First, thanks to anyone that would take time to read this story. Additional thanks for any comments.

This is an experiment for me to write this way, and I am using, I hope, some effective techniques of time and scene movement. There are minimalist ‘description' passages, only used when I want the readers tucked away where I need them to be. Some lines are intentionally jarring for this purpose as well. Hopefully this is not annoying. Comments on predictability, imagery, confusion, being boring etc. are all welcomed.

Formatted to work with this forum software.

     The Unheard Warning

     "They'll learn you to kill real good and get you shiny trinkets for your efforts."

     My father's last words before the door closed on our relationship years ago. We rarely spoke since. But he was right; they awarded me for my scars. I'm not sure why I thought of him as I read the pink notice taped to my locker. My last name first, followed by THOMAS all capitalized in faded, machine printed ink regretfully informing of my termination.

     The guys were quiet when I walked in. They knew. It wasn't the first time we've seen it. The sting would always come at shift's end, an unlucky man finding thanks for his dues with a pink. When I saw it I hoped that I was standing far enough away that I only thought it was my locker. When I came close my sight held the condemning slip centered-it was my box.

     "Will it be worth it when you're dead, Tommy? Or maybe crippled? Maybe you'll never walk again like your uncle?"

My father carried his own scars from a thankless war and was angry when I told him. He hated my decision and mom always agreed with dad.

     I tore the small document from my locker, folded it as if it were precious and thought of the medals. I carried a false pride towards them. They were kept hidden in a closet and I haven't seen them since we moved into the house. Was it three years now? Money was good and I promised her a home. The backyard was wide enough and our dogs could reach full speed, the kids laughing as they played with a pile of toys on the patio.

     "I love it so much," she smiled. "You sure we can afford this?"

     We could. I had made work my atonement. I would provide. I would prove that my wounds would not decide my life. But this was an issue of downsizing and I lacked seniority. There was nothing I could do. Pinks were final.

     The evening was cold with a breeze scented by frozen asphalt and truck exhaust. My hands felt numb as I closed my car trunk with my few locker items packed away. Lit just enough by the orange lamps above, I saw myself as an indistinct reflection in the rear windshield.

     Can you keep this life for them? But the image said nothing. We'll have to move? Maybe. This kind of money anywhere else? No. Not for someone like you. I promised her and she believed me. A hero lover, she had said yes when I asked. But she loved a liar and the paper in my pocket burned as another reminder.

     On the drive home I veered, finding myself idle in the parking lot of a bar listening to the motor running. Those familiar feelings again. Was this somehow my fault, too?

     The noise of my car engine was being replaced by the sound of an engine echoed from another life, before I had conceived of any fragile place as home.

     As we slowed to a stop the heavy diesel hummed in heavy chugs that almost pleaded for us to keep going, to stay in motion and drive away from those streets. That was the thing about night patrols. If you kept moving the warm desert breezes and vast, star sprinkled skies eased you along, dulling your senses, relaxing your readiness and you could find yourself forgetting where you really were. Sometimes it was wonderful, assuming you avoided getting killed.

     That part of the city was like the rest-flat roofed boxes. The lines of cubed structures were layered like weaved baskets, oppressively crowding in upon you, the claustrophobic roads cut between the buildings like carvings on temple walls. The plaster, stone and brick were the colors of burnt mud and ashy sand in the sunlight but twisted in the nightly blackness to shades of midnight blue and violet, shimmering and pulsating like ocean tides as we sped past in armored transport.

     Windows, low walls and blind corners were menacing promises. Things that waited were made worse by the concealing shadows. It could be this one or maybe that one? Never could be sure.

     "We don't need to check," Sammy complained nervously. "Don't feel right, anyway. Hell with this, man, running into them boogie dark alleys like that." Eighteen, his enthusiasm was as limited as the degree of his regretted enlistment. I guess it was expected because his brother had joined two years before, but Sammy had been homeward bound in heart and mind the moment his boots hit the sandbox.

     "We don't ignore suspicious activity." My command had sat on my shoulders barely a week so I didn't have full force in my orders, nearly arguing with the guys, uncertain in what I wanted, letting sir slide unused, still a friend just as apprehensive, not a higher rank leading.

     "I'm with Sam on this one," Tony agreed. Shorter than me by a head, his body was stocky and powerful. His face was a broad sweep of pudgy cheeks and bold forehead ridges that displayed his unease clearly in the moonlight, a sliver of sheared bone glowing in the sky.

     "Don't you girls worry," I said with mock confidence. "I promise we'll just take a peek and come back before Sammy wets himself." There was an unconvinced laugh.

     Three empty shot glasses stared at me, their molten contents swallowed in rapid succession. The tension in my shoulders was melting and the glaze settled into my eyes, but even with the alcohol fumes buzzing through my head I could not stop the thoughts that came. I could still smell the chemical stench of burnt powder; see vividly the blinding flashes of yellow and orange, hear the brutal sounds of gunfire in cramped stone rooms. I said it was nothing, don't worry. But it was something. Just like that pink was something. How would I tell her? She would try to reassure me but it would only be comfort for her.

