Bubbles' Midsummer Night's Scream (Fiction)

Richmond High School's adaptation of Shakespeare's  "A Midsummer Night's Dream" proved to be a challenging production. Mrs. Seekins the bespectacled veteran English teacher took on the ominous task of assigning the roles.

Bubbles, the bane of Mrs. Seekins' Tenth grade English Drama class screamed, her piercing voice ringing in her teacher's nearby ears, "Old lady Seekins, Uh, I mean Mrs. Seekins, I was born to play Titania! I was born to be a Queen! May I have the role of Titania, may I, may I, may I?"

Mrs. Seekins, familiar with such bubblish outbursts, put her hand on her forehead head and replied,"Tryouts are tomorrow Ms. Vintinner, we shall see if you are Titania, Hermia or possibly even Nick Bottom's character, Pyramus."

"Nick Bottom, oh no, I'm Titania Mrs. Sealskins, I mean Seekins. I don't want to be anything called bottom." With that she turned her head and looked down at her fleshy backsides,"Oh my," she thought, her eyes growing wide, "Oh the other kids, the laughs, I mustn't be Nick Bottom!"

Sure enough when tryouts came and went, there was Bubbles, acting the  part of Titania. It's not that she excelled in her audition, but Mrs. Seekins knew that a happy Bubbles made for a smooth play, and she had no intention of allowing Bubbles temper to run wild, creating it's own real-life version of the chaos in the Athenian woods.

Bubbles arrived home too excited to talk...true, she went on for half an hour about the play to her mother, and had a little speech decrying the evils of the asparagus on her plate at dinner time, but by Bubbles usual standards, she was as quiet as a Tibetan Monk.

Bolting down her mashed potatoes, Bubbles looked at her father and  excused herself from the table, "That thou shalt like an airy spirit go. Peaseblossom! Cobweb! Moth! and Mustardseed!" And with that, she flew up the stairs and into her room.

Skimming through the play, she came to Act 3, Scene 1, where Titania is asleep in the woods, "I need to be awakened, I need someone to play Nick Bottom!"

The light bulb in Bubbles capricious mind was rarely unlit, so within a moment she shrieked, "Egbert, come here, ole, Eggie, hurry!"

Egbert, eccentric in his own familial way, was in the middle of creating a "better stink bomb," but hearing his sister's call, hoped that something more adventurous might be afoot. He'd no more entered Bubbles room, than he was assailed by his sister  who shoved a cooking pot on his head and pushed a copy of the play in  his hands. Speaking without breathing she commanded, "You're Nick Bottom...the pot is your donkey head...read those lines,  where it says, The finch, the sparrow and the lark, AND sing it!

Poor Egbert didn't know what was happening. Not a particularly bright  boy to begin with, the slamming of the cooking pot on his head rung in his ears, causing him to sway off balance. He tried to gather his  bearings, but could only ask,
"Are you daft, Wha..what are you doing?"

"Stop your whining and just sing the lines!"

"What lines, I can't read any lines, you shoved a pot onto my head!"

"It's not a pot, it's a mules head...act your part!"

Egbert took one hand and slid the pot just above his eyes, squinting, he  began to read, "The finch, the sparrow and the lark, The plain-song..."

"Wait you idiot, I have to say my line first!...What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?" There was a momentary silence and Bubbles shouted, "Well?"

"Well what? I didn't know you were finished."

"You're so déclassé. Just sing!"

"The finch, the sparrow and the lark, The plain-song cuckoo gray, Whose note full many a man..." stopping in mid speech he asked,

"Who wrote this junk? I can't sing this! If you wrote it, you're gonna get an "F," and worse than that, the other kids will all laugh at you!"

"It's Shakespeare you twit, the greatest playwright of them all. Will you just sing your lines!"

Doubtful, but as of yet undaunted, Egbert sang on, "Whose note full many a man doth mark, And dares not answer nay;--for, indeed, who would...write such drivel?
It is I, Shakespeare!"

"Stop that, those last two lines aren't in the play! Sing the lines!"

Having reached a limit which most brothers would have passed long ago, he took off the cooking pot, plunked it over Bubbles' head, and tossed the book on her bed,
"Parting is such sweet sorrow," he mocked, bolting out the door.

Bubbles stood, like a poor resemblance of a Knight of the roundtable, she began to stomp her feet, having the fit Mrs. Seekins had so wisely avoided. She removed the pot and tossed it across the room. Turning on her heels she made a swan dive onto her bed and hid her head under the pillow.

Muffled screams made their way down to the living room where her parents were sitting, watching, Wheel of Fortune. Her father slowly looked toward the top of the stairs and then to his wife, "What do you suppose it is this time?"

She looked back at her husband and said, "Is there a death scene in Midsummer Night's dream?"

"Not that I remember dear," He said with a sigh, "Guess I have to go up there, huh."

"You're the one who thought getting involved in a school project would be good for her!"

"I can't wait until she's married and becomes some other man's problem," Bubbles father mumbled, and rose from his comfortable chair and slowly took the familiar long march up the stairs to the executioner's block.