Silent World (WIP)
- Locked due to inactivity on Aug 4, '16 4:33pm
Thread Topic: Silent World (WIP)
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The world had always been too loud for Charlie, even before the war. New York was an impossible place to live for someone who adored being enclosed in the silence of the night. But, then, New York was home to him, and despite his want for undisturbed sleep, Charlie stayed. He had never planned to leave, even when he finished high school, and had the option. He just bought a small apartment, applied to a couple colleges, and settled into a daily routine of a student with an undeclared major.
To be perfectly honest, Charlie had no idea what he wanted to do, what he was going to go for after he had all of his required classes out of the way. He wasn't brilliant, his grades were just slightly above average. He didn't have any aspirations, and he didn't have a family trade or business to follow, as his father and mother had both been teachers. That was out of the question, of course. Charlie disliked children, not severely, but enough that the idea of dealing with them for more than seven hours a day, five days a week, made him cringe. Really, Charlie didn't know what he wanted to do with his life.
The idea of joining the military came to him through a friend of a friend. A conversation over dinner(At one of the weddings he had somehow gotten invited to. He hadn't been popular in high school, but he had his lingering friends) somehow lead to someone's cousin going to fight in the war. Charlie's eyebrows rose to be hidden under his curly brown hair as he listened to the story, and then heard that the man whom was speaking was planning to join himself. Iraq seemed a long way away, for someone who had hardly been out of New York.
Still, almost a year later, he was in Iraq. That first year, 2005, seemed like some sort of an illusion to him. The days were long, and it was hot, and he did what he had to, hardly ever seeing actual battle. Charlie was thankful for that, as he had never liked the idea of having to kill another human, for whatever reason. He dreaded knowing that the people on the other side were fighting hard for what they believed in, just like himself, and his comrades. Somehow, he got through it.
The young man learned with time that maybe he didn't love silence as much as he thought he did. Now, empty air was filled with the screams of dying beings, the echo of guns, and the sounds of military jeeps thundering down dusty dirt roads. He wanted to go home, back to New York, back to the noise of chattering people and the horns of cars caught in traffic. He was more than relieved when a bullet in his leg returned him to his noisy city.
2013, almost two years after the war had officially ended, Charlie still woke to screams. Covered in sweat, he'd allow himself to cry in the dead of night, knowing that he had ended the lives of many people himself. It was a horrible, horrible crime, perhaps the worst of all. No, not perhaps. Certainly. How could he, a human himself, and not any kind of god or otherwise divine power, doom a human to death? It seemed to be one of the most horrible cruelties possible. He had murdered, and regardless of if he was just serving his country or not, it didn't matter. He had ended lives.
There were nights when he didn't sleep at all. The few friends Charlie had noticed the change.
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(Not done. Not even close..)
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