A Meaningful Suicide

The sand has changed to mud, the mud to flame. There are only whispers of trees, ghosts of the forests that were. Husks of huts jut from blood-soaked hillocks like broken teeth, and the screams of children haunt the countryside. She has moved from the glass deserts to Hell's rice lands. For this she has signed away her rights, her name, her soul. This is what it is to become a soldier, a sister, an artist: for war is as much an art form as it is a way of life, and those who live it live by it and for it and through it. She doesn't remember the times long ago when she did not hate or kill anyone. But it's not that she can't remember, she simply doesn't want to.

With casualties estimated in the tens of thousands, you'd have to be crazy to join. That's what everyone said, at least. But for some, for us, it was a far better alternative to living the way others do. Through no fault of our own we were possessed of too much moral fiber to pull the trigger ourselves, spraying our brains away from our bodies in a cone; we were just incapable of suicide. And then we saw the posters. We watched the news. After that it didn't take a genius to figure out that God and country had handed us a way to escape. Hell, they even paid. So what did we do? We signed on the dotted line. Mephistopheles would have been envious of the throngs of people who lined up to sign away their souls. As the pen scratched out our signatures there was no confusion with what we were doing. We wanted our deaths to mean something other then melodramatic self-pity and antisocial isolation. Our reward for going to war would be a meaningful suicide.

Overhead a pair of jet engines scream as the slender F-15 dives towards Hill-45 at 450 miles-per-hour before, with graceful choreography, it releases its payload and banks sharply to the right, sweeping back into the heavens. A split second later and a tremendous blossom of fire erupts from the hilltop, sending up a geyser of super-heated mud and debris and raining it down on her position. The order goes out to storm the hill, and before the smoke even clears they're charging up the slope. Gunfire rains down around them, spattering her already grimy face with more mud. A tremendous roar erupts from her company as adrenaline kicks in and they forget about the danger to life and limb that's falling down around them like hail in a hurricane. All that matters is the kill. Get to the top, kill. Huzza! they cry as one, though more than a few are just choked screams as comrades are cut down like rice-stalks. She finds herself screaming as she plunges up the hill and over the lip; no words come out, only a shapeless noise of hate and excitement; of fear. She sinks her bayonet into the nearest enemy, showering blood across her body. Her breast heaves with fatigue and exhilaration as she raises her rifle (2.9 kg) and pulls the trigger. It sounds like Fourth of July firecrackers.

There is no more glassblowing, the curtain of that stage in the theatre has fallen. Instead, for recreation, the soldiers play a game they call "Digging for China." They divide a recently shelled enemy position into a five meter grid and select three "miners" via lotto. They then place bets on the "miners" to see who will uncover the first "china-man". With the volume of mud thrown up by bombings, artillery strikes, and grenades it can turn into a challenging game and sometimes takes several hours of digging to uncover one body. Long ago there was solid ground, but war is an art form: it sculpts, it shapes, it molds countries into things they are not. Here you dig for China.

The world has moved on. She has learned to eat fire and sand like milk and honey only to be taught how to drink mud like wine. Gun smoke has become her oxygen as she now lives for war. Her heart flutters as her flag unfurls and she follows it blindly through the field of battle. "For God, for Country, for Glory!" she cries over the rush of blood pounding against her ears and she is surrounded by a cornea of most holy light--

"Here is my heart," she whispers. "Blood for the Blood God."