World War 4: Sticks and Stones

Peter's Destiny

Every inch. Every cell. Every nucleus. Every atom. Every microscopic speck of energy that created the carbon of my body surged with an unbearable, an unceasing, an overwhelming pain. But at the same time, nothing did. I felt nothing, but pain, but as everything was pain, it was easier to bear. I fought with heart and soul, and I fought with the strength of a thousand, but it was not enough, and yet it was. He could not finish. Ben could not finish. The pain that I had did not have any measure to the relief that I had for what Ben had finally understood. That relief did not have any measure to the pride I felt for Ben in these moments. Him stopping was not magic. It did not save my life. I was still going to die. It was impossible that I wasn't going to die. I felt every orifice in my body fill slowly with blood as if it were a river seeping through cracks in a dam. But it was different now. Before, when Ben had tried to kill me, I had to convince myself of why I simply could not die. I had to keep loving Destiny! I had to keep having hope for Destiny! I had to keep believing in humanity for those who could not believe in it themselves. But now, as I was dying once again, I had to convince myself of why it was okay this time to die. I could not stop seeing Ben laying next to me in my peripheral. He looked tired, anguished, scared, and directionless. He looked as though his entire life had been taken from him, which, in a way, it had been. But every time I looked at him, I saw more and more of me. 

I remembered that day. I limped away from the bunker, my mind dizzy, hazed. I could not think a single clear though except "I did what was right. I did what was right." Those thoughts never made anything that I ever did more right. They just justified them in my own heart. They just created reasons, excuses. They were lies that only the Devil himself could have told-- if the Devil himself were my own soul. In that evil, I could have chosen death. I had killed too many to count. I heard too many screams. I had told too many lies. It was all for the one child that was taken from me. None of it was right. I felt myself nearing the end. I felt myself losing any feeling of worth. I felt myself so unable to convince myself that I could ever become a good man. I walked no longer with any feelings of conviction. I walked thoroughly directionless, only picking up the few breadcrumbs of life that I could before my days ended. But then I saw the body. It was the body of someone who was madly, deeply in unconditional love until the end of her life. She was so human. So scared, but so in love. Her love radiated through the look in her eyes that were glazed over and rolled back, but they were not dead eyes. They were still full of life. They still shimmered in the desolate land. They were a moon. They reflected the light of the sun in beautiful radiance. Looking at her made me wonder if death was even truly possible with love. She was so broken. She had seen so much evil, so much pain, but her heart was full. She loved somebody with everything that she could give. I had to imagine that her love made her life worth living. I had to imagine that those who die with happiness do not really die at all. I had to imagine that she was pure and perfectly human. I did not know this woman well. I had only seen her in passing. I had only done her wrong, but for some reason, I could not stop looking at her in the eyes. How could someone so brutally dead look so vividly alive. It had to be unreal. Perhaps it was just the dust that surrounded her. Everything to every direction, but in the place where she was laying was grey-brown particles of dust. I had to imagine that I was standing on the remains of human life at that moment. I had to imagine that in storms, the dust from the ground blew tragically complex pieces of dirt into my hair and onto my skin. The dust felt no longer like dust, but instead it felt like an envelopment of human souls. I was touched by those killed. Those that never suffered. I had to imagine. If they never suffered, if they never understood that they were going to die, then they never really did. They must have just felt the wind of heat wash over them as their skin melted from their bones and turned to flakes of ash in only but an instant. They were out at parties. They were eating at restaurants. Some were getting married. Some were crying over the death of a loved one. Some were feeling the touch of a lover drift gracefully across their bodies. All of them so alive in that moment were now just flakes of dust blowing through my hair. One day, if we were lucky, a generation would see trees grow from the remains of human flesh. Every inch of dirt and dust was part of a human so infinitely complicated, so entirely unique, yet now so uniform, so colorless. It was all just padding for my feet, just dirt. But here was a woman who had loved and was longing to be loved until the day she returned to the ground. Had she died? If dirt is the vessel through which life grows, then dirt is a mother. I felt the souls of those blowing through my hair cry out as if they were longing for their children to be conceived. They wanted people to prosper, they wanted their children to grow into lawns and into trees and into fruit and into life. The ones in this blast never died, they were merely transformed. The dust blew through each gust of wind and I was surrounded in a cloud of muted browns and grays and I was transformed into the father for these mothers. I stared at Eliza's eyes through sadness, but also through hope. I needed to save humanity. I needed to give purpose to those who had become dust. I was alone, but surrounded. 

