After much bullshitting and procrastination, I bring you the prologue of my Christmas story, Memoirs of Sam Dorian!
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Memoirs of Sam Dorian
By Ares Tenno
PROLOGUE
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With the rising sun, the darkness faded out and I saw the smooth stone placed so gently and precisely in the earth, I thought that just touching it would make it crumble and fall to pieces where it lay. Engraved on this stone were the words that I remember watching her write for so many months on a piece of paper, designing them, shaping them as a masterpiece in the hands of an artist at peace with the world and all that live in it. Those words rang out so much more clearly to me now, than they had six months ago – Here lies Amanda Renee Johansson; sister; friend; artist; May she rest in peace.
At the time, I figured she was ill with some form of deadly sickness; that she had cancer, or had come down with what medical scientists were calling “Darkeye”, a disease that took place in the eye and slowly infected the rest of the body; but it turned out, that wasn’t it at all. She was merely preparing herself for when that day – November 8, 2030 – came. She was preparing for the moment when her eyes closed and never again opened.
I was the one with my wits not about me that day.
It started during my time in the military; I was Private Dorian, Medic, one of one hundred forty-six men from the Eighth Platoon, Sixteenth Company, First Battalion, Tenth Regiment, Three Hundred First Armored Infantry Division. I was fresh from boot camp, a green recruit still sore from the punishment of basic training, sent into the war with a gun, a knife, and the clothes on my back, with the orders to kill or be killed. I, like so many other recruits who hadn’t even learned the meaning of war, was scared. Entering the haze of battle was a mouse in an electric cage that had loose wires, swinging back and forth across the borders of life and death, sparks shooting off in all directions, and one false step would be the end of me. I couldn’t focus; my mind kept flipping to images of my mother – or rather, the woman who called herself my mother. We didn’t look anything alike. She had blazing red hair, and I had a dirty-blond head of hay.
I thought about my grandfather and what he had told me of his time in the military: “We didn’t do much more than shoot and cuss at each other, or punch and kick at each other, on and off the field. This realization that the base was no better than the field terrified me; I was alone in a world full of chaos and bloodshed, with an M4A2 Carbine with added grenade launcher to protect me and my fragile self. Those times as a kid where I thought myself invincible were tired lies that I saw now as a veil full of holes. Coincidentally, crossing my line of view was a torn scarf full of bullet holes, probably from one of my now dead friends. For some unexplainable reason that I desperately sought words for, I found beauty in that scarf, an artistic quality that I thought only crazy men could achieve.
I guess I was pretty nuts.
Mike Yang had died throwing himself on a grenade to protect me; Jack Donahue had been shot in the neck by a sniper; Jordan Connery had been killed when a mortar crash-landed on the tank we had been using as a ride into the battle; Captain Raffik Shanzi had been blasted by a hailstorm of bullets; and I was hiding behind a wall, wetting myself and crying like a two-year-old. The hard-core vets who ran by and saw me would scream at me to pull myself together, get back on my feet, and fight. They didn’t know that I knew next to nothing about fighting, and that I was saving myself the trouble by not shooting and wondering how long until they dug my grave. Three seconds. No, five. Ten? It was a mystery that would only be solved when the bullet came.
I couldn’t take it anymore.
All the fighting, all the bloodshed, all the fear that was telling me I had no place to hide… it all shot down to my legs, and I bolted from my hiding spot, threw down my gun, and ran. Not towards the fight, not towards the guy I hardly knew who was bleeding out next to the fiery remains of a convoy truck. I just ran. I could hear screaming, people turning and looking at me in utter disbelief. I think a Sergeant Major might have even demanded that I return and help fight. I didn’t know because I was too scared to hear anything but the blood pumping in my ears. I kept screaming my apologies through bitter tears – sorry, ma, I couldn’t do what you did in the war; sorry, grandpa, I’m not that hard-core Spec you thought I was; sorry, Cap, I just can’t follow orders, even when I want to. That and many more as I ran.
Day turned to night, night turned to sunrise, sunrise turned to day again. By the time I finally quit running, I was miles away from wherever it was the rest of my platoon was at. I could taste sand; I guess I was at the boardwalk. I could smell sea salt and heard the rushing tide in my ears. As I woke myself from my dazed trance, I looked down to see I was still in my battered uniform, and was still carrying my weapons. Save for the knife, I threw the rest of my gear in the dirt, a strong feeling of disgust, both with myself and the war, overcoming me.
I looked far up the beach and saw a strange object; as if pulled by an unknown force, my foot took a step, and my brain followed through, moving me closer to whatever it was this object was made out to be.
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Hope you enjoyed!
