Current location:	Limbo
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Current music:	Where Do You Think You're Going - Dire Straits
Entry tags:	stories

The End
And so he just lay there, waiting for the inevitable. They said your whole life flashed before your eyes before you finally went away. He wondered whether it would happen to him. He wondered how it was that you could relive your whole life in a few moments time. Was that an indication of what it had been worth? He knew it would eventually happen but he hadn't expected it to come so soon. But then again, if he had applied himself a bit more he would have realised he didn't even deserve what he'd got. The regiment counselor had pointed that out to him. He was always busy knocking himself down she said. Never believed he deserved what he got. That was the reason he was so insecure all the time, always thinking that those he loved best would be taken away from him, or just plain stop loving him. She said that was also the reason he never went after what he wanted. Always waiting, waiting for whatever it was to come to him instead. So ironical that he found himself waiting again for the ultimate event.

Once, he couldn't even remember how long ago it was now, but once, a long time ago he had been an optimist. He trusted people back then, believing what they said and living his life like some sort of stupid hamster who thought that his cage was the best thing there was. Of course, he didn't think of himself as a stupid hamster back then. That was till deceit, lies, heartbreak and the real life got to him. That was until the worst in people was laid bare to him. That was when he was liberated. For a while the feeling was great. He looked with condescension upon all the gullible fools who lived for ideals and believed in the goodness of fellow men. But that didn't last long either. The loneliness came soon after.

Every morning for years after that, he'd get up in the morning feeling like there was a hole somewhere in there. Sleep wouldn't come to him. He found he couldn't connect to people anymore. He thought of suicide for a while, but that would be too difficult. More importantly, it would be too wasteful. No, he'd rather die doing something useful. Die a death that would be mourned, not ridiculed. And so he had joined up. Just given the job a skip one day and gone over to the recruitment office instead. They said they would put him through a psychological evaluation. He had been afraid of that. Afraid that the psychologists would figure out what his real motives were. He knew psychologists could get a lot out of you just by pretending they were listening. He had been in therapy as a child once. But that's all they did. They pretended to listen. He wasn't a child any longer, maybe he could lie his way through it.

Turns out he had spent all that time worrying about nothing. It wasn't that the psychologist was inept or anything. In fact, it was the exact opposite. She was very good. Got him to tell her everything there was to be said. He had always been a little strange around women he was attracted to. He thought she realised that. Took good advantage of that. But the army were chronically short of officers, and they just couldn't pass up somebody as well educated as he was. Apparently, middle-class english speaking officers were very hard to come by. So he was in. They sent him to a training academy for a short while where he had to posture and pretend he was proud of his rank. He gave a few trivial exams, fired a few shots with the standard issue rifle. That was it. He was in the army now. An officer and a gentleman if you're into that sort of thing.

They sent him back to his hometown, even offered to give him a house. He refused though. Thought it'd be better if he spent time at home. Bask in his glory. He'd earned it, or at least he thought so. Coming home right after training was probably a mistake. The parents sprung a trap on him. Got him married off to this girl they'd found for him. Insipid little creature. Couldn't even talk right. Anyway, he didn't really care. His commanding officer had told him that he might be called in to active duty very soon. Seeing as how the war was getting worse he had been expecting that anyway. So he didn't care about getting married either. "Let them have what they want. As it is, they'll be the ones spending most of their time with her anyway, so who am I to question it. I probably don't even deserve this", he thought. So it was that he became a married man.

It was the first day of April. Irony always had a way of fucking with him. Guess it was the old bitch having a go at him again. He got called in for active duty to one of the most blood-soaked battlefields of the war. That was the great thing about an organisation like the army. They could throw a complete greenhorn into a situation that obviously needed an expert and you couldn't even turn around and question the decision. If you did that, they would simply call you unpatriotic, a traitor even. Yup, it was about the best employment contract any employer could ask for. So in he went, into the proverbial company car, the jeep the local army office had sent to pick him up.

He was flown to the post closest to the front. As he flew over the landscape he realised it was a wasteland. Nothing grew there, no people lived there. It was about as habitable as the moon. The inflated egos of a few politicians and the meglomania of a general had turned it into an object of desire. He wondered if the politicians had ever seen what they were fighting for. But then they weren't really fighting for it were they, he was. He had read somewhere that the principals changed, but principles didn't. Clever wordplay, and very true. They put him in charge of a small group of men. They expected him to lead these men into battle. The men probably thought he was some sort of war hero so he thought it best not to tell them he hadn't even fired a bullet at a person yet. He had once been made leader of a little drama team back in school. He had messed it up royally. Everybody who was in the team hated him the whole time they were in school. Memories of that kept haunting him.

They attacked at around three in the morning. He was the only one awake, mostly because he just couldn't sleep anymore. He'd taken to staying awake for days at a stretch, only going to sleep when he couldn't stand it. Even then, he couldn't do it without sleeping pills. The tanks were the scariest. When they fired, it was as if the earth shook. He had seen them in museums before, but seeing a real live one doing its job was something else. And the machine guns. He wished he could carry one around instead of the shitty rifle and pistol they gave him. The fight got worse but he didn't lose any men. He should have been feeling proud, but fear was all he could feel. Thats when he realised that soldiers, the really good ones, don't fight for their country or principles. What they fight for, what is most important at the time, is their own life. A soldier who lives longer kills more. It's so simple. He wondered why more people hadn't figured that out. Maybe they had but hadn't let on because it would be too difficult to get anybody to fight if everybody knew this. He imagined an army recruitment pamphlet headlined "Join the Army. If you're really good, maybe you won't die!". And he laughed out loud at the thought. Nobody would hear him. Not in the noise of battle.

The engagement must have carried on for a good ten hours. That's when they got some reinforcements. Some of his men came to him and asked him whether he wanted to withdraw to the encampment and get a little sleep. He refused, but later decided to take a snooze in the trench he was assigned to. He took a few pills and settled down for a snooze with his helmet in his lap. That's when it happened. For a moment he thought somebody had struck at his gut with a hammer. It sure hurt like that. A moment later he realised he'd been hit by a bullet that had somehow ricocheted into the trench. The blood that came out was dark brownish, probably meaning it had hit his liver. For a moment, he thought how lucky the soldier firing the bullet had been. He had just fired a shot into an empty trench and actually managed to hit an officer. He wanted to go up and congratulate the fellow, maybe a slap on the back and a few encouraging words. The kind of incentive his men had come to expect from him whenever they managed to bring down another human being.

Calling for the medic would be no use. They couldn't do much. You couldn't really fix a perforated liver in the battlefield. He didn't see any transports. The nearest one would have to come in from base and that would take at least two hours. He knew how long he had. Twenty minutes, thirty maybe, if he didn't move too much. He wondered then whether being an atheist had been such a good idea. Of course he knew there was nothing after this. All that reincarnation, soul, heaven, hell mumbo-jumbo was an elaborate incentive system devised to keep an insane world sane. It hadn't worked though. We still had wars, people still killed each other. Hell, he was dying because of another man's actions right now. "Here I come god. Here I come you son of a bitch. Lets see if you really exist you oppressive bastard!", he shouted. That hurt. The shouting hurt. He'd probably reduced his remaining time by another five minutes by indulging in that outburst. The irony was, there wasn't even anybody listening. Not unless god really existed. He'd find that out he supposed.

So there he was, all alone, waiting, waiting for the inevitable. Alone, like he had been in his head, all his life. A death that would bring glory, at least to those he was leaving behind.