War on Foreign Soil -a writing prompt story

Wow! It’s February already. Can you believe it? 2022 is just racing right on by. I haven’t even written a Picadilly Write the Story yet. Inside this book are story ideas that come with a list of ten words you must include in the story. It can be quite the challenge.

For the first Picadilly Write the Story story of the year, I let my husband choose the story. I handed him my business card and the book. I asked him to slip the card in between any of the pages. Then, I asked him left or right? He chose left.

This is what he chose:

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War on Foreign Soil

Include the following in your story:

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I was a patriot because I was raised to be a patriot. I never questioned loyalty to my country. I never considered not loving my country.

I knew I would grow up to be a soldier. It was what my father had been. And his father before him. And so on and so forth for as many fathers as we could trace back in our family line.

I loved the calisthenics of gym class, so basic training was a breeze for me. I hadn’t considered global tensions when I had enlisted on my eighteenth birthday. I had expected to spend my years marching around base and saying “Yes, sir,” a lot just as my father had.

I was going to find me a pretty girl. If she could bake my grandma’s banana bread with the toasted walnuts just the way I liked them, I might have even married her. We’d be a fixture in the community because everyone loved her as much as I did.

But those were just dreams. Dreams that were dashed by a war on foreign soil I never should have stepped foot on. The bluetooth navigation system led our convoy right into the enemy’s hands.

Instead of lying in bed beside a beautiful wife, I find myself here on this cold metal slab. The flimsy curtain that separates me from the rest of the room billows in an imaginary breeze as I slip in and out of consciousness.

The words that float to me from the other side of that divide are foreign. I can’t remember if I recognize them. I think I heard the word amputated or maybe it was carbonated.

The darkness closes in.

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