Friday Fictioneers – Air Show

~ neilmacdon
ted-strutzs-town
Photo Prompt © Ted Strutz

There are spitfires over my garden. Mrs Christie next door cheers.

“Hello,” I say. And then I add “Magnificent aren’t they?”

There’s a pause as she eyes me. “Kept us safe in the War. The Few.”

I sing “There’ll be blue birds over, the white cliffs of Dover.”

That seems to do it. She grudgingly invites me in for a nice cup of tea.

Spitfires don’t bother me. But when the helicopter comes over, I again see the barrel bomb falling and taste the choking gas.

“It must be hard for you people,” she says, and I feel utterly alone.

 

Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

 

65 thoughts on “Friday Fictioneers – Air Show”

  2. A deceptively carefree conversation then his troubled mind plummets as it always will. The fact that Mrs Christie is uneasy but ultimately empathetic heightens the sadness. Subtle. So well written.

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  7. Excellent depiction of PTSD. Stark contrast the romance of war. That said, the sound of a Rolls Royce-Merlin engine will bring me running out of the house. I recall once hearing two of them. I raced into the yard and was rewarded with the sight of a Spitfire and a Mustang flying in formation. There was a local airshow that weekend.

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  10. Well done, Neil. Am I correct in thinking that the narrator might have been German? Or, have I got the wrong end of the stick? That there’s that sense of acceptance and being neighbours but not quite. That there’ll always be that line in the sand.
    Best wishes,
    Rowena

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  12. Expertly written, Neil. Using the shared experience of war – old Mrs Christie’s experience in WW2 and the narrator’s in the current Syrian conflict – you show that despite this common bond, the human tendency to classify ‘us and them’ is too strong for Mrs Christie to overcome. What a sickening moment that must have been for the narrator. Really good piece – terrific writing.

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  26. The sound of helicopters is so different and does provoke different emotion and feeling. The remembrance in this giving an insight into your protagonist’s past is so well done.

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