Five.

I asked my friends to give me five random items for me to form a short story around and I started as soon as my first friend responded.
He gave me:

• The Sphinx
• Alarm clocks
• C-17
• Cardigans
• Rays Player

Okayyyyyyyyyyy (Later he told me that they were things he had "lying around his room")
Surprisingly, I started rambling on and didn't stop for a good 30 minutes. It's not the best storyline, definitely not developed yet, and I haven't proofread. My tense even changes multiple times, I'm pretty sure....... But it was fun. And I was told to post it now, so for once I'm following directions. I might elaborate and try to finish it, though, since for once in my life I haven't become bored with it and abandoned the would-be story after a paragraph or two.

We made it. We were finally going home. Well, not quite home in the typical sense. We were on our way back to the FOB but it was home to us. Back to the rest of our unit, and back to internet access and phone access. I can’t lie; I was probably more excited about waiting in a two-hour line for a fifteen-minute call than I was for getting my license on my sixteenth birthday. And trust me that was a day I had been counting down to since I got my first Twin Mill hot wheels car. Needless to say, I was a little bit more than psyched. I bet my facial expression was what really gave it away, though. Even my helmet and sunglasses couldn’t hide how I was beaming. Looking around at the rows of smiling faces in that C-17, I could tell that at least a third of the soldiers were looking forward to the same thing that I was.

We were such a rag-tag group. It was pretty perfect, too. As much as we all hated to admit it, we all fit into one stereotype or another. Or we just got mocked so much for it that we latched onto it began to fulfill the typecasting. Not a one of us could remember anymore, but then again none of us were all too good at distinguishing events anymore. That whole deployment was basically a blur, punctuated with good stories. At least, we thought our stories were completely hilarious. I snorted to myself. Why even try to deny it? We were hilarious.

To my left, Smith was telling a dirty joke to anyone who would listen while, on my right, Finnegan was rambling on and on about how he suspected that his girlfriend was screwing some Rays player. I confess that I was only half-listening. As bad as I felt about not being there for him, I couldn’t let him bring me down off of this high. We were getting was getting close, I just knew it. In a few seconds we would be landing, but as I realized this, something dreaded happened. I knew it was too good to last. It was too easy, we were too close, we were too detached from the war for a moment, I could hear it.  Rockets streaming, screaming through the air. The high-pitched screeching was too much to bear.

______________________________________________________________________________

I slip my arm out from under my pillow and turn my annoying alarm clock off. It was all too real, the dream, but I was used to this kind of thing. Sighing, I will myself to move from the comfortable confines of my bed. Light streaming through the slanted blinds on my window, pigeons cooing on the fire escape, a slight chill in the air. Looking at the clock one more time in case it magically moved back about ten minutes, I hastily run a comb through my bed-head and tug the first cardigan I could find in my clean laundry hamper over my head.

“Hello, Monday.”

Just another day at the office. I still wasn’t used to my civilian job. I don’t think I ever will be fully. It isn’t like people say; it isn’t a release to be at the coveted 9 to 5 job. It wasn’t nice to “not be in danger” as I’m constantly told. I could die being hit by a bus, or tripping over my own two feet and landing on my head in precisely the right position. It wasn’t even the luxury of being able to choose my own clothing. It just…. Wasn’t me. I never was one to sit still for long, be confined by a desk, by a clock. Working odd hours, night-duty, being there when called no matter what I was doing worked for me. Neither brainwashing nor training did that for me as some of my buddies hated it more than I could tell you, but for some reason it was just how I was programmed to function. The danger didn’t really bother me either. Even when I was at a combat outpost I wasn’t too worried. I had to trust in my training, I mean, there wasn’t anything I could really do if the shit hit the fan but trust in my training, my commanders, and my buddies. Somehow we would get through it and worrying wouldn’t make the situation any better.  And as far as the clothing went? My morning ritual used to be five times as short not worrying about what I was supposed to wear, what would look good, what was “in.” I wore what everyone else did, give or take a few details and on a normal day I didn’t even have to think about what to grab. Muscle memory got me dressed and those damn boots might as well have been attached to my feet at all times. But even lacing them became second nature, although I suppose that makes sense.

I had always wanted to travel. See the Eiffel Tower in Paris, The Coliseum, the Sphinx, the Great Wall. As a kid I used to marvel at my Dad’s National Geographic magazines, I’d stay up late with a flashlight under my covers reading all of the articles when I was supposed to be sleeping. I was a weird kid, but I knew what I wanted. I wanted to be a part of something, reading about these snapshots of history. Every picture told a story of the people who once stood there and the events that surrounded them. It was something bigger. Small pieces adding to the whole, captured on film, printed, sitting in my hands. I wanted to be a part of something. I wanted to changed history so one day some kid could be looking at a photograph, thinking of the people who shaped the image and think of me.

For years I played various scenarios in my head. At one time I was a photo journalist, traveling around the world capturing images on film. It made the most sense to me. I could be the one delivering the images to the kid directly. It made sense. Later on, I just decided that I would become rich and buy a plane. Travel on a whim. Become friends with dignitaries, royalty, millionaires. Or maybe I would sell all my worldly positions and buy a sailboat. Alone, without a care, I could sail my vessel to wherever the wind decided to take me. But as I matured, I realized that all of these scenarios were selfish. Nothing innately good would come out of them. So really, I wasn’t shaping cultures of changing history, I was only living a superficial life that would soon be forgotten after I left the Earth.

That was when I saw an ad in one of Dad’s old magazines. “Join the Army, See the World.” I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner when I first read this issue how many years ago. Join the army. I would be a part of something timeless, something good, something true and selfless. See the world. I could travel to exotic lands, see the sights, and take in all that the world had to offer. It was perfect. And so the next day I went down to the recruiting office to see what I had to do to join the army.