Ben was lying next to me. He had fallen, bloodied by our battle. He was lying next to me, terrified that he no longer had a purpose. I spoke through my pain. "Ben, you didn't love Eliza. You know that don't you?" He just looked at me with heartbroken eyes. "But you can. All Eliza ever wanted was to save Destiny. Her daughter was almost everything to her. The rest was you. You can love her, Ben. It was never my place to love her, it was never my purpose. Eliza never loved me, it was you. You were supposed to be there for Destiny, to protect her, and you failed. But that doesn't have to be the end. Somehow, Destiny is still on this Earth. Somehow, she has found a way to save humanity, and you have been blind. Ben, this matters. She matters. Your love matters. If it didn't matter, you wouldn't have made it here. You would have died fighting me. You would have dropped dead when Destiny protected me. There's a reason you're here, Ben and maybe it is because you need to kill me for what I've done, and if that's the case, you've succeeded, but maybe it's also to save the lives that you thought you were protecting. Maybe it's to finally love Eliza again." Outside of the hallway that we had fought in was a desk with some paper and a pencil. I asked Ben to grab it for me. On it, I wrote "trust him." It took everything that I could muster to write these two words. I saw in Ben's eyes everything that I needed to know. He could have left after I wrote my words, but he came back and he lied back down right where he was before and he looked me in the eyes. He said nothing. I said nothing. The silence was not tense, or unnerving, but rather, understanding. Ben was frightened. He had every right to be so. He hadn't felt like the hero in so long, and now he had a chance to, but he still killed people to fulfil what he thought his purpose was. How many good deeds does it take to counteract the evil ones? He grabbed my shoulder and he moved closer and he held me tight. We became one being. I could feel his tears drip onto my arm as his soul broke. He could not speak. Neither could I. I was about to die, but I finally gave life to someone who was dead before. I could not help but smile. Ben was shaking. Every emotion that he refused to show before was finally being let loose. 

Finally, I let go of him and took a few more breaths. I closed my eyes. I was transported to a Hospital where I saw the face of two people breathlessly sobbing. The sobs were tears of joy rather than of sadness. I saw a classroom learning math for the first time. "One times anything is?" The class answered in a collective shout: "itself!" I saw two people yelling at each other as a young girl looked hopelessly down on a diploma that was ripped into two halves. I saw the same young girl gasp for breaths through her tears as she heard her brother tell her a joke. I saw her hug her brother tightly and refuse to let go, as they both smiled through their sadness. I heard a loud noise and a scream, and then a deafening silence. Moments later, I heard sirens and wailing cries of anguish as an older, teenage girl was taken away on a stretcher. I saw a brown wooden casket filled with a girl sporting a fake smile plastered with makeup. I saw a boy in his early twenties look somberly upon the casket as he whispered into the girls ear. "You always deserved that award." He looked away as the casket was lowered into the grave. I saw the same boy at his college graduation. He looked upon his parents with glee as he went up to the microphone for his speech. "Three years ago, my sister overdosed. She was always so happy even when things weren't happy. She didn't deserve the things that happened to her, but she always deserved that award." He looked at his mom with a smile signaling that it was okay. She looked down in regret. "The point is, that her happiness is what put me here. Her support, and her love is what put me here." He broke down in tears. I saw that man finally marry a beautiful woman and try for a child for years until finally, she became pregnant. I saw him lose the child. I saw him lose his wife. I saw him become angry, and scared, and vengeful. I saw him kill thousands. I saw him think for years that what he did was what had to be done. I saw him look upon the eyes of a corpse and remember his sister, and his wife, and his child. I saw him realize the complexity of life and ponder the meaning of a soul. Then I saw him lie on the ground with another person who was just as confused and afraid as he had been once in his life. I saw the tears of the other person fall like raindrops onto the ground. Then I saw nothing.