The Harmony War

by Ten Speed

Chapter 1: Misery and Me

“Why are you reading this? You're pathetic. Can't you find something better to do with your time?” I thought to myself accusingly. I knew the answer because I'd asked it numerous times before. I sighed as I felt the worn paper between my fingers. It had seen a lot of abuse over these few cruel years but it was all I had left of her. The colorful words dulled with age and the paper yellowed and stained with greasy fingerprints and blood.

I reached to my waste and unclasped my canteen as I glanced out the window of the humvee. Another impoverished village. The sagging buildings seemed to stare back sharing an emptiness I've never been able to fill since I lost my beautiful baby girl. The letter I clung to, she had written me 4 years ago. I let my mind wander back to that day.

She was in the hospital, and the doctors were trying to prepare her for surgery. She was using the crayons I'd brought as she waited in her bed.

I paused momentarily to ask myself, “Why? Why her? Why is this world so cruel? It ain't fair.”

She had been diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor and the doctors didn't give her very good odds to pull through it. I spent every moment I could with her. I was all she had. She was all I had... Her mother had walked out when she was only a year old. I was a soldier and wasn't there the first year of her life and I always blamed myself for her mother leaving. I made a silent promise that I would always be there for her and never leave.

I was able to get a transfer so I could be a reliable parent and for six years I never abandoned her. But that's when life dealt us a cruel blow... How can a child of seven years old be asked to be so brave and face the terror of the unknown?

When the doctors came to take her away for the operation she grabbed my hand and gave me what she had been so intensely focused on with her crayons. “I love you Daddy,” she said as I looked down at what she had given me. It was a letter. Each word written in a different color. Each word vibrant with life. When I looked up they were already gone from the room and I nervously made my way to the waiting area.

An eternity had passed in those few hours I waited. I had made myself physically sick with worry and I had vomited twice. I clutched that letter she wrote with all the colors of the rainbow against my chest like a blanket on a cold night when to doctors entered the waiting room. I was hoping, praying for some small bit of good news.

“There were complications,” they began to explain. My chest heaved, and my heart bounded skipping beats. My mind was gripped by panic. “We did what we could but...”

I tried to scream but nothing would come out as the noose of my grief tightened around my throat. The sound died in my throat with little more than a whimper. I collapsed as tears stung my eyes and ran across my cheek and onto the floor. I didn't hear the rest of what they had to say, it was just static, background noise. My world had come crashing down around me and the only thing that mattered to my life was gone.

Shortly after there was fire that claimed our home and everything we had owned. Everything, except for a little rainbow letter kept tucked away, always to me. Faulty wiring in an old house caused the fire and I never forgave myself for not fixing it. It was another broken promise.

The only answer I could find was to return to duty. I had no reason to stay in that place any longer and I was desperate to get away from everything and end it all. I couldn't count how many nights I had stared down the barrel of my rifle hoping the answer was in there. “Just pull the trigger and the nightmare stops,” I thought grimly but I could never follow through, a trait that had always plagued me. I was running from myself and I knew it. I was ashamed but I didn't care. My mind and soul were dead, my body just hadn't accepted the fact.

I lifted the canteen to my lips to drink but it never got there. An ear piercing explosion ripped through the vehicle leaving the occupants at the mercy of gravity and whatever equipment was not secured as we were thrown like rag dolls off of the road. By the time I realized what had happened I was crumpled up on the roof inside the cab. The taste of rust in my mouth. “Blood,” I answered before the question could even materialize.

I lifted myself to my hands and knees and spit. I watched as the blood curved a path as it mixed with the water from my open canteen. I glanced up, The driver was dead and the corporal next to me was tore up from being tossed around and colliding with the loosed equipment but he was breathing. “Why couldn't that be me?” I thought selfishly.

“Sergeant!”

I heard someone shouting but the ringing in my ears made it impossible to comprehend.

“Sergeant!”

The sound was still muffled but it registered this time. It was a young kid who had been in one of the other humvees in our convoy.

Taking a another quick look around I found that little rainbow letter and hastily shoved it into the front pocket of my shirt. I groaned as I pulled myself from the upturned vehicle. My head began throb. Turning my attention to my unconscious subordinate I reached in to retrieve him. Every bone and joint my body ached as I strained to extract the battered corporal from the wreck. I caught a glimpse of his name tag, “Hicks,” I said out loud to myself. “Well Hicks, you aren't gonna die on me today.”

“Sergeant!” the kid yelled again, “We need to get to those buildings, we're gonna be target practice sitting out here any longer!”

As if on cue a hail of gunfire began to riddle the empty shell of the humvee. “Go! I'll cover, and you damn well better not hesitate! And you better be ready to cover me when you get there!” I barked at him grabbing the front of his uniform. The anxiety in his eyes and the jerky head nod was all the answer I needed.

“Go!” I shouted again and he ran as though his life depended on it. I suppose because it did. “Fear,” I thought to myself, “Have to have something to live for to be afraid.”

He'd made it and now it was my turn. I gritted my teeth as I grabbed Hicks by his collar and drug him as fast as I could. It was a short distance but it felt like a mile with cinder blocks strapped to my feet after being a pinball in a pop can. The pounding in my head put me off balance as a staggered back and fell after reaching cover.

“I'm gonna go back and grab the med kit out of the wreck, do you understand that?” I said sternly shaking him again. The only response I got was the same jerky nod as before. I got up and started running.

I made it to the hulking corpse of our overturned transport and began searching for the med kit. It had ended up in the front seat under the driver. “Don't think you'll need this any time soon,” I said callously as I pulled it away from the broken body. It was warm and sticky with blood. It left a familiar metallic taste in my mouth as I remembered spitting out blood after the explosion. I exited the vehicle and stood up expecting to return to to the other two in the same manner I left them. That thought was quickly dismissed.

“RPG!” a distant echo rang in my ears.

I whirled around on my heels, the serpentine smoke trail was racing towards me. “Finally,” I muttered a sigh of relief, dropping my weapon in the dirt. “This world is finally giving me some bit of solace.”

My arms were draped at my sides, my palms up welcoming the fate hurtling at me as though I were greeting my daughter. I allowed a timid smile to creep its way onto my face as tears began to well up behind my eyes which were clenched shut. “I'll see you soon baby girl.”

Comments

[the monkey ninja]

All I have to say is...
DAAAAAAAAYYYUMMM, SON!
I won't say if that is good or bad, because I honestly couldn't tell you. Take it as you will.