Call of Duty Oneshots (Mostly Ghost)

dislocated part 1

Red, hot fire slipped into my openly welcoming veins, finally. I'd taken at least three shots of bourbon, spilling some of it on shaking hands, and pounded them down back-to-back. No time to think about it when oblivion called my name, begging for some long-overdue companionship.

I hadn't even peeled off my blood-stained gloves yet before screwing off the bottle's top, tempted to just take it right from the spout. It'd be a lot faster that way, to get those memories out of my brain. Guzzle it down in gulps, wipe me into a blank slate faster.

After a few moments of letting the warm fluid settle into my bone marrow, sinking into my chair to watch the edges of my vision blur, I waited for the moment where nothing seemed overwhelming.

Where I didn't have the scenes of a failed mission replaying over and over and over and over....

With a tongue loose from too much bourbon and blood heating up with an anger I hadn't remembered inviting in, old memories I'd suppressed began clawing through the caskets I'd built with my own damn bleeding hands and nails made of unbent graveness.

Only reminding me why I didn't drink like this. Casual drinks with friends didn't upset the dead. This did.

Visions of a man I hadn't seen in years or even thought about in just as long, angry and resentful, hands just as bloody as mine.

I was no different now, was I? I just had a different way of releasing... everything. Instead of knuckles meeting innocent cheeks, I intentionally liberated pent-up regression into people who actually deserved it.

Over and over and over and over and over...

My room spun dangerously around me, and if I hadn't been sitting, my resting spot would have been the floor. Might have been nice and cold, and I contemplated just doing that briefly before ultimately deciding I was just too comfortable free-falling into my drunken stupor right where I sat.

Expecting to feel nothing, I felt everything.

Grief, self-loathing, regret, a faltering steadiness to my confidence.

Dislocated emotions, showing disloyalty to a usual state of being stoic.

I could have done better. I should have done better.

My throat burned, satisfying that desire to distract my head from feeling anything other than the blanket of mourning swaddling me, tightening around my limbs and throat.

It didn't last long.

A few smacks to the side of my head, as if I were trying to jostle the images of him right from my ears or eyes, any orifice would do. The pool of blood still oozing out from underneath him, a chunk of flesh gone from his side.... pieces of a body that anyone shouldn't ever have to witness, exposed.

It had me in a chokehold, remorse. Its teeth bore into my neck, sucking what composure remained, leaving bitter self-animosity behind.

Over and over and over and over and over...

Witnessing such atrocities was, unfortunately, the norm for us, but for it to happen to someone whom you'd bonded with, talked to, and shared a meal with... seeing them lifeless...

Was a pain I'd only wished for the enemies we hunted down to experience.

Over and over and over and over and over....

Through my muffling inebriation, I made out heavy footsteps approaching, stopping right outside my door. Shadows of two feet could just barely be seen through the cracks, and I scoffed when whoever had stopped by knocked three times. Might've been four.

"Ghost?" A familiar, feminine voice called out to me quietly, their voice dulled by the closed door.

Someone not important enough, I determined, if they were afraid of using my real name. "Go away," my throat countered, my lips giving away how much I'd had to drink.

But they didn't recede. Doing the opposite of what I'd told them, they seemed to have cemented right where they stood, igniting my irritation to a bubbling brew.

Then, their voice came again. More gentle. Patient.

"...Simon?"