Aftermath

Aftermath

         Jimmy runs forward in a serpentine pattern, his M-16 chattering and spitting short bursts of death as return fire buzzes past his ears like the drone of pissed-off bees.

         The humid, sweltering air is filled with the mismatched scents of jungle decomposition, cordite and death.

         He sees a friend, nineteen, and in the prime of health, slapped backward as a bullet rips away his helmet and the top of his skull, and Jimmy wonders if the boy's dreams and memories can be found in the viscous liquid flowing from his ruined brain.

         A movement to his left draws his attention, and he instinctively swings his weapon and squeezes the trigger. When his eyes follow the path of his bullets, he realizes the "enemy" torn asunder by his hand is a little girl, not more than five or six. Pieces of her flesh, bone, blood and organs decorate the dilapidated hut behind her with a grisly mural. He giggles, feeling the soft shoes of insanity tip-toeing through his mind as he thinks, I didn't know I was an artist! But look at that superb rendering I've created from such an unusual medium!

         As is often the case, the firing is done, the fight finished in an instant. His commanding officer congratulates him and his platoon buddies on a job well done, and tells them they are heroes, defenders of liberty, pa . . .

         Jimmy barely hears the last word as one final shot rings out.

         . . . triots. Jimmy, now shortened to Jim with the passing of years, twitches awake, cold with fear, chilled with memories, as the recurring dream fades, and he recognizes his surroundings: the same drab, green room in the Veteran's hospital that has been his home for some thirty years. The room where his brain-shot friend and the dark-haired, moon-faced little girl, long dead, revisit him over and over again.

         Made an instant quadriplegic when a sniper's bullet severed his spinal cord, Jim looks down at his wasted chest and legs; his twisted, twig-like, useless arms, as he slumps in the wheelchair peering out the dirt-hazed window.

         And he wonders how many of the young men now fighting in a land of sand and barren landscapes, men sent to trade their blood for oil, will also experience the tap dance of insanity and the interminable hell of ruined bodies and souls.

The End

         The following poem is a companion piece to the above short fiction piece.


         Aftermath

The young soldier bursts into a clearing,
shooting and shot at, each second he's fearing.
A friend is killed before his eyes,
and a child's life is taken in error.
The soldier has no time to cry
or respond to the tableau of terror.

Then the fighting ends, and the Sergeant remarks,
"Men, you're all patriots true!"
The soldier hears a shot, and then comes the dark.
When he awakens, his life is through.

The sniper's bullet severed his spine,
and made him a rag doll with a brain.
The V.A. hospital has been home all this time,
where he relives that day again and again.

He peers through the dirt-glazed window,
his only view upon the world,
and ponders the new war, where our men go,
so politicians can see our flag unfurled.

He wonders how many of those brave women and men,
will be lost, or doomed to years of disabling strife.
And knows no matter whether we lose or win,
all the oil beneath the sand is not worth one young soldier's life.

         The End