Spooktober Prompts 2022!
Captain Saponar's Final Flight
August 4th, 1945
Magician Barracks Row, North Field
Tinian, Mariana Islands
1: Portrait
The portrait of Dan's bubbe had hung in the tenement's front room for as long as Dan could remember, watching over the family after they moved to the East Side. Now, as he lay on the cot in the North Field barracks room, she watched over him still from her spot propped up on his trunk.
In Romanian, he asked, "What am I supposed to do, Bubbe?"
The portrait didn't answer. In his memories, though, she pulled him into an enveloping hug, smelling like equal parts paprika and fresh bread, and she said, "Whatever you choose, Danny. I'll always love you."
Dan sighed out hard, attempting to exhale the sharp anguish of loss that still stabbed into him, even years after losing her. After losing all of them.
2: Vanish
He'd been waiting for pilot training to start, or rather, waiting for Cimmaron Field to become operational. That whole spring had been such a blur, because all he was doing was waiting around, kicking rocks up and down the sidewalk in Oklahoma, and writing letters back and forth to his parents in Romanian, and Mike in Yiddish, and Rahela in a mix of both plus English.
It was Rahela's letter in July that broke the news to him. He usually looked forward to her letters. His sister was one of his favorite people, on account of her spitfire attitude. She'd just gotten married in April of that year, and the last letter Dan had sent to her was saying congratulations and G-d help her new husband. So when her letter arrived in July, he expected some sort of sass from her.
He opened the letter with a smile, but that vanished off his face as he read the first legible line:
The pogrom killed all of them.
3: Abandoned
He had to read the rest of the letter a dozen times in order to understand it. Partly because Rahela had clearly been in an emotional state when writing it. There were tear stains smudging the ink, and entire sentences she'd scribbled out.
The gist was clear, though: Dan's entire extended family in Iași was dead.
I don't know if you get news out there, Rahela's letter said at one point. I wanted to make sure you knew. You need to know.
He did get news, but he mostly paid attention to news about the war in Europe. A lot of the guys also waiting for training wondered about why they hadn't joined in the fight against Hitler yet. Dan was one of the only ones among them who understood on a personal level the effects of the abject antisemitism that smoldered across Europe, and the United States' lack of action felt like a purposeful act of abandonment.
In the North Field barracks, Dan's eyes strayed to the latch on the trunk. Rahela's terrible letter was inside, folded up and tucked among other letters, and its presence seemed to vibrate the air. His rage had vibrated the air when he'd first read the letter, and he'd had to fight off the throbbing, the pulling, the ache in his teeth, the marrow-deep heat as his magic came unbidden.
The magic didn't come often. Having tight control over it was a condition of his enlistment. If he ever used it, he'd be court martialed and sent to prison--if he was still alive. In spite of the hardships and the danger, he liked what he did. He loved flying. Loved the Army. Loved--
4: Enchant
The barracks room door opened and Mike walked in with a half-eaten cookie sticking out of his mouth. He came to an abrupt halt when he looked at Dan's face, and slowly removed the cookie with one hand so he could ask, "You okay?"
The smile on Bubbe's grainy face seemed to glow, enchanted somehow by Mike's appearance in the room.
Whatever you choose, Danny.
Dan sat up and swung his legs off the side of the cot, managing to smile even though his heart was profoundly numb. "As okay as I can be, I think."
Mike stepped closer, extending a napkin-wrapped collection of cookies toward Dan. "They were giving out cookies at the DFAC."
Dan almost said no, but reconsidered and plucked a cookie from the greasy napkin. "Thanks."
5: Misfortune
"No sweat," Mike said, and reached into his jacket pocket. "You got a letter."
Mike extended the envelope to Dan. Immediately he knew it was from Rahela, and he opened it hastily. The first line of this letter pulled him out of the depressed funk, and he said excitedly, "They named the baby Daniel."
Mike sat on the cot next to Dan and leaned over to read the letter. "What a terrible name."
Dan just nodded. "An absolute misfortune of the highest caliber."
They were quiet as they both read the letter. Mike asked softly, "Is little Dan the same as big Dan?"
Mike meant to ask if the baby was a magician. It was hereditary, as far as anyone could figure, and G-d, Dan hoped his nephew wasn't a magician. Dan and Mike were, and sometimes Dan could feel the atoms that stacked up to form his body pulsating, shivering. Sometimes he felt like if he just let go, he could tear apart the whole world.
