The Beach Breeze

The beach was beautiful. It looked just like my hometown, with pure white sand, beautiful blue water, and seagulls cawing overhead. No one was on the beach, leaving it peaceful and quiet except for the gentle lap of the waves. I felt the grainy sand between my toes and looked down to see unique seashells scattered across the ground. Conches, cones, broken pieces of sand dollars. The sunset painted the sky with exquisite colors, the dimming light at the horizon bouncing off the tall, white clouds, creating rainbows that stretched for miles. A gentle beach breeze danced across my skin.

He was standing beside me. His face was just as I remembered, with hazel eyes, windswept hair, and a chipped front tooth. I could see it clear as day, shining in the fading sunlight, illuminating every feature of his skin. His hair was ruffled. The light beach breeze caused his salt and pepper strands to hide the spot on his head that he refused to admit was balding. His old clothes echoed memories of years of love and worth. It smelled of salt and sweat, freedom and faith, love and loss.

He looked at me. Downward with a knowing glance, like he had a secret on the tip of his tongue that he couldn’t wait to tell me. The wrinkles around his mouth revealed themselves as his smile grew, his white teeth shining. His eyes sparkled with mischief. Behind them, a tale of a thousand words waited to be released, a story waited to be told, feelings waited to be felt. I lingered expectantly. This story would be a good one. It’s been so long since I’ve heard one of his stories. I missed them.

He turned toward me, opening his mouth to tell me, but all that came out was noise. The noise of seagulls. They chirped and cawed, blurring my view of him. Tears flowed as I searched through the horde, looking for any sign he was still there. The breeze that once reassured me was gone, replaced by the feelings of a thousand seagulls, scratching me, pecking me, trying to expel me from their swarm. Are they pushing me out or taking him away? I threw up my hands, trying to protect myself. But they took advantage of my confusion and fear to navigate my arms and strike at my face. At my cheeks, my nose, my eyes. I could only see red. Red hands, red feathers. This is no beach, this is their dominion. Where they are the strongest. They can do what they want, what they wish, what they desire. I’m powerless to stop it. I can’t do anything. I’m weak, I’m useless, I’m a beacon of anxiety and fear that brings them right to me.

There’s a different noise coming from the mass. Loud, chaotic, unrelenting. Not just the screams of the seagulls, but something else. Something foreign from within. It’s the hassle of a workday. Cars honking, people talking. Was that his voice? Papers flipping, time ticking. How long has it been? Anxiety showing, tears flowing. Where did he go? Please, just let me see him. Is he still in there? Please let me hear him.

I feel a hand on my shoulder. The noise fades, the red clears, the breeze returns. It’s his hand, it’s his arm, it’s his chest, pulling me into a deep hug. His steady heartbeat calms mine as he pulls me into his chest. He’s alive. He’s alive? His head lowers to my shoulder, his breath joins mine as it reminds me that he’s still with me. He’s still here.

His voice echoes in my ear, clear as day, loud as a bell, determined as I remember, but gentle as breath.

“I love you.”

The words fade into a whispering echo as his hand loosens its grip on my shoulder. He pulls away from me, a sad smile on his lips but a fierce pride in his eyes, as he becomes one with the beach breeze.

I cling to the feeling of his hug, the echo of his words, the sound of his pride. I know it is within me now, and nothing can take it away. Even if the seagulls come back, trying to remind me that he is gone, I know they cannot. Because that is all they will ever be. Just seagulls. The beach breeze, my beach breeze, will always be with me, giving me hope when the seagulls get too loud.

Take the Shot

A sniper trains for years in their specialty. You are beaten, trained, and tested constantly at the cost of many nights of sleep. However, there are always scenarios that you can’t train for, that you can’t expect. As I stared through the scope, breathing evenly and calm. I had been assigned to retrieve information on a small, broken-down town. Hard to imagine something nefarious going on in the snowy streets that young kids used as playgrounds. I saw a lot of myself in them. I didn’t grow up in quite as cold of an environment, though, watching them push massive mounds of snow together to make barricades and hurling snowballs over the top reminded me of the many nerf battles conducted on my suburb’s streets.

I’d been watching them for hours now, no sleep, food, and barely any water. That is the life of a killer like me. An unmoving threat, waiting for the command to strike, though I was just on a recon mission today.

I had a marine assigned with me, Seargent Hardel. He stared through binoculars next to me watching the kids play. He was my support and the one who received the messages on our assignment. Most of the kids were young, as in 8 or 9, however there was one noticeably older boy, probably around 14. They all looked up suddenly at a building behind one of the “barricades”, then headed towards the building. Presumably called in for dinner or a chore they had to attend to.

Roughly, an hour after the kids went inside the eldest reemerged. Tracking him diligently, I watched as he walked around the building towards a small shed, built a couple yards out from the complex they lived in. I didn’t think anything of it as he walked in, assuming it was just a normal chore like shoveling the walkway. That’s when he emerged holding 2 AK-12’s, one in each hand. He laid them gently in the snow and walked back in to grab more. Me and my support said nothing for a while, we both saw it; we just didn’t know what to do.

My finger hovered over the trigger as I aimed in on his head. My hands shaking. One hour ago, this was just a normal kid, now he is a threat.

“Are you okay?” I heard Hardel say beside me.

“He’s just a kid.” The hesitance was obvious as I spoke. I didn’t what to shoot him, but that was my job. Probably why they put me here in the first place.

“If you don’t do this. The troops marching through here tomorrow may die, and we don’t have time to warn them.” I nodded to his response, no words to reply with. “I understand this is hard, I’ve had to shoot someone many times. It never gets easier.”

“Well, they weren’t kids, Sargent!” I blurted out without thinking. I watched as the young boy set two more rifles on the ground. There were 10 now, he was still going to get more.

“Take a deep breath and listen. I have some advice for you.” Embarrassed at losing my cool I kept quiet as he talked in a hushed voice. “You know I was deployed to Afghanistan when I was younger right?” I nodded slowly, “Well, I oversaw a convoy, one day. I was a new leader, riding in the front car with one of my soldiers. He was at the wheel, going through enemy territory. All was going well, no tangoes in sight, road clear, no known IED’s on route. We let our guard down and that is when it happened. A young boy, younger than that one out there ran into the road in front of the convey. My soldier wanted to react, but it was my decision. Stop the convey or run over the kid. This one was on me, my call, alone and unexperienced. I knew if this convey stopped all the soldiers in my convey may as well be written off as dead. It was a tough decision.”

“What did you do?” I asked in the silence that followed his story, breaking sights on the boy to look at him.

Hardel was staring at the ground in front of him but turned to look at me. “I chose the option with the least loss of life.” He stared off into the distance suddenly, not at the boy, he would need the binoculars for that, but somewhere off in the scenery. “That’s the thing about life, it doesn’t always give you a good option. Sometimes it gives you two shitty options and forces you to choose.” He stared back at me with an intense gaze. “I won’t order you to make this decision, this is on your shoulders alone. I will support your choice.”

I looked back through the scope, relaxing into my position again as I looked at the boy. He had finished laying out the guns and was loading clips on the ground next to them. There were roughly 20 at this point, maybe more in the shed that he hadn’t laid out.

I took a breath…
 
 
 
…and fired.