“Probably,” Ralph said, “he has skin problems when he isn’t messing around with dead bodies.”
Ralph detected Delores’ shudder.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get back down to the hospital and see what the lab guys have got so far. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”
“You’re on.”
*
George Wier lives in Austin, Texas with his lovely wife Sallie, two dogs and two cats. He has been writing in earnest for more than twenty-five years, and is the author of the Bill Travis Mystery series and co-author of Long Fall From Heaven (2012). He also writes science-fiction, steampunk, and is an avid short-story writer.
Visit his website at http://georgewier.com
*
For a Soldier
Jason Deas
The war ended and kids streamed home. All of them left something behind—some more than others. Morgan returned with tattered baggage.
His parents drove him home from the airstrip. He didn’t say a word except that he wasn’t ready to talk. His mom and dad seemed to understand.
At home, Morgan went upstairs alone, shut the door, put his kit bag down and sat on his bed as a rush of images flooded his mind. Fear, joy, pain, brotherhood, loss. He’d never felt more out of place and surreal than he did at that moment. Homesick for the jungle, he sobbed quietly into his hands. He had a love/hate relationship with the bush and at that moment his heart splintered in new directions. He felt as though he’d been chewed up and spit out and wished he’d been swallowed like his best friend Crimson.
Morgan put on a Black Sabbath album and stared at a picture of the two of them as he wondered what Crimson would be doing if he’d made it home. The song tickled his ears and he shuddered with pleasure as he peered into the faces in the photograph.
Morgan took off the Sabbath album, put it back in its sleeve, and replaced it with a Jackson Browne record and turned off the lights. Even before sleep his head began to spin as if he were already in dreams. It was the first time in memory he’d gone to sleep without a gun. Sitting up in the dark, he blindly felt around under his bed until he recognized the familiar form that comforted him like a pacifier. He retrieved a gun his father had bought him on his eighteenth birthday. Rubbing his finger past the trigger he wondered how many times he’d pulled the one on his military weapon. Without doing so, Morgan knew exactly how it felt, what it sounded like, and even what it smelled like. With the gun in his right hand and his dog tags in his left, missing the night sounds of the jungle, he slept.
After six hours he awoke on the floor beside the bed. In the middle of the night he’d ripped off the sheets and moved to the comfort of the hard floor. With his gun still in his right hand he thought about the day ahead and all the proper things that should be done by a soldier home from war. His parents would want to have the entire family over for a homecoming dinner and the thought soured his mood.
I don’t want to talk about this. How would they ever understand? What if somebody asks if I had to kill someone? Of course I did! We all did. What will my sister think if she learns I killed nearly a hundred men? She’ll probably be scared of me.
Morgan was sure he’d be watched like an animal in the zoo. The idea of the dinner grew uglier in his mind. He knew the family would all claim to understand what he was going through. His older uncles and aunts would offer advice. As the scenario played out in his mind, he knew at some point he would get annoyed, boil over, and explode, saying something cruel and hurtful to them all. He imagined himself storming out of the room, pounding up the stairs, slamming a few doors, and sitting on his bed missing Crimson. Morgan made a mental note to ask his mother to postpone the party until he was a little more adjusted.
Morgan also thought a phone call to his ex-girlfriend would be the customary and polite thing to do. The war had ripped them apart after a year of letters came from an evolving soldier who began to deny life existed elsewhere in the world in order to survive. Morgan wrote her regularly at first and she wrote him daily. A feeling of separation began growing inside him at boot camp and intensified with his deployment. The line that connected them became so thin it snapped as he came to the point where he didn’t know who she was anymore because he didn’t recognize himself.
The break happened early one morning on watch, long before the sun rose. He’d been staring at a tree for minutes, hypnotized by fatigue when he saw something move to his far left. As his heart pounded wildly and his muscles tensed, Morgan tried to catch his breath. Camouflaged by a neatly devised cover which left open enough space to see and shoot, Morgan studied the young face of the combatant creeping toward him. The young man jittered with fear. Knowing what he had to do, Morgan lifted his weapon, aimed and fired. The slug hit him in the mouth, collapsing his head and exploding it at the same time. Morgan froze. A mind shattering confusion rocked his entire being as he witnessed the death. His first kill. A part of him snapped and became disconnected from everything he believed about himself and the heavens. From that moment on, he began the process of tearing himself apart and putting the pieces back together again.