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Art by Lucian Stanculescu

The Sound
By Meghan Lamb

 Helen wakes to a piercing sound.  She straightens in her chair and
rubs against the rifle.  The barrel’s cold and smooth against her
cheek.  For a moment, she pretends it’s porcelain, looking at the plate
upon the mantle.  Blue willow china Mother gave her for the wedding.
Her husband placed it in its wooden frame beside the mirror, hoping to
remind her of her Eastern home.  He didn’t come so far to keep an
empty house.

 He tried to give her something to protect.  He bought glass windows
and a quilt to hang against the door.  He taught her how to hold the
gun before he left, bending her hands around the base with his own.
His own rough hands around hers felt like wooden roots that made the
weapon safe.  It seemed a part of him just as the plate was part of
her.  But now, without his hands, it feels heavy, still feels foreign,
and if someone entered she’d be too afraid to use it.

 That sound is not the wind.  Tonight the wind is silent.  Its moaning
coils under crevices, sheltering itself in every space that will
receive it.  The prairie soil is pregnant with the wind sound.  When she
listens, she can almost feel it rattling below.

 Her ears gape open, gathering what warmth they can.  She hears the
dying embers and the breathing of the dog that sleeps beside her.
His own ears flick contentedly.   She pats his head, imagining the
sound comes from a wolf.  It’s growing louder now.  It has almost reached
the door.

 She thinks, be ready, and she shifts the gun into position.  It
presses hard against her shoulder, and she feels as though she’s being
held in place.  But then, she hears a knock upon the door.  “Helen, can
you open for me?  My arms are full.”

She opens the door to receive her husband.  He carries a bundle of
burlap bags.  “Enough to last til the end of winter,” he says.  She
smiles, but not as broadly as she’d like to.  Something’s changed about
him.  He seems much larger than before.  His eyes seem darker.  When he
kisses her, his beard is cold and damp with sweat.  His hair is also
longer.  She’d cut to just below his ears before he left, and now it
almost blends into his chin.

 “You look a fright,” she tells him, meaning just to tease about his
beard.  But real fear reveals itself in her voice.

Outside, the sound seems to have faded.  Perhaps it too has found a
shelter underground.  She feels something shiver from within the walls,
rising as though ready to attack.

His Last Tour

By Michael J. Solender


His last tour lasted 14 months.  He promised his mom and his wife he’d come back in one piece and he did.  All the parts were in working order and his little girl even recognized him at the homecoming at the base.

They didn’t see what he’d left over there, it wasn’t immediately apparent.

His buddy’s hand on his shoulder one minute and his guts in his lap in the next.  The little Iraqi kids whose makeshift pushcart found the IED before his unit could sweep the road.  The families who lived in squalor, begging him for food.  He left all that there on his last tour.

Each day over there didn’t transpire without taking a small piece of him with it.  Every day, another chunk of his soul.  He could feel himself being hollowed out, bit by bit, eaten alive by this ugly wars silent termites.

He may have looked like he was whole when he came back, but he felt like he was only half the man he once was.

 

Smith & Wesson
by William Lange

We are all made the same.  Some of us are just built for a different purpose.  The ones closest to us often finish in the same place in life.  My brother and I grew up wanting to be in the military.  We were the youngest of all of our family members.  Our great-grandfather was in the First World War.
He never made it back home.

We figure he is somewhere in a filled in trench, forgotten by everybody except for us.  His son, our grandfather shared the same fate.  We assume that he is in the murky waters close to the Beaches of Normandy.  No one knows exactly where.

He never made it back home.

Our uncle was in the Vietnam War.  He and my dad were separated, my uncle was sent out without my dad.  His job was to kill the enemy and did so, but it cost him his life and now lies somewhere in the Vietnamese forest.  He did what he was made for.

He never made it back home.

My dad spent years waiting in the dark until he was called to action, sent to the Middle East.  His officers wondered if he was too old to go overseas.  Before they could decide, his serviced were needed and he was shipped away.  Like his brother and father, he was destined to be left on foreign soil.

He never made it home.

My brother and I were made for war.  We were bigger faster and stronger than anyone else.  There were high expectations of us.  We were the new model.  Compared to our grandfather, my brother and I were twice the size and twice as efficient.  Few things could stop us.  Once the war with Afghanistan began, we knew we would get our chance to do what we had been made for.

When the shipment order came in, we knew it was only a matter of time before we would lie to rest like our elders or have the chance at coming back.  We arrived in solid numbers.  We were dropped with a parachuted in the middle of the desert.  We waited all night to be picked up.  With my brother next to me, we rode for miles.  As the sun rose, we got ready to go out.  There was a feeling that today would be the day we were made for.  The years of testing and refining would pay off now.  Back on the road, my brother and I were prepared for battle.
The car stopped, and a sandy breeze blew by. We knew our destiny would soon play out.  One by one, we were carried out of the car.  Locked and loaded, we would soon fine if we really were better than the ones that came before us.  With my brother by my side, we looked straight at the enemy.  A deafening bang, and my brother was gone.

He never made it home

I knew I would be next...another deafening bang.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contributor Biographies and Credits

 

 

 

MiCrow Winter 2010 "Half" was edited by Walter Conley.

MiCrow 2010. All rights to content at Full Of Crow belong to the respective writers and artists.

MiCrow is the flash fiction supplemental section of Full Of Crow and is produced by Lynn Alexander for Full Of Crow Press and Distribution. 2010. Contact: microw@fullofcrow.com.