He tapped a cluster of words on the paper. "He was born on the fourth of July."
"I bet Rahela did that on purpose," Mike said.
"It's something she'd do, isn't it?"
Mike nodded and ate another cookie. They both read the letter in silence for a few moments, and then Mike pointed to a piece of the letter further down the page. "Your Tata's health is improving."
Dan scrolled his eyes down to read Rahela's report that their father's recovery from influenza was progressing better than doctors had predicted. Dan had been sending the majority of his salary back to them to pay for his father's medical treatments, and he was glad to see that the sacrifice had been worth it.
6: Chasm
Dan shifted his eyes sideways toward Mike, who still leaned close to read the letter. Mike's shoulder rested against Dan's, and the warmth of him seeped through the fabric between them. In the heat of the August afternoon, that extra warmth should have been uncomfortable, but it wasn't. Not at all.
Bubbe in her portrait smiled wider.
Dan cleared his throat. "Hey Mike?"
Mouth full of cookie, Mike was only able to grunt a question sound: "Hm?"
"Can we talk about something?"
Mike blinked slowly, and every passing second widened the chasm opening between them.
Bubbe's ghost said she'd love Dan no matter what choice he made, but that wasn't true of everyone. Dan knew that. He had no idea what his parents would say, or what Rahela would say. He knew what the law said, though. He knew what the Army said.
"You lied to me," Mike said. "You're not okay."
7: Thorn
Dan scowled and folded Rahela's letter up. Mike pinched the top of the letter softly to stop Dan.
"What do you want to talk about?" Mike asked.
"Nothing, actually," Dan said.
Mike guffawed. "Yeah, real convincing, Dan. I definitely believe you. You've been acting weird since we got here."
Dan sighed. "They said once we fly this last mission, the war should end. We can go home."
Mike shrugged. "Yeah? That's a good thing, isn't it?"
"I guess," Dan said, but didn't really think that. The impending release from wartime service was like a thorn stuck in him, being worked in deeper with every passing day, and the pain was starting to extend past discomfort and into real agony. "But, I guess I also wonder . . . what are we going to go home to?"
"Our families."
"Sure," Dan said. "And what else?"
Mike pressed his lips together. "I dunno. Fame and fortune?"
"I'm being serious, Mike," Dan said. He lifted up his empty hand and rubbed the pads of his fingers against his thumb. "Who's gonna want to hire a magician for anything?"
"A war hero magician," Mike corrected.
"A war hero who could vaporize a city block without breaking a sweat," Dan said.
"But who wouldn't do that," Mike said.
Dan stared at his fingertips.
Mike pressed, "Right?"
8: Howl
"Yeah," Dan said, and let his hand drop to his leg.
"Shit, Dan, is this what you wanted to talk about?" Mike asked, very serious now. "Going back home and losing it?"
Dan sighed. "No. Kinda. I don't know."
Mike set his napkin of dwindling cookies on the green wool blanket, and used the fingertips of his now-free hand to turn Dan's face toward his own.
The first time they'd kissed had been when Dan was sixteen and Mike was fifteen, up on the roof of Dan's tenement building as they were trying to find constellations past New York City's light polluted skies. Mike had been looking skyward, and Dan had been watching him, admiring his profile silhouetted against the city's twinkling skyline, when Mike had turned to look at Dan and caught him staring. But before Dan could look away or make an excuse or anything, Mike had leaned in and kissed him. Close-mouthed. Chaste.
Back then, on the tenement roof in the dark, Dan's heart howled with triumph and excitement and something more.
But in the North Field barracks room, in the buzzing artificial light and oppressive humidity, Dan's heart howled in another way.
"We're gonna fly this sortie," Mike said, "and we're gonna drop bombs, and the Japanese are gonna surrender, and then we're gonna go home, and never have to look at that airplane again. Okay?"
Something gnawed at Dan though, with acid teeth and an unabating sickness in his belly.
It's not the airplane, he wanted to say to Mike. It's not the airplane. It's you. I'm never going to see you again.
But he didn't say that.
He didn't say anything at all.
August 5th, 1945
Prebrief Room, North Field
Tinian, Mariana Islands
9: Mirror
Dan sat next to Mike, both silent as they waited for the briefing to start. Dan could hear the low roaring rumble of B-29s as they took off in formations, heading to Japan for daytime raids. Tonight, the night crews would continue the bombardment, and by the time Dan and the six other B-29s in his seven ship formation took off in the morning, the Japanese cities on the near side of the country would be in shambles.
