A Letter to Harold Pinnicks

What is my name? I don’t even think it ever mattered. My friend? Harold Pinnicks. What is the problem? He’s going crazy, and I think I am too.
It started earlier this week, god it seems so long ago. We were in the truck, moving across the road in Iraq, I don’t even remember where we were, nor do I think it matters. We were to act as security guards for the U.S. Embassy, and as such, we were careless, joking around the whole time, all 7 of us: Harold, his younger brother, myself and the others.
If we had been more careful maybe what happened next could have been avoided.
The truck ran over a mine, engulfing the entire truck in fire as it sent it flying end over end. Our bodies banged around off the sides and each other as the burning vehicle made its deadly roll over the sand.
Harold and I were the luckiest, we sat at the back so when the mine went off, we were the first to fall from the wreckage, with only a broken wrist.
But it was the others who were not so lucky.
When we rushed back to the wreckage, we say the horror of our fellow soldiers. I remember the smell of blood, no overpowering, but ever present. One of the knives we carried was bumped loose and cut one of the guys, he was ok, but bleeding pretty badly. Two of them had broken bones like Harold and I, but they were unable to move.
Then Harold spotted his brother, lying in front with the dead driver. It appears that his neck was snapped and he died quickly.
He looked almost as if he was just sleeping, his uniform hid any damage from our eyes, but his neck was bent at an awkward angle and his eyes and mouth were open in a deathly gasp.
Harold lost it.
He screamed and pulled the body out, letting his sobs free as he worked. He fought off the other soldiers who were able to move who tried to pull him back to safety in case of an attack but he continued to scream for his brother.
He screamed about how sorry he was about making his young brother join the army, a choice he didn’t give him. Harold dealt with such guilt that day and every day after that he was sent back to the states as a danger to himself and others.
He pulled knives at lunch, gripped his gun like we was going to use it, and began writing strange notes, notes about death and betrayal, about how sorry he was to his brother, about how he shouldn’t be alive.
I remember his screaming at night, screams that echoes so deep in my ears, I… I swear they might be my own.
They hadn’t let him leave the asylum since they admitted him, and I’m sure they will never let him go.
As for me, I don’t know how I feel, I mean, it doesn’t even feel like I really exist anymore.

The doctor read over the letter a few times then sighed, “Poor guy.”
“What do you mean?” Another asked, and was handed the letter. After reading it, he asked, “Who wrote this? I didn’t know we had another soldier from the attack.”
The doctor nodded his head and said, “I know.”
Meanwhile Harold was sleeping on the keyboard he used to type up his letter, a look of pain permanently etched on him face.
-~-

The Soldier and the Maiden

Now the rain came down blocking my sight and drenching my blood-soaked tunic down to the very fibers. My sword dragged behind me marking the ground in an uneven groove in the ground next to my footsteps and dark red earth. My right hand was holding a deep gash on my shoulder, trying to keep it covered and closed the best it can.
The light from the open shack was my only beacon, leading me from this miserable red rain to people who might help me. But only feet from the door was what I stumbled to as my knees buckled and caved in, throwing me face first into the mud.
The mud splashed into my wound and very quickly the soil around me was turning a deep red. I groped the dirt trying to get to the door, but didn't make it very far before complete darkness enveloped my vision.
Warmth was the first thing I became aware of. The warmth from a flickering flame alighting my cheeks and nose, the warmth of a padded bed under my back, and the warmth from a small hand lying gently upon my forehead.
My eyes tried to ignore my request to open and shook and flattered in mad protest. I heard a gasp and the hand moved from me. I finally won in my eyes and opened the weary pupils to the warm world around me.
The light from a small, white candle stood tall in the dark room not far from my resting head on a bedside table. The roar of the storm outside was pounding on the thicket roof but not getting in.
There was a shift in the shadows beyond my vision and I turned toward it, but the darkness was too thick.
I whispered a ragged word that slipped near silently from my lips and was heard by the angel in the shadows.
Now my eyes began to cut through their fog and I quickly found two wide, almost frighted eyes. They were a reflective blue-gray, like a cloudy day on a beautiful lake, and almost seemed to produce their own light.
"...help..." I tried to say and she must have heard it for she quickly rushed out of the room to return moments later with a wooden cup filled with water and mixed with crushed leaves of some unknown plant. It was tea that she had brought me.
She set down the cup on the table next to the lamp and tended to my head, propping it up and easing me into an upright, sitting position. She tended to me as a mother would her child and let me sip from the cup.
It didn't taste very good to me but I knew it was rude to protest, not that I could.
After the tea was finished the angel put my head back down and began to leave the room. I wanted to cry out for her to stay but the words were lost in my throat.
-~-