A Play: 2 Characters in a Dialog

Two figures stand alone. The light is dimming and swirls of fog or dust rise with each movement.

1: What was that?

2: What?

1: That thing…
                (Swiping hand in front of face.)

2: I don’t see……. Oh! Ouch! What the fuck was that?!
                (Shaking hand as if wiping something good and unexpected off hand.)

1: That!
                 (Waving hands around head and upper body.)
Whatever it is it’s annoying as fuck

2: How did we get ourselves into this?

1: I think you said, “Sure, we’ll take the job.” When that weird little guy asked us.

2: Did I ask what the job was first?

1: Nope.

                (Grimacing)
2: Humph, I didn’t think so…
                (Shrugging shoulders and continuing to wave hands around.)

                (The buzzing hum has been gone for a few minutes but #2 continues to wave hands around as though on auto-pilot.)

1: I think you can stop now.

2: What am I doing now?

1: Waving.

2: What?

1: You can stop waving your hands now, that whatever-it-was is gone.

2: Oh. Good. I was getting tired. How’d we get here anyway?

1: Well, I’d say a train or something but I think it was a bus.

2: Bus?

1: Yep. One of those old fashioned school-bussy things. Multicoloured.

2: Hunh.

1: That’s your response? We travel to somewhere who-the-fuck-knows on an ancient multicoloured vehicle that seats 20 and all you can say is, “hunh” ?
                (Shaking head and looking disgusted.)

                (#1 begins dusting themself off. Clouds of dust rise as #1 brushes themself down, clouds grow bigger and bigger as though adding to the dust rather than subsiding.)

2: (Coughing) Please stop doing that. You’re making it worse!

                (The dust cloud has become so thick that we can barely see the characters.)

1: What the hell…….. (coughing). I was brushing it off.. not on!

2: Well it had other ideas. Just stop what you’re doing. Stop waving your hands around like that- you’ll set something on fire.

1: Fire! Where?

2: Nowhere, (sotto voce) yet. Just stop moving for one minute and let’s figure out where we are.

1: And then let’s figure out when we are.

2: Right. I always forget the when part.

1: Why did it have to be so dusty?

2: Can you focus, please? Stop moving. We’ve no idea what’ll happen if you sneeze.

1: Okay. I’ve stopped.

                (Standing statue-still and all of a sudden looking like an actual stone statue)

They both remain still as the dust swirls around them, covering and then completely obscuring them.

Fade to black.

– End –