#5 Flash Fiction B&W Challenge - Piper

Guernica by London Junkers - LEA 6

#5 Flash Fiction B&W Challenge

The ballroom was empty, except for the curtains left behind. The door was closed. 

Piper had the room all to herself. Well, to herself and a few of her friends. 

“Would you like to dance,” she asked Pea. 

And they swung from the chandelier for a long time, which made Peaches rather impatient. “Why do you always have to do this, each time we come here? There’s no music. Can you hear anything? Anything at all?”

Standing by the door, Poncho chewed his nails just to aggravate PJ while tapping on the wooden floor with the heel of his shoe.

“Stop that!” shouted Poncho.

“What?” replied PJ, still chewing his nails. “I’m just setting the rhythm here, so they can dance.”

“Not that! The nails thing.”

“That’s what I meant,” said PJ, happy to have achieved his goal in such a short period of time. He was getting better and better at it.

“Come down from there,” roared Peaches. “Right now, come down from there.”

Piper and Pea stopped the swinging rather abruptly, not because Peaches had ordered them to but because they heard an odd sound, a cracking kind of sound.

“Oh dear, the chandelier is going to crash on the floor, and we with it,” said Pea.

Piper laughed. “No, it won’t! And even if it does, we won’t get hurt.”

“You’ll get hurt, you’ll get hurt, you’ll get hurt…” yelled Princess, who had been silent till then, observing the curtains. Perhaps she could use them to swing from one window to the next, like Tarzan.

“Shut up!” shouted Poncho. “Just shut up, Princess, shut up!”

“Leave her alone,” said PJ. “She’s a Princess.”

PJ was such a gentleman, thought Princess, a soft toothless smile on her face. She was missing the upper central incisors. That gap only made her sound even less of a princess whenever she decided to yell, which was her natural way of talking to anyone.

Another cracking sound echoed throughout the room, this time louder.

“Oh, yes, we are going to die…” whispered Pea.

“No, we are not! Look, we can grab those vines and swing from window to window,” replied Piper.

“Those are not vines. Those are curtains. And they are mine,” yelled Princess, running towards them and squishing them as hard as she could.

“They are not yours at all,” protested Poncho.

“No, they are not,” seconded Peaches.

Princess ignored them and proceeded to squish and squish the dusty curtains. She squished them so hard that she started sneezing. This caused Pea to get startled and lean back. Piper tried to keep the balance and swung her legs. The ceiling cracked noisily. Poncho and Peaches ran towards to door of the ballroom. PJ grabbed Princess by the wrist and pulled her away from the windows.

Only a few seconds later, the chandelier, the ceiling, Pea and Piper tumbled down onto the floor. There was dust everywhere. 

“Piper.”

Everyone was sneezing.

“Piper?”

They couldn’t stop.

“Piper…”

And they knew they’d be in trouble.

“Piper!”

“What?”

“Wake up. How do you feel?”

“We… We broke the chandelier…” replied Piper.

“I know. Don’t worry about that. It’ll get fixed. Now go back to your room.”

Piper stood up and walked away, waving her usual friendly wave of goodbye.

“See you,” she said.

“See you next week. Same place, same time.”

Piper nodded and as always, while she closed the door behind her, added, “… and same day.”

Note by Dr. Freud: Now they are five - Pea, Poncho, PJ, Peaches and Princess.