A Soldier's message

Chapter 3.

Samantha sat right up in front of him as if  perched on an ant hill.  "Listen", she spoke seriously, taking hold of his slim face with his thick short hair.  "I can't wait for you to decide what you want to do", she told him, the seriousness in her voice made him want to react, only he didn't know how.  For so long the Military had arranged his responses.  To every given situation, there was a reaction. He knew when to wash, eat, sleep, switch on, switch off...fight if needs be....he realised in this moment that he didn't know 'How to just be'.

"Look Baby", he held her small shoulders, turning her to face him...   "All I know is this.... I love you, with all of my heart, I want you to remember this okay?... I love you Samantha".

There may have been a second or two, he couldn't be sure, where he felt his body being pushed,  he felt  incredibly helpless.  It would take another few minutes for him to hear the transcription coming from his friend's mouth.... "Daniel, Wake Up! Wake Up!  ......Will you just wake up for fucks sake!"

  Day broke, in an instant.

There was nothing that could alert the brain as quickly as the news of a comrade being killed.
Prickly heat hurt the skin, it was something always to be aware of.  If it wasn't covered ,the skin became very painful, quickly.  "I am going away Dan", ~Samantha cut in to the frame, slicing away the remnants of reality "I don't want you to worry about me, do you hear?"  her sullen expression transfixed with impish cheek.  "Gran says I can stay with her until you get home".    Daniel grappled with the scenes deteriorating, hurriedly placing them in to filing cabinets, in order of importance.  He viewed the fading photograph of Samantha behind shuttered eyes, reluctantly he gave in to the light bearing down on his face unrepentatly.... he eased out of the dream, being sure that this infact  was the last time he would 'See' Samantha exactly as she was when he last saw her.... with her belly just slightly protruding in a pink printed smock and leggins, standing beneath the Elm tree in her 'Nanna's' garden.

A Soldier's Message

Chapter 2.

"Dan, Dan", "you've got to get up", a shutter, like a butchers canopy shielded out the half light from an elongated moon fading behind day break. A rustle of movement filtered behind eyelids and somewhere in the far distance, mountain goats 'baahhed' as they scaled the sheer peaks of 'Beherad Mountain'.  Peace flowed like a stream, the body incognito, non compliant. "Dan"!  

Samantha was smiling right down at him, from what seemed to be a high place, in mind and in spirit.
 In and out of the sun's warmth, he cradled her.  "Are ya gonna' come down here and give me a cuddle?" he could feel the lightness of her touch. she was laughing now, as he held out his arms, her high pitched laugh she always gave whenever she felt unsure.  'She was cheeky', he thought now,  as he remembered the first time he had asked her out.  She eyed him flashly with those bluey eyes, darting over his face to see if he was nice looking.  She was'nt anything like the girls he went for usually, with her quiet, serious ways.  In fact sometimes he felt as if he had the disaproval of the 'hardened Carr's' generations before him, with all their prejudicisms.  This time he wasn't about to let his family bother him, there was something about Samantha that made him feel different, special.  Her reddish blond hair fell over her face in a messy pile. 

Daniel had heard just about every four letter word shouted at him by the time he was six.  His Uncle Ian , on his Dad's side had made sure of that, six weeks after his father's burial, he moved in, lock, stock and barrel.  Every square inch of their once neat, ordered home was transformed in to a shrine to his fishing travels. Photographs hung on the wall in testimony to is conquests.  Massive Pike with their ugly faces and sharp teeth and trout big enough to win trophies.... he bragged incessantly that he had slain a Great White.... Daniel shuddered at the memory as  he remembered the first day he spied his Uncle sitting in his Dad's old favourite chair, with the television remote in one hand and a pint of Newcastle Brown Ale in the other.  There was  smug satisfaction on his weathered face, which he reckoned was 'red' because he worked outdoors on construction, not Fishing.  It was always only a matter of time before Daniel 'got the hell out of there', despite his Mam's protestation twelve years later he did.  Not a single regret marred his 'Passing out Parade', only triumph, yes that's exactly what it felt like, triumph over 'the Shite that had kept him back all those years'.

A Soldier's Message

Chapter One.  

The sky was lit with a thousand stars, shining like candles, so far up in that vacuous darkness, it made the distance seem like nothing, compared with the aching longing to be back home; which seemed aeons away by comparrison. 
Sea, deserts and mountains blockaded the way back, as if by unseen powers, guarding over the men,reminding them in their dreams that they were lost to everything that had once been their real lives.  Not a single reprieve in sleep or in waking from the silent dispair that comes from longing.

 Sometimes a dreamer's mind can be so lucid that there is a continual episode which replays night after night with the' One' longed for, easing in and out of the frame, pressing against the narrowing lense, getting farther and farther away until they are eventually in appearance, disfigured.   The aching sweat from being unable to hold on to the picture within the mind, long enough before it dissolves in to nothingness, is painful beyond physical expression. The stress on the muscles, taught like elastic bands as they make their disclaim to the heart's whisper for Love.

A far away explosion distracts, much like the hum of an over head plane on a clear day, but he mind eventually numbs it out, deciding, before it even reaches awareness, that it is insignficant.  Every gun shot fired alerts the body in to a responsive mode, even when the mind is still re~assessing, grappling through the orderly files until it accesses the one marked 'Act',' in real time', there is seldom a delay. 

Fact: I am a British Soldier Serving in Afghanistan.
Fact: 13.4.1992 which makes me 18 years old.
Fact: My name is Daniel Thomas Carr. 

The response is so immediate it wakes up the body before the mind has even had time to leave the side of the' One' longed for and side steps away from the dream.  Crickets in the long grasses chirp their chorus as the dawn raids.