Two crewman hide their love for each other aboard the Hindenburg.
(from Love and Hydrogen)
Awesome. A heartbreaking and funny love story.
Also, this is a Doomed Story. What’s that? A Doomed Story is where you know the characters are travelling aboard some vehicle or working in some building that is slated for disaster by history. Maybe it’s a power plant you already know blew up, or ship that sank, a bridge that collapsed, a balloon that popped. Like Titanic. Or David Foster Wallace’s really excellent story “The Suffering Channel,” wherein overprivileged interns and magazine editors spend an inordinate amount of time working on a 400 word story (about a guy who poops art). By the way, they’re employed in the World Trade Center and it’s Sept. 10, 2001. (Here‘s my write-up on that.)
My short story “Pompeii Comeback Volleyball Geezers of the Year” — about a ragtag group of elderly volleyball players who defy their ages to contend for the national championship, only to get obliterated by the giant volcano under their feet — would also be an example of a Doomed Story.