January 18 Play: JACK & JILL ON BLUEBERRY HILL

18: JACK & JILL ON BLUEBERRY HILL - by Ed Valentine
© January 18, 2010 * ed@edvalentine.com

LIGHTS UP: 1950’s picnic scene. Green field. A hill with a tree. At the bottom of the hill: a picnic basket has rolled down. It’s upended, and its food is spilling out.

A line of ANTS go marching past the hill. The ants chant in a language, not English... in a song, as yet unheard... in voices inhuman, low, and intense.

Atop the hill, a picnicking couple: a MAN and a WOMAN on a red- and white-checkered blanket. They speak in hushed tones, afraid to move.

MAN: There’s so many of them.

WOMAN: Many many.

MAN: And they all are going in the same direction.

WOMAN: That’s what they do, isn’t it? Ants?

MAN: That’s what ants do?

WOMAN: Yes.

MAN: I would imagine. But most queer –

WOMAN: Is?

MAN: is that they seem to have no interest in our food.

WOMAN: Oh.

MAN: They’ve walked right past the food, in a long long line.

WOMAN: They’re circling us.

MAN: Do you think?

WOMAN: They’re coming up the hill. They’re circling us.

MAN: Seems to be.

WOMAN: Maybe we’re the food.

MAN: Maybe –

WOMAN: Maybe we’re the food, yes.

MAN: Huh.
It seems to be so.
-
Yes.
It seems to be so. Don’t move, maybe they’ll go away.

(They sit, staring at the ants, frozen in fear, watching the ants approach. It is as if they are hypnotized. Very scary moment. Very softly, the softest words yet.)

WOMAN: Help.

(Still chanting, the ants start crawling up the woman’s arm. MAN and the WOMAN do not move.  Lights fade.)

END OF PLAY.