Experience Writing Halloween Challenge Theme: Extra Terrestrials
When I was a girl, my Grand Uncle Percy had been a fighter pilot in WWII.
That little factoid surprised me because my Grand Uncle was so awful at driving cars that nobody wanted to ride with him EVER.
His cars were always dented, the windshields were always cracked and the interior of his cars always smelled of stale smoke and mold.
Another odd think about my Grand Uncle is that once he left the Air Force, he never flew again- and by that I mean not only did he never fly a plane again, he never set foot on one as a passenger either.
One year at a family dinner my Grandma said the reason he never flew a plane again was ‘because of that thing he saw ‘.
We were all sitting around my Grandma’s dining room table and the smell of roast beef was still in the air. I chased green bean around my plate with my desert fork.
” What did he see?” I asked for the millionth time and for the millionth time my Grandma told me that he was out flying a mission at night ( that was his thing apparently ) when something flew under him.
He said the air in his plane got really hot and it smelled- it didn’t smell like fuel or anything that he thought he’d smell if his plane had been hit by something.
Then what ever had been under him moved and the next thing he saw was the other pilot looking back at him from a dark plane with jagged wings.
” It was that face- ” he had told my Great Grandma ( his Mom was the only person he ever told his story to ) ” It was pretty awful, but what made it worse was when it smiled at me. And the smell. I’ll never forgot that moldy smoky smell. I’m sure it came from that machine. But I don’t know how it got into my plane. ”
Photo A.M. Moscoso
October 2024
My Grand Uncle, like I said couldn’t drive his car worth a toot, it always smelled funny and when I was little and he took me for a ride to the park or the zoo, I tried to hold my breath but of course I couldn’t hold my breath for long.
All I know is that smell got so much worse when he smiled.
Photo A.M. Moscoso
October 2024
