The Chal’cha Napkin (flash fiction)

“It looks like a gigantic napkin,” Tommy said. “Like they put in your glass at nice restaurants.”
“You ain’t never been to a nice restaurant,” Julie said. She was always saying things like that jokingly, but Tommy never laughed, and she never quit.
They walked toward the strange building, seemingly dropped overnight in the middle of the countryside miles away from any convenient skyways. It stood about eighty feet tall at its highest point, and did look a bit like a crumpled cloth from where they stood, with long ripple-like folds spiraling up to a narrow top, which opened to the sky. Nobody knew why the many-tentacled Chal’cha built such structures, but given their fleet, nothing was ever done about them.
“The Chal’cha certainly know how to build a… whatever this is.” Tommy touched the outside. Sudden friction halted his palms. They would not move once planted.
“The secret is on the inside, stupid.”
Tommy smiled, and began pulling himself upward into one of the grooves on the outside. Soon he was twenty feet off the ground, then fifty, then he was at the top, looking down at a very perturbed Julie.
“Good luck getting down!” she cried.
Tommy swallowed.
200words. This was created for a writing prompt at Short Story and Flash Fiction Society.

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