This is going to be my first multi-chapter story, so bear with me ... I'm trying to build up suspense!
Chapter One
Private Arthur Frobisher had seen a lot of things in his relatively short life. He'd seen countries fall, cities destroyed and children sent away from their homes. He'd seen Nazi aeroplanes fly full tilt towards him, shooting at him with German machine guns. He'd seen some of his best friends get shot down over the English Channel fighting in the Battle Of Britain. He'd seen some of his best friends come back form the dead as those who were missing , presumed dead, were brought back from Dunkirk during Operation Dynamo. And Private Arthur Frobisher was only just 23 years old.
Yes, Private Arthur Frobisher had seen a lot of things in his relatively short life. Some of the things he was grateful he'd witnessed … some of the things he wished he could never see again.
But one thing that Private Arthur Frobisher had never seen, not even in his wildest nightmares, was a monster. And right now, in the cockpit of his Spitfire, watching the ocean come towards him terrifyingly fast … right now was the last place Private Arthur Frobisher would expect to see a monster.
It came up suddenly, as if it had appeared out of thin air. He barely had time to acknowledge its presence before he was ripped from his cockpit in a blaze of fire. His frantic mind knew that he was surely going to die – there was no way he could survive the impact if he wasn't in his aeroplane – and before his world went black, he felt sharp pain in his left side, as if something had torn into him, and he knew it was the monster. He knew that the monster was beside him, attacking him, and he knew then that he had no chance of survival.
As Private Arthur Frobisher lost consciousness, he realised that it was the monster who had saved his life. The monster saved his life and he did not know how or why, but he knew that he would surely have died if it hadn't have been for the monster, visible only for moments, and now gone from sight. The monster had been real enough, that much he was sure of at the time – but right now, the only thing that Private Arthur Frobisher could do was to thank the monster that saved his life just before his mind was engulfed in darkness.
Twenty minutes later, Private Arthur Frobisher was found, barely alive and bleeding profusely from a wound in his left side, by the rescue services, floating amongst the wreckage of his Spitfire.
Everyone agreed he was lucky to have survived such an impact with just a shrapnel wound in his abdomen.
Very lucky indeed.