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31_days2008-01-17 10:15 pm
rosehiptea.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2008-01-17 10:15 pm
[January 17] [Original] Kid
Title: Kid
Day/Theme: January 17/I can only tell you my side of the story
Series: Original
Character/Pairing: Unnamed narrator
Rating: R
Warning: Dark
Word Count: 1,668
The kid loved to talk. If I were him I’d have kept my mouth shut. Yeah, I know, I haven’t been him. And it’s not like he had any military secrets to give away. He and his buddies hadn’t even been headed anywhere interesting and all of them were dead anyway, except him. And we were trying to be decent; we’d never done this before, and we aren’t hateful types. Not even me; I don’t care what anybody says. So after a while, when we kept giving him food and being OK to him, he started talking to us. Maybe he just wanted to show off that he could speak two languages… how the hell should I know?
He had a mom and an older sister who was about to get married. Harris told him once that his sister was going to be all right, even said the kid would see him family again after the war. See, Harris wasn’t lying, either, none of us were. We were playing by the rules; the kid would end up in a camp with some other prisoners, and it wouldn’t be heaven but he’d be fine. Well, maybe not fine, but there was a fucking war on, so as good as he could expect. Like I said, we were doing it by the book.
So we were stuck there, the three of us and him, in this farmhouse. I don’t know what happened to the damn farmer, OK? There was plenty of food though, so I guess whoever lived there went somewhere in a hurry, but that part had nothing to do with us. We only stopped for the night but then we heard gunfire from insurgents in the hills. Then it wasn’t safe to leave. At first we thought the rest of the unit would find us. Then there might be enough people to face any trouble on the roads or in the hills so we could all make it back to the nearest town eventually. But no luck; we were stuck hiding in this place and hoping the wrong people didn’t find us instead.
Anyway, like I said, the kid kept talking. There was always somebody watching him, but I felt like he talked to me the most. After a while I knew more about his mom than I knew about mine. She was a nurse, and she supported the family until his sister got a job and he joined the army. His dad ran out on them when he was little. Just like mine, right? Yeah. He thought his mom might be ashamed of him that he ended up captured. And I was thinking, she’s your damn mom, she’d be happy you’re alive.
The sister was engaged to one of his friends. Not one of the guys we shot in the fight, somebody else. The fiancé was in the army too but a different unit. Maybe he’s still alive; I don’t know. The kid definitely loved his sister. He was always talking about how she was an artist, did paintings or something like that. The guy told his friend, the one who was going to marry her, that if he wasn’t nice to her he’d beat the crap out of him even if they were friends. The kid didn’t really sound worried though. He liked the guy fine, said he wanted nieces and nephews.
Looking back on it, maybe he was trying to make friends, get us to feel sorry for him. And we did feel kind of sorry for him, you know? His whole country wasn’t his fault. He was the kind of guy who probably would have been one of us if he’d have been born where we were, and maybe we would have been him, too. I know what you’re thinking, everyone is like that. And maybe everyone is. But there still a fucking war on for a reason. But he wasn’t any damn threat to us and we had no reason to hurt him, even if he hadn’t told us all those little stories. We knew how to act right.
And maybe he was just bored; we all were. Sitting there listening for gunfire, trying to contact the unit. Hell, there wasn’t much difference between him and us at that point. He couldn’t leave, but neither could we. We were all sleeping on the floor in shifts, eating the same food. Kid had to tell us what some of the food was, how to eat it.
Anyway, we heard a bunch of stuff from him. How good he did in school, how he wanted to be a doctor, or maybe some kind of lab tech if he couldn’t get into medical school. He was around medicine all the time since his mother was a nurse. She used to tell stories about operations and shit like that right at the dinner table. And the sister, like I said, an artist. He never told us what. Portraits, landscapes, modern stuff, I couldn’t tell you. She was only about a year older, used to boss him around all the time. Cracked Harris up, reminded him of all his older sisters back home. But we tried not to tell the kid about ourselves. You have to draw the line somewhere.
And sometimes he’d tell jokes, but half the time he’d have to explain them. We’d just look confused and he’d say “No, there’s only one reason a rich guy would go to that part of town!” There was one good one, about these two guys walking down the street with a dog, and then a woman comes up and she has a cat, and… yeah, never mind.
I wondered sometimes if he had a girlfriend. I asked him once – yeah, OK, I shouldn’t have asked – and he just said “no.” But there was a picture of a girl in his wallet; we found it when we searched him. She didn’t look anything like him so I don’t think it was the sister. I wasn’t about to push him to tell me, what’s the point in that? And he was kind of scared of us already; he must have been.
