Toes

I am a soldier.

It’s an exceptionally wet September morning and I am standing at a dead man’s feet. The rain has turned the surroundings into a river, and the dead man’s face is covered in wet brown leaves and his lips show the traces of the mud that may have filled his mouth. His eyelids are dark and his hair looks like that of a baby who has just been bathed. I cannot make out the look on his face. I look at his body. I cannot figure out the difference between it and the rotting leaves that cover it. My eyes rest upon his feet which stick out from the brick-colored water that he’s lying in. He has a shoe missing and there are

only four toes on the foot that’s missing the shoe. Also, his toenails are missing. They seem to have been plucked out from his toes. This dead man was our prisoner. He tried to run away. I shot him and now he lies dead at my feet. I have been watching this man for many days. He was afraid of closed spaces. We both knew I was afraid of them too. Only he knew this about me. He also knew that the sound of ripping flesh scared me.

But he let them rip away his flesh anyway. Only he knew what went on in my mind. He knew where I had kept the secrets of my imagination and his eyes would follow me every time a cobweb fell on his face in the small space he was put into. He would eye my clean, ideal life and haunt it with his live, bloodshot eyes. Sometimes we went into each other’s mind and it worked in the same way as acid does when it is poured on human flesh. I knew this man could keep my secrets so I tried to soothe his pain with an occasional smile. And he would respond by rubbing his bloody face or arm with is finger and licking it as if it were honey, assured me that he was swallowing the secrets which lay beneath the

warrior body.

I was brave. I let him run away. But would he be safe? I thought as he turned towards me, giving me one last look of assurance. I felt my insides burn as he disappeared into the rain. The rain? It must have washed him clean. I thought. There would be no blood left on his face and arms now. Will he still be able to keep my secrets?

I picked up my weapon and followed him. And now I am trying to look at his body through all the mud and the leaves which cover him. There is a little blood near his right eyebrow. I squeeze it with my fingers and begin to taste it. I can’t make out the taste. I seem to have lost that sense altogether as if I was born without it..

I shrug and turn to leave. I resume my clean, warrior position and start to walk. After I have walked a mile or so, I feel something in my boot. I remove my shoe and look at my foot. There are only four toes on my foot.

My heart begins to race but then I remember that I am a soldier.