Addison
There’s no taming a man like me.
…But damn, that woman makes my cock turn up like no one else. Last night, I drove home in silence, just reliving the whole experience. There are a lot of women out there who have given me the time of my life. However, the next day, something changes. Normally, I get this realization that I need to get back to my life. With her, there’s none of that. I keep on thinking about her because she’s got the whole package and more.
The next morning, I wake up and make a hot cup of coffee. I glance down at myself and laugh, when I notice I’m completely butt ass naked, and all of my windows are open. “Fuck it,” I smile and on walk out on my porch. It’s a beautiful day in Canton, I’m thinkin’, and the cool breeze always makes me feel like I’m on top of the world.
I walk forward and my toes hit something hard and immovable. I glance down. “What the fuck?” I whisper. “Halloway?”
Here I am, naked and holding a cup of coffee, and Halloway is passed out drunk on my porch. “Morning, brother,” he smiles. “Nice pecker.”
“God damn it,” I sigh, walking my ass back inside. I grab a pair of sweatpants and a shirt, and I walk back out with a big glass of water. “Drink,” I tell him.
“Fuck off,” he keeps on smiling.
“I ain’t fucking around,” I say. “Come on. Drink. You look like shit.”
“Did you get lucky last night?” he asks, grabbing the water and downing it. It spills all across his face, pouring down his shirt.
“I don’t kiss and tell.” I laugh and sit down in my favorite wooden rocking chair. I look out into the small amount of snow that’s gathered from the morning cold.
“Like Hell, you don’t,” he says. He struggles to pick himself up from the ground. It’s as if his whole body is made out of a ton of bricks. “Ah, I’m getting old. Damn everything to Hell.”
“You’re 31,” I laugh. “You’re not old yet.”
“Sure feels like it,” he says. “There’s no trajectory for me anymore. At least, that’s how it feels. A few years ago, I was fucking king of the world. Now look at me. I’m passing out on porches and getting drunk every night.”
“Life is whatever you make of it.” I shrug. “Can’t keep making excuses forever.”
“Come on, man. Have my back for once.” He wipes some leaves from his hair and sits down next to me. “Can’t you see that I’m having a moment here?”
“Oh, I see it,” I laugh. “I just think it’s a little unnecessary.”
“Yeah, ‘cause you got laid last night. Of course you feel all chipper and happy, and shit,” he says. “You got your rocks off. Yippee for you.”
“Whatever.” I smile, thinking about Helena and that pussy of hers. Just the thought of her makes my head spin. I’d live on my knees for that woman if she’d let me.
We sit there for a moment, not saying a word. Birds are chirping above us and it’s peaceful outside. A few cars drive by, but they’re few and far between. Finally, Halloway speaks his mind.
“Don’t you miss our time over there?” he asks, shuffling around in his seat.
“Shit,” I sigh. “Don’t even bring it up.”
“I’m serious, man,” he says. “You don’t miss it at all?”
“Nope,” I say, still staring off into the distance.
“Look, man. I know it was tough over there. I know it wasn’t a box of fucking chocolates, but we were all in it, you know? We were a group. We were brothers. It feels so weird to be back,” he says.
“That was a while ago,” I sigh. “I’ve learned to forget about it. I’ve put it out of my mind. You should too.”
“I can’t.” He shakes his head and strokes his beard. “I try all the time, but every night I think about those nights over there. I remember staring off into the desert darkness and the lights shooting over our heads. You remember?”
I nod. “Yeah, I remember,” I say, solemnly. “It was like a dream. None of it seemed real.”
“Exactly, man. It was surreal, the explosions in the distance. You remember them. Whole villages went up in flames,” he says. I close my eyes and see it all too clearly. Hell. That’s the only word that can describe what I witnessed. Hell.
“It was wrong,” I say. “Those people shouldn’t have died. The coordinates… fuck, those soldiers in those planes never could get it right. What’s the point of fighting if you’re unable to hit the target every single time?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “They killed us too, remember? We killed our own men.” Tears fill his eyes. Before the “conflict,” I would have called him a fucking pussy. After the war, I realized real men know how to cry. They know how to let it all out. Still, it’s not something I want to relive. I already have trouble sleeping at night.
“I remember,” I say, angrily.
“It’s the cost of war,” he says. “I guess we should have realized, huh? We should have read more about history or something. This shit repeats itself, over and over again.”
Like a broken record. Like my memories, stuck in time, but getting more and more horrible with each passing moment.
I can’t say anything anymore. I can’t tell him to shut up. I can’t tell him to elaborate any further. This is something he needs to talk about and I’m the only one he can talk to because I’m the only other person in this town who experienced the same fucking thing.
“You should see someone,” I tell him.
“What, like a therapist?” he asks me. After a few long seconds, he starts laughing. “Fuck that. What will they tell me? ‘You have PTSD. Take this pill and you’ll feel better.’ You know as well as I do, that shit doesn’t work.”
“Yeah,” I sigh. “I don’t know. There aren’t any answers.”
“I don’t want any answers,” he says, nodding. “I just want to keep telling the story.”
“Why would anyone want to retell that story?” I ask him, hearing the screams of burning bodies echo in the distance. All of those innocent people that my government ordered to be slaughtered.
“Because man. It happened. People need to know the truth,” he says. “They can’t keep repeating the same fucking mistakes, over and over again.”
“But they will,” I say. “They will.”
I think of Helena and my whole body begins to feel incredibly weighted. When she finds out who I really am… when she realizes I’m not as heroic as she thought… when she understands how fucking damaged we all are now, she’ll throw me away like a dirty rag. She won’t know what to say. Nobody does. “Thank you for your service,” is about all we can get. Hero is what they call us, and some really are heroes. But, at the end of the day, they call us these things because they don’t know what else to say. The subject is just way too dark for the normal, everyday person to believe.
Halloway stands up and walks off my porch. “Anyway, sorry for bringin’ a bunch of darkness onto your porch,” he laughs. “We’re still alive, after all. That’s some cause to celebrate.”
“Sure is,” I mutter, nodding to myself.
He disappears into the distance and I’m left in pieces, on my porch. It was such a beautiful day, full of promise. Now, I’m not so sure. I walk back inside and fall to my mattress, falling asleep.
Helena, you seem like a light in all this darkness. I just hope you don’t think I’m a fizzled-out book of matches.