Hello and welcome to the Writober series! These posts will feature flash fiction stories that I wrote for #Writober 2020 — one prompt each day for the whole month of October. Prompts provided by Fanwriter.it‘s pumpINK list.
Day 2: Radio ?
The radio she was gifted for her birthday was simple but functional. It couldn’t pick up many stations, but she didn’t need anything more than the classical music station, which was best suited for her tea parties.
Mr. Bear, Mrs. Bunny and Mrs. Badger were the perfect tea companions: easy to please, never complained and they never interrupted her. They had impeccable timing and table manners, a rare quality in a party guest nowadays. Her mother’s friends were always late, always loud, always bringing something — or worse, someone — they didn’t need along with them.
And then she had to deal with it.
She didn’t want a tea party with Mrs. Davenport’s son, or Mrs. Pibsworth’s infant daughter, or Mrs. Willoughby’s dog. They all made for poor party guests: they interrupted her with noises, couldn’t hold a conversation, made a mess of everything. Worst of all — they were never invited.
They couldn’t even appreciate the classical music, which she regarded as an essential trait for a guest.
No matter how many times she told her mother, she just couldn’t understand the problem with leaving her to “entertain” guests that were, quite annoyingly, impossible to entertain. Moreover, why should she entertain them? What was she, a circus performer?
She was a party host.
It was one day in particular that her patience run out and she exploded in the face of the adults present. She’d been mopping up the tea that Pibsworth-to-be had unceremoniously spilt all over the table, quick and scared that it would stain Mrs. Bunny’s perfect white fur. She’d been too engrossed in the activity to notice Mrs. W’s mutt having an homicidal go at Mr. Bear, almost tearing his left arm off.
She’d yelled so hard and so loudly that the classical music was drown out, replaced with her own fanfare of spilled secrets and gossips and poisonous words, without missing a note.
She’d been sent to bed without supper to mourn Mr. Bear’s almost-severed left arm.
“I wish for their tea parties to be no more.”
“Wish granted,” she heard, a small, quiet voice croaking through the radio.
She never had to suffer a bad tea party ever again.
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