Dan and his formation were one of three flying at once, and he listened to the briefer explain how he was heading west toward Hiroshima once they all got off the coast of Japan. The other two formations would continue north, with one dropping payloads past Tokyo in a place called Tsukuba, and the other continuing further north still to drop over Sendai.
Dan's formation would be in the front, and the Sendai formation just behind him. The Tsukuba formation would be last, and they'd all drop bombs at about the same time. A coordinated attack from one side of the country to the other would scare the Japanese, undoubtedly. If the bombings on August 6th didn't convince them to surrender, an even larger coordinated effort a few days later on the 9th would surely do it.
Right?
He looked around the room at the faces of his fellow pilots, and the navigators, the bombardiers, the gunners, the engineers. Everyone's face mirrored what he was sure was on his own: fear, determination, and certainty that this flight was going to be the one to end them all.
10: Broken
There had been so many flights over Europe that Dan was sure would be how he died. One particular one flying over France killed his copilot and almost the entire crew in the back, and Dan could still hear the gurgling final breaths of the navigator behind him as he fought to keep the plane flying. He did, all the way to England, limping to RAF Mildenhall and landing so hard one of the landing gears broke off and jammed up through the bottom of the plane and couldn't be pulled back out until they cut the plane's frame from around it.
Mike hadn't been the bombardier on that flight. Thank G-d he hadn't been out there yet. The bombardier had been shot up so bad the only thing keeping him together was his flight suit and life vest.
"Sparky?"
His callsign spoken so loudly and suddenly made Dan startle, and he could hear crewmen screaming it before they went silent forever.
"What?" Dan snapped before he registered who was speaking to him. Major Jack Maywether has his arms crossed and his eyebrows pulled down. Dan cleared his throat and said in a more respectful tone, "Uh, I mean, what can I do for you, sir?"
Major Maywether jerked his head at the map of the Philippine Sea tacked to the wall behind him. "The sergeant asked you a question."
The briefer stood near the map, looking uncomfortable, and Dan said to him, "I'm sorry. I didn't hear you."
"That's fine, Captain Saponar," the briefer mumbled, keeping his eyes turned down. "Um, I just asked if you and the other formation leaders could stay behind after everyone else has gone."
"Of course," Dan said, his heart still pounding in his throat. He wondered if everyone else could see it there, looking like his Adam's apple was dancing in his neck.
11: Escape
The majority of the airmen left the briefing room. Mike did too, lingering long enough to cast a concerned look at Dan, and then he was gone. Dan remained in his seat and rubbed his face. His hands felt unusually hot so he pulled them away, looking at his palms before flipping them over so he could look at the backs. Then palms again. Nothing strange. They looked normal.
"Sparky," Major Maywether said from nearer to the map. When Dan looked up, the Major nodded his head to indicate Dan should come closer. He did, following the two other formation leaders to where the briefer stood.
The briefer regarded Dan's approach with whale eyes, shrinking away slightly like he was going to try to escape any second, but enough for Dan to notice.
The kid had probably never been this close to a magician before.
Dan sighed, wanting to tell the sergeant just being next to him wasn't going to do anything. Dan was still in the Army because he'd proven his magic was under control, and he even wore a dosimeter on his uniform so anyone could see what his radiation level was. It was nothing just then, like it'd been for years.
For some people, though, it didn't matter that Dan had worked so hard to keep his powers under control. They saw him, saw the illness, and assumed he was dangerous purely because of the diagnosis.
12: Slime
And boy howdy did being treated like a slimy, diseased toad make Dan angry. He had that enough from being Jewish. He didn't need people to use another reason to treat him like vermin.
His hands were hot again, itching, and he rubbed his palms against his flight suit as he tried to ignore the sergeant's discomfort.
The sergeant cleared his throat and started talking, emphasizing the importance of spreading out so they would drop bombs all at once. The bombers had been targeting relatively close targets thus far, clustering their efforts around a single large city every day. The sorties the next day would hit cities that were hundreds of miles apart, and if they timed them all to happen at once, it would show the Japanese that the Americans were capable of coordination beyond what the Japanese had used when they attacked Pearl Harbor.
It would also demonstrate that Japanese air defense would have to be spread out so far and so thin, it wouldn't make much of a difference.