Truth is, I don’t think he ever would have told us who that was in his wallet. He was trying to be the good prisoner, and trying to have that “we’re all soldiers” thing going but we were still the enemy just like he was to us, right? The girl was off limits. That’s what I think it was.
So that last day, Stevens gives up listening for radio transmissions and decided it’s time to head out. There’s no gunfire in the hills and the food is finally running low. So we’re all a little keyed up, and then he points to the other room and says “We can’t travel with him. There aren’t enough of us to guard him when we’re moving. And we can’t just leave him here. He’d follow us or send someone after us.”
And I’m thinking “So we kept him here talking to us and all that shit but now it comes down to this?” But Stevens was right – there was no way for us to bring a prisoner through those hills. And then they both went outside and left me there. See, you have to understand, they both knew what I was going to do. They both would have done it too, Stevens and Harris. Yeah, that’s not what Harris is saying now but that’s bullshit. There was no way out and he knew it too.
I couldn’t take time to think about it. I went in that room, walked up to him, and shot him in the head. I didn’t say anything. What the hell was I going to say, that I was sorry? Would that sound good to you from someone who was about to shoot you?
He looked surprised. That’s the part that gets to me, that maybe he really wasn’t expecting it. I mean, he couldn’t really have thought we were all friends? That we were going to trust him, save him if it might get us killed? Could he?
And then I just left. I didn’t have to check to see if he was dead, and I didn’t really want to fucking look at him, I just wanted to get away from there. We just left him there, with his ID and his picture of the girl. There was no reason to try to hide anything, to do anything to him or the place. He was an enemy combatant, who was going to wonder what happened? And nobody would have if it weren’t for fucking Harris. And they both heard the shot, and neither one of them asked what happened, because they knew damn well what happened. If Harris says different he’s full of shit.
Sure, I think about it. Why wouldn’t I? I think about the mom, and the girl, what happened to them. Maybe somebody looked them up by now, now that Harris is talking shit, but it wouldn’t look very good if I asked. But I think about it.
And of course I don’t feel good about what I did. What the fuck is there to feel good about? I still don’t see what else I could have done, but when I think about walking up to him like that, and watching his eyes when he saw the gun, as a matter of fact I feel like hell.
They want to make me out to be some kind of psycho. That’s easier for them, to think you have to have something wrong with you to do what I did. But there was a damn war on, and they’d have done it too. They just picked me to be the one. And you can call me whatever you want, or judge me however you want, but I’ll bet you would have done it too, if you were in my shoes.
That’s all I’ve got to say.
Day/Theme: January 17/I can only tell you my side of the story
Series: Original
Character/Pairing: Unnamed narrator
Rating: R
Warning: Dark
Word Count: 1,668
The kid loved to talk. If I were him I’d have kept my mouth shut. Yeah, I know, I haven’t been him. And it’s not like he had any military secrets to give away. He and his buddies hadn’t even been headed anywhere interesting and all of them were dead anyway, except him. And we were trying to be decent; we’d never done this before, and we aren’t hateful types. Not even me; I don’t care what anybody says. So after a while, when we kept giving him food and being OK to him, he started talking to us. Maybe he just wanted to show off that he could speak two languages… how the hell should I know?
He had a mom and an older sister who was about to get married. Harris told him once that his sister was going to be all right, even said the kid would see him family again after the war. See, Harris wasn’t lying, either, none of us were. We were playing by the rules; the kid would end up in a camp with some other prisoners, and it wouldn’t be heaven but he’d be fine. Well, maybe not fine, but there was a fucking war on, so as good as he could expect. Like I said, we were doing it by the book.
So we were stuck there, the three of us and him, in this farmhouse. I don’t know what happened to the damn farmer, OK? There was plenty of food though, so I guess whoever lived there went somewhere in a hurry, but that part had nothing to do with us. We only stopped for the night but then we heard gunfire from insurgents in the hills. Then it wasn’t safe to leave. At first we thought the rest of the unit would find us. Then there might be enough people to face any trouble on the roads or in the hills so we could all make it back to the nearest town eventually. But no luck; we were stuck hiding in this place and hoping the wrong people didn’t find us instead.
Anyway, like I said, the kid kept talking. There was always somebody watching him, but I felt like he talked to me the most. After a while I knew more about his mom than I knew about mine. She was a nurse, and she supported the family until his sister got a job and he joined the army. His dad ran out on them when he was little. Just like mine, right? Yeah. He thought his mom might be ashamed of him that he ended up captured. And I was thinking, she’s your damn mom, she’d be happy you’re alive.
The sister was engaged to one of his friends. Not one of the guys we shot in the fight, somebody else. The fiancé was in the army too but a different unit. Maybe he’s still alive; I don’t know. The kid definitely loved his sister. He was always talking about how she was an artist, did paintings or something like that. The guy told his friend, the one who was going to marry her, that if he wasn’t nice to her he’d beat the crap out of him even if they were friends. The kid didn’t really sound worried though. He liked the guy fine, said he wanted nieces and nephews.
