GARNET 2012 47
motorcycle while they clung on for dear life. Nate was the risk-taker of the group while Josh served as the voice of reason. Josh always planned to settle down early; he loved the idea of a wife and kids right out of high school, but Nate had bigger plans. High school horseplay and girls soon became boring for him; he needed the ultimate thrill to curb his never-ending mischief: war. Nate enlisted the day he turned eighteen, left for training, and was soon shipped out to Iraq as an infantryman of the 1st Battalion, 128th Infantry Regiment. Nate had sent Josh letters every so often while in Iraq, but Josh quickly hid them from Mary to read at a later time. All alone tonight, he could finally catch up. Each letter began with the usual smartass comments and recollection of old tricks, like when they used to hide Old Man Murfey’s highly prized Miniature Schnauzer on his roof and watched as the old man hobbled around the outside of his house cursing them in his raspy, decrepit voice they heard so often. Josh flipped through until he came to the most recent letter on the bottom of the stack; it had come in about two weeks ago and caught him by surprise at how perverse it was. Nate wrote of the glory of war: the necessity for conflict in life. “The world,” he wrote, “is coming to an end, my friend. Life is a mind game, for the mind controls us; we do not control it. Cormac McCarthy once wrote, ‘A man’s at odds to know his mind because his mind is aught he has to know it with,’ and I believe it. War brings that out of you, man. I hear things at night and wonder if its real. I’m no longer afraid of what’s out there. It’s me I’m afraid of—of what I’m capable of creating.” Josh thought about those last lines as he dozed off, listening to the comforting voice of Zach in the background. He found himself staring down at hands that were covered in blisters and cracks that no longer bled from the thin layer of brown mud that sufficed as a bandage; hands that had symbolized all morality lost in the world; not the hands of a mechanic, but the hands of a slave; hands that were somehow his own. He heard whispers around him, but couldn’t understand who or where they were coming from. They sneered, “You’re nothing! Give up. He’s already won because he’s better than you. You’re a lost soul in a lost world.” The snickering built up, ringing off the walls around him, echoing, into a screech of blurred chaos. He screamed in pain, “Stop, please stop. I have life left to live.” Silence. An unblemished, glowing white hand wrapped around his shoulder lightly, but with a firm enough grip that provided him with an odd feeling of comfort. He looked up to find Nate looking down on him, smiling with the same childish grin and saying, “I’m with you now, don’t worry. Like old times man, like old times. I’m back for good now.” He awoke covered in sweat lying on the floor of the living room. Josh felt drained, mentally exhausted from the nightmare that just crushed him. The room stood still, but he still felt claustrophobic, as if the walls still spoke and were judging him. He lifted his wrist to check his watch and noticed his hand was his own, unscarred and natural. His watch read ten past nine. “Shit, I need to call Mary,” he thought out loud, but his body groaned and ached when he shifted his weight and got up. And then he felt it. That same familiar hand grasped his right shoulder. He jerked around to see the same shaggy brown-haired, blue-eyed, young-looking Nate that left four years ago standing in front of him, as if his stint in Iraq had never happened. Nate smiled and smirked, “Excited to see me, big guy?” Josh threw out his arms and grabbed him, embraced him, and kept spilling