It was a cold and blustery evening, deep in the frigid valleys of Western Massachusetts. The moon hung low, as if it were down on its luck. The wind whistled softly and slowly, as if it were singing the dulcet melodies of a sad love song. I sat quietly as the whiskey I sipped upon burned my insides delicately and soothingly. There was something about the way I felt that night. I knew my life was going to change; I just didn’t know how.
Company was coming on that evening; the usual suspects I presumed. Our cohorts from another bunker, perhaps. Even in the most dreadful of winters, my comrades and I typically perked up at the notion of another night spent drowning our sorrows with bourbon and good company. We exchanged whimsical tales of our previous lives. It was good to feel alive, even if the feeling vanished by dawn. Reality always set in by dawn. The war had certainly made us weary, but those fleeting glimpses of positivity were all we had left.
Before I could collect my thoughts, the door to our bunker burst open. In came a man I had never seen before. As he removed his coat I could see his chiseled body shining in the moonlight. His face was hardened and stoic, yet oddly comforting. As he approached from the shadows I quickly could see that this was the face of a man you could trust. A man you could grow to love. A man you would always remember.
He moved towards me in a slow, calculated manner. It was then that he reached his right arm towards me and extended a hand. His voice beckoned to me with a sense of enchantment, “Hello, I’m G.”
Months passed and we grew closer than I could have ever imagined. Many winter nights were spent filled with laughter, with tears, and always with a sense of a greater purpose. We discussed our pasts, and our futures; but never the present. We learned to never discuss the day-to-day, for the harsh reality of our everyday horrors were too much to bear. Yet, despite it all, our love for one another became real. If it weren’t for G, I thought to myself constantly, these harrowing winters would have been the death of me.
As the war pressed forward, it soon became evident our assignments would change. Suddenly, this was the harshest reality of all. Our tried and true tribe began to disperse, one by one. I learned I was being dispatched to a base out east. G learned his unit was being sent down the river to the front lines in Delaware. Before I knew it, he was gone, and those nights we once longed for would soon become nothing but a memory.
As the war raged onward, keeping in touch with loved ones became next to impossible. I sent letters to G; but I knew my efforts were in vain. Soon, the glimmers of hope in my otherwise dreary life had become nothing but faded memories. All I had left were blurry images in my head of the faces I once adored. The stories, the smiles, the laughter, the tears; it was all for naught. And I had no choice but to accept this fate.
War will do that to a man. You lose touch with who you are, and who you ever were. But through it all, I tried to remember G. Our love felt tangible. You could feel it. You could touch it. But as we learned, you could never make it last.
Many years later when the rebel troops took over the allied front, I was left with two options: die or fight as one of them. I had been stripped of everything I once knew. A shell of myself, I had become nothing more than a cold-hearted killing machine. It had been over a decade, and I had no emotions left to give. Survival was my only instinct, and the only memory I had left was the taste of my enemy’s blood.
It came to be one gloomy evening on the battlefield that I locked eyes with the only familiar face from my past I could have ever recalled. Amidst the sounds of gunfire, and the cries of agony and anguish, a man emerged from a plume of smoke. He stood entirely still, and spoke to me in the sweet, gentle tone I had once longed for. “Lopes?,” he whispered faintly. “It’s me, G.”
As his comforting smile gazed longingly toward me, I began to replay all the tender moments we had once had together. Amazingly, in my head they seemed so vivid, so recent. It had been years since I had felt the type of warmth that I felt in that instant. But as I laid eyes on G it occurred to me that this time was different. I had changed. The war had changed. And even as these distant memories once again became so real, this was no time to let emotions get in the way of quenching my thirst for blood.
Weapons drawn, we both shuttered with fear. I was not ready to come to the reality of what needed to be done, nor was he. Before he could whisper another word, I raised my right arm. With the cold, heavy steel in my hands, I cocked my pistol and pulled the trigger, without a hint of hesitation. And as I walked away in a slow, calculated manner, I continued to remember fondly that first night I met G. Yet, in that same moment, it became clear to me that from now on I will only remember the last time I met G.
Lumpster's Dumpster 