Looking back on it, maybe he was trying to make friends, get us to feel sorry for him. And we did feel kind of sorry for him, you know? His whole country wasn’t his fault. He was the kind of guy who probably would have been one of us if he’d have been born where we were, and maybe we would have been him, too. I know what you’re thinking, everyone is like that. And maybe everyone is. But there still a fucking war on for a reason. But he wasn’t any damn threat to us and we had no reason to hurt him, even if he hadn’t told us all those little stories. We knew how to act right.
And maybe he was just bored; we all were. Sitting there listening for gunfire, trying to contact the unit. Hell, there wasn’t much difference between him and us at that point. He couldn’t leave, but neither could we. We were all sleeping on the floor in shifts, eating the same food. Kid had to tell us what some of the food was, how to eat it.
Anyway, we heard a bunch of stuff from him. How good he did in school, how he wanted to be a doctor, or maybe some kind of lab tech if he couldn’t get into medical school. He was around medicine all the time since his mother was a nurse. She used to tell stories about operations and shit like that right at the dinner table. And the sister, like I said, an artist. He never told us what. Portraits, landscapes, modern stuff, I couldn’t tell you. She was only about a year older, used to boss him around all the time. Cracked Harris up, reminded him of all his older sisters back home. But we tried not to tell the kid about ourselves. You have to draw the line somewhere.
And sometimes he’d tell jokes, but half the time he’d have to explain them. We’d just look confused and he’d say “No, there’s only one reason a rich guy would go to that part of town!” There was one good one, about these two guys walking down the street with a dog, and then a woman comes up and she has a cat, and… yeah, never mind.
I wondered sometimes if he had a girlfriend. I asked him once – yeah, OK, I shouldn’t have asked – and he just said “no.” But there was a picture of a girl in his wallet; we found it when we searched him. She didn’t look anything like him so I don’t think it was the sister. I wasn’t about to push him to tell me, what’s the point in that? And he was kind of scared of us already; he must have been.
Truth is, I don’t think he ever would have told us who that was in his wallet. He was trying to be the good prisoner, and trying to have that “we’re all soldiers” thing going but we were still the enemy just like he was to us, right? The girl was off limits. That’s what I think it was.
So that last day, Stevens gives up listening for radio transmissions and decided it’s time to head out. There’s no gunfire in the hills and the food is finally running low. So we’re all a little keyed up, and then he points to the other room and says “We can’t travel with him. There aren’t enough of us to guard him when we’re moving. And we can’t just leave him here. He’d follow us or send someone after us.”
And I’m thinking “So we kept him here talking to us and all that shit but now it comes down to this?” But Stevens was right – there was no way for us to bring a prisoner through those hills. And then they both went outside and left me there. See, you have to understand, they both knew what I was going to do. They both would have done it too, Stevens and Harris. Yeah, that’s not what Harris is saying now but that’s bullshit. There was no way out and he knew it too.
I couldn’t take time to think about it. I went in that room, walked up to him, and shot him in the head. I didn’t say anything. What the hell was I going to say, that I was sorry? Would that sound good to you from someone who was about to shoot you?
He looked surprised. That’s the part that gets to me, that maybe he really wasn’t expecting it. I mean, he couldn’t really have thought we were all friends? That we were going to trust him, save him if it might get us killed? Could he?
And then I just left. I didn’t have to check to see if he was dead, and I didn’t really want to fucking look at him, I just wanted to get away from there. We just left him there, with his ID and his picture of the girl. There was no reason to try to hide anything, to do anything to him or the place. He was an enemy combatant, who was going to wonder what happened? And nobody would have if it weren’t for fucking Harris. And they both heard the shot, and neither one of them asked what happened, because they knew damn well what happened. If Harris says different he’s full of shit.
Sure, I think about it. Why wouldn’t I? I think about the mom, and the girl, what happened to them. Maybe somebody looked them up by now, now that Harris is talking shit, but it wouldn’t look very good if I asked. But I think about it.
And of course I don’t feel good about what I did. What the fuck is there to feel good about? I still don’t see what else I could have done, but when I think about walking up to him like that, and watching his eyes when he saw the gun, as a matter of fact I feel like hell.
They want to make me out to be some kind of psycho. That’s easier for them, to think you have to have something wrong with you to do what I did. But there was a damn war on, and they’d have done it too. They just picked me to be the one. And you can call me whatever you want, or judge me however you want, but I’ll bet you would have done it too, if you were in my shoes.
That’s all I’ve got to say.