Story of Logan

My sister, Megan, and I sit on the wooden floor of our grandmother’s living room, flipping through a brick-size photo album. This is what we do every time we visit our grandmother. Some people consider this boring, sitting all day flipping through pictures, we consider this a form of storytelling.

Every photo tells a story of grandmother’s life. A life which I can always picture it in my head and pretend I am a part of it. I pause mid-flip and stare at the picture at the top of the page. I point at the young military-man whose arm is wrap around grandmother’s shoulder and ask. “Who’s this?”

Grandmother puts on her glasses and looks down at the picture. “Oh, that’s my brother, Logan.”

Her face suddenly looks sad. “What happened?”

Megan quickly lays down her album and stands next to me. Grandmother took a deep breath. “This was taken on the day Logan was being sent off to war. Mother and father didn’t want to go to the station, so I went instead.” She smiles. “A photographer insisted on taking our photo right before he boarded the train.” She sighs. “That was the last time I saw Logan. He was killed in action less than a year later.”

This story was originally published on September 14, 2014.

Written for Sunday Photo Fiction, a flash fiction challenge hosted by the blog A Mixed Bag where we are given a photo prompt and must write a piece of 200 words or less. Each prompt is provided on Sunday.

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