18 Fletcher Strawberries—Caamp
Fletcher
Strawberries—Caamp
The universe has a sick sense of humour.
But this is long past being funny.
Thick, formal paper scrunches in my curled fists. I don’t flinch as the edges nick my skin. The words disappear, but that doesn’t stop the invitation from rattling around the barren wasteland in my head.
Posthumous war honours.
Victoria Cross for bravery.
They want me to accept the award on behalf of my team as the sole surviving member. Never mind the fact I was shipped home with little more than my blackened dog tags and a horror story from afar. Now the formalities are taking place, I’m being recalled for the sake of pageantry.
You are hereby invited to attend a formal ceremony to honour the lives lost . . .
Slamming my fist into the exposed brick wall silences the voice reciting that letter. Pain races over my knuckles, joining the slick of fresh blood, but neither releases the pressure that threatens to rupture me from the inside out.
I don’t want a fucking medal.
I’m not worthy of such a reward.
Perhaps it’s a cruel taunt. Some final sick joke from above. Because taking my voice and my pride wasn’t enough, right? Now it wants to parade me in front of the cameras to play the role of poor, damaged war veteran who outlived his own comrades.
If I could scream, I would.
I’ll have to settle for destroying my latest project. For the last month or so, I’ve been working on constructing a pergola for the garden to be used in the summer. Now she’s settled into our home, I imagined Eden sitting underneath it with her morning coffee, watching the world come alive.
Smashing the intricately woven trellis and snapping painstakingly carved wooden joints satisfies my bloodlust. Look at me. Planning for a future I have no right to long for. Here I am, building garden furniture to make a pretty girl smile. Like I deserve that pleasure in my life at all.
. . . and to mark your exemplary service over a decade in the Royal Air Force.
Snapping thin connecting beams across my knee squashes the voice that resurfaces. My hands are shredded from splintered wood, but the sight of crimson doesn’t deter me. It’s nothing compared to what I saw in that desert, surrounded by smoke and flames.
They’re all better off without me. Sterling. Leo. Eden. No matter what I dream about, this life isn’t mine to live. It hasn’t been since that day. I have no right to breathe this air when men and women far better than me perished in that helicopter while I escaped.
The letter falls to the secluded garage floor in tatters. I turn and walk out without a second glance. The spring sunshine is an unwelcome assault when I break outside, itching with the urge to run at full speed from this place.
Breaking into the woodland that surrounds the cottage, towering fir trees swallow me whole. My panting is drowned out by twigs crunching underfoot and the hum of forest life clamouring around me.
I’ve spent all these months pretending. Scraping together the meagre remains of a life, destroying and rebuilding a home that will never be mine, attempting to offer something of substance to the men who have tried their best to help me.
It hasn’t worked.
Then she came along. The moonlight-scented goddess with her broken smiles and sad doe eyes, brimming with secrets that make me feel so fucking seen. And for a stupid second, I let hope grow roots inside my brainstem.
For what?
I’ll never be good enough for her.
If I couldn’t protect those who looked to me as their leader, I’ll never be able to protect my family. The little worth I had left is gone. This medal is a final reminder of that fact—I am, and always will be, a failure.
My foot catches on a tree root, but I hardly notice the crash that sends me to my knees. Spongy moss beneath my hands is akin to a deathly kiss, damp and fed by nature’s decay.
Collapsing in the dirt, a bone-crushing weight bears down on me. The entire universe finds its target and crunches my body into a fine dust to scatter in the wind. No one would even notice, I’d slip away so quietly.
Hell, it would be peaceful.
I think . . . I’d like that.
Sure, I’ve thought about it enough times; what it would be like if I simply ceased to exist. The thought took hold when I woke up bandaged and bloodied, but it’s grown since then. Day after day. Sleepless night after sleepless night.
Now it’s all I can hear.
The call to drop arms and surrender.
I’ve held that tiny whisper in reserve for so long. The comfort of an easy escape route has given me solace for endless lonely nights, but it’s no comfort today. Instead the whisper is telling me to enact the plan I’ve quietly created.
Scraping myself up off the ground, I pick a path back to the cottage, running on autopilot. The house is still deserted. I know Eden went for coffee earlier with Cassidy, while the guys are working.
