War by Todd Komarnicki

Author:Todd Komarnicki [Komarnicki, Todd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-61145-447-5
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Published: 2011-02-15T05:00:00+00:00

They’re here now. It’s morning, and I can hear them contemplating action and access points just outside the door. The slow hurry of loading bullets echoes out onto the roof. Jumping suddenly seems a satisfying possibility. At least, for a moment, I could fly. Up away from all the punishment of myself, to land in the graveyard that this war has already dug for me. But somehow, as I peep over the side, I don’t want to disappear down at all. I long to fly up. To vanish in clouds and purity, somewhere above all this no, into an impossible possible yes.

But men don’t fly up. We only fall down. And now is my time. The time to end all the time I have wasted. All these things I will never know. And the door opens.

They are soldiers, of course, seven, with guns aimed and confusion on their faces. Maybe that they’ve chased all this way to find a man wrapped in a sheet. Barefoot. Like I am late for a meeting. So late I forgot my shoes. Not a soldier at all. Or at least not a threatening soldier. Just a man trapped at the far edge of his life.

Two of the men are dark-skinned. One with an elegant, African face, totemic. The other short and maybe Latino, his shining face as pinched down as if something fell on it. They speak to each other in broken English and stutter-step my way.

The uniforms. That’s it. Familiar. But not green. Beige, with different shoulder patches. The five men behind look eager to shoot, but, with their commanders in front, they’ll have to wait until I run or the leaders say bang. Involuntarily, I tense in anticipation of a bullet, and they stop and crouch as if expecting a gun.

“No, no,” I say, “I’m unarmed,” instantly regretting it. It is obvious. My thin cotton layer hides no weapon, but I don’t want to be taken in, arrested for treason, locked away anywhere they choose. I want to die up here. Maybe I will jump.

They stand again, and the front two make it within fifteen feet. I begin to shake. My last dance, I laugh to myself. And they laugh, too. That’s how they get through such an execution, I guess. They laugh. So it feels less real.

“Shoot me,” I say. “Everyone. At once. That’s all I ask.” And then the laughter really comes. The African soldier takes in my English slowly, then rolls out a laugh that would seem loud at a party. The others fall in behind. Not dying at the hands of these hyenas, I decide, and I hop up onto the ledge.

“Wait,” they say in delayed unison. “No. Come here.”

“I’m not going anywhere. I’m already home.” I turn and stare down. Ready to step out and free.

“Sir,” the small face says to me. “Sir, please, stepping down.” I don’t step down, just peer back over my shoulder. The other soldiers have laid down their weapons and opened their hands like fathers who have pushed their child too far out on a swing.

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