200 Words. A Challenge.

I took on the First Campaigner Challenge. A 200 word piece of fiction that must begin with the words "The door swung open..." It is inspired by an abandoned church I discovered in my travels.

I hate rules. Only because I am doomed to always follow them. But this begins as I was told to begin it. And I am proud to say it is exactly 200 words. It is #275 on the linky list.

The door swung open and my wrists fell limp at the keys, fingers caught in memory, the abrupt halt of a note half heard. I kept my back to her, legs stuck to the sturdy wooden piano bench.

“Keep playing.”

I shook my head. No. That was not why I had gone there. That was not why she had come.

In the darkness of the empty church, faded hymnals rested at a pulpit where no one stood, and I was there, breathing in the stale air, so that no one would hear. I was there because it was a place that had been forgotten.

I imagined her blackened feet against the wooden floor as she approached. “It’s outta tune, I bet.”

“I like it that way. That’s how I want to hear things.”

“But how’ll you know you got it right?”

“I don’t want to get it right.” I was too used to getting things wrong.

She sat beside me, her long hair dripping down her tiny shoulders like honey. And she leaned forward, tired, as if she were only resting her elbows on the kitchen counter, smashing into the keys, ripping apart the silence.

It sounded like a sigh.