A CHILD IN RED (5): Horrors of War
“Didn’t you sleep again?” Miller asked, standing in his doorway.
Walsh ground his teeth, staring at the small girl seated on his chest, peering down at him. “Nope.”
“You are starting to worry me, bro. Change quick and you can tell me about it on the way down to breakfast. I’m starving,” Miller said.
Sure, no problem. So, this little girl has the most beautiful green eyes you have ever seen. Well, this bitch won’t let me sleep because I burned her drawings of me murdering all of you and playing with your corpses. Yeah, he’ll believe me and may even be able to help.
The look on Afsoon’s face told him otherwise. Her green eyes continued to bore into him.
Rolling to one side, he dumped her against the wall with more malice than a child of her size deserved and then climbed out of bed. Pretending she wasn’t there, he changed, grabbed his rifle, and left the room.
Aside from high school, when he would stay up late playing video games, he never lost so much sleep. His steps felt unsteady. He felt drunk. Miller worked hard to get something out of him to explain his lack of sleep, but he wasn’t going to tell him that a ghost girl was tormenting him.
“It’s just this place, man. Must be getting to me,” Walsh said while they walked back from breakfast.
Miller looked at him with skeptical eyes. “If there is something more, you know I’ll listen, and I’ll only call you a pussy if you deserve it.”
Walsh laughed. “Thanks. What would I do without you?”
“Probably find some other dude to pour your homosexual infatuations all over, but I don’t blame you for wanting this sweet ass. It doesn’t get better than this. But you won’t get it. I’m saving it for the right guy,” Miller joked, slapping himself on the ass.
“I’m just letting you know that if I were to go gay, it wouldn’t be for you. I’ve seen you in the shower. Not impressive.”
“You did strike me as a Size Queen,” Miller said.
Walsh laughed, the first time he had in several days. He opened the barracks door and let Miller pass up the stairs in front of him.
His vision blurred and he staggered, lack of sleep affected him more than he thought.
“You should do something about those drawings, bro. That shit is getting out of hand,” Miller said casually, walking by Walsh’s room.
How did she…?
“What can I tell you? Kids love me,” he tried to cover up his surprise.
His room was empty, but scattered drawings were on his bed and table. Each one was him, hanging from different locations: the edge of the Death Star, the gnarled tree, or the center of the barracks. In others, he was lying in a pool of blood with a rifle in his mouth. In some of them, he had slit his own throat. And still, another depicted his insides being torn out by black dogs.
No.
Into the burn barrel.
As calmly as he could, he gathered up the pictures, rolled them up, and carried them out the door. His hands were shaking, partly from sleep deprivation and partly because he didn’t know what to do. This was spinning out of control fast.
He found himself nearly fell asleep as he stood over the fire. He was that tired.
Before he knew what was happening, his body began to listen back and forth. Then he tumbled toward the flaming barrel. His boots scuffed forward. The fire crackled louder, hotter. He swayed. One more inch, and he’d be ash.
“Aiyeee!” Afsoon’s screaming voice ripped him back to reality if that’s what it was called.
He caught himself and managed to stumble past rather than into the barrel. With his balance regained, he looked back at the girl standing in the center of the road, her fists balled at her sides and her mouth open. Her scream ripped through the air out of her tiny lungs.
Trying to ignore her, he stared back at the burning paper pile.
Her scream didn’t diminish. It changed in pitch and timbre, but she didn’t stop. Her little ghost lungs were more than capable of dragging the terrible sound out longer than humanly possible.
The fire burned itself out before she stopped. Her green eyes tightened into slits, glaring at him.
Walsh glared back at her.
I don’t care. I’m going to try to lie down.
He brushed past her. She didn’t move right away, but after he was about ten meters past her, her small feet shifted in the gravel and started to follow him.
“You can follow me, but I’m telling you right now, I’m going to burn everything you draw,” Walsh said, turning around and looking at her.
She stopped. “Zaa laa ta nafarat larm.”
“Now that we have that settled,” Walsh said, turning around and heading toward the barracks.
He tried to lie down for a nap, but Afsoon wouldn’t allow him any rest. He ended up staring at the ceiling until dinner time, while she screamed at him from the bedside every time he closed his eyes.
She tried to climb into the bed at one point, but he pushed her back before she could climb up.
She followed him to dinner, standing on his bench seat while he ate, screaming in his ear while he tried to talk to Miller, eventually giving up and standing between them. She crouched low and stared at him, ensuring he couldn’t avoid her gaze. She quietly watched him while he ate his meal and tried to listen to Miller’s complaints about his girlfriend back home.
After lights out, she stood at the foot of his bed. Her screams filled the barracks all night, mingling with Sergeant Krandall’s snores.
I don’t think I can do this much longer.
When his brain began to drown out the screams, she tugged at him, her small hands gathering bits of his blanket and trying to pull it off him.
I can kill her.
No one knows she is even here.
She is a child.
“Aiyeee!”
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The Story continues in The Horrors of War series.
If you want to know what happens after the last drawing burns, explore the larger story in Objective Two (OBJ 2)—a novel that expands beyond Kevin’s perspective and dives deeper into the haunted valley of Najil, the soldiers who survive him, and the darkness that won’t let them go.
Download Objective 2 – EPUB, MOBI, PDF
Book one of The Horrors of War series is available here.
