Excerpt from Bump
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(Loud MUSIC, punk-rockish with a fast, hard beat, blares until the lights go up. The play begins with HIM bending under the “car,” HER pacing nervously.)

HER: I tried to miss it, but this fog, it’s like rain. I couldn’t see, and—that music! It’s nerve-racking. No matter how many times I ask, you never turn it down. (She pauses, thinking.) It was so white.

HIM: Ahh. Dog.

HER: I don’t know. There was something about it.

HIM: A white-haired dog. We need to go, we’ll miss the flight.

HER: I didn’t see any legs.

HIM: You can’t see dog-legs when you run over a dog doing seventy miles an hour.

HER: But it was just one bump. A big bump. Bump.

HIM: I heard ka-bump.

HER: How could you have heard a thing with the Meat Puppets blaring? I can’t believe I let you talk me into this. This four a.m. stuff was hazardous back then, too, don’t you remember?

HIM: I thought you liked them.

HER: Liked what? Not being able to see the cement divider until you’re almost on top of it?

HIM: The Meat Puppets. The resurgence of punk. The anti-hair bands of the eighties.

HER: You can’t see a thing either, you just pretend to be able to. (Pause.) It looked like a human torso.

HIM: It was not a human torso.

HER: How would you know? You weren’t even looking. You were doing that ridiculous Dah, duh-duh, Dah, duh-duh, Dah, duh-duh drum thing.

HIM: I heard it. Ka-bump. It was a dog. A big white dog. Or tan, or yellow, or a deer. Everything looks white in the headlights.

HER: There was no head.

HIM: There was too.

From Bump by Maryann Lesert
Taken from The Art of the One-Act, 2006

New Issues Poetry & Prose, Western Michigan University, Dept. of English,
1903 W. Michigan Ave., Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5331
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