Fiction created from a news headline

Activity 3.11 – New story from newspaper headline

*Note to any local people who read this:

The news headline was "Pedestrian killed at railway near Maitland". This just happened and there are few details yet. A 78 year old man, no name.  Investigation is ongoing. I do not know the people involved, I have NO details, no reason for how or why it happened which is why I wrote a fiction piece about a possible someone at the house waiting, not the man killed so tragically. 

This is fiction.  

The woman breathed a long sigh as she settled in her wing chair by the front window. She closed her eyes and breathed two slow conscious breaths, head leaned back. She treasured the break. These 45 minutes to an hour was usually the only time she had to herself. She loved the old man, her father-in-law, but he was demanding. His needs were constant not that it was his fault. She didn’t blame him. Worsening Alzheimer’s held them both captive. But he walked everyday and it being Apple Blossom Drive with a dead end he was safe. She saw him away, up the hill, and she saw him when he returned. It was good for them both.

She picked up her book, slipped the bookmark out and settled back to read. Her cup of tea steamed on the table beside her. Bliss. She fell into the story and never heard the train, nor the elongated urgent blast of its whistle.

Three chapters later she began to glance out the window at every page break. She was in such a half aware state when the first OPP cruiser screamed by, lights flashing and siren wailing. She leaned forward and peered up the road at receding taillights. Another cruiser streaked by, and then the Paramedic van. She heaved herself to her feet and went to the door, flinging it open. In her many years here there had never been a police emergency. Her heart began to pound, panic shortening her breath. She stumbled out the icy driveway in her slippers peering up the road. A few neighbours had done the same and they migrated together in a worry huddle, the fog of their anxious breath mingling.

They still stood close when a cruiser eased back down the drive and stopped by their group. A young male officer got out of the car. He straightened his duty belt before turning to the curious faces. There was reluctance in his posture; a hesitation as he stepped toward them.

“Mrs. Garner?” he asked as he scanned their worried eyes.

Trench Art

I discovered something new to me Sunday. I’ve been around a number of years (little haha) and am a curious sort with at least an average amount of awareness. But I never knew about Trench Art. I knew people always made things out of what they had, wartime or not, but did not know this had a name and was considered an art form. If I don’t know, there are other people who don’t.  

I had this little plastic crucifix with emblem for sale at the flea market. Came in a box lot from somewhere I know not, since the husband multi auctions and I get the leftovers to sell. A fellow vendor spotted it in my costume jewelry and asked if I knew what it was. I thought it was a plastic crucifix with little value but she knew different. She didn’t take advantage which tells me everything I need to know about her character and we had a lovely discussion about wartime art. Trench art. Soldiers, pilots and aircrew, navy seamen; anyone with a creative bent would take bits of things they had and make something of it that meant something to THEM. Now highly collectible, in my Google searching I have found other pieces in museums: ovals, circles, diamonds and stars as pendants and bracelets. Each piece is unique.

The crucifix is very light and quite small, 2 inches long, with the crosspiece at 1 ¾ inches, made out of early acrylic. The sterling RCAF sweetheart wings in the centre are tiny. The crown is red, the wings dark grey and the round centre is blue. I can see through to the back of the emblem to see the Sterling stamp and a maker mark E – whatever company that was. Not having much luck with that search. This little piece would have been made by someone in the Royal Canadian air force out of a little piece of scrapped windshield.  Amazing!  A tiny little piece of history that I would have sold for $3.00 is now going to the National Air Force museum in Trenton.  If they have a collection they may want it.

4 am Thoughts

Parable of the Oak

A mighty oak stands in the meadow. Seasons pass and each autumn the seeds fall. Sometimes they ripen and slip from their stems to fall on the fertile leaf compost below the spreading branches. Other times thunderous winds carry the seeds out and away where they fall on uncertain ground.

Winter passes and spring comes and with it nourishing rains. The seeds sprout. They send out their tiny roots to burrow into the soil and find nutrients. A stalk begins as a sliver reaching for the mother of all life, the sun.

The sprouts under the tree have a rich home. The massive trunk protects them from wind and the worst of the storms but they do not thrive. The mighty oak has leached the ground of it goodness. Each year it sends its roots deeper and farther out in search of its own food. The dense leaf canopy shields the seedlings from rain and sun. Seedlings become saplings but they wither and die.

The seeds that have flown from their home on the wind have fallen by chance; on rock, in water, or with some luck, on ground. Some will not survive, will shrivel and die with no place for a root to grow. Some will become food for birds or small meadow creatures and will travel even farther. Some will sprout. They will send their tendril of a root into the good earth; they will reach their slender spike to the glory of the sun. As the seedling becomes a sapling, the rains and wind will test its fiber and find it strong enough.

Good morning blogworld, I have come back to it. My last post in here was 2010, a 9 year hiatus. I'd best not put it off much longer. I am writing again and I need a place to connect. Writers need readers, else what's the point?