“Fuck!” I hollered, ducking back behind the window. Chunks of wall fell around me from where the bullet hole was currently smoking right next to my head. I crouched low, trying to get as small as possible. Not very difficult, as I was already short for an American. I’d earned the nickname ‘Short stack’ after a waitress at a diner made a joke that a short stack was ordering a short stack. One look at the shit eating grins that my buddies gave me, and I knew my fate was sealed. And thus, I became ‘Short stack’. 

 Chunk! Another bullet smashes into the wall, this time from the other side, spraying my face with stone. My breathing came short and fast, chest heaving as I tried to suck in the horridly hot and oppressive air that was our constant companion out here in the desert. I glanced around, dust and darkness blocking most of my vision. A thick ray of sunshine shone down through the open roof, illuminating the small room. One man, Mark, lays unmoving, his head blown open by a bullet. The top half of his face was gone, utterly destroyed.  

“Jesus Christ! Mark!” I whisper in shock. The memories of my best friend and brother in arms flood my mind, overlayed by the vision of his destroyed face. We’d been best friends since boyhood, getting into as much trouble as we could. As teenagers, our hijinks dropped off and we became, well, jocks. He was the star quarterback of our tiny little high school. I was a short, fast kid, 5’8” 170 senior year so the coaches put me at running back. I stayed a little bit nerdy, playing DnD in the off season, while he devoted everything to being a gym rat. 

Mark was the one who convinced me to enlist with him. He was a true American, as red-blooded as it gets. He said that it was the “pride of every American to serve their country”, and I knew that if I let him join alone, he’d wind up dead. Guess he wound up dead anyway. Some friend I am. 

A loud CRACK! And one of my brothers fell, a hole punched clean through his body armor. The soldier in me reacts, my voice screaming out “SNIPER!” as another round careens through the wall and into my left shoulder. I screamed in agony as my shoulder blade was obliterated and my arm fell limp. Darkness twinged the edges of my vision, and warm blood soaked my front. I shook my head, forcing my mind to focus on the current moment. My left arm was useless, which meant no rifle for me. I dropped it, letting it hang from the sling and drew my sidearm, cocking the hammer back with my thumb.  

A shadow crossed the ray of light, and I glanced up in time to see a silhouette holding something out over the hole. I watched with a sort of detached calm as the figure dropped a grenade into our room. Time seemed to slow as the grenade fell. The clink! It made when it hit the ground echoed in my ears. Without thinking, I drove myself to my feet, blood pouring from my wound. I kept my eyes trained on the grenade as I took unsteady steps towards it. My legs gave out, and I collapsed forward. Another spike of agony as I crashed onto my ruined shoulder, the butt of my rifle digging uncomfortably into my right shoulder. 

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I roared as I reached out with my working hand, grabbing the round explosive. I pulled it to me, holding it against my stomach and curling around it. I clenched my eyes tightly, my mouth open in a defiant roar. Stupid, as you’re supposed to keep mouth closed and ears covered around an explosion, but hey, I was a dead man anyway. The seconds ticked agonizingly slow. One Mississippi. I thought of Mark; of the video games we played as kids. I thought of the party we had when we won the State Championship our senior year. He got with Mary Sellby and I lucked out with Molly Wingum. Best night of our lives. 

Two Mississippi. I thought of home, of my family. I wasn’t the best son. To be fair, I didn’t have the best parents. We never really got along, and family supper would often turn into a family shouting match. Both my parents were drinkers, and it eventually killed my father. That was fine, honestly. He’d been nothing but a drain on the family for a few years beforehand anyway. We didn’t struggle for money... much. Mom worked, and her father helped us when times got too tough. But most of it went towards booze for them. It got really bad when Dad and Annabeth, my sister, passed in a drunk accident. Ironically, it wasn’t Dad that was drunk. No, he’d been sober that day, picking Annabeth up from school. 

Three Mississippi. I thought of my sister. I could barely remember her smile. It had been seven years since her death, and the pain wasn’t helping my focus. The image of Annabeth’s smile faded, replaced by her charred corpse on the morgue's table. Mark’s hand was on my shoulder, and I looked up at him. He smiled down at me, and his face exploded into a shower of gore, splattering me with blood and viscera. 

I blinked, and Mark’s face disappeared. What replaced it was far, far worse. The blood and gore that splattered me in my vision was real, just not Mark’s. Everything was silent, eerily so. I stared down at my chest, bloody strips of flesh sloughing off in heaps. My insides, what few that remained, were now my outsides. Blood poured from the lower half of my body that was no longer attached to the other half. 

Ah. Well. That’s not good. I thought to myself. I looked down and saw my lungs, pink and torn, sliding out of my chest cavity, still attached to me. More blood poured out onto the dusty ground, making a sickly mud that I collapsed into. My heart tumbled out of my chest and onto the lungs, settling between the two like an offering to some profane god. 

My vision went dark as my brain started to die. The last thing I saw was Mark teaching Annabeth how to ride a bike. They were both smiling so wide. It was contagious and I couldn’t help but smile as well. 

“Hold on, you two. I’m coming home.”