The Queen's Shadow

The Cruelest Intentions

~~~Apollos
February 13th, 1951

'Are you sure?' She said it trying to make sure this was a real option. I heard the risks, but I couldn't live with the pain. I stayed away from the therapist so I could push the thought out of my mind. In the end, I knew it was a chance it would come down to this. 'Just think about it, and if you want to do it, I'll do it.'

I sat in my room, contemplating the idea I had concocted in my broken mind. I willed myself, forward I couldn't lose to my grief. I couldn't let him win. I walked to my bed after taking my clothes off. I couldn't sleep sometimes because my nightmares would make me break down. The way I would see their bodies...oh God it was enough to make me relive World War II and neither of these nightmares we're a good thing. I relived some of the darker parts of the war, sometimes I would feel myself fighting to wake up. It wasn't anything I didn't feel already it was sometimes they felt so vivid and at one point I felt a bullet burrow its way into my stomach.

I would wake up before it got worse, I thought some of this was behind me. I went out of my way to put it behind me, I didn't want to relive killing so many people. I know what I did, yet in the end game I was fighting for my country, and so was my enemy. The Allies just happened to win.

I found my eyes getting heavier, I wanted to resist. It was just that today has been pretty exhausting, I had spent time preparing myself for the questions that would arise. I didn't tell my siblings and it was something that I wanted to keep to myself, I had a bunch of responses prepared for when they ask why I was being different. I just wanted to move past it, that's all I want now.

'Corporal, you with us?' I looked around and saw the village that we had to take in Japan, I grabbed my knife and said "Yes." We had already taken care of the two guards and were waiting for the patrols to pass. The village was so close to our base and plenty of our recon units had gone missing because of how close we are to the village.

We had dispatched two more guards, we had to handle it quietly. It was only then that I saw a kid who couldn't have been only ten years old. 'What the hell the intel said there weren't any civilians.' We had remained hidden, the only problem was he was getting closer. I mentally was preparing myself to knock him out. We needed to sabotage their machine guns and destroy their anti-air artillery guns. These guys were holding on no matter what and the way they thought almost always made me nervous. It wasn't like the Germans, these men were willing to die for every inch of this goddamn country. They had no problems using our men's bodies as a means to stage an ambush. Every time we fought them, we had to fight out of them. There is no way to survive an ambush without taking casualties unless you are already prepared.

The boy got closer, it was only when a few voices were calling out did he turn back and run. He didn't see anything it was too dark, but we had to hurry. We snuck into the first building it was a makeshift cabin just like all the ones we had seen before. I took a quick peek into the cabin to see if this was where artillery fire coming from, and sure enough, it was. We had gotten ready to set the bombs, we had a fifteen-minute timer. We move quickly it was 3 in the area and we had to get these done, we couldn't afford to stop.

By the time we got to the third cabin, the kid was right there. They were using children as Lookouts, and one of my teammates pulled his knife out. I stopped him, he looked at me his eyes cold as ice. It told the story of how many of his teammates had been killed because of the nightmarish war. "Wait," I whispered we had the demolitionist set the bombs, I wanted to leave him there but I knew this wasn't right. 'It's time to go corporal.' One of the men whispered I stood there looking at the kid thinking. The second I showed my conscience I could get myself killed, but all I had to do was move him a few feet away.

'Are you trying to get court-martialed?' I heard one of my subordinates' voices, I don't know why I couldn't leave the kid in there. As I moved to get further away, I noticed something my hands, they were empty. This wasn't how it happened, I had to leave him there. He was an enemy, he died that night. Once the bomb went off, the main Force came in. We would Ambush them and when this battle quickly, after weeks of trying to push past this point we finally got it.