And All Was Right With the World

And All Was Right

With the World

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Synopsis: A soldier comes home, but the war has never left him.

Author's Notes: This post-canon tale was a response to an Iron Chef posted by Prince Charon in September 2007, asking for a story that “starts with gut-wrenching angst, and ends with uplifting joy, from the [Point of View] of the same character or characters, without the angst having been a dream or hallucination, or the joy being artificial, or the result of brain damage.” It was also a response to another Iron Chef posted by Hershey-chan in April 2007, asking for a story that makes one of the Three Js stand out.

Acknowledgements: Thanks go out to Prince Charon and Hershey-chan, of course.

He closed his eyes and he was there, crawling across the dusty boulevard with the tall date palms in a line down the middle, the long row of squat buildings in sun-baked beige ahead in the unbearable heat and someone screaming in the westbound lane where oily black rolled into the blue sky. He had never been away, he had never left the army and gone home to sit on a hillside in his old hometown, it was still as alive and real as it had been the first time, as it would always be. He was still crawling over bits of date palm leaves and windshield glass and burnt metal and bone fragments and scraps of bloody flesh on his knees and elbows with his M16 in his hands, trying to get to the concrete island between the boulevard lanes so he could get out of the open and see who was firing at him. There was a helmet before him with someone’s head still in it, the face blown off, leaking red into the dust. He crawled around it and got to the island and thought he saw something move just behind the rooftop parapet across the street, and he fired burst after burst at it, the bullets spraying brick dust when they hit. He could see the twisted Bradley with orange flames roaring out of it, and a guy was still alive inside it, screaming in a way that wasn’t human any longer. He shot at the parapet, a shrill whine in his ears from the IED blast, shot at it until he used up all his ammo, and nothing changed, nothing at all. He was still there.

He opened his eyes.

He was sitting on a grassy green hillside overlooking a pond. The grass had been mowed a few days before. Maple leaves rustled to the left and right in the spring breeze. It was going to rain soon, judging from the clouds to the southwest, but the sun was out for now and brown ducks floated on the pond and quacked. A couple walked hand in hand by the pond’s edge on a worn path. A small boy in short pants ran ahead of them, stopping once to look at the ducks and point.

PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE DUCKS, read a sign by the pond. HIGH HILLS PARK. LAWNDALE CITY COUNCIL.

Nothing about the scene was real. It looked fake, like something off a bad computer game. He rubbed his hands together as he sat with his knees drawn up on the grass. It was all fake, every bit of it. Any amateur fiddling with CGI graphics could have made a better picture. Only the war had been real. He knew this was true because he had been there and seen it and lived through it, and it was the only real thing there had ever been, or would be.

He wondered where Quinn was. He had imagined one time that she had liked him. He and Jamie and Jeffy had a competition going as to who would win over the cutest red-haired girl in the world, but she had never really picked any of them. It was all just a high-school teenage game, just like any other. When he called her from college and told her he was quitting school and joining the Army to fight in Afghanistan, she had begged him not to go. He got the idea from the way she had acted that she had liked him, but he thought now that she was just being a normal girl, not wanting anyone to fight, and she had had no special feelings for him. He had written to her about half a dozen times from Iraq, where he had been sent instead of Afghanistan, but she had never responded. She hadn’t really cared. It was all just a game to her, nothing more.

Even though she hadn’t cared, he had no bad feelings toward her. She was just being Quinn. He understood that. She couldn’t have understood. He still loved her, or thought he did, though now that love was an invisible thing, never showing itself, never coming out. He loved her, which was why he was going to let her go on with her life, go on being the Quinn who could toss her hair like a mane of orange fire, and it was a good thing. He was glad there would always be a Quinn around; he hoped so, anyway. She was worth it. He hoped someday she would meet the right guy and settle down and have kids and a good life, a happy life, a better life. She deserved that.

The thought made him smile. The silver leaves on the maple trees roared in the wind. The weather was changing. The sun would be gone soon. He looked up and smiled at the light. He did not squint or close his eyes. When he lowered his gaze to the pond, the couple and their little boy were gone. No one was around. He reached behind him, pulled the Smith & Wesson from under his sweatshirt, checked the safety, then put the muzzle to his right temple and pulled the trigger. He did not close his eyes then, either.

A thousand miles away Quinn laughed and tossed her mane of orange fire, and all was right with the world.

Original: 09/12/07, modified 11/04/07, 06/14/08, 10/31/08, 05/06/10

FINIS