Creepypasta: Nightmare Fuel

128: PTSD

PTSD

The year is 1940. It's been four months ever since I enlisted to be part of the army. Four months since I last saw my parents. Four months since I saw the face of my wife. Four months of listening to the sound of gun fire and smelling the foul stench of gun powder. Four months of watching good men fall like flies. I've been in this desolate battlefield for four months now, seeing nothing but bloodshed and gore.

I'm a soldier. That is all. Boot camp was nothing. I breezed through it. Not too well, not too shabby. The war's on. That's what my parents all talked about. War, war, war. It was what pushed me to enlist in the army in the first place. Gonna be a big war hero someday.

Someday...

It's been four months since someday was first uttered. My friends? Dead. My brothers? Six feet under. The Nazis shot them as if they were nothing. 7.62x39mm rounds buzzed through them like bees. All of them died happily stupid.

"What're you slowing down for, Parker?"

A heroic helicopter pilot risking his life to save others who risk their most valuable possession, their lives, to fight a war that was willingly vilified and unnecessary. So what were heroics worth? A good man saving others and being almost fatally wounded?

"But without war, would that be ever needed?"

And why aren't humans doing this always?

Why is it only during a war situation where we would consider someone as patriotic hero?

"Why make heroes out of war?"

Aren't there more valid and worthwhile reasons to celebrate human success?

"It's for honor! Because we need to protect ourselves! We need to protect our wives! Our children! Our country and our freedom!"

Good reasons they may be, but aren't there more peaceful tactics far more useful than violence and bloodshed? Abraham Lincoln, Confucius, they believed that humanity in its best face could earn more prosperity and peace than bullets and guns.

Why glorify war?

"Because people show compassion when put in bad circumstances!"

Yes, they certainly do...

Then why use war to show it?

Killing someone is wrong. I used to think otherwise when I riddled those Nazi scums with bullet holes, but when you stand amongst the corpses of thousands of dead men, it makes you realize the true horrors of war. The true monsters of humanity.

"They deserved it! They were horrible men!"

It's too much. It's too much for me to handle. I'll kill every person with a swastika sewn on their shoulders. They killed your brothers, right? They shot your friends, right? They would love this, right? Wrong.

They're everywhere. Every soldier I shot, I see them. Every fallen comrades, I see them. Every dead civilians I cautiously step over, I see them. Every muzzle flash. Every dead person. It's them.

"Aren't you angry, Parker?"

Yes, I am. I kill for vengeance, not for pleasure. I'll put a bullet inside every Nazi's skull in this battlefield. They killed them, and I'll kill them. God will protect me. I won't go to Hell. It's only fair.

It's only fair...

It's... Only... Fair...

"Do you think they deserved death, Parker?"

Yes? No? I don't know. If my time in the army taught me one thing; it's that no one deserves death. We claim we kill for reasons. We think to ourselves that it's right. Even convince ourselves why. But no matter how many Nazis I kill, my friends and my brothers won't come back.

All lives matter. Learn to value life. Any lives. Remember that no one deserves to die.

Please, remember this. Remember this as society slowly crumbles...