And the Sky Opened

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Another Red DayWe heard long before we saw. The sound filled us with hope and fear because we knew it was our death or our salvation that was being pushed out in front of the vapor trails. A deep purr, like the sound of a thousand-ton cat, rose from the valley but was silenced by a bone jarring thud.

Then they were over us.

And the sky opened.

The sky opened to deliver either life or death.

As we looked up giant mushrooms sprouted in the air to gently hand us the heavy boxes.

Food and water descended on us, like Manna dropping from the Heavens, but gifted to us by the hands of men and women.

They were gone as quickly as they had arrived.

We would survive another day.

 

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I’ve been out of town and have been doing 15 hour days so I haven’t had time to write a new story for my “Fiction Friday” post. I thought of my short work of fiction, Our Story, and decided to do something similar if much, much shorter. The story itself is only 130 words. I hope you enjoyed.

 

13 thoughts on “And the Sky Opened”

  1. Pingback: The 750 Word Challenge | Trent's World (the Blog)

  2. letsbuildapillowfort

    “As we looked up giant mushrooms sprouted in the air to gently hand us the heavy boxes.”

    This sentence is intense. First I thought “giant mushrooms – bombs – now they all die.”
    How you express this feeling of insecurity – the ambivalence of hope and fear – in just a few words really touched me.

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    1. trentpmcd Post author

      Thanks! It was one of those luck things were the word “mushroom” came to mind immediately and only later did I think “Mushroom cloud = explosion”.

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      1. letsbuildapillowfort

        That happens to me often when I write poems.
        I read it again after some time and think “Hey, this could mean so many other things as well!”
        Sometimes I don’t even really know what I want to express in the first place and only discover some meaning when I get back to it in an other state of mind.
        I don’t know if those happenstances are just our minds trying to construct meaning that wasn’t actually there or if our subconsciousness guides us in some way we aren’t aware of…

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        1. trentpmcd Post author

          I think our subconscious often gets some of the oblique references even when we aren’t aware of it. That is why some word choices just seem right and others don’t work.

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    1. trentpmcd Post author

      Hi Rick. Every so often I like to put myself in the shoes of those less fortunate. Not only does it help me stretch my imagination to unfamiliar territory, but it makes more thankful for what I have.

      I originally drew the picture for a sci-fi story I posted a few months ago named “Another Red Day”. I didn’t have time to draw a new picture and this fit the story well enough.

      Thanks for the comments.

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