When we had all had our turn, and some twice over, we grabbed the babe by the legs and smashed its soft skull on the wooden doorframe. She had cried out then for us to stop, but after a couple solid hits against the doorframe, her screaming turned into a babbling mess of syllables, and her babe stopped crying forever. It was Marcus who enjoyed finishing the job. He said that he liked the sound of it. He stepped over to the babbling, childless woman and put one hand on her chin, and another on the back of her head. With a sickening crack, he turned her head to the left in a quick motion that silenced her weeping. Marcus would smile up at us and make the same comment time and again: "Almost as much fun as the rutting." Dropping the cooling corpse to the ground, he would wipe his hands on his trousers and step over the bodies to his next gratification.
It would take a few hours, but when the sergeant deemed that we had enough fun with the locals, he would order the bodies to be piled and set aflame. That was my job. I don't know how I was given that job, probably because nobody else could handle the smell. I would take out my torch, light it, and set it to the oil drenched pile of wasted men, women and children. Without fail, each time before I ignited the flame, there would be a moan of some sort, or a flicker of movement from within the pile. It's nearly impossible to pile hundreds of bodies together making sure all of them are completely dead. But my job was clear to me, and I never questioned it once. I would set the oil aflame and stand back to make sure that nothing happened.
That was my job. Set the people aflame and watch their dead eyes boil and burst while they all stared at me. Like the sick fuck that I am, I become aroused. Every time.
That's how the dream ends. I wake up with a morning erection and go about my life. Only I wish it were just a dream, and not a recreation of the first five years of my adult life. I traveled with the Panther Claw division under Sergeant Mattson. "Lieutenant DeLevanadel of the Third Claw Archer Division" was my full title. I was good too. Had I any ambition for a command post, I would have gotten it. But I didn't want it. I wanted the same position I had always had: the man who fired the bodies. At first it was my own form of punishment for what I had done, but it grew into more than that. My own sick fascination I suppose. Or perhaps I am just crazy.
I left the army after a while. I was in my fifth year, and my superiors were wondering why a man with my talents wasn't ascending in rank so they made inquiries to find out why. I was discharged shortly thereafter; dishonorably. No pay, no chance of ever going into the life I had trained for. They found me rutting with a woman prisoner with the standard group of guys. It was just another sacked town of barbarians, and we were just enjoying the spoils of the city. None of the other men were discharged, it was strictly political. They wanted me out, and they found a reason. I tried my hand as a hired man, but I had never been much with a sword and archers have very low standing in mercenary companies. So I put away my bow and tried something else: stealing. At first it was just to survive. I would steal a bit of food here, or club a man who was foolish enough to walk between buildings after dark and take his purse. After a while, I found that I was pretty good, so I started to do it with a bit more stealth. That's when I got caught.