The sergeant went over duress codes, headings and bearings and the closest safe places to crash land if it came to that, and the pilots all wrote the information down in their tiny notebooks that were then stashed back in uniform pockets.
"Any questions?" the sergeant asked, deliberately not looking at Dan.
Dan nearly asked why the sergeant was so afraid. Why he thought Dan would harm his fellow airmen. He nearly asked if the sergeant wanted him to get shot down. But he didn't. He shook his head, silent, and Major Maywether dismissed the three of them, and Dan stepped out of the stuffy briefing room and into the searing day.
August 6th, 1945
Magician Barracks Row, North Field
Tinian, Mariana Islands
13: Haunt
Dan startled awake, slamming both hands down onto the stiff cot matress under him like he was trying to punch through it. Awake now, the gray wisps of the nightmare haunted him, but like any ghost faced head-on, it was weak and fading and then . . . gone.
Mike was on the next cot over, awake as well, groggily rising from bed and fumbling for his pistol.
"What's it, Dan?" Mike mumbled, still mostly asleep.
"Nothing." Dan reached a hand out, waving it at Mike to stop him. "It's nothing. You don't need the gun. I had a nightmare."
Mike blinked, yawned, and put away his pistol. He shuffled across the room and sat down next to Dan. "A nightmare about what?"
"I don't remember," Dan said. "It's gone."
"Must've been bad," Mike said. "You were screaming."
That surprised Dan, and he said, "Really?"
Mike nodded and yawned again. "What time is it?"
Dan always wore his watch to bed, so he squinted at it in the dark. "Two."
Mike made a sound of disgust and then leaned against Dan's shoulder. "I'm too tired to go back to my bed."
14: Ruin
"It's five feet away," Dan said, smiling.
"Feels like five miles." Mike yawned again. "Can I have a sleepover at your place?"
Dan laughed, just a little. "I'll have to ask my mom."
"S'fine," Mike said, allowing himself to fall over onto the cot and scoot his head up to where Dan's pillow was cooling. "She'll say yes. She thinks I'm a nice boy."
Yes she did. Dan joined Mike, tucking up against him tight on the narrow cot, wrapping his arms around Mike from behind and pressing the bridge of his nose into the back of Mike's head. His hair smelled like castile soap, and Dan breathed it in a slow, deep breath.
He wondered, if his mother caught them like this, would that ruin her opinion of Mike as a nice boy.
Probably.
He didn't want to go home after the war ended. He'd have to get a job, but there were so many restrictions for magicians. He couldn't be a civilian pilot, even if he wanted that. Which he didn't. Magicians had offers out west in the desert working in factories apart from any real towns or cities. People said it was so they could be safe from the prejudice that a lot of people had against them, and maybe that was a little bit true, but Dan knew mostly keeping them in the middle of nowhere was to contain any toxic event if one of them went nuclear.
Back home--in New York City certainly, but also all over the States--he and Mike wouldn't be able to be together, either. If they didn't get arrested for sodomy or deviance or something like that, they'd get locked in an insane asylum. Apart. Alone. If anything in the world would make Dan go nuclear, he expected it would be confinement in an asylum for the crime of loving someone they thought he shouldn't.
Mike was asleep again, and Dan's hands were hot and itchy. He clenched them hard then released, hoping that would dispell the weird itching feeling. But it didn't. He wanted to go run some cold water over his hands, but then he'd have to let go of Mike. There was no way Dan was going to spend even a minute without Mike in his arms. So he stayed, palms hot, throbbing, itching, and smelled the castile soap in Mike's hair until it was time to get up. And fly.
August 6th, 1945
B-29 Apron, North Field
Tinian, Mariana Islands
15: Mist
This wasn't Dan's first sortie to Japan, or even to the area near where he was flying that morning, but he had jitters for some reason. He circled the B-29 with his copilot Heavy during their initial walkaround, skin tingling with nerves as the crew chief trailed them.
Dan stumbled over something in the morning dimness, and when he caught himself and looked down, Heavy was withdrawing a foot and laughing.
"The hell's your problem today, Sparky?" Heavy asked.
Dan rubbed a hand over his face in an attempt to clear away the misty cling of exhaustion. "I dunno. I didn't sleep too well last night."
Heavy grunted. "Are the magician barracks shitty?"
"Not this time," Dan said. "Usually, yeah. These ones are kinda nice."
"Just you and Wizz in them?" Heavy asked, and when Dan nodded, Heavy continued, "At least you don't have the ruckus of some of these other guys."
