Sabre Lee

Lynn Nottage’s plays often take an honest look at cultures we don’t often see onstage. Write a one-page play about a group of people (perhaps you know them) whose stories you want to see onstage. 

Dreams in an empty city

Every morning the sun rises at 6 and shines through my bedroom window. I wake up to get ready and the timer starts. I need to get to school within fifteen minutes from 6am if not bad things will happen. No one asks questions or even thinks about speaking about our town’s strict rules and guidelines. We are born into this town and we shall never leave for any reason unless you are told to by the government. This was the policy everyone learns about in grade school, no one knows how this town came to be or why it’s like this to this day and I wouldn’t dare ask why. On my brisk walk to the only bus stop in town I pass by all of my neighboring houses and I wonder like I do every morning  “what if I didn’t remember my house number, I wouldn’t be able to tell all these houses apart from mine because they're all identical.” The government keeps everything the exact same for everyone. No one is rich nor poor, everyone gets fed and has a job. It's a system to prevent anyone from wanting more, I think it’s a good idea to be honest. I wouldn’t want anyone to steal my bed and they won't because they have the same bed as mine in their house. As I'm running to reach the bus stop I can see the mechanical doors open to let the students in. The empty bus gets filled up with students climbing on aboard bus steps. I'm the last one to get on. But I'm just in time like normal. There are only three stops for the bus it’s the housing neighborhood, the school, and the work office, sadly the bus only does two rounds around the town so all the adults and parents need to leave the house before the students so the bus can drop them off at work then it comes around to pick us up. So if I missed the bus I would have to run all the way to the school and I’d probably be late once I reach school grounds. I know I was late once but I don’t really remember what happened, all I know is I woke up next day and on my calendar it marked yesterday as late and I felt sore for the rest of the day. So from that day on I never missed the bus. Once I get to school the day just goes by, I don’t really retain much but I have enough notes to get by in classes. I always meet up with my friends after school, their always interested in doing stuff after class so I wonder what well be doing this time. Last time we hung out on the street in between the school and the neighborhood, I remember a cold and dark alley way off the center path of the street I don’t see the streets often because I always take the bus but the alley way felt off. After I described it to my friends they were all jumping with excitement like they were dying to know if what I said was true. Their excitement reaches me and we all race down to the street to see the same alley way I described, seeing it was like seeing a glitch in the perfect system. We walked in carefully not to get noticed by anyone on the street even though no one was around you can never be too safe. Who knows what would happen if someone saw us. I walk in first into the narrow and mildly dark alley that seems to have been build for just one person to walk in at a time; the walls are tall like there was no ceiling closing off this alley and its was so clean like they haven’t been touched since it was built. I turn left into a small corner of what was a straight way path and I see this wall a few steps ahead blocking the only path in the narrow alley. The wall is like 12 feet high and has a line, or is it a crack down the middle of it like gates that opens up. When my friends finally reach where I’m at to see the wall, me thinking were goanna head back now because this place had bad vibes, decides to walk back to the streets when I’m stopped by one of my friends James he’s pretty tall and thinks he could probably get over the wall by standing on top of me. I look at everyone else’s faces and their all beaming with wonder and curiosity; I can’t help but feel curious too. So I give in and let James on top my shoulders as a brace myself on the huge wall. Once James gets to the top he lends his hand down for me to climb up to. I want to just run out of the alley and get home to do homework but something urges me to just grab his hand and climb up. Once I’m up there I can see that the wall is pretty thick and you can walk on it with no problems about where your foot needs to be. I finally look straight ahead and just see nothing but a white abyss that seems to never end with tracks below us on the floor like it’s a maze. Just when I was goanna walk on closer to the edge a large bus zips past us on the tracks. I didn’t think about it then but it looks exactly like the bus that I take every day to school. James walks along the wall of the other side and wants to explore more but I was pretty done with our new discovery and just when I thought all the surprised were done a tank like thing below us spots James and blares an alarm. I got so scared of the noise even thought it wasn’t that loud from where I was standing I jumped straight down from the wall and I was surprised I didn’t spraining my ankle in that very moment, I yelled for James to get down too but he was in mid sentence of saying “I’m coming” when I and everyone else heard a thud. We all knew in that moment we need to run, we could come back tomorrow maybe to look for James but if we didn’t leave right then and there we could be in the same situation as James is and who knows if we could be in danger. As we hurried out onto the streets the sun was setting, and there was an old but middle age man standing on the side street just staring at us like he was waiting for us to come out of that alley. I recognized him almost instantly, he was my neighbor and he would babysit me as a kid. I ran over to him and begged him not to say a word of what he saw today to my parents but in his calm and raspy voice he spoke “listen I won’t say anything because I know you’re a good kid and you and your friends just want to explore the area. But when I was your age and me and my friends went into that alley once, we didn’t see anything there so there’s no point to looking in there anymore, there’s nothing for you to see and if anyone and I mean anyone or anything catches you, just pray you’ll wake up the next morning.” I was confused what he meant by nothing because I saw a heck of a lot past that wall but I wasn’t about to get myself into even more trouble by saying I climbed up the wall. So I thanked him and asked “do you know how much time we all have left to get home?” he responded with a chuckle “you never could deal with time management well, you got 5 minutes left to get home I would advise you stay with one of your buddies for the night, you don’t want to be caught still roaming the streets after the 15 minute time limit…trust me.” As me and my friends started to running back to our homes I decided to bunker up with Evan cause he lived closets to the street we were on. I looked back to see if the old man was goanna walk home and he was gone, I had so many questions. I don’t know what’s goanna happen but after today things aren’t goanna be the same. I woke up and got to school the next day and James was standing near my desk with all my friends asking him what happened yesterday I could tell by his face he had no idea what was happened. So when everyone saw me they rushed up to ask since James wasn’t telling them anything. I couldn’t say much because I could barely wrap my head around it myself…I think I changed after that day… well everything kind of changed after that day.

Juliana Huxtable’s work explores a wide variety of subjects including the internet. Take a few big topics like art, life, the universe, the meaning of everything, and describe them using only 3 words. Try using only emojis. 

Life

Big👣

Light 💡 

Endless🫀

Love

risky 🫀

holes 🕳 

warm 🔥 

Art

creative 🎨

fulfilling 🤗

brain🧠