Today’s story opens a week of fiction at The Sunlight Press.

by Duncan Woodall

Stephen has been my best friend since high school. The first time we met, we got into a heated debate over which Pokemon was the coolest. It was the type of school where such debates were only settled by flying fists and jumping knees. After the cuts healed and bruises faded, we were inseparable. We laughed together, cried together, and even fought in Afghanistan together.

He is my brother in every meaning of the word. I love him and would do almost anything for him and that’s what makes this so difficult as tonight I am going to have to kill him.

I turn up the radio to distract myself from my own thoughts and help me concentrate on my driving. It also helps drown out the banging and muffled shouts from the boot. It’s Kate Bush again. Last week I never even knew any of her songs and now they are everywhere.

“You have arrived at your destination” states my sat nav in that generic A.I. voice. How great it must be to be so unflappable and uncaring. To switch off your emotions, thoughts, and feelings whenever it was convenient must be truly liberating. I have always been a slave to my impulses, which is why I am in this mess to begin with.

I take a deep breath and bring the car to rest. They told me to bring Stephen to this old abandoned industrial estate. I can see why; it looks like the kind of place that only rats and vagrants would call home, which is fitting for me as in my life I have been both. I don’t know which one I hate being more.

The radio goes off mid-chorus when I stop the engine. The headlights abruptly go out. Now I can’t see anything. It is dark. Really, dark. The type of pitch black that puts fear into your soul and sends an animalistic anxiety coursing through your body.

I fight these base instincts and get out of the car. The silence is as unsettling as the darkness. It sounds so peaceful, but that just unsettles me even more. I have another flashback, but I don’t let it fully come through. It is just a glimpse into another terrible day in Afghanistan. That doesn’t stop the crippling anxiety coming back, though. A glimpse alone has the power to ruin men. I do what I have been taught and use the 3-3-3 rule. Identify three things I can hear, move three parts of my body, and point out three things I can see.

Even in this sensory deprived environment it still works and the worst effects of the anxiety subside. My breathing is back under control, my mind is slowing down again and my heartbeat is returning to normal. It’s like magic.

I have taken cocktails of drugs, talked through trauma, written how I feel and it all does nothing until my daughter Sophie showed me this approach. She is better than any of those £200 an hour experts. She is also better than the likes of me. She always has been. She has her mother’s empathy and kind eyes, but hasn’t given up on me yet.

The news and politicians call us heroes, but I’ve never felt like one. The things I have seen and done when I was there doesn’t make me feel very heroic. Watching on powerless as your brothers bleed out as you hold their hand and lie to them that the medics will be here any minute, is not heroic. Coming back to crowds of people thanking you for your service, as most of your squad come back in body bags, is definitely not heroic.

The only heroic thing I can do is to fight these demons and stop the weight of regret pulling me down into the depths of hell.

I don’t do it for myself. I do it for her. I do it to try and live up to the person she thinks I am. Not the broken husk of a man that I truly am. She can never find out what I am about to do. It will destroy us both.

***

He really should be here by now. It was his idea to come at this time. Men like him tell you when they’ll arrive, not the other way around. I take my phone out of my pocket to check for missed calls. I push the button on the side and let out a pathetic yelp as the light from the phone pierces into my brain and almost blinds me temporarily.

It transports me back to a memory of seeing the midday sun in Helmand province. I could never get used to it and always left me with a golden circle in my vision every time I blinked. I hated it, I really did. That and my pasty skin got me the nickname of vamp or Edward the Sparkly Sniper. It was also because I never left this Mastiff unless I really had to.

It could be worse, some poor new recruit got called “mongrel” just because he didn’t know who his parents were. I do miss the dark humor of the army lads.

“CONTACT!!!!” screams Bones at the top of his lungs. My adrenalin surges and before my conscious mind takes over, my training does.

“Location?” yelled Joe.

“The ridge 3 o’clock”

“RPG RPG RPG!!!”

Before I have a chance to even brace for impact, the world is turned upside down as I tumble about the Mastiff like a rag doll in a washing machine. Explosions and screams ring out all around me. People are bleeding, Smith is trying to put out a fire as we are hit again. It’s absolute chaos. My boys valiantly try to fight those animals off. I try to get up as my ears ring, my head pounds, and I feel like I am going in slow motion while everything around me is going at light speed.