     "He's hit, man, they got him! He's bleeding to death!"

     I found out later that the boy's rifle was an ancient relic from some Twentieth Century war. That it fired was a small wonder and it was probably a fluke that it had taken Sammy in the throat.

     "Come out now," we barked the commands in rage, our fists tightened on the solutions of our rifles. We couldn't understand what was shouted from inside. The phrases we were taught in the native tongue became hard to recall, the pronunciations wavering like smoke from a gun barrel. We only knew confusion and anger.

     Another three joined us from the squad and I gave the entry order and we breached the house.

     It was nearly lightless, the human shapes inside running for unseen escape, our words over lapped, incomprehensible, chaos, and then someone fired-then we all did. The central room was engulfed in hypnotic brilliance, the world visible then hidden, the horrific scene played in slow motion strobe lighting, our bullets destroying meager possessions and ripping away the walls in chunks.

     My arms vibrated from assault rifle recoil. Screams. A woman heard through the ringing in my ears. Afraid, I went forward leading a sweep the best I knew how.

     "Cleared" called a furious voice and "secured" came another. I think I had half a magazine, quickly moving to a hallway off the rear of the main room, the walls the faint shade of scorched steel from the moon bleeding through an arched window above.

     She lay upon the ground struggling with a body that would not respond to the pleas of her brain. Her pooled blood was a void as black as the anger in our hearts. Her face was obscured but her eyes absorbed enough of the moon. The cries slowly ceased. I knew she saw me.

     I still don't know why, but I choked, helpless. I could only stare at her crumpled form on the ground. I'd seen death, the dying, but for some reason she stopped me.

     I did not secure the hallway. I never heard the voice or the threat. I didn't see the weapon. I barely realized Tony had appeared next to me. Then I moved, going for the woman, and I stepped in front of Tony at the moment just before the deafening roar.

     It was like being smashed in the chest with a hammer, the impact moving outward to my shoulders and stomach. Shock and pain, I screamed, falling backward into Tony, pushing him from the hall and I looked past the woman to the boy. We stared at each other, his shouts distant and slowed. We were the same, two boys afraid, but I raised my rifle...

     "I haven't seen a man looking that way in a long time," the stranger said in a deep, strangely pitched voice. "You okay there, buddy?" He tossed his gloves on the bar and looked to the bartender who recognized him.

     "Excuse me? You mean me?"

     "You okay," he asked again. He spoke as if ignoring my question.

     "Yeah, I'm fine" I mumbled from between the empty glasses that increased to five or six.

     "Could be worse, right?" He smiled, lifting a fresh double scotch. "Name's Perry. You?"

     "Tom," I slurred.

     "Have to say it right at me, friend. Lost most my hearing in the war."

     "Tom," I said again. His face had two large, gruesome scars crisscrossed from cheek to forehead. His gaze was direct with an intensity I turned away from.

     "You remind me of an old friend, Joshua Riley. He'd been hurt real bad in the war. Explosion. Last I saw him he had the same look you got right now."

     I wanted to be alone but I stayed restrained, polite.

     "It's the face that gives us away," he snorted over his drink. "A person confesses everything through an unguarded face."

     I tried to let him know I wasn't interested in talking but my words were pointless. He wasn't looking.

     "Josh lost his legs and an arm." He crunched on a piece of ice. "That's usually enough, but he lived."

    "Excuse me, sir," getting his attention. "I don't much feel like hearing stories right now, okay?" He nodded and stood to move away.

     As he went:

    "I'm sorry. It's just, you remind me of him. Josh used to say that the lucky ones were killed. Said they were spared. I almost believed that, too."

     He walked with a practiced limp and I looked away, swallowed another shot, the burn smooth, but it wasn't making me drift into the oblivion I wanted. With my head clutched in my hands I began hearing the voices I had failed to confess to.

     "He saved my life! His tall ass slammed me back and took that round for me, right where my head was sure as hell. He saved me!"

     "You never listened, did you, son?"

     "We award this..."

     "I love you so much...yes, yes I will..."

     "God deliver this man..."

     And now: "I almost believed him..."

     The man was quietly drinking and watching the blurry television above the bar.

     Drunker than I realized, I wobbled toward the stranger. He turned to me.

     "Sorry about that."

     "It's okay," he shrugged. "It wasn't my place to say that to someone I don't know."

     We spoke for awhile, the empty drinks building.

     His name was Perry Mann. He had enlisted with a future of honor and pride in mind. On the day he earned his scars it was beautiful. He remembered the sky was achingly blue with wisps of milky clouds, an unfair contrast to the ugliness below where the wreckage of failed progress lay burning in the sand; the smoke, the flame, the distant concussions of combat and the tangible fear of streets dangerously empty-these were still the places of his nightmares.

     "Sometimes the worst thing to come from a wound is guilt; even if you survived, it can kill you later. That's what got Josh. He blamed himself," Perry said drunkenly, coming around to his original story.

