The Soldier Who Did Not Kill

He was a typical soldier, he supposed. Well, anyone would suppose such a thing, really. He went in right out of school, with his mother tutting nervously while his father sat back proudly. He went to training and he learned everything he was meant to, and perhaps a bit more than he’d thought he would. He was, for the first time in a long time, exhausted to the point where happiness didn’t even matter.

He did everything a training soldier was meant to do, and he did it well. He learned so much, so quickly. He and his newfound brothers learned to shoot guns, clean guns, maintain guns. They learned how to kill.

It wasn’t until his unit was deployed that anyone learned how to die.

It was sand and heat and far too much sun sparkling on the sand and rippling in the heat. So much, always, all the time. It was constant and horrible and eventually, it was so, so red. Seeping into sand and boots and cracks in hands. It was everywhere. The coppery hotness under his tongue was everything.

Sprays of red stars and grey matter and shattered hearts shone in the sun like nebulas spinning together and screaming apart. The soft rush of air before a hot bullet slipped through the air was so quiet, but hideously, viciously loud in the hush before someone fell.

It was the most heinously unfair thing, he thought, that he had been taught so many things and that he hadn’t ever properly known what death was until he saw it in the blazing deserts and sand and red red red glitter of life forcibly expelled.

His finger was always on the trigger, as any good soldier’s would be, but he was something strange and wonderful and terrible.

He was the soldier who would not kill.

Never did a bullet explode from the muzzle of his gun. Never did he drive existence out of the body of, God, anyone, friend or foe.

And then.

And then.

Heat and pain and his accidental brothers yelling and he was being lifted off the ground on which he had collapsed. It felt like the end. It felt like the last few words of the novel of his life.

It felt like void.

***

He woke up two days later, and went home a month after that. He’d just been shot in the leg, and was, ultimately, fine. He limped for a while, but eventually, he was able to go back to work. He was never put on the front lines again, but he was still that strange and wonderful and terrible thing.

Over thirty years at that job, and he was still, always and forever, the soldier who did not kill.

Years and Years

I sort of feel like posting more short stories (and eventually a few serials) on here, and you know, I totally will. Gotta stretch those writing muscles, or something like that.
Anyway, here's a little thing I wrote this evening! Let me know what you think! I'd really appreciate prompts, as well. They can be as simple as words or ideas, or as complicated as vague storylines you'd like to see fleshed out. Feel free to share!

Years and Years

They had known each other for years and years and years. To the pair of them, the beginning of their friendship felt like the beginning of the universe. It was like the Big Bang, the spark that ignited every last little thing. It was intrinsic and absolute; no universe could exist without their friendship, and that was the thing.

The pair had known each other since before they were born; their mothers had been in the same expecting mothers group, and they had been born on the same day. He’d been a trouble baby, kept under close watch while she thrived on the outside world. Once he got past that, though, he was perfectly fine. He was simply perfect.

They grew up together, spouting like evergreens and daisies. He grew tall and strong and brave, and she grew fine and delicate and braver. She saved him from the bullies, and he saved her from her own self-destructive tendencies.

The pair celebrated every birthday together, and it was the celebration of their eighteenth that broke their hearts.

It had become quite obvious to each in turn, truth be told. It clicked almost simultaneously as they danced at their birthday party, hands warm on her waist and his shoulder. It was the finality or a camera shutter clicking shut, or coffin lid banging closed.

It was the absolute saddest thing either had ever known.

Each saw it flash in the other’s eyes, and each felt their heart break. She was leaving in the morning, and he was staying behind.

But still, in the soft light of dusk, grass brushing their ankles, their lips touched so lightly.

It was a kiss that had waited for years and years, and when it came, it was the saddest kiss the world had ever known. It was a kiss that said either tonight or forever, no in-between. It was a kiss like ashes in their mouths, burned and forgotten memories and what-ifs.

So she touched his lips once again, letting the song play out, knowing all the while that all she could do was leave.

Decades later, their paths crossed, and she tasted ashes in her mouth again. Her husband and daughter smiled cheerfully enough at the old friend, and they caught up on each others’ lives, hearing the impossible possibilities threaded between each word.

They both went home that night, and they did not remember.