Story Plot Ideas | Vol. 2

Enlisted

The blood rushed to his ears, his head pounded with the beating of a thousand drums. Then, nothing.

He supposed that it would never truly leave him. That never-ceasing thrum of danger-induced adrenaline, coursing through his veins. The ghost of a rifle in his hands, a pendulum between life and death. The weight of a helmet upon his head, a crown of camouflage, the king of slaughter.

It was what he signed up for, what he enlisted for. 

As his heart rate slowed and his breathing evened, he thought about how it had been 6 months. 6 whole months and he still couldn't function like a regular person.

He remembers the moment that he realised that war showed no mercy, had no compassion. He remembers it clear as day. 

The sun was beating down on him. His sweat soaked up by the stiff fabric of his uncomfortable tactical uniform. 4 local children had found their way to him, faces adorned with smiles, cheeks chubby with youth.

They followed him along his patrol route, singing songs in a tongue he could not understand, playing games he did not recognise. It did not matter. They had tugged at him and chattered in his ear, and he nodded along as if he understood. There was a certain tether there, one of a mutual respect of differences. An unadulterated moment of purity, where neither were enemies. 

Then came the sirens.

They were bomb warnings, but it was too late.

A moment later, he was thrown onto his side, pain searing through his arm. He choked on the debris, eyes stinging dust. Feeling around for his rifle, he got back up and looked around. As the dust cleared, there lay 4 mangled bodies.

He wasn't sure how to feel. After all, he hadn't even known their names. 

Yet, they were innocents, caught up in this world, a war between men. So he wept, for the young lives lost, for the futures gone, and for the light taken from this world.

When he first stepped off the plane and onto the tarmac of his homeland, there she stood. His dutiful wife, who cried out protests when he first told her of his thoughts of enlisting. Her eyes shone with relief and happiness at having her husband back. But he wasn't the same man who had left, he was never to be whole again. She would never understand that, forever blaming him for leaving her with their infant daughter.

He was greeted with protests against the war, out on the streets. People who would have spit in his face if he was wearing his uniform. People who called men like him monsters and murderers. But he was just doing what he thought was right, was that wrong?

He hadn't been gone that long, but it seemed that he had forgotten the use of his more complex motor functions, having relied on his baser instincts to survive. He couldn't wrap his head around his laptop, the screen unwavering in front of him. His phone, his camera. He wasn't sure how anything fit in his hands anymore, not unless they were rifle-shaped.

But thank the heavens, there was still one thing he still understood. His daughter. She was soon reaching the precocious age of 5, cheeks round and rosy with health and privilege. Blessed to live a life of which, she would never have to face the death and destruction that her father had seen.

But she was too young. Too young to understand the amount of sacrifice that her father had made. The veneration he deserved, for the life he had given up, the moment he enlisted.