A Quarter Life

Stealthbreaker

Guilt was too cheap to be sold, he knew that.

He couldn't say anything, even to himself. He sat there, alone.

Why should he be left alive? A girl, was suffering, in these rooms, a guy, an obedient army guy, lost his job to serve the motherland, just because of his f*****g dream.

He never could face the mirror. Mirror might be a bad, very bad precision of his failure at that time.

He thought of a curse, he would ask the mirror, 'Are you me, or are the guy I wanted me to be?'

The answer would be, 'I am that you which even you hide from yourself.'

Bruno came out of that room, quite sad, yet relieved.

He asked, 'How's she?'

Bruno replied, 'Physically, quite sick. Doctor couldn’t exactly clear the recovery time. But, she was happy.'

He nodded, he wanted her to be happy.

Bruno said, 'She wants to see you.'

He understood, and started walking towards the door. Bruno uttered, 'Mike.'

He stopped.

Bruno smiled, 'Thank you, thank you very much. She told me, about your marriage proposal. I never saw her this much happy, ever before.'

He kept silent, and went inside.

The waiting room was familiar. The smell, the color, all was planted in his head, when he saw her last.

She was looking beautiful, even with the pipes or glucose tubes. She was always beautiful to him, always ravishing to him.

He could look at her, spending the rest of his life in this waiting room.

She looked at him. He saw the one thing in her eyes, that he never saw even in himself. Hope, hope to be united. But she was quite distressed, maybe for seeing the bandages.

He said, 'How are you feeling?'

She said, 'Better. How's that happened? Can't you be careful, even for a second, in your life?'

He said nothing, just smiled.

She said, 'Oh, now you are smiling? God, I am so fed up now. I can't even think what will happen to me afterwards if I live with this guy.'

She laughed saying that. He didn’t.

He said, 'I have brought all your stuff.'

She said, 'Mike, when will I go home? I can't be here anymore. I wanna be outside, I wanna be with you.'

He kept quiet. What would he say? He himself didn’t know whether she was gonna recover soon.

He put his hands on the glass wall, 'You will. And when you do, I will be there, to take you home, our home.'

She was happy. She would have imagined the calmness to be in home, to be together.

He came out, came out from the glass cage. He could see the white dim light, laughing at him.

Bruno was sitting there. He stood up seeing Mike, 'I think I should go now, came here to see her. Take care.'

Mike said, 'Bruno, can you spare some minutes? I need to talk to you.'

Bruno had some minutes to spare. They started walking to the canteen. What would he do? Would he tell Bruno about the manuscript?

“The medic here was quite helpful, and swift also. They had already plucked out the bullet from me, and was giving me a dressing. The plucking process was quite painful. They would have given me anesthesia first, but there were many more injured, so I myself thought it was a waste of time giving anesthesia.

Reeve was standing there, chewing an apple. A soldier suddenly came, 'Reeve, Charles, Lieutenant has summoned you.'

Ah man, not again.

We were heading to Lieutenant room. Reeve said, 'You know, I just-'

I shouted, 'Shut the f**k up. Just shut your f*****g ass up.' How could he speak? Who gave him the right to speak?

Reeve said, 'Gosh, I'm sorry. I just hadn’t enough time to explain the air breaching.'

Air breaching? What was that?

We reached quickly. I peeped inside. Man, Lieutenant sure looked in rage.

I knocked on the door, 'Sir Lieutenant, may we come in?'

He looked at us, the look was shouting at us, he sure was quite pissed off.

We entered, heads down.

Reeve broke the silence, 'Lieute, let me ex-'

Lieutenant grabbed his collar, 'Don’t you dare Lieute at me, you bastard. What do you think of yourself? Some god to defy everyone? Well then, f**k you!'

Reeve kept quiet. He knew, he deserved this kind of welcoming.

Lieutenant spared his collar, 'At least you should have given a message of the breaching.'

I was becoming impatient, 'What the hell is this breaching? What breaching?'

Lieutenant raged, 'Well, ask your insane f*****g friend.'

I looked at Reeve. He said, 'Okay, let me explain.'

I said, 'You better.'

He started, 'I was all time connected to the watchtower. They said, there were armies, only in defensive position. I felt suspicious. I read the journals about the war, the German Nazis were cruel, devastating. So, I thought of two choices, first one, maybe they weren’t Nazis, maybe they were German general army.'

Lieutenant shouted, 'That's bullshit. We are America, Hitler would never do that.'

I agreed, we were one of the strongest military services in the world.

Reeve continued, 'That took me to the second choice.'

I asked, 'What's that?'

He sighed, 'A stealth attack.'

Shit! Stealth attack? That's quite logical.

He continued, 'It was the only possibility then. The defensive Nazis were just backups. And they would surely attack from air. Because their wooden stealth bomber plane were quite untraceable in the radar. So, they had the upper hand on us. But there was a catch.'

I wondered, 'What's the catch?'

He explained, 'As they carried large bombs, they were built without any kind of attached automated guns. That's why they were called stealth planes. They were unarmed eventually.'

Man, Hitler was some nerve wrecking bastard.

He continued, 'So, I had to go on air to check whether my assumptions were correct. But there was no time to explain it to Lieute, so I went on air suddenly.'

Lieutenant was fuming, yet true, it would be hard to make him understand then.

I asked, 'So, was there stealth attack?'

Reeve looked at Lieutenant. Lieutenant said, 'We sent some soldiers in the battlefield, out of range, to inspect. They found five stealth planes, destroyed, in the ground. The impact of destruction was covering like 100 kilometers radius area.'

Our camp was covering like 20 kilometers. So, we would have been hell dead even one bomb would have fallen here.

Reeve looked at the Lieutenant, 'At least you can thank me for that.'

Lieutenant shouted, 'Thank you my ass!'

I laughed.

Lieutenant looked at me, 'What the f**k are you laughing about? You are no less. Who said you to jump their like a superhero and risk your life? Are you nuts?'

I said nothing. I just smiled. He wasn’t angry at us, he was worried. I could see the worries, the tension behind his every words.

Suddenly the telephone rang. Lieutenant picked it up, he was quite formal, 'Hello, yes sir, reporting....yes sir, defeated....just base 9 was blown, and 14 soldier bring martyrs, and some casualties, we can handle them....yes sir, I said to them....the first one is Trey Reeve, and the second one is Charles McCourt....yes sir, handed over to investigation team....okay sir.'

We were confused about reporting our names. Reeve was silent.

Lieutenant kept the phone, 'I have recommended both of you for heroic act on battlefield. And remember, just the heroic ones, not the stupid decisions you both took. Never, ever say them to anyone. I can't risk my job.'

We both laughed. We had won a battle, together.

Suddenly a soldier came, 'Sir Lieutenant, investigation team reporting. There’s a bad news.'

Lieutenant asked, 'What?'

He said., 'Sir, the prisoner is dead.'

We were shocked. The silence gulped us down. It felt like, we lost the war.”