I opened my eyes, complete darkness. I reached my hand out from under the duvet and searched for my companion. Having found her, I grabbed her by the waist and pulled her closer. Touching every one of her slender curves and contours, I ran my fingers over her entire body, sensing her coolness and rigidity, making sure everything was still in place. It was good to know she hadn’t left me yet. I held her more tightly, rolled onto my back and hoisted my darling onto my chest. With my fingers locked around her waist, I gradually began to make out the contours of her clothes hanging from a nail hammered into the wall. Cold sweat began to trickle down from my hairline at the uncertainty of the new day.
My darling was my second wife, a combat weapon, an M-16 with laser sight and grenade launcher; hanging from the nail were the combat harness, 20 loaded magazines and 8 grenades. The green glowing lines on the watch showed too early a waking hour, there were still two hours until departure. I seemed to recall having dreamed of being at home; my darling and I were lying in a hammock planning our future together. For a moment I felt long hair brushing against my shoulder, but it vanished instantly. I ran through my entire youth in my mind’s eye, helping my parents on the land, playing in the meadows and hazel thickets, later the tricks and troubles of school days, and finally the conscious choice in favour of a soldier’s calling.
I felt quite alert, sat up on the edge of the bed and crossed off another day on the calendar, 12 days left and then home, for good. I picked up the weapon and cleaning kit and went to the common room to give it a final polish to see it through the long day ahead…. The next moment I was already out in the desert with my comrades in arms, laying down heavy fire on the enemy. I tried to recall how I had got there, but the time in between had been cut from the day as if with a knife. My battle buddy had come under heavy fire; I shifted to a slightly different angle and took out the enemy position with a grenade. My buddy gave a thumbs up from a distance and smiled in thanks. I dropped to my stomach and saw a flash in the mountains ahead. I was wondering who the hell had pushed that far forward when I was covered in a spray of blood. I looked toward my buddy; his left side of his face was gone.
“Damn it, bloody hell, there’s a sniper in the mountains,” I thought, and began rolling toward the nearest rock to get at least some cover, while trying to keep an eye on the spot where I had seen the flash. On the second roll I saw a new flash and knew I was now being hunted. I made the next two rolls even faster in the hope of escaping the bullet. On the following roll, sand and stones flew up close beside me. “Missed,” I thought. I reached the rock and to my dismay found myself sheltering behind sandstone.
“Damn, this won’t hold anything at all. Maybe the texture of the stone is indistinguishable from this distance, and the sniper won’t waste ammunition,” I reasoned to myself. My head was buzzing, thinking through possible escape routes. I rested my helmet against the ground, breathing the desert heat straight down my throat, when there was a crack. My head jolted backward and I felt a cutting pain in my neck. I lay motionless for a while to think through a plan of action, since my protective rock was clearly no more. I peered left and right from under my helmet, not a single place of shelter in either direction. I felt that someone was watching me from very close by; I raised my head with extreme slowness to avoid a clean shot from the sniper. All that remained of the rock in front of me were fist-sized chunks, a flattened bullet among them. I mentally thanked the kevlar helmet for saving my life, and then it happened. Time stopped for a moment and from there everything moved in slow motion. A bullet spun toward me, aimed precisely between the eyebrows. I knew there was nothing left for me to do but receive that bullet. Just before impact my soul left my body, and my mind, left behind in great shock by the departing soul, also took flight. My mind saw from above my soul hovering over my body, and the bullet shattering my head.
“You are just so incredibly stupid, for God’s sake. I have loved you all these years, kept you safe, given you the will to live and carried your dreams,” my soul shouted toward my lifeless body. My mind looked around, the entire unit had been taken out by the enemy; lifeless bodies blown to pieces and destroyed machinery were everywhere.
“Why, why on earth did you come here?” my soul continued to wail over my lifeless body. I watched it turn deep crimson with rage.
“Did you even know that your darling at home is expecting your child? Why, why, why must another child grow up without a father?” my soul fired on. At that moment the picture went completely black, and I felt an intense cold. I opened my eyes, complete darkness. I felt myself here and there; the skin felt real enough. A terrible dread of the unknown seized me, because after all, I was dead. I began to shiver from the cold and tried to move more; I was somewhere very cold and very wet. Instinctively I looked at the watch that should have been on my wrist, it was still there, and the glowing lines showed half past one. I looked straight ahead into the darkness and as if there were something familiar about it, as my eyes adjusted, I found myself in my own home, in my own bed.
“Good grief, that dream was already too cruel,” I muttered to myself. The feeling of cold wouldn’t let up; it turned out I was completely soaked, the sheet and pillow squelching with water.
“Bizarre,” I thought, “I’ve only been asleep for an hour.”
I gathered up the wet bedding, put on fresh, went to the kitchen for a drink and tried to fall asleep again. Through deep sleep I heard the clattering of tank tracks drawing closer and closer. A moment later I could no longer bear it and opened my eyes, a life-sized Abrams was driving straight toward me. I panicked and tried to roll away, but I was stuck somehow. I flailed one arm and shouted with all my might; the tank rolled on, clattering its tracks, toward me. I was screaming at the top of my lungs as my legs were disappearing under the tracks; my whole body went hot with the fear of death, and my mind felt my soul leaving my body. My lifeless eyes saw the soul hovering above my body, hurling curses in my direction that were impossible to make out. Everything was buried in deep darkness. I became very cold and my mind said that this was it, you are in the grave. I woke with a loud shout and startled even myself with the noise.
“Phew, that was thankfully a dream again,” I thought. I looked at the clock – impossible! – quarter past two. I felt the sheet, completely cold and soaking wet, the pillow the same. I cleared away the bedding, went to wash up and sat in the kitchen in a daze. All of this surely had to mean something. I didn’t bother trying to go back to sleep. I got the vodka and a shot glass from the fridge and went into the room, maybe something comforting would be on television. I clicked through many satellite channels and everywhere nothing but violence upon violence. The stick-thin figures on the fashion channels turned my stomach inside out too. Eventually I settled on the Moomins, speaking in a completely unfamiliar language. I downed a shot of vodka and reflected on my lost friends. I recalled their names, their voices, their manner of speaking, how we had trained side by side on exercises and gone to the pub at weekends. Quite a few of them are now in the best of places. I decided to take a shot for each fallen soldier…