Post by L. A. Blackwater on Apr 6, 2021 18:06:04 GMT -6
04:37...
It’s like clockwork, my own internal alarm clock. Every morning without fail, I awake from my slumber, pulled out of the chosen nightmare of the night.
Last night, I was taken back to Damascus, Syria - back when the war first broke out and I was sent in as part of an SAS team assigned to help aid the Republic in their fight against the corrupt government. I can still see the bodies of the dead: men, woman, children, even the fucking pet dogs. Their bodies violated by the evil of humanity, yet their eyes - prised open, their pupils fixed and dilated - focused on me, the poor son of a bitch sent to fight another man’s war, to help the helpless, and we failed them - I failed them.
The night before, when I awoke at 04:37, I was pulled from my slumber from yet another flashback, another cruel reminder of the pain’s we old war dogs endure through the many years spent in the trenches. The night before, I returned to Belfast, Northern Ireland in the late 1990s. I was only a rookie, a foot soldier in the Queen’s Royal Army. One Sunday morning I was on patrol, making the daily sweep to ensure the local’s were safe. I remember it as clear as if it was yesterday. Sunday Mass - A car bomb exploded outside of a fucking church, killing twenty-seven churchgoers, and six of my own men, including Jimmy Price, my friend who been by my side since we were bunkmates together at Pirbright.
Oh Jimmy, do you remember the time we snuck in those two nursing students into the barracks...
A smile forms across my face, I can still remember that look that brunette gave me as I entered her from behind, then the look of fear on her face when we could hear the Drill Sergeant approaching the barracks.
I sit up in my bed and swing my legs over the side, leaning forward as I try to shake the cobwebs out from my brain. I sweep the hair out of my face and rub my one remaining eye. I then slowly turn my head back over my shoulder and look over to April, who is sound asleep, yet facing my direction. Her arm is now laid across the space I just vacated having been laid across my chest, whilst her head was nestled into my shoulder.
It’s been over two weeks since she first approached me inside the bar at the Aria Casino. She admitted to me that she’d become a fan of mine, having followed me around this godforsaken city whilst I saved the weak from their impending doom.
Perhaps that’s why I am here, maybe I am atoning for those who I failed to save. I know I have saved countless lives, both directly and indirectly, throughout my many years of service. Directly, I have rescued countless victims of war with my own hands, and indirectly I have shot many extremists, terrorists who would have undoubtedly gone on to kill many more innocent people.
Yet I am weighed down by the heavy burden of the ones I failed, the ones I did not save.
So here I am, despite having been unceremoniously discharged from the Army, instead of utilising my skills and turning to a life of crime, I find myself continuing to help the helpless, I trawl the streets, defending those who need to be defended, saving those who need saving.
I turn to April again, admiring her beauty.
What is your secret? Why are you here? Who is it you need saving from?
I swing my legs back up onto the bed and shuffle my ass down the mattress, whilst trying not to disturb her. I quietly lift her hand up and lay it on top of me as I slowly lower myself back down onto the comfortable mattress. My back clicks as I readjust my posture, damn that hurt. I’m getting old, the tournament’s physicality has definitely taken a toll on this already beaten up body.
April repositions herself, moving her head back onto my shoulder as she digs her nails into my chest, I kiss her faintly on the forehead and look back over to the alarm clock…
04:40…
There’s little hope that I’ll go back to sleep now…
I lightly stroke April’s arm with the back of my hand, she instinctively rubs her left foot against my inner leg, her big toe slides against an old healed shrapnel wound I obtained in Afghanistan.
I close my eyes and think again of Afghanistan. After finishing my stint in Northern Ireland, I was so excited to be back in England. But then a bunch of Jihadi fucks had to fly a couple of planes into the Twin Towers. Then the next thing you know, I’m out fighting a bunch of rag heads in a bastard desert. One day I was on patrol on the south side of Kabul when an American crew ran over an IED. Next thing you know, I wake up in a bloody heap on the floor with a 7-inch piece of Hummer sticking out of my inner leg.
April’s foot caressing my leg sure feels better than when it’s a cold winter's night and that wound is throbbing like a son of a bitch…
Talking of throbbing… April’s hand has moved down from my chest to my crutch…
I gently reposition her hand. She might be having happy dreams, I’ve sure as hell showed her a good time over these last few weeks, but I’m not feeling the want or need for that right now. To be honest, holding her in my arms, smelling her perfume, that's enough for me.
I’m ready to stop the fighting, I’ve been fighting for as long as I can remember. Fighting my old man when I was a kid, after he came home from the pub, drunk out of his face. Pissed off that he’d lost money on the horses, again. Trying to stop him from beating up Mum…
Stopping Tommy Loughlin from beating up Pete Jones at school…
Trying to help save the desperate from their corrupt government…
Frantically attempting to save my friend from bleeding out on a shitty Belfast street…
To save the desperate public of this forsaken city…
I’ve been fighting my whole life, now it is time for me to finally lay down my sword and start to lay down some roots. Now it’s time for me to start living life for myself.
I’m starting to fall hard for April, when she approached me at the Aria, I just thought she was a fangirl who’d caught a glimpse of a real-life superhero whilst reporting the news. Perhaps she thought she could get an inside report on me if she was able to get into my bed.
Maybe that’s what she’s doing… it has crossed my mind.
But she has been in my bed now every night for over two weeks. The way she looks at me, it just makes my heart melt, it makes me excited for life again.
Truthfully, when I arrived in this city. I didn’t care if I made it out or not. I came for money, I came for a fight. I was ready to be dragged to hell, and I was aiming to pull as many as the other fuckers down with me as I could possibly take.
But I’m not self-serving, I put others over my own needs, it’s just what I do.
I could have been a fucking ostrich and buried my head in the sand and drank myself to an early grave, half-assing this tournament...
... but I chose not to!
After a tough couple of losses, I refocussed and reevaluated my life.
Those two losses gave me a wake-up call, a kick up the ass to help those who cannot defend themselves, or eliminating those who seek to harm others.
Since that wake-up call, I’ve won four straight, and have clinched third place in Block A. Life seemed over for me before this tournament… but now I feel reinvigorated.
I look down at April, she is as beautiful in her sleep as she is on the TV.
She motivates me, she makes me want to do better. Sure she was attracted to the superhero on the news saving the helpless… but she is still here.
The novelty surely has worn off now… the excitement is gone?
No, she is still here with me.
I’ve worn many different suits in my life, many different costumes.
Pupil to cadet… soldier to mercenary…
Now I am a hero turned to a fighter…
And once I defeat another suit, sending him packing off to the dry cleaners…
Maybe April and I can continue down this new path… perhaps turning from fighter to husband?… husband to father?
I pull my gaze away from my beautiful girl and look back at the clock once more…
04:41…
For fuck sake...
