Flash Fiction

Title: “The Battle of Cardboard.”

It’s been a year, the enemy has turned to friends, and the king has forsaken us! Lucas adjusted the lopsided cardboard crown on his head, settling himself once and for all. A year ago, the crooked chair used as a buttress, was divided by a formidable wall of refrigerator boxes, the floor a vast expanse of battleground. The battlefield of extra allowance, the room filled with holes and neft gun bullets, scattered with hundreds of soldiers in discordance of war. Alexander! The king's right-hand maiden. Sit across the room, eye-stinging in dust, waffling in the trenches of cacophony. ‘Hey! Can we stop this now?’ she cried. And the king fell, falling as of slipping on the cardboard beneath. He injured himself, momentarily trying to reassure his maiden, ‘We are in this together, don't get discouraged!’ They both reemerged triflingly, peeking through the corner of the boxes, with a horror facet. Far, beyond them, remained hundreds of soldiers marching heavily. With every phase, ‘whoosh’, and ‘BANG BANG!’ sounds filled Alexander with horror. The shortcoming of laborious war is the dry desiccating air for a maiden. Alexander sniffled, telling Lucas to stop. ‘Hey, we are in the middle of the war, stop this madness, will you, for once.’ drool spurting, as Lucas and Alexander huddled to the nearest barricade card boxes, hearts pounding with rhythms.

The footsteps of the grown-ups thudded heavily, the rhythm gradually quickening into a panicked march. The coming of adults tears the scene, lively soldiers turn cold stone. An unwelcoming expression from Lucas's stern by the mishmash ‘Clean up-Clean up!’ with a happy atmosphere from parents. ‘It’s clean-up time! It’s clean-up time!’ Alexander happily kicked away the cardboard, while Lucas was in disbelief. Lucas cried from being told to clean up his battlefields, the proud fortress fortified with a formidable wall, crushed by his maiden. Never had he imagined the portrayals of many sleepless nights, he who had predicted the downfall of his kins. Now! God has forsaken the imperium for good. Lucas frowned, lest Alexander got nothing to do with his impediments, her role apt in the embraces of Lucas' downfall.