Torn Away

Have you ever eavesdropped on a conversation at the office or in a public library? Sometimes the words people say alone tell an entire story! Sometimes they don't so much. In this writing exercise, take 20 minutes to eavesdrop on someone else's conversation. Jot down their conversation as best you can, keeping true to the dialogue of those speaking. Then write up the dialogue either exactly as you heard it or with a little fiction added. In my case, I sat in a classroom eavesdropping some of my peers so I changed their names and transported them out of the classroom and into the middle of a war torn land. The dialogue is pretty close to how the conversation went, although my hands were a little too slow to capture it all. Enjoy!

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“No one took me as a Southerner either,” Phil said, his voice a whisper among the blasts of bombs in the background.

Jackie and Phil squatted behind an embankment of earth, oddly arcing its way out of the ground, disturbed by the tumultuous explosions. Jackie held her rifle firm across her chest, ready to attack at a moment’s notice. Phil let his weapon rest at his side. There was a war going on here, but Phil was tired of fighting, tired of his nerves being on edge every second of every day. It was time he took a break – after all, he’d been fighting this war for 3 ½ years already. Jackie was still a greenie.

“I’m the same way,” Jackie whispered back, glancing to the side to make sure she and Phil were still alone. “Growing up the cool place to hang out on a Friday night was Walmart. There were probably better things for a 15-year-old to do in Charlottesville, though.”

“I was already grown up by the time I reached Charlottesville,” Phil said, reflecting on his own past. “That was 15 years ago. I’d wanted a lot of property so I bought a farm in Virginia to be somewhere without Nascar.”

“Well you chose a good place. Charlottesville is definitely a bubble of interesting people,” Jackie said as she scratched the side of her nose, never taking her focused gaze off of the horizon.

“Interesting people,” Phil said repeating Jackie’s description quietly. “I used to live in Connecticut, then I worked in New York. I met a girl who was an upcoming actress. She and I took the trains everywhere, went to all of the restaurants. When I moved to Charlottesville I realized that my friends up in New York City were not going to be impressed by Charlottesville or Charlottesville food.”

“I don’t know, have you tried Christian’s or the dumpling place?” Jackie said, counting the restaurants on her fingers, her grip on her gun relaxing. “I had friends from the north who came to Charlottesville and were impressed that you get a whole meal for only five dollars!”

Phil laughed slightly, or what Jackie thought was a laugh. “Yeah, well after you’ve been in Charlottesville for a while your taste buds adjust themselves.”

Another wave of explosions hit the earth, the vibrations reaching Jackie and Phil, silencing their conversation for a moment. Jackie clutched her gun for life support again. Phil barely even bothered trying to balance himself. Once the world held to its original position again, Jackie picked the conversation back up, something to help her forget that she might die any second. Fighting a war was not what she had expected.

“What did you used to do?”

“I trained police dogs.” Phil loved talking about his time working in the station, although he didn’t often get the chance to. “I know a lot of cops and have worked with them for a long time.”

Another explosion erupted just on the other side of the embankment of earth protecting the two soldiers. Rubble rained down from the sky, Jackie and Phil both protecting their heads with their arms. The battle was getting closer to them.

“Hey,” Phil said, trying to distract Jackie whose eyes had grown wide in fear. “You know after working with so many cops, all of those cop shows drove me nuts! The main detectives, who only wore windbreakers, would lead the SWAT members, who are completely covered in armor, into battle!”

Jackie looked like she might laugh because she knows that’s true too, but all too soon the earth rocked again with another explosion. A quiet squeal came from where Jackie sat, her grip tightening around the gun she likely wouldn’t get the chance to use again.

“I have a feeling things I remember from my childhood never happened,” Phil said, grasping for any topic to help distract Jackie from what he knew to be their imminent fate. If the explosions were getting closer, then so was the enemy. And Jackie and Phil were out here completely alone, the only two who had escaped from the POW camp.

Jackie’s eyes were filled with tears, but she nodded in agreement. “It’s like the brownies from middle school. I used to love them, then like a decade later I had one again and it was awful!”

Jackie and Phil sat in silence for another few minutes. “I learned how to make those brownies, you know. My daughter is in love with them now and begged me to learn how to make them so she could have them all the time. If we make it back, I’ll probably be baking them for this platoon so I don’t end up with an entire pan for just her and me.”

“Where’s her dad?” Phil asked, unable to stop himself.

Jackie didn’t respond, but looked down slightly and shook her head.

Another explosion rocked the earth, the embankment crumbling away, exposing Jackie and Phil’s hiding spot. Before the earth even had a chance to stop shaking, another explosion erupted, and another. This was it. This was the end. Phil had never known that Jackie had a family, a life she was trying to get back to. His main goal was to just survive. Hers was to live.

“Get ready to run,” Phil shouted pointing behind Jackie to a wooded area filled with trees.

“What are you talking about?” she shouted back over the explosions.

“Find your family.”

Without another thought, Phil grabbed his gun and ran in the opposite direction that he’d told Jackie to go, making as much noise as possible.

Jackie sat frozen behind the disintegrating mound of dirt, shocked at Phil’s sacrifice for her. Her natural instinct was to chase after him, to throw her partner’s body to the ground so they could both escape alive. But escape was never really an option, not after they’d been captured as prisoners of war.

“Thank you,” she whispered as she got to her feet and began making her way to the forest Phil had pointed out to her. With the enemy’s attention on Phil, it was easy for Jackie to make it to safety. Just before she crossed the threshold into the woods, Jackie turned to see Phil shot down on the other side of the valley, just steps before he could have reached the forest too.