A bunch of kids are playing, because aren’t kids the cutest. They’re being very imaginative and talking to their ‘friend’ and nicking household items to build things. All very sweet, and told from the point of view of a distracted, rather distant mother. If anything, she’s delighted that the kids aren’t underfoot – even if they are playing ‘WWIII’. As with many of Bradbury’s twisted tales, by the time the people that shouldbe paying attention start to pay attention, it is too late, and terrible things are now underway.
This is a maddening, frustrating, provoking tale. It makes me want to yell at the page, and then hide under the bed. It was the source of a decade’s worth of nightmares as a child, and has stayed with me ever since.
First published in Planet Stories, Fall 1947. Collected in The Illustrated Man, Doubleday, 1951
A Personal Anthology 