My bedroom is lacklustre. I never bothered to personalise the room, no matter how light and airy it is. In fact, I’m fairly sure this was the master before I came along. Sterling moved to a smaller room to make me more comfortable.
Guilt punches into my gut. I’m hurting him. I’ll hurt them some more if I vanish, but at least that pain will be finite. When it has run its course, there will be an end-point. Then they will move on and live their lives without me weighing them down.
Underneath the bed, a locked chest holds my military gear and a few personal items. I quickly unlatch the padlock to pull out the three full medicine boxes left from those early days after the skin graft surgery.
The docs had me on opioid pain relief, but I rarely broke down and took it. Rather than hand them over, I kept the packets in a safe place. Sometimes I’d take them out to look at when I needed reassurance that there’s another option but continuing to struggle.
The sound of pills clicking against plastic blister packets might as well be gunshots ripping through the silence. Each white sphere represents another strike. With enough, I’ll take the knockout and go down for the count.
Peaceful. Silent.
Effortless.
Nausea swells in my scarred throat, but I gulp the acid down. The medicine boxes fit snugly in my jacket pocket. Giving my possessions a final once-over, I pause on the framed photo of Leo’s eighteenth birthday.
We’d taken him to an Irish pub in Dublin, and some drunk musician snapped a photo of us. All grinning. Red cheeked. Glassy eyed. Not one of us related by blood, but family nonetheless.
We marked every occasion together just like we gathered around the fire for Sterling’s birthday: by drinking and playing cards. Only I can’t laugh with my brothers anymore. Just like I’m unable to tell the girl I can’t bring myself to love how fucking breathtaking she is.
I’ll never shout and sing in some backstreet pub for a birthday celebration again. Or be able to have a future where I exist fully, freely, or even at all. That’s what has been taken from me. A normal future. Dreams. Hope.
Lifting the framed photo out of the chest, I carefully place it on my bedside table. My scrawled handwriting is sloppy on the back of an old receipt, which I nestle in the frame’s corner to be found later.
I’m So Sorry.
Cowardly? Maybe. But look where bravery got me. Now I can embrace cowardice and call it mercy. For me, for them, and for everyone cursed enough to see me skulking around this town like a reanimated corpse.
I make sure to close and lock the front door behind me this time, feeling an odd sense of calm. Rather than heading back into the woods, I hunt down the rough path that Leo takes to work every day.
I want to see the water one last time. I’ll find a spot that’s shielded from sight. The weather is warming with spring, but we’re still out of peak tourist season. No one will find me in the forest until it’s too late.
The hike towards Hawkthorpe’s natural lake crystallises my determination. It feels like something has clicked inside me. A missing puzzle piece that’s rattled around my skull for months on end now slots into place, allowing the solution to present itself.
Time seems to hold its breath in the tangle of tall firs and ancient oak trees, offering solace from the chaos rioting within me. It’s silent but for my own hammering heartbeat and the promise of lake-water lapping nearby.
At the edge, water twinkles in beams of sunlight. It’ll be nice to slip away in the warmth. I always loved my hometown at this time of year, dotted with wildflowers and reawakening wildlife coming out to play.
The shoreline is encircled by muddy banks, steep grass verges, and the odd platform for fishermen.
Taking care to remain hidden in the trees, I walk around the lake, drinking it in.
It’s the route I hiked many times as a teenager, leaving my empty home while Dad worked all hours to keep us both fed.
I’m thankful he’s too old to understand what happened to me. Someone will travel to the care home and give him the news when I’m gone. Maybe he’ll be relieved. I know I was when Sterling turned up at the airport to bring me back here instead of him.
It takes some time to find the right spot, but eventually I locate the gnarly old oak tree we carved up as kids. Beneath a notch in the wood, our initials still reside. S, L & F. Forever stamped on this town even when our lives took a juncture before gravitating back together.
Sitting at the base of the tree, I pull the medicine boxes out, then neatly stack them on the carpet of pine needles. All full and sealed. Legs crossed, I must stare at those orange containers for an eternity. Long enough for cold dampness to creep in and make me tremble.
When no other solution presents itself, I open the first and press out a few white bullets. Studying them hard yields no alternative solutions. I’ve tried my best to avoid this eventuality, but it’s still come for me in the end.
No last words.
No one could hear them anyway.