Page 43 of The Sniper

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I want you to stay.I want a lot of things, but I don’t want anyone else to do your job.

Talk about music to my ears.

Where this is going, I don’t know.

But if we end up in another situation like today, I don’t know if I’ll be able to let her go again.

Fuck.

What a mess.

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WHEN I WAKE up in themiddle of the night in a sweat, I’m at first confused.

Then the images of those haunting eyes slap me hard across the face.

My chest rises and falls rapidly, yet I can’t seem to keep the oxygen in my lungs.

Fuck.

I’m having a panic attack.

I sit up, clenching the sheets in my hand and look around the darkened room.Yet all I see are the two women who looked up when they heard our fighter jet that day.It was a split-second moment before the drones dropped and blasted them into a trillion pieces.A split second before the little boy ran toward them, and I screamednooooo.

I knew it was useless.

I saw his body flying through the air.I knew if he lived, the training he’d already received would be multiplied by his hatred for us.One day he’d seek revenge, lead soldiers and drive more wars.

Yet, he was still a child who’d just watched his mother be obliterated.The same woman who had appeared to look me in the eye with fear and anger as we came bearing death.

What evil in this world can justify any of it?

I couldn’t make sense then or now.It wasn’t my first mission, but that day I got too close, and it tore a piece of my soul off and spat it out.

Then came the nightmares.

The memories of those eyes, the little body running...the death.The sounds of the engines, the explosion, the smells.

Anything can trigger it, and it never seems to end.

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