Soliloquies Anthology 30.1

By: Spencer Diver

Through the haze of mp4 compression, the splotches of umber, olive drab, and pallid grey are like a perverse coral reef, an ecosystem of vast, strange structures on which every crevice holds some form, or former form, of life. The trenches web through the ground like a bustling terrarium, giddily ushering each man through the field, inch by inch. The sandbags are their only protection from what lay outside the habitat, wards that do little to save one from the intense spectacle of near death— a tasteful memento mori to keep them dialled in.

The lens blurs as the drone moves away from its home, the whir of its tiny engine raising a few semitones. It pushes past the trees, barely escaping the potshots from 5.45x39mm, and arrives at a bare open field, whatever flora it once had overtaken by a new stagnant ecology: bullet casings, deadwood, artillery shells, corpses, ammo belts, and AFVs, IFVs, APCs, and MRAPs. The drone halts on one of them— a T-62. It’s scorched and pockmarked with small arms fire, though seemingly in working condition. It was abandoned in a hurry; belts strewn
across its body and its hatch left open. The treads are caked with mud. Metal grates and wooden pallets are propped up on their sides. The drone becomes a vulture, circling around the remains until it finds its morsel to scavenge—under the tank’s rump, there’s a small indentation in the earth. From the distance the drone’s at, and the speed it’s going to prevent itself from being shot down, it’s barely visible on camera. But it’s visible enough. The drone banks left, then rights
itself over the pit. After a pause, a quick release mechanism drops an American made M67 hand grenade. The camera pulls back as the explosive nestles itself perfectly into its target. Deadwood rends apart as black smoke brushes over the tank’s carapace.

A jump cut, another explosion, this one managing to fall just onto the edge of the dugout. It’s unclear whether whatever creature is hidden under the crevice is still functional, until a small spade reaches out from the pit, an entrenching tool as a last resort to prevent the shrapnel from lacerating their hands and faces. Another jump cut, another plume of smoke. And another. The infantry arrives, though the drone doesn’t see their movement, only the brief beams of light from the tracer rounds scattered across the desolate field. A final cut, this time right in front of the pit. A man with a forest-green tactical jacket and Timberlands approaches and lobs another grenade into the pit. He scurries away, and the pit doesn’t respond. The man returns to the pit, hesitantly at first, then with more confidence when he sees the carnage he’s caused. Said carnage is blocked
from our view, as a mosaic blur is placed over the pit.

Peter takes a bite of his egg salad sandwich as the soldier empties a magazine into the pit. As the scene switches to a village raid, he takes off his headphones and opens his word processor, recording a few errant thoughts in lengthy bullet points on the practical necessity of drone warfare in the modern urban theatre. He absentmindedly takes a peek at the statistics page of his Substack, making a soft hum of approval after noting a new bump in sign-ups. His subscription-based blog, Kinetic Engagements, has been steadily increasing its readership in
these last few months, with an engaged audience excited to hear his insight on counterterrorism operations, reviews of the newest military hardware being deployed to front lines across the globe, and de-escalatory invasions. His blog received co-signs from a number of military tactics outlets, with magazine Force Multiplier describing Peter as “the premier news source for up-to- date and detailed combat info written by a civilian.” After responding to a few comments about some new NATO infantry rifles, he pulls himself onto his feet and walks to his bathroom.

Peter carefully redefines his facial hair into a neat goatee, and plucks a few stray nose hairs before taking a step back and examining himself in his bathroom mirror. More readers means more attention from podcasts and content creators, which has made him more aware of the signs of his late thirties: a sagging stomach and neck, and the retreating follicles on his crown. Grabbing some gel, he slicks his hair back, doing his best to consolidate troops over the top of his head. After enough futzing about, he’s ready to leave. He pulls a pair of cargo pants and a soft shell jacket out of the pile on his bedroom floor, throwing them over a greasy t-shirt and two-day-old boxer briefs. His jacket is his favourite item
he owns, a black tactical garment specially designed to resist anything—wind, rain, and bloodborne pathogens. He unzips the pockets on his left arm to place a folding knife, then a zipper near his waist, giving him direct access to his Kydex concealed carry holster, where he pushes his Kimber Custom 1911 into place with a satisfying click. He had purchased it at a gun show two years back, enamoured by its sleek chrome finish and its custom wooden grips, which were emblazoned with a condor, wings outstretched, swooping downwards.

