I carefully apply the warpaint of my surrogate tribe
onto my cheeks and under my eyes. The dark greens and
blacks meld into the deep brass of my own skin. My helmet
fits snugly on my head. I close my eyes and duck beneath
the spinning blades. The rest of my platoon and I scurry
through the cloud of dirt kicked up by the rotors. We stay
low to the ground, moving through dying, yellow grass. The
smell of death is already present. I think of home. The
place where life begins and ends. Where it's green. Where
my grandfather, the shaman of our tribe, taught me the
spirit magic. But I am a warrior now, like my ancestors
from long ago. I inhale deeply, filling myself with the
spirits of the newly dead. I cough quietly.
It is 1969 and I am in Vietnam. I didn't want to be
here at first. This is not my war, and this is not my land.
I have no reason to fight. But something in my blood is
boiling and I hunger to hear the death cries of my enemy.
We slither like a snake along the muddy ground, behind the
cover of trees. My heart beats quickly. In the distance, I
can hear the sound of a Vietnamese soldier dying. I hear
his final breaths escaping his lips, the blood bubbling in
his lungs. The bones are cracking all around. Flesh is
penetrated by metal spearheads, flying faster than the hawk.
A spider spins his web in a tree. Our wet clothes squish in
the mud.
My platoon quietly moves into a village. One man is
sent forward to survey the area. We were ordered to
investigate the area for possible enemy activity. I am the
first to hear the machine gun fire. We all surge forward
like hot lava pouring from the mouth of a volcano. I kick a
door down and fire pours from my rifle. I am the last to
hear the baby's cries.
It is 1775 and a child is screaming. His mother lies
dead on the floor, blood streaming from a deep wound in her
neck. Her clothes are cut and torn. An hour ago, I threw
her to the floor, cutting her clothes with my knife, tearing
at her with my claws. As she writhed below me, I entered
her and pressed my lips to hers to stifle the screaming. As
my fluids flowed into her, I sliced her taut neck and lapped
at the first few streams of blood that burst from her wound.
Now I stand above her, gripping her long blonde hair,
lifting her head out of the pool of blood on the floor. My
sharp knife slices across her scalp, and I hold my trophy
high above my head. I shout triumphantly, revelling in the
spirit I've just released and in the spirits of my
ancestors. The door opens and I see a still living spirit
enwrapped in the skin of a man. I turn to see his gun erupt
and my spirit slips away.
It is 1837 and the smoke is burning my lungs. Gunfire
sounds randomly in the backdrop of battle. Hundreds of
bodies, dark and red, litter the ground. A cry is raised to
the skies and to the earth as another of my brethren falls
around me. I slice into another white man's body and hear
him scream one time before I cradle him in my arms and cut
his throat. Blood gurgles from his neck as I scalp him with
my red knife and drop his corpse to the earth. Dust rises
around him. I inhale the fires, the spirits, the smells,
and shriek in ecstasy. I rejoice in the blood and the
ending of life. In the returning of bodies to the earth.
Again, I cut deep. Again, I hear the single scream as I
violently wrench the soldier's spirit from his body. My
brothers and his are all around me. I feel them. I charge
again, like the buffalo, fearless in my desperate plight. I
feel a burning blade cut into me. I feel it go through me
and out my back. I feel my spirit slip through the hole to
join the others.
It is the year of the plague and my body is failing. A
warm fire burns near me, but I only feel the cold inside.
My spirit sticks to my fingertips. My wife is beside me,
and I see her with new eyes. She is beautiful. I smile at
her with a sickly grin made of two dry lips and yellow
teeth. She reaches out to touch my burning face, and it
feels like a pinprick. She brings the water to my lips and
I drink as much as I can, filling my almost empty shell with
the fluid. She cries for me, her tears splashing on my
still throbbing chest. I reach out a hand and rest it on
her knee, remembering the feel of her. She folds her hands
over mine. I look at her once more, remembering, before
these eyes close forever.
It is 1969 and we are running from a sea of explosions.
The village is far behind us now. I hear the baby's cries
in my head over and over again in the back of my skull. Its
face was splattered in blood. Its mother's dead body still
held the child close to her chest. I run, but I don't know
where I'm going. My platoon has scattered like ants in the
presence of a falling foot. We're all running as the bombs
explode around us and the gunfire spits at us from every
tree. I don't think we'll make it.
It is the year of the sun and I am sleeping. My dreams
are of the battle to come in the next day. My heart is the
beating wardrums; my breath is the songs of my tribe. I
dream of the spirit magic I've been taught. Of becoming the
bear and the eagle. Of rejoicing in the release of a soul.
My body is tense with excitement, yet my sleep is calm and
peaceful. I will do much killing tomorrow and I will prove
myself a warrior to my tribe, whether my body remains filled
or it becomes empty. I am enwrapped in my dreams. Yet I
notice a tingling in the physical plane, so I return. I
open my eyes to see the cold flash of a blade in the
moonlight. I see the enemy. My blood pours from me and my
spirit rides its waters.
It is 2065 and I feel the pressure building inside of
me. My lungs are tight. Air bubbles are forming in my
bloodstream. This I know and nothing else. I check the
gauges to see what's gone wrong, but nothing registers at
all. The radio has died. The red sphere of the planet
dances in front of me as my eyes glaze over with tears from
the pressure. I hold my breath as my oxygen tanks fail.
With my final breath, I scream with the pain and let the
breath take me away. My heart explodes as my pod plummets
towards the planet's surface.
It is 1969 and I fly like the eagle, my skin as tough
as the bark of a tree, absorbing a thousand shards of metal.
Like the snake, I shuffle off my old skin and become
accustomed to my new covering.
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