Short Stories - Warbird

The old war bird was quite ready for retirement by the time it went down.  It had almost considered going down on purpose already, but it cared too much for its crew for that.  They had taken care of him for a long time after all—custom paint jobs, constant tune up, even came up with a team logo to slap on his side.  Dropping out of the air on a whim seemed like a rude way to go after all of that. So he had held out, waiting for the day when something would inevitably go wrong and he would be scrapped.  Only then would he start his long anticipated retirement—hopefully as a household refrigerator. He had heard good things about household refrigerators.

As it turned out, though, things didn't go that way.  His career ended quite suddenly one night somewhere off the coast of Australia.

Terrible turbulence, rain, then a pop from the engines—down he went into the water and that had been that. He wasn't sure what had happened to his masters, swam away hopefully, and there he was left to get along as best as he may.

Now there are fish in the cargo bay—live ones, not rations—and crabs living under the seats.  Every day at three o'clock sharp an octopus turns nobs on the dashboard because it can, and fluorescent snails crawl over his cracked batteries because it makes them feel jittery.  It turned out to be quite a fair place for an old war bird to retire. The perfect place to rust in peace.

Maybe even better than being a refrigerator.

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