A Dinner Party.
Cindy lifts the shade and looks outside the room. “Cold night.”
Mike was staring with her out the window while their dinner guests sit behind them. Steven grinds the knife into the plate, leaving a deep groove in the surface. Cindy then lowers the shade.
“Well I guess let’s have a party.”
They all sat there silently waiting for Mike to say what he always said. He was always the voice of reason telling them that this was what was supposed to happen. In a moment there would be a flash of light then it would start all over again.
“Let’s have a party,” responded Mike.
For a brief moment afterwards they all smiled and looked at each other. Tina with her new hairstyle that Cindy always noticed, and then Steven told his joke, everyone loved that joke. Nothing ever changed, they sat there quietly smiling, mouths agape. Everyone frozen in time holding their glasses up to the heavens.
Flash!
Cindy lifts the shade and looks outside the room.“Cold night.”
Mike was staring out the window while their dinner guest sits behind them. Something had changed. Cindy lowers the shade.
“Well I guess let’s have a…”
They all sat there silently wondering what had changed. Steven started to tell his joke but stopped halfway into it. They all looked panicked in that moment. Steven held up his glass, freezing with his mouth open and smiling. The rest followed suit picking up their glasses to the sky, open mouth grins to the sky.
Flash!
Cindy goes to the shade.“Cold…”
Everyone was silent waiting for the inevitable joke by Steven.
Silence.
Flash!
“Is he really gone?”
Steven and Cindy both turned to look at Tina. It had been years since they heard Tina say anything. Her voice in that moment was wavering and fearful.
“Mike? Mike?”
They had never realized that the chair where Mike had been sitting was a blank space. In the blackness there was nothing, a void that they were trying to fill. Then their arms reached forward, out of their control grabbed their glasses and their smiles reappeared.
Flash!
“This isn’t the way it was supposed to be,” Tina sounded upset and scared, “til death do you part! He agreed.”
-
“What is this one of?”
“Oh that one? That’s a dinner party before Mike and I got divorced. I decided to cut him out.”