Just outside the War Room, a voice called out behind Mack.
"Hey!"
He whipped around to face the speaker. It was none other than Jared.
"I swear to god, if you screw up tomorrow, you're the first on the chopping block next round."
Despite the apparent gravity of the threat, Mack couldn't help but tilt his head in utter confusion. "Huh?" Was an entitled army brat seriously threatening to kill him? I'd like to see him try. Mack had to stop himself from saying the thought aloud.
"I'm saying don't cross me, Lance. Don't even entertain the thought, you f*cking defect."
Now he knew something was definitely wrong. "My name's not Lance."
It was difficult to be seriously mad when the malice seemed to be directed at some fictional 'Lance' Jared was referencing.
This time it was Jared's turn for confusion. A knit of doubt stretching his eyebrows, a falter, before doubling down. "Stop messing with me. I've known you for--"
"It really isn't," Mack interrupted.
Jared didn't continue the half-baked tirade, instead staring ahead, searching Mack's eyes for any hint of humor or sarcasm. He found none.
"Look, man. I don't know what your problem is with me--or I guess, with Lance. If you're so confused, go ask anyone else around what my name is. Mack, McKinsey, hell, sometimes Fletcher. But never Lance."
Mack turned on his heel, not wanting to spend another second sharing the same air with that poster child for early onset dementia. Leaving Jared left racking his brain, struggling to decide whether to be pissed, confused, or both.
It's impossible I'm wrong. There's never once been a Mack. Why would the system change things now?
~~~~~
The soldiers had been instructed to keep a journal. 'To help process the mentally scarring reality of war,' had said the white collar superiors. But its real use had nothing to do with the soldiers themselves.
It was to make sure each of the fallen had something left behind, whether that be for family, friends, or just as proof they once existed. A physical legacy, kept just behind the scorching fire of battle that threatened to consume all in its path.
Mack sat at the desk in the common area of his barracks, staring at the cover of the notebook. A wide scentles candle illuminated the setup; unlike the War Room, the barracks were not allowed the luxury of electricity.
It had been a while since he had last wrote, though in his mind only a day had passed.
Still, the ritual felt far away, and when he opened the front cover to its bookmarked page in the center, he felt as directionless as his very first journal entry, entirely unsure of how to procede.
What did he usually do? It wouldn't come easily to him.
Treat it like its real purpose then. A will. A post-mortem scrap of himself. A letter for a family member they could pore over even months after his body rotted into the loose dirt below.
Mack picked up the ballpoint pen to his right and twirled it between his fingers a few time. What would they like to hear? No, what would he like to tell them?
He tried to picture the faces of his parents, but it was like peering through a sandstorm. Only brief flashes and blurs of colors, outlines of half-shapes, existence unproved, could be discerned.
Surely he had a family: that was a prerequesite for life.
The concept dredged up unpleasant feelings.
Mack had come here to escape them, after all. It must have been that the reason he couldn't remember them all that well was because he had been willfully discarding their existence.
Just write, goddammit.
Wiping his mind slate-clean, Mack began to write without a thought behind the flowing ink.
Dear,
Already a pause.
Dear some shattered reflection,
The Frontlines are not nearly as abhorrent as you've been led to believe. Most people here are eager to help and make small talk. We do have our strange ones, though.
I was shot in the left shoulder a bit ago, but it shouldn't be a big deal. I'm handling it well, though the painkillers are beginning to wear off.
It's embarrassing to admit, but I understand why Gram wanted me to stay in the medical tent.
We've been told things are ending soon. This will certainly either lead to triumph or catastrophe. In the case of the former, I won't hesitate to burn this notebook after a night drenched in whisky and song.
In the case of the latter.
In the case that I do not ever return home.
Mack paused. He knew in his heart he wasn't planning to return home either way, wherever that mystical place may be.
How to write a heartfelt goodbye when he had nobody in particular who would mourn him?
Somehow his hand knew the words.
If this entry exists, then I have failed you.
In the absence of your shadow, the sunrise ahead must have scorched my eyes, melted them out of their very sockets.
What a pathetic existence. That can kill but not accept their own death. You were never like that.
But I wish you were. I wish you were selfish enough to cling to your life.
Before another word could be brought to page, Mack slammed the cover shut, eyes dizzy. He couldn't bring himself to open the notebook again then. To face the reality of what he had written.
The existence within the page, the imprint of that person in the back of his mind.
Something was missing.
...
Whatever. He might die in two days anyway. To worry over a lost memory or two when his own mortality was around the corner was stupid.
And it would be right stupid to die without talking to Iris at least one last time.
Mack snuffed the candle out with his front two fingers, slid the book back into the cubbies by his side which held everyone's personal affects, and crept into bed.
[Data loading...]
Though I have been searching for the choice for eons, now that it lays in front of me, I cannot help but to feel an insurmountable dread.
This does nothing to stop the inevitable motion of my finger to the "Yes" option.
My body collapses, and my vision flashes black.