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He couldn’t remember his way home.

Kendra Taylor

    Distant drumming against the sounds of the night until, eventually, the bombs above him drowned out the screams of God. Streamers of light shoot across the darkened sky, creating stars that live and die with shaky breaths. His rifle pressed against his chest, finger crooked around the trigger. Waiting to either fight or die. Another boom. Another loss. A sudden rattling in the bushes. Please don’t come this way. He aims his rifle at the undergrowth as a solitary figure emerges from the vegetation. Too dark to see who it is, but he’s in enemy territory. Better safe than sorry, he thinks.
    Click.
    Shit. Moving without thinking, he slams the butt of his rifle into the stranger’s head, catching him by surprise. Leaving too fast to see the man fall to the ground, he ducks off into the vegetation. After far too long, he finds an abandoned building with a roof that looks like it’s given up on life. Sat behind a ramshackle barrier against the sky, he can finally breathe. Just need to get back to base, he thinks, then it’ll be alright.
    A siren pierces through the drumming above, closer and closer until they couldn’t be anywhere except right behind him. Oh God. Oh God. This was it, he thinks, not the way I wanted to leave this place. Out of both ammo and time, he slowly rises. Maybe, he thinks, maybe I’ll be able to come home in one piece. Light from behind passes around his haven. Steady on his feet with his heart pounding fast, he braces himself for when they inevitably see him.
    “Sir, are you alright, sir? Do you know where you are?” says a voice where there should have been shots. His vision cleared. Red and blue flashes across the park from the police car parked on the road behind him. No longer was he in the jungle, where the artillery shells screamed. He had no weapon in his hand except for a fallen branch he had found. Here he was in the city where he’d always lived. The familiar scene blurs with the eleven nights of death echoing across his memory.
    “Dispatch, I’ve got eyes on that silver alert from earlier,” the voice says. “Sir, do you know where you are right now?”
    His face looks up in frozen confusion, eyes glassy and unfocused. There is no answer from the old man except for a heavy plop onto the park bench. He looks above into the bright light of a streetlamp as if looking into the light of God himself... if there even is a god.
    “Sir, do you know where you live?”
    The question echoes around his ears.
    He remembered the house and coming home after the war. The row of streets and quiet fields were replaced by buildings that could fit an entire division and trucks that sounded like war machines. The buildings and streets are as unfamiliar as that damn jungle all those years ago. No. He couldn’t remember his way home.
    “Sir,” says the officer, “are you aware that you assaulted a young man a few blocks down?”
    More lights approach from down the road. No sirens this time. The booms of celebration dance around the city while the wind carries the smell of gunpowder from nearby. The old man still clutching the grainy wood of his chosen arms.
    “Sir, have you ever found yourself lost like this before?”
    A burst of static and a muffled voice reverberates from the officer’s radio.
    “Yeah, dispatch, the subject is likely suffering from violent hallucinations. Looks like he’s coming out of it.”
    Another response from the man’s shoulder.
    “10-4. Let’s go ahead with the 5150.”
    The flashing lights approach from the side. The red and blue of the cruiser and approaching ambulance fight against the streetlamp’s white light, bleaching the man as he looks at what he carries and drops it, leaving it to clatter on the cool cement.

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