The SUV makes a calming ping as he presses the engine button off and opens the door. an empty Pepsi bottle that was hastily stuffed into the side holder pops out and rolls onto the street, where it is promptly crushed by a Civic. The midday sun beats down on Peter, and he is overwhelmed by the sounds of summer— the loud conversations, the cheery yacht rock piped out from patios, and the incessant buzz of the cicadas. Pushing open the door to his local cafe, Mow-Shun!, he spots who he’s looking for, a serious-looking woman with a purple notebook and a laptop. Peter pauses for a moment to collect himself. He rehearses his greetings internally, and notes that he should remember to mention his upcoming seminar for premium members on the growing use cases for Improvised Explosive Devices. The woman looks up from her laptop, gives a polite smile, and waves him over.

“Caroline Sumner,” she says, her hand outstretched. He takes it. It’s cold, yet supple.

“Peter Breshinsky,” he replies, flashing his best smile which reverts to fear as his chair screeches against the linoleum floor.

She waits for him to sit down.

“It’s a pleasure,” she says. “The team can’t stop reading your stuff. You have a real knack for sourcing.”

Peter looks down, embarrassed by her flattery and still thinking about how her hand felt.

“You’d have to thank my sources for that,” he says.

It’s a false humility she can easily see through. “Save it,” she laughs. “You know the props you get from the community. You and me probably have the same sources, and I can’t get
half of what you can. You have a gift.”

Peter blushes. They run through the hot topics of the month, giggling about a failed Naval assault that led to the destruction of two aircraft carriers on the Black Sea. She pushes her glasses further up the bridge of her nose. Peter notices the fine shape of it, slightly Slavic with a small bump at its top. It reminds him of the girls he would fawn over in high school, the ones that he glimpsed in between the pews during Sunday service, the ones he wished would look back athim. He stutters a moment, but she waits for him to speak, readying her pen.

“I guess I’m curious as to what got you into…” he waves his arms desperately. “All this.”

She gives a slight smile and turns her head down, streams of strawberry blonde hair shimmering against her cheeks. “Me and my father were very close, especially after my mother fell ill,” she says.

“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“It’s alright, I was very young when it happened. Dad was a Marine, so we would go to the range pretty often to give him an excuse to hang out with his war buddies. He used to tell me ‘ain’t nothin’ given me a reason to keep pushin’ than a drill sergeant on my ass!’” She mimics a gruff Southern accent, smiling to herself. “It all started from there. I remember when he got me a bright pink .22 for my sweet sixteen.”

“Must have been a great moment.”

“Hell no, I wanted something way more powerful than that. If he really wanted to get me a good gift, he should have gotten a 12 gauge.”

They both laugh, and Peter watches the crinkles around her eyes as she smiles.

After catching himself, he forces his eyes away.

“What about you?” she asks, turning a page in her notebook. “I read you were thinking of joining the navy, but had some issues due to health.”

“Yeah, it was an eye issue. It was tough for a while, that was my plan out of high school but when it fell through I was, I don’t know, drifting for a bit.”

“Still reading about it all, though.”

“Oh, yeah. The interest never died. Lots of forum posts arguing about stuff.”

She chuckles, then looks down at her laptop, scrolling through a few pages. “Now that you mention it, I never managed to find what the eye condition was.”

“Ah, I don’t remember the name of it exactly.”

“You don’t remember?”

“They always have those weird long medical names, as soon as I heard I couldn’t serve, I kinda tuned everything out.”

She pauses to write another note down, and Peter takes the opportunity to observe her again, this time her slender fingers manipulating the ballpoint, her nails painted a satin olive drab. Caroline looks up, quicker than he imagined she would. He thinks he notices a brief raise of her eyebrow, but it was too quick to be certain. He gives her a slight awkward smile. She shifts her weight in her chair and grabs the edge of the table, slightly lifting herself before telling him she has to run to the bathroom and completing the push onto her feet.

Peter waits, tapping nails on the hard, glossy finish of the table. His thoughts slosh around his head violently, pushing and pulling him endlessly to every possible action and consideration. Does she want him? The possibility arises within him, unshakable. He wants it to feel