And as quickly as I am whisked away to the turmoil of Afghanistan, I am back in the serenity of the industrial estate. However, the emotions and trauma stay with me and for a moment, I am not sure which one is real and which is the past.

The emotional spike passes and after I reduce the screen brightness, I can look at my phone without incident. Five missed calls. It must be Johnny Darko. When you want a horrible job done, he’s the man all the local gangsters turn to. And to be clear, I need a really horrible job done. I need my best friend to tell me where he has hidden my money. Then he has to go. I don’t think I have the nerve to do it myself.

I almost forgot Stephen was here. He’s quiet. I stare back at the dark shape of my Honda Civic. Too quiet, I realize. Something is not right. I head toward the car with both urgency and trepidation. As I get closer, I spot lights in the distance. Looks like headlights. It must be Johnny, it has to be. If not, I really am in trouble.

I run behind the driver’s side of the car and crouch down on the ground and watch it approach. I suddenly feel very vulnerable and pick up a large brick and get ready for anything. The car comes into the estate and slowly comes to rest about 20 meters from me.

The car door swings open and someone gets out. It is a small figure, slender, around 5 foot 3. This is not Johnny. Who is this person and what are they doing here? I begin to panic. They step forward in front of the headlight beam of their car. They have long curly, dark brown hair, and a light complexion. I gasp as I recognize that face – I would anywhere. It’s my daughter Sophie.

“Dad,” she says audibly before saying it several times. It gets louder and louder each time. I want to come out, but I can’t let her be a part of this. I don’t know how she knows I’m here, but if I stay long enough, maybe she’ll just go away on her own.

“I know you are here, Dad.”

“I followed your phone.” She always was a technological savant compared to me. I might have been able to field strip my SA80 quicker than anyone in my platoon, but now I can’t even work my new TV remote.

I know the game is up and come out. I try to fix my hair before standing up and facing the music. “Oh, hi Sophie, what are you doing here?” I say like I just saw her in a crowded street.

She turns around to face me. I can see how stern she looks. “This needs to stop, Dad.”

That takes me by surprise. “Stop?”

“Yes!” she screams. “I have a family now. I can’t always go running off looking for you every time you choose not to answer your phone”

“Oh those were from you? I thought…”

She rudely interrupts me. “Thought what? That it was Johnny Darko or some other lowlife criminal?”

I am dumbfounded. “H…how do you know him?”

“I don’t, Dad, and neither do you. That’s the point.”

“I don’t understand,” I say, beginning to be very unsure of myself.

Her face is red with anger. “You never do. So what is it this time? Did he rip you off? Did he steal your new girlfriend? Did he betray your precious military code again?”

I try to say many things, but they don’t come out. All I can say is “Who?” meekly.

“Stephen, of course, it’s always Stephen. Is he tied up in the back of the car as usual? Give me your keys, dad. It’s quicker this way.” I hand them to her, still very confused, but something is gnawing at the back of my brain.

I hear a click. “Now go and open the boot so that we can be finished with this charade. I need to get back to my daughter and your granddaughter. It’s a school night.”

Even before I open the boot of the car. I know what I’m going to find. Even though it makes no sense to me. I bend over and slowly lift it up. “It’s empty,” is all I can say.

“Of course it’s empty,” she says in her usual kind manner, with tears in her eyes. “Do you know where Stephen is?”

That’s when I drop to my knees and figure out what my brain has been trying to tell me along. The golden circle from my Afghanistan flashback wasn’t about the sun. It was about my friend Stephen’s wedding ring.

On that day. That horrible day I can never forget. He saved us like he always did. He initiated the counterattack that drove them off. He pulled the burning rubble of the Mastiff apart with his bare hands and reached his hand in to help me up.

That’s when everything changed. The light of the sun reflected off his gold wedding ring and shone brightly in to my sensitive eyes. I turned away. It was only for a second, but that was enough. Enough for me to miss the child soldier behind him with an AK-47. Enough for my friend, my brother, and the bravest man I have ever known to die in my arms. It all comes back crashing around me as I kneel on the ground, weeping uncontrollably as my daughter joins me, her head pressed against mine, trying to comfort me.

The worst part about losing Stephen is that I haven’t only lost him once. I lose him daily. I really need help. It’s too late for Stephen, but I hope it’s not too late for me.

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