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I’ve just finished work and on my way home I decided to go to the convenience store close to my work.
I walk into the store and start looking through the aisles for something I can snack on as I travel home.
As I made my way to the third aisle to grab a bag of chips I hear someone yell in a roaring voice.
“PUT THE MONEY IN THE BAG OR YOU’RE F****** DEAD!”
I peeked around the aisle to look at the register and some was holding a revolver pointed at the cashier.
I could feel my heart beating out of my chest from the sheer amount of adrenaline this situation was creating in my body, it was too dangerous to do anything so I waited while staying hidden.
Not even 10 seconds pass and someone comes dashing through the door and knocks the gunman to the ground and the gun falls from his hands and slides a meter away from them.
“GET THE F*** OFF ME!” The gunman screams as he scrambles across the floor trying to get his gun back.
Just as his fingertips reach the handle of the gun the other guy lunges on top of him and they begin to struggle over the gun.
The gunman manages to shove the guy off of himself and grabs the gun and points it at his attacker, which is immediately shut down because the guy swiftly grabs the barrel of the gun and hits the wrists of the gunman.
This causes him to loosen his grip on the gun and it gets snatched away by the guy and now the gunman is being held at gunpoint.
The police arrived in around 4 minutes and after the police had cuffed the gunman and taken him away I started to talk to the man who apprehended the gunman and it turns out he was a retired army soldier. I asked him why he did what he did and his response was somewhat peculiar.
“Hmm…”
“It wasn’t out of a sense of duty as a soldier nor was it because of it being the right thing to do.”
“I was in the army for so long that constant fighting and death became normal. After a certain point, I wasn’t waiting for the next break and going home but I was just waiting for the next fight, the next battlefield.”
“And that waiting never stopped even after leaving the army and this was just that ‘next fight’.”
“What did you say your name was again? I seem to have forgotten.” – Kyle
“That’s because I never told you.” is what he told me as he walked off with a grin on his face as if he waited his entire life to say that line.
The mysterious man was around 6ft 3, had short grey hair and looked to be around 60-70 years of age, he had a physique so fined tuned as if he hadn’t missed a day of training his entire life and seemed to be blind in his left eye as it was a cloudy white.
As I watched him walk off into the city that was enveloped in a deep and heavy rainfall I felt that the man looked very lonely and I thought about how everyone always said war changes people in ways normal people couldn’t imagine.
What that mysterious man said to me lingered in my mind even as I made my way to the train station and for the rest of the trip home.
I walked down my driveway and pushed the key into the door and unlocked it.
As I walking inside I would walk only a few feet and fall onto the couch out of exhaustion, I would lay there and feel the exhaustion that had built up over this long long day all suddenly come rushing like the flood gates had been opened.
It felt so peaceful as I slowly drifted away into a deep sleep.
I opened my eyes and everything was dark, there was nothing but emptiness but I turn around and I see Rai I ask him something but I can’t seem to hear what I’m saying.
Rai suddenly turns around and starts walking away, I start following him but he begins to run and I cant catch up.
“Rai! Wait! Where are you going!?”
Before I know it he’s already beginning to fade away as he gets further and further.
I turn around but and instead of nothing being there like before I vaguely see two figures one big one that seems to be a woman and one small one that seems to be a child.
Suddenly the figures disappear and I’m falling, I look around and see nothing.
After what seemed like only a few seconds I begin to notice something.
First, it was my arms, then it was my legs then my torso, then slowly my vision begins to fade as the rest of me turns to dust.