     "That explosion wasn't his fault, though. Wasn't the driver, either. It's just the way the war was. We all had to pay a certain price." He was seeing that distant time.

     "So young and foolish, you know? Very proud. And it all made sense. You remember those skies? And the damn thing was casually hidden. Real clever. A speck on the ground compared to those skies. We always expected of course, but who's sure? No one is. It was our time."

     I had nothing to say.

     "It cut through us like a welding torch. Killed one there and another in the hospital. Two lived, though. One was Josh." He looked down at his drink, then back at me.

"The other was me."

     I nodded.

     "But at least I can walk, right? Hell, if it hadn't been us it would've been someone else. I was on the other side. It took most of my hearing and I had to learn to walk again. But I make out okay. I'm still alive, right? We're alive. But I'm telling you, Tom, I only spoke to you because I've seen that look you got. I've seen that hurt before."

     Perry leaned his head closer to me sincerely.

     "I'm not sure what you're saying."

     "No? You sure?"

     I said nothing.

     "The blast didn't kill him, but when I last saw him in the hospital I could tell. It was the face. He wasn't there anymore. Who can blame him, right?" He traced his thumb along the rim of his glass.

     "He was messed up plenty but that's not all of it. I wanted to believe he was justified by his wounds, but I just couldn't."

     "Why?"

     "Because it wasn't that simple. I know he'd lost everything he was, that his life would never be the same, much worse than mine. And when I heard he died I wasn't surprised. They gave some medical reason and maybe that's true, but I think it was because he couldn't let go of the blame. That guilt pulled him down into some place he never came back from and he let himself die inside. The rest just sort of, you know, followed along."

     He faded from the story and we spoke about very little beyond empty remarks about the games on the televisions. We sat together, but apart, listening to our own silent stories, our own wordless justifications.

     It was late when we got up to leave. I dropped a few bills for the bartender and followed Perry outside. It was much colder. Shivering, I put my hands into my pockets. It was like grabbing a smoldering coal when I touched the folded termination notice. I'd forgotten.

     Too drunk to drive but close enough to walk, I'd return for my car in the morning. Perry didn't drive so he would walk with me.

     "It's okay. It's sort of on the way."

     "Sort of?"

     "Close enough," he smiled.

     We had gone two blocks when my last drink decided it wanted out immediately. I tapped Perry on the shoulder. I motioned what I had to do, unsure if he would be able to read my lips.

     "Don't let it freeze off."

     I stepped into an alley, closed my eyes and leaned my head back. A rush of blood and I was dizzy. Almost falling, I caught myself against the wall. Lightheaded and drunk I looked at the puddle spreading upon the ground.

     The flashback came with uncontrollable force, paralyzing, suffocating; before I could regain control I was as a ghost watching the images of my past.

     Her hand was reaching for something it couldn't find, and then it lay still in the spreading puddle of blood. I wanted to do something, I had to try, even if it was worthless, but as I stepped in front of Tony a piercing thunder erased all silence. I was hit near the shoulder just beyond the lining of my body armor. My breath burst from my lungs and I stumbled into Tony, shoving him from the hallway. The boy stood at the end of the hall and we looked at each other, a moment of time frozen within a crystallized shard. Was she his mother? Sister? Had my shots killed her? I raised my rifle by instinct, but he did not move. Watching. Was there nothing left to fight for? Was there no reason to care? Was his hatred a creation of my sole actions? I squeezed and his chest exploded as my bullets ripped through him.

     When it was later sorted we discovered the boy had been a student, sixteen years old, dodging curfew patrols on his way home from friends. We only happened upon him. A few seconds different and we wouldn't have seen him, never followed, and none of it would have happened. When we rolled on his house the boy had panicked, grabbed an heirloom gun and tried to be a man protecting his family. We forced him to make that choice.

     Was the war still enough for me? I've used that for so long but I wasn't sure anymore. I had lied to those men, to my family, my wife, my children. To myself. I sat through funerals and ceremonies, quietly accepting what they said about me; brave, noble, a hero, but I never admitted the truth-I had failed.

     Perry must have thought I was sick by the way I was doubled over against the wall. He laughed, said something I couldn't understand, and I fought to regain myself.

     "Get it together, man, come on!" He encouraged me to come out but I was stuck against the wall. I was choking. Perry came closer and he changed from humor to a gentle sympathy. He smiled understandingly and came to help me.

     Perry took my arm firmly, helping me to stand upright upon a drunken, broken heart. I looked at his face, a vision of mercy, but I could not embrace it, and my tears came, the last bits of my silence conquered by regret.

     "You're wrong, you don't know. You can't, you can't see it, that I'm so afraid. I lied. It wasn't me. I failed them. I never did it, it wasn't true. I lied to everyone and I lied to you! I can't do this!"

     Then I realized that we were beyond the reach of the street lights, my mouth lost in shadow. I tried to move toward the street, my eyes wet with shame as much as sadness. As I struggled forward he raised his hand to my face, finger tips on my forehead. I stood still. Then he guided me from the darkness, helping me to get back home.