are forking hay into an empty stable)

Hop: Luke, what're you scared of?

Luke: Uhhh... nothing... there's nothing I'm scared of.

Hop: C'mon, this is me you're talking to.

Luke: And I'm telling you there ain't nothing I'm afraid of.

Hop: Not even with all the world problems we're dealing with?

Luke: Nahh... what's there to worry about?

Hop: Not worry, just be afraid of.

Luke: Worry or afraid have no difference between.

Hop: So, war, crime, pollution, climate change; these are all things you're happy with?

Luke: Maybe not happy, just things I don't worry about.

Hop: So, there's nothing you're afraid of?

Luke: Well.... to be honest I guess there's one thing I'm afraid of.

Hop: Yeah? What are you afraid of?

Luke: Well, you remember our fifth grade teacher telling us grammar and how important it was to learn about?

Hop: Ohh yeah, Mrs. Miltby you're thinking of!

Luke: One day, she said that a preposition is never something to end a sentence with.

Hop: Yeah, yeah, that's something I have a very clear memory of.

Luke: She usually was a teacher you could joke around with. But, when she said that, she got all serious, like it was the most dangerous thing in the world you could ever mess with!

Hop: I know; my heart through the roof shot on up.

Luke: That moment, prepositions became the thing I worried most about.

Hop: Yeah, I wondered if the world would end if we started ending our sentences with prepositions all over.

Luke: We should thank Mrs. Miltby though, since she got me fearing prepositions being around; now there's nothing else I'm afraid of.

Hop: Nothing else to compare it to.

Luke: Yep, everything else just seems really easy to come down on up from under.

(pause)

Hop: Luke?

Luke: Yeah?

Hop: What's a preposition look like?

Luke: That's something I haven't the slightest idea of, but I know they're bad and dangerous, and we can never let our sentences end with them.

Hop: Them? That sentence had something that it didn't sound right about.

Luke: Shit! Shit! Do you think that was a preposition that everywhere I just unleashed on over?

Hop: Maybe, Luke, we should stop talking for a while to see if anything bad starts happening around.

Luke: That's a good idea you came up with. I won't say another word.

Hop: Shit, Luke, stop messing things up!

Luke: Sorry.

Hop: Shut up! Shut up!

(They cower deep in the stable, pitchforks bared)

Hop: We'll wait here, see where the attack comes from.

Luke: Sorry, Hop, I didn't mean to. I really didn't mean to.

Hop: It's too late to apologize for; get ready, to the death we might have to fight until.

(lights start fading as ominous screeches and howls start sounding from all around them, loud pounding sounds and splintering wood, Luke and Hop scream, lights out)

(the end of)