Short Stories By Yours Truly

| #9 Sarge |

Sergeant Bo was stuck. He wasn't literally stuck, but metaphorically. He was stuck to this toxic routine that killed his mind and this Gods forsaken village that used to bustle with people but was now nothing but an almost black and white picture of empty streets covered in a deep red coating of the blood of the innocent people his troop had to kill.

His fellow soldier, a sniper who went by the name of Ley, pushed a glass filled with murky brown liquid into Bo's hand. He looked up at them with his brows furrowed. "Drink it. It'll make you forget for a moment," Ley said, their brown eye showing a hint of sadness in it as they watched sergeant Bo slowly lift the glass up to his nose to smell it. It smelled like sewage, just like the saloon he was sitting in.

He placed the glass to his lips. "I wish I could go home," Bo whispered before throwing his head back as the murky liquid poured down his throat. It burned as it slid down, and the sergeant coughed into his soot covered hand.

"Don't we all? We've all got family out there that don't even know if we're alive. I doubt the Queen even cares for us anymore," Ley said as they sat down next to Bo. The Queen had sent them to this village. She'd sent them all to a place they'd never get out from, knowing they'd be forgotten by their people. Soon they'd all wither away until the saloon was empty except for the musky brown rats.

"She never cared, Ley. Do you really think she'd risk sending troops out to destroy these people's holy land if she cared? Do you?" Bo said, his voice rough like sandpaper. He'd been here the longest out of anyone: his troop was sent here first, and he was the last to remain out of them. Thanks to that, he was the first to lose hope, to lose faith in the queen and the Gods.

Ley looked down at their hands and the missing third finger on their right one. They'd lost their finger in an earlier battle before they were sent here, but their eye had been punctured by a local shaman who had attacked them for stepping foot into the holy lands. The shaman was then killed and dismembered by soldiers because of what he had done to Ley. "I like to stay hopeful," Ley said, their voice weak and quiet. Their words made the sergeant laugh in his gravelly way.

"Hopeful? Kid there's no hope in this place. We're not getting out of here, not alive, not dead," he said as he looked around the saloon. The tables used to be filled with soldiers, but as the months went by, less and less people came to sit in the saloon. Every day, another soldier died under mysterious circumstances, only for their bodies to be found in front of the saloon.

At first, everyone assumed it to be an animal attack, but when the animals died away as well, the idea was discarded. There were no people other than the soldiers anymore, so it couldn't have been an angry local either. This left two more options: either here was a traitor, or they'd angered something inhuman. As more and more soldiers died with no traces of it being a murder, the latter option became more convincing.

As Bo's eyes scanned over the people in the saloon, he spoke, "You ever noticed how everyone here is broken somehow?"

Ley looked over the people in the room before glancing at Bo. "Nix and West don't have anything wrong with them, though?" they said with a questioning tone. Bo looked over to where the two men sat, one on the lap of another with their arms around each other to give comfort.

The sergeant huffed out a humourless laugh. "You and I both know people like those two aren't accepted," he said. "And besides, Nix has violent hallucinations that hinder his ability to fight on the battlefield while West's tongue was cut off in the war, leaving him mute. That's why he doesn't talk. They're worthless to the queen, that's why they're here."

Ley licked their lips and nodded. "But you're fine, aren't you?"

Bo smiled in a bitter way. "I did say that everyone had their faults, so do I. Outwardly, I look just fine but I was deemed unfit to serve in wars and that's why I'm here," he said, patting his leg hit one calloused hand.