Ruins: a story in five sentences

 
Five Sentence Fiction from Lillie McFerrin Writes in which a story is told using only five sentences, inspired by one word.
This week's word is: Ruins.





Ruins

Five guests sat in an awkward silence so complete the ticking of the clock on the upstairs landing sounded like an ominously insistent metronome. One of the gentlemen tried to distract himself by watching to see if he could hear when the dust motes landed on the coffee table. He couldn't. Anyone entering the room just then would never believe that only moments before, the house had been filled with a cry of surprise followed by exclamations of horror, then wails of disappointment that brought all five friends in a swirling tangle of flying skirts and carefully pressed trousers to the kitchen where they piled up against each other in the doorway with one indrawn gasp of disbelief at the sight of a cat daintily licking buttercream icing off its paw. It was sitting like a queen on her throne atop a carefully crafted three-tiered birthday cake.