Dan and the Feisty Flute

She heard a slight sob coming from the living room. She sat up and listened for an intense second. What was that? Her neighbor? Was she imagining things? She was sure that all this time alone in her own house was driving her crazy, making her imagination go wild. Then she heard it again. Yes, it was a sob. 

“Birdie?” This time she stopped scrolling on Instagram, got up, and walked into her living room. “Birdie?” Her cat was planted like a barnacle on the couch, staring at something across the living room. She glanced over to what her cat was looking at. It was just the end table beside the recliner--but then she heard it--a little sniffle. 

It was muffled and a little hollow, but clearly a sniffle. Now she was sure she was losing it. For a second she wondered if she was high and had forgotten having taken an edible. No, no--she was sober. Maybe her ears were playing tricks on her? Maybe the sound wasn’t really coming from the end table, and the acoustics in the building were creating audio illusions. She shook her head, but then came a tiny, wistful sigh, high and wind-like, almost like a chime.

She walked over to the end table in three steps and opened one of its doors. A sudden clank sounded, but she couldn’t see much in the shadowy interior. She startled back a little, now really spooked. “What the hell?” she said out loud, half to herself, half to the cat. Dan had always been a little superstitious, but she was too sensible to let it get the best of her. She wasn’t going to let any old ghost scare her. Just because they weren’t from this world, why did that give them the right to be creepy? She threw open the other door of the end table, but all she saw was her old flute lying disassembled in pieces on top of its open case.

“What the shit?” She asked, more curious than anything. She leaned over to pick up the pieces of her old instrument and tucked each segment back in its proper slot in the case. “That’s so weird,” she said out loud to herself. She had started the habit of talking to herself out loud as if she were talking to a friend to create a sense of companionship even when she was alone. She snapped the buckles on the case closed and shut the end table doors, then went to the couch to sit down beside the cat, who had been watching her from across the room.

It was the weird time of evening where no one wants to start working on a project, or exercise, or do anything else productive, but it’s also not time to go to bed yet. So Dan decided to watch Netflix, but just as she was half-way into a rerun of Friends, she heard a clank. It was coming from the end table again.

“Ok, what the actual hell?” Dan stopped the episode and in a couple steps crossed the living room and yanked open the end table. She saw the pieces of her flute suddenly fall from a standing position onto the open case. She sat back on the carpet, speechless for a second. “Ar-are you...alive?” I am definitely going insane, Dan thought. I’m hallucinating, right? She stared at the pieces of her flute...no motion. “Oh my gosh, I need to see a psychiatrist.” She put the flute away once again and started to close the doors of the end table when she heard a muffled voice, “wait.” 

“What?”

“Wait…”

Dan reached in the end table and grabbed her flute case, holding it up to her ear, “What?”

“Please don’t leave me in here.”

What felt like a full minute of silence followed. Dan didn’t know what to say...in response to her talking flute. She set the case down gently on the carpet, unlatched the buckles and slowly opened the case. The shiny segments of the flute were tucked into their soft, faux, fur-lined bedding. They glimmered in the lamplight against the sleek, black material, but nothing about them looked very unusual. Dan wasn’t sure what to say to it...or maybe that wasn’t the right pronoun.

“...did you say something?”

Suddenly the mouthpiece turned towards her from its snug nest, “I miss singing.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I know I haven’t played very much recently.” Am I apologizing to my flute for not playing it?? Dan thought internally, but she didn’t want to be rude or make it--her? the voice was rather high--feel self-conscious. 

“You haven’t played recently? You haven’t played in a year. And that last time was only to impress your date, which I saw to that you didn’t accomplish by the way,” the flute said smugly.

“What!? That was you who sabotaged my date? I thought I was just out of practice. No wonder Auld Lang Syne sounded like a cat dying! And also, that’s not fair; I moved recently and all my shit was in boxes, how did you expect me to play then? I’ve been really busy,” Dan cried indignantly.

“That’s a bunch of excuses. Being busy hasn’t stopped you from playing the piano.” Dan scooted back an inch on the carpet, shocked, but noticed a slight quake at the crown of the flute. Was that an eyeroll directed towards the piano? 

The flute scooted up out of her reclining position and stood vertically to confront Dan. At that, the cat hopped down from the couch and sat next to Dan to watch the feisty flute intently. “You could have played if you had wanted to, and even before you moved, you hadn’t practiced, for real anyways, in years. I barely had to do anything to ‘mess up your date.’ I just coughed a few times, and it totally threw off your embouchure.”

“You what? Well, I’m sorry that I wasn’t trained on how to properly play a talking, coughing flute. And that was years ago anyways--you know I haven’t had actual lessons since I was 15. I’m out here in the wilderness trying to fend for myself; I never had much training in the first place. And you know what? For all that, I think I’m still pretty decent.”

“Oh sure, you can’t even remember the fingering for one octave of notes. And don’t tell me it’s because of your lack of training, Danielle. I know you knew them at one point, but now you have to learn how to play all over again.”

“I can too remember the fingerings!”

“Okay, then prove it to me. Kids, get up!”

To Dan’s wonder, the other two pieces of the flute stood up, rather timidly, but fully attentive to the mouthpiece.

“Should I just--I mean, is it okay if I play now?” Dan said.

“Wait, I have an idea,” the mouthpiece said. “If you can remember the fingerings, you can leave us in the end table. If you can’t remember the fingerings, you have to play at least three times a week.”

“Okay, okay, fair. I accept.”

Dan carefully assembled the flute, feeling embarrassed and suddenly nervous. “Ready?”

“Ready,” the flute said. 

But Dan wasn’t ready. She held the flute to her mouth, but couldn’t remember which combination of keys to press to play a single note. 

“You can go ahead whenever.”

“I know, I know. Just give me a sec.”

Actually it was a couple seconds. Finally Dan said, “okay. Okay, I can’t remember what keys to press.”

“Even to play F?”

“...even to play F--you don’t have to be a dick about it.” Dan set the flute down, shame-faced. Out of the corner of her eye she caught the mouthpiece making a smirk. 

“So now you have to play three times a week,” the flute said.

“Yes, I’ll play three times a week.”

“Good...the kids really missed singing. They were cramped in there, and they’re a little bit afraid of the dark. I didn’t want them to spend their whole lives in the end table. They needed this.”

“Of course, the kids need to get out more often,” Dan said, a little surprised by the flute’s sudden confession--also a phrase she never thought she would say to her instrument.

“...I just want to say, I am sorry, for not playing more often--well, or, at all.”

“It’s okay,” the flute said. And it may have been Danielle’s imagination, but she thought she saw the flute beam.