RISING FAST
Genre: DRAMA
Cast: FEMALE (MALE)
Setting: A HOUSE
Age Range: 18-50
Description: Elizabeth is at her mother's house, after a terrible flood that has devastated the town. Elizabeth and her mother are safe. She speaks to her mother.
ELIZABETH
I—I saw the baby, Mom, the baby, he…She calls me, Clara calls me around noon and says the winds are getting bad and water levels are rising. I’m sitting there, eating popcorn, watching reruns of Ally McBeal on DVD—and the whole town is evacuating! She asks if I can come to her place, give them a ride to your house. So of course, I tell her I’ll pick them up. I don’t even hesitate...I walk outside and it’s pouring, and I see the water rising too. Rising fast. But I get in my car and start for her house. The wipers can’t keep up with rain, so I drive less than 5 miles an hour. It takes me forty-five minutes, forty-five minutes to drive one mile to her house. But I get there. And I’m not even thinking about how we’re going to get out of town, how I’m going to get my car to move again. I’m just so relieved to be with my sister, and the baby.
(pause)
But when I stop the car, when I crawl out the window and look up at her house…her cozy ranch-style home…it’s not there. It’s just…not there. I mean, there are pieces of it, there are boards and there’s the frame or whatever it’s called. But it’s not a house anymore.
(pause)
And I start screaming and running around—as fast as I can through all that water—and I’m terrified because I can’t find them—then I hear a cry, a baby cry, and I see my little nephew, sort of propped up in a piece of broken gutter, between two boards, and I start toward him—END OF EXCERPT
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