“Is that a carton of milk on the shelf, dad?” Lily asks her 83-year-old father. Slowly, his eyes travels upward to the shelf and chuckles.

“There’s a great story that goes along with that.” He leans in as Lily settles down next to him. “First of all,” he whispers, “it’s not milk.” He grins. “It’s a radio.”

“A radio?” Lily’s brows shoots up.

“Back then, radios were bulky and dangerous to walk around with them. They’re one-way radios, you see. You can only hear the intelligence but you cannot reply or warn the enemy’s coming. If the enemy gets hold of one of our radios, we’d be doomed.

So one day, the genius of my unit – the engineer – came up with the idea of hiding the radio in something plain. That way, if the enemy discovered us, we can throw the radio away and no one would ever find it. We thought he was nuts but after four days, three nights, he returned with this,” he grabs the carton from the shelf, “a milk-carton radio.”

(~175 words)

I am participating in Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writer, where we write a piece between 100 and 150 words (more or less 25 words) in length inspired by the photo prompt above.