They reached the end of their walkaround, and the crew chief ran off to finish his tasks. Dan and Heavy lingered near the aircraft's nose for a moment. When Heavy had mentioned Mike--"Wizz" they called him, because no one could pronounce his last name, so they just called him by the final syllable--Dan's stomach had clenched. Did Heavy know about Dan and Mike? Did anyone else?
Heavy pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and slipped one in his mouth. He extended the box to Dan, but he waved them away. Heavy shrugged, returning the box to his pocket.
16: Whisper
"Almost done," Heavy said as he struck a match. The two of them walked away from the aircraft and the apron it was parked on as the sun began its blaring rise into the sky. "Where're you going back home to? New York, isn't it?"
Dan nodded. "East Side."
"You and Wizz grew up there, right?"
"Yeah." Dan wondered about eating something for breakfast. He felt nauseated, but he knew flying on an empty stomach wasn't a great idea. "You're from Nebraska?"
They approached the hangars that edged the airfield, where crews of pilots, airmen, maintainers, and everyone else involved in sortie launch went about their various tasks. Dan scanned the crowds of men for Mike, and finally spotted him standing by himself near one of the hangar's smaller doors.
Heavy took a drag on the cigarette. "Yeah, Omaha, but I don't think I'm going back there."
Dan squinted. Mike wasn't actually by himself. A man in a suit stood near him, and it was clear they were speaking. Mike looked uncomfortable, even at this distance.
"Maybe I'll come visit you in New York," Heavy said. "I've never seen it. You can show me around." He laughed and elbowed Dan's arm.
Dan hardly heard what Heavy said. He was too busy staring at Mike, studying the man talking to him, trying to figure out who that was.
Then Mike looked up at Dan, and the man speaking to him turned to look as well. Dan got a good look at his face--just a regular guy, face clean-shaven, hair cut short like everyone else's, nothing remarkable about him--before he peeled off from Mike, vanishing through the hangar door, leaving Mike by himself.
Dan and Heavy reached where Mike stood, and Heavy said, "Hey Wizz, you excited to blow the shit out of someone today?"
"Can't wait," Mike said, his voice coming out in a hoarse whisper, so he cleared his throat and repeated, "Yeah, can't wait."
Dan nodded at the door where the mystery man had vanished. "Who were you talking to?"
Mike looked at the door as well, then back at Dan. "Oh, that guy? He, um, had some information about the payload. It changed a little."
"Changed?" Dan asked. "Shouldn't he brief the pilots too?"
Heavy nodded, and Mike said, "No, it didn't change that much. Just a little. Something about the . . ." He struggled for a moment to find a word. "The fins on them. They might fall different."
Dan had known Mike long enough to know when he was lying.
17: Shadow
But before Dan could call out Mike's obvious fib, Mike said, "Did you eat? I'm dying for some coffee."
"I ate," Heavy said. "I'll see you in the prebrief."
Dan and Mike said goodbye to Heavy, and after the man walked away, Dan crowded closer to Mike, speaking in Yiddish in case that man was close enough to hear them. "Why are you lying to me?"
"I'm not lying--"
"The fins are different," Dan said. "I don't have to be a bombardier to know that's bullshit, Mike."
Mike's already pale face paled further and he remained silent, but his lips tightened like he was about to start talking.
Finally, Mike said, "It's nothing. I promise. It's nothing."
"If it's nothing, you can tell me," Dan said. "It's not like you'd be spreading secrets or something."
A shadow fell over Mike's face and darkened his eyes. He said again, voice trembling, "It's nothing."
"Mike--"
"They changed the way the bombs're loaded, so he was telling me how to work around any jams," Mike spat. "That's it. See? Nothing."
"I thought you said fins," Dan said.
"The loading has to do with the fins," Mike said. "Why is this such a big deal to you?"
"I'm the aircraft commander," Dan said. His hands were hot again. "I'm supposed to know everything about the plane, including what's going on with the payload."
"They'll probably talk about it at the prebrief." Mike stepped closer to Dan, close enough to lean his head near so when he spoke it was soft and pleading. "Do you want to go get breakfast with me?"
"I'm not hungry," Dan said, and he walked away from Mike, leaving him by himself next to the hangar. He didn't see him again until the pre-mission briefing, where he didn't speak a word to him, and only stared hard at him when there was no update regarding payload.
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