Why?
 

I hear them.

I hear their distorted screams, echo, warped around me, one by one mingling with dozen by dozen.

They crowd the air around me.

Why? they ask, their empty bloody sockets crying metallic tears.

I had a family, they cry.

Their voices rasp. They reach out with whatever hands they have left.

Their blind hands rape my space. They grope towards me the more I try to push them away.

I recoil in frank terror and disgust, from these crying, still-bleeding ghosts, who seem to relive the pain of their death and push all of that on me.

Their bare skulls stare with blind accusation, emptily boring holes through me.

Why? they ask me. I was a young soldier, I had such dreams, such dreams of glory…

They reach out to tear at my clothes with their bone-white hands, their skeletal fingers harder than any rock.

Everywhere I go, they follow.

I can no more hide from them than I can from the sun.

I feel alone. And so afraid.

No one knows.

I want to cry and scream.

I too am young with dreams, I scream as I try to run.

They waft with me, infinitely faster than I am ever capable of being, but staying with me all the way. I shove my body into a cold grey alleyway.

Still you live! they answer with mindless rage. I was a good person! I WAS! Wasn’t I?! Wasn’t I a good person?

Their clumsy hands fumble as they seek my answers.

How can I tell them that I hold not what they want? How can I dissipate their memories, like mist into the fine dusty air?

Don’t they know I have no answers for them? They will never have eulogies, sermons in their honor! They will never be buried by loved ones! They’re the unknown, unmarked dead, can’t they understand that?! They will have no patriotic speeches of duty! They DIED! Can they not leave me in peace?!

Leave me be! Leave me ALONE!

Wasn’t I a good person? they press, crowding in on me from all sides. Thick red blood seeps from what remains of heads. Of arms. Of legs. I feel its heavyness on my ironic joke of attire, on the priest’s garbs.

They hurry the bloody metal scent of war my way.

I want to throw up from the fear.

I don’t know any of the answers they demand from me.

How many more will join these numbers?!

 How many more must I kill?!

How many more souls to crowd and torment and torture my every living moment, of a life that should have been filled with joy but instead reeks with false-true tears?!

What more of me do they want?!

I have nothing left to GIVE!

What more do they WANT?!

I can’t give any more!

I can’t DO it any more! my heart cries in anguish, rocking from their blows.

Ah, but I will.

Because I must.

I will live with the iron smell of death. I will live with the ghosts of a past, present and future I cannot escape from.

Until I join their number. And even then they will ask me.

Ninmu ryoukai.

And damn you all for it. One day I’ll kill you too. And I’ll laugh insanely among the wreckage of souls and machines. I’ll laugh when you ask me why.

That’s what I’ll do, even when they wrap their bony arms around me to weakly imitate what I have done to them. I’ll laugh and force my tears back.

But why?

I have for you, and for myself, no answers.