On New Year's Eve

Okay, this is a flash fiction piece for a writing contest. The prompt is: New Years and the prompt words  are: Firework, party, mahogany, pebble, and phone.

Also, I'm looking for a better title.
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            There’s this old mansion on 17^th East and 2^nd South that’s built out of a cruise ship from the 1920’s. It stands there, on the end of the street, dark and empty and gathering dust all day and all night.

            But once a year, on New Year’s Eve, the lights come on. Music and laughter –the sounds of dancing and meaningless chatter– fill up the empty expanse of the old house. Crystal glasses clang together in a toast for the New Year, and the aromas of turkey and roast beef cling to the windows where silhouettes appear of people long since dead.

            On New Year’s Eve, the Nameless Ghosts of Forgotten People dance across the mahogany floors. They sing and talk and eat and laugh. They shoot off lights into the sky and call them fireworks. They attract the attention of the Daylight People (living, I mean), with whom they chatter in a language that we can’t understand. And, they think they’re speaking English, but they’re not. They’re speaking Stones.

 On New Year’s Eve, it’s become the tradition of Little Children to throw pebbles at the windows of the mansion to grab the interest of the Nameless Ghosts in hopes of being let inside. The Children play games with the Ghosts. They play hopscotch and checkers and hula-hoop, if they are permitted.

The Ghosts make jokes with the Children, and the Children understand. They laugh. The Children speak Stones: Life hasn’t beaten that out of them, yet.

The bell tolls midnight. The party will continue until daybreak, but it is time for the Little Children to return to bed. The Children and the Ghosts share their final words with each other. They make promises and eternities. Promises they will try and will not keep.

Promises are forgotten.

And eternity –Eternity is lonely.

The clock ticks on, and the night grows steadfast. One such Ghost, a child, makes conversation with the woman who, in life, she would’ve known as her mother. Neither party remembers the other. Neither party remembers the grief, the sorrow, the pain. Neither party remembers names. Neither party remembers the words they would’ve said in life; instead, they talk about the weather. For one night a year, these Faceless Ghosts gather together to laugh and sing and make small talk with people they might have known in life –or maybe not; they can’t remember, anymore.

By three am, the Daylight People have gone home.

By four am, the dancing has stopped.

By five am, the music fades.

By six, the mansion is silent: they’ve forgotten how to make noise.

By seven, they’ve begun to look the same.

By eight, a phone rings. No one answers. The house is empty.

There’s this old mansion on 17^th East and 2^nd South that’s built out of a cruise ship from the 1920’s. It stands there, on the end of the street, dark and empty and gathering dust all day and all night.

But once a year, on New Year’s Eve, the lights come on. There’s a lively little party for people who have been abandoned by Time. People without names or faces, who think they’re alive, but they’re not. They’re dead.

And one day, we’ll be there, too. One day, we’ll join the Ranks of the Forgotten. And, on New Year’s Eve we’ll travel to this old mansion on 17^th East and 2^nd South and we’ll throw a party.