Go Home!

Several weeks after Johnny had made it out of the Hospital, fate decided now was the time to take yet another swing at him. As everyone he collectively knew had either died a long time ago, or were busy making sure he didn’t die for whatever reason, one of the few things he had left besides drinking, eating, and sleeping, was bowling. So it was in March on a particularly windy twilight that someone attempted to mug him. It didn’t help that Johnny was also intensely drunk. Not that being sober had anything to do with his bowling ability. He still got plenty of strikes. It was after a long game and Walter’s Lane closing down that he found himself bumbling down an alley towards...somewhere. His mushy thinker box was still very alcohol logged. Unbidden, tears came into his eyes. Times like this he, or rather his imagination, decided to wax nostalgic about fighting in the cold tundra of Russia. So it was then he looked down and noticed suddenly that he was standing in snow, inside a small trench tunnel with snow piled along the sides in haphazard heaps. He also felt about 50 years younger and stronger. Suddenly Malibu ran past him, and the dull muffled thumps he heard resolved into raging artillery fire. Johnny’s eyes blazed, he had a job to do damn it all! He ran out of the tunnel, just in time to see Archer’s squad get torn to shreds by a Kraut mortar shell. He kept running, sliding into cover next to the rest of the squad, no, his squad. Malibu, Preacher, Ken, Smiles, and Cutter all leaned against the rocks, Preacher casually lighting up one of his custom “cigars”. Johnny leaned over the rock and ducked back just in time to get a new buzz cut. “Where is our support Smiles?!?! We’re getting slaughtered out here!” Smiles glared back at him, then revealed the smoking slag that had been their radio. The knife scars that had been used to rip downwards on his cheeks simply added to his glowering countenance. “Oh, ok then. Well...Preacher, you got any more of those “presents” of yours to give to the Krauts?” Preacher just smiled at him, and pulled out of his pants a few IED’s. “Oh course man, I always got some for Pendejos!” Malibu lobbed them over the rocks after priming them, and a few seconds later a deafening explosion rocked the landscape. The cry went up amongst various squad leaders. “Move up!” He waved them on. Then everything went...sideways. He was suddenly aware of far more than he should have been. He turned, knowing exactly who would be there. Same kid. Same blue eyes. A constant. This time though, Johnny was angry. The kraut had out a big knife, not even regulation equipment it looked like. He was saying something, but Johnny never had passed his language classes back in school. He swiped, when Johnny screamed at him “No!” again and again. He missed, and Johnny swung his fists in a dervish, a haymaker, a cross, uppercut. The kid stabbed outwards again, and got the knife lodged in his left bicep, and it stuck there. The kid was startled by this, more so that Johnny headbutted him in the nose. Cartilage cracked and the kid fell down. This time though, he hadn’t been shot. His eyes weren’t accusing, they were terrified. He wasn’t dead or dying though. Johnny grabbed him, the knife not even registering on the long catalogue of pain and scars that was suddenly coming back to him for some reason. “Go home! This is isn’t the way you should die today!!” God he wished he could have said that to him before. Because now he knew. The snow had faded, the rocks as well. They all smoothly returned to being trash cans and cardboard boxes. The kraut had melted into a different kid. His white skin was covered with is own blood, and bruises now clogged up his face. The eyes were brown, and entirely unremarkable. His raggedy Grateful Dead shirt and pulled over leather jacket were now more so ripped, even his tight jeans. Johnny threw him away, and the kid scrabbled home. Johnny snorted, then went home. “He didn’t die this time. I didn’t kill him.” This, for some reason, made Johnny happier than he had been in a long time. He even cried a little.