Rain

PLAYHOUSE OF THE DAMNED

"Rain"

by Richard Nathan

The spotlight is up on our host, GUS THE GHOUL.

                                                            GUS
                                    This next piece is dedicated to all you big
                                    drips in the audience. Into each life some
                                    rain must fall. And don't expect to get a
                                    break if you're dead. There's no escaping
                                    "The Rain."

Gus exits. A recording of a RAIN STORM starts playing and continues throughout the piece. A spotlight comes up on a PERSON who does not like the rain.

                                                            PERSON
                                    When I was a child, I thought the rain made the
                                    world a cleaner place. The same way I was
                                    cleaned when I took a shower, I thought the earth
                                    was cleaned by rainstorms. And why
                                    shouldn't I feel that way? After a storm, the
                                    sky was bluer, the air smelled fresher, and everything
                                    just felt better after it rained. But I was a child,
                                    and I did not know that our ecology is a closed
                                    system, and that the filth of the world never entirely
                                    goes away. The rain just moves it around, to
                                    places where it hides for a time. All the muck of
                                    the world that I thought the rain washed away was
                                    just transferred to the nooks and the crannies and
                                    anywhere else the rain could secrete itself. But
                                    now the nooks and crannies are all filled. Now all
                                    the grime of the world has no where to go, and when
                                    it rains, there's a backwash, and the filth comes back,
                                    making the world dirtier than it was before. I won't
                                    go out in the rain. I wouldn't wade into a cesspool,
                                    cesspool; so why would I go out in the noxious rain,
                                    into that miasma of liquid carcinogens? I'll stay in
                                    here where it's dry, while the idiots go out and allow
                                    the toxins and poisons to saturate their skin and the
                                    pollutants to sink in and infect them. What kind of
                                    foul, diseased, loathsome monsters will they
                                    eventually become after they've finished soaking in
                                    the putrescence of the rain. I'm staying indoors where
                                    I'm safe, away from their festering diseases. Inside,
                                    where I'm safe. Where I'm safe. I'm safe. And dry.
                                    What is that pool leaking in under my door?

There is an OMINOUS KNOCK AT THE DOOR.

Blackout!

The performer playing the person who did not like the rain exits in the darkness. The recording of the rain stops. A moment later the spotlight comes up on GUS THE GHOUL.

GUS
The pain of rain is bane to the insane.

THE END

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The author grants all internet uses to print these scripts for their own, personal, non-commercial use. No other use may be made without the author's permission. Without limiting the foregoing, the plays may not be staged without the author's express permission.

Send e-mail to the author at Richard-Nathan@att.net.