Soon, the darkness shrouded us, hiding us from the hungry gazes of our predators.

I could still hear the angry roar of our audience, but the curtain had finally closed.

I breathed a sigh of relief and began to shrug off my cow costume as my eyes adjusted to the dim light.

“Well, that was a disaster,” I said to my costar Matilda Huffington.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, still fully dressed in her chicken costume. “Please leave your clothes on.”

“No way,” I said. “This is my opportunity to escape before that mob recognizes me as the cow and drags me off to grill me for supper. You’d better get a move on too unless you want to be fried.”

I finished wriggling out of my cow costume, kicked it to the floor, and stomped on it several times.

“But what about curtain call?” Matilda protested.

“There’s not going to be a curtain call on this one,” I said.

“But what about meeting with the cast and signing programs?” she asked.

“This may be your only chance to get away,” I warned her too late.

The angry mob stampeded onto the stage, grabbed Matilda by the wattle, and threw her to the floor.

I did my best to distance myself from the cow costume as I watched

Members of the audience swarmed around me as I watched my costar who was dressed as a pig get tripped by a stray leg as he attempted to flee and my costar dressed as a turkey flip upside down and lay still on the floor of the stage.

“Which one are you?” a furious woman asked me.

“Lighting,” I said.

“Don’t the lights come from the back?” a puzzled man demanded.

“Most of them,” I said. “I just shine the light from that side of the stage when needed.”

“Wait, what’s this?” the furious woman held up my cow costume.

“You were the cow,” the puzzled man said.

“Get him!” the furious woman screeched.

I fled. Weaving around my fallen costars, I left the stage and made for the emergency exit.

But there was no emergency exit.

“Why did we choose this stage with no emergency exit?” I yelled.

“You chose it because it was the least expensive,” one of my costars shouted through the chaos.

Somehow, I miraculously escaped the mob and made it home unharmed.

“Yes, that is me,” I told my golden retriever named Mutt the next morning, “financier, writer, director, and cow of a horrendous play that has sparked uncontrollable rage in its audience.”

Mutt just stared at me.

“Well, Mutt,” I said, straightening the newspaper in my hands. “The audience is calling for a refund, but if my play was so entertaining that it inspired a mob, then it was worth whatever people spent on it. If not for me, they would be bored after all. My play entertained them long after the curtain closed.”

Mutt sighed at me and walked away to eat his morning kibble.