In Hot Water: A Play

LENNY: Presenting In Hot Water: a short play by raccoonkid230! Enjoy, my friends!

(He exits.)

Act I: The scene is located in the Haunted Woods. It is evening and an infamously eccentric white Aisha, ACE has arrived at his good friend's house. ACE lives in Faerieland and has never visited the Haunted Woods before. The two had planned to visit a traveling carnival in the nearby area. The friend is NEIL, a striped Ixi and he is outside the modest house at Spyder Lane when ACE enters Stage Left.

NEIL (waves): Ace, my pal! How goes it?

ACE: Swimmingly, swimmingly. All set for the carnival? We're sure to make quite a splash.

NEIL (raising one eyebrow): Ha-ha. Let's leave before I drown in your puns.

ACE: Water we waiting for, then? (Laughs)

NEIL: You really do need to cut that out...

(ACE and NEIL exit Stage Right, the curtains close.)

NARRATOR: ACE and NEIL begin walking through the woods, much time passes and the two begin to realize that they are lost. Our heroes walk on and on and on, determined to not be bested by a mere forest.

(Although offstage, one can hear ACE and NEIl walking through the forest. ACE is constantly asking if they have arrived yet, while NEIL mumbles to himself. )

(ACE and NEIL enter Stage Left. They walk in front of the closed curtains.)

NEIL: Oh, I wrote down that map and everything but misplaced it somehow.

ACE: Ho, ho, I thought you had a photographic memory. Shouldn't you have memorized it already?

NEIL: Unfortunately, the mind film is lost too, if you catch my drift.

(The curtains open revealing a dark patch of forest. Trees surround the grove and a dark lake is situated nearby. The moon is full and lights up the scene eerily. ACE and NEIL cross to center stage, and sit on a few rocks within the grove of trees.)

ACE (exasperated and throwing his arms into the air): Where are we now?

NEIL: I would hazard a guess of... the Haunted Woods. Somewhere.

ACE (dryly): What joy, lost in the Haunted Woods. It's probably haunted, too.

NEIL: Shock! Horror! Things are named after what they are! What a novel idea.

ACE (sighing theatrically): This doesn't change the fact that we are still lost.

NEIL: We aren't lost. We are simply completely unaware of our exact location.

(Long SHADOWS loom across the scene from Stage Right passing over the startled ACE and NEIL.)

ACE (recoiling in horror and falling off the rock): Egad! Hideous creatures!

SHADOWS: Oye! That's no way to speak to ladies!

(The SHADOWS reveal themselves to be three female neopets. ENTER Stage Right a pink Aisha, a red Wocky and a blue Usul who introduce themselves as MEGAN, ADRIA and GINDARA, respectively.)

ACE (standing up and brushing himself off): Sorry about that...

MEGAN: We are sorry as well, to have frightened you so. We both seem to be in a bit of a predicament, eh?

ACE: Indeed. It's a sticky situation; we may go so far to say a jam. We're in a gooseberry jam, in fact, for those are the stickiest jams to be caught up in.

GINDARA (briskly): Let's get to the point. We are gypsies who've traveled from the carnival, however...

ADRIA: We have lost our... mysterious glowing object.

NEIL: We have lost our... selves.

ACE (excited): Now, what is the mysterious glowing object which you speak of?

MEGAN (slyly): Ah, but if we told you, it wouldn't be mysterious. And it isn't exactly lost; it is at the bottom of the lake.

ADRIA: Retrieve the object and we will supply you with directions.

(Exit MEGAN, GINDARA, and ADRIA Stage Left.)

NEIL: Ah, you can see the spot where the object's been submerged. It glows.

ACE: I'll bet it is a bottled light faerie and we will be her brave heroes-slash-rescuers!

NEIL: They're gypsies, Ace. The object will obviously be a crystal ball.

ACE (unconvinced): That's cliché, innit? What if it's a ghost trapped in an underwater prison? We may have to bust him.

NEIL: It's probably a hidden treasure. It'll be a vast glowing jewel of magnificent value.

ACE: They might be thieves. Whilst we natter on about nothing, they may well be ransacking your home for valuables!

NEIL (nervously and wringing his hooves): To tell you the truth, they did look a bit dodgy.

ACE (gasps): We've been gypped by gypsies! Tricked by travelers!

NEIL (joining in): Victimized by vagabonds!

(ENTER the MEGAN, ADRIA and GINDARA Stage Left.)

GINDARA: We've practically been here the entire time.

ACE and NEIL (together laugh nervously, their words overlapping each other's): oh... right... Sorry about that then.

ADRIA: We've brought you something. (She hands ACE a fishing net.)

NEIL: Ah, to help with our work on recovering the mysterious glowing object?

ACE: Brings new meaning to 'network", eh? Eh?

NEIL (flatly): No.

MEGAN: We'd do fetch it ourselves but, like witches, we have, how you say, an aversion to water.

NEIL: Ah.

(NEIL and ACE, carrying the net, enter the dark pool of water, fishing around for the mysterious glowing object. They spend several minutes diving down to the bottom but the murkiness makes locating the object difficult, despite its glow. After quite some time, ACE is able to bring the object to the surface. It is covered with grime and dirt from the bottom of the lake. They swim ashore and hand over the obscured object to ADRIA.)

ADRIA: Excellent, boys! How very kind of you.

MEGAN: Now to fulfill our end of the bargain. (She begins to wipe the grime off the object.)

ACE (impatiently): What's the object? What's the object? Faerie? Crystal? Ghost? Gem? What what what?

(The grime quickly is rubbed away, revealing a glowing.....)

NEIL: A pen!?!? What kind of mysterious glowing object is that? It's a pen!

GINDARA: It's a Light Faerie Pen! It's our very last one. (She clicks the pen and begins to draw a diagram on ACE's white paw.) Now see, you walk forty steps until you reach the Brain Tree, hang a left and walk thirty five more steps and there you are at the Carnival.

ACE (suddenly): No!

NEIL: What? What's wrong?

ACE: Th-th-that was so anticlimactic!

GINDARA (with a small smile): This is real life. Everything isn't a big dramatic commotion.

ACE (raising his paw melodramatically to his forehead): Oh my. It isn't?

(Despite ACE's yearning for a spectacular ending to the gypsy adventure, the pair quietly part ways with ADRIA, MEGAN, and GINDARA, following the directions to the carnival. Exit ADRIA, MEGAN, and GINDARA Stage Right. Exit ACE and NEIL Stage Left. The stage goes dark on the woodland, lakeside scene.)

(The scene opens on a dark scene of the carnival. The gates are shut and locked.)

ACE: Closed? Why ever would they do such a thing?

NEIL: I believe so the carnival workers can rest. This is often the reason why establishments close for the night.

ACE: How rude to turn away patrons. Not a practical way to run a business, don’t you agree?

NEIL (humoring his friend): Hmm. Yes. I suppose.

ACE: Let's just go back to your neohome already. I've had enough non-drama for the night.

NEIL: Well, about that... uh... Ace?

ACE: Yes, Neil. Whatever is the matter, my friend?

NEIL: We... uh... don't exactly have any directions home.

ACE (as the scene goes dark): Oh, fiddlesticks. (The curtain drops.)

END

(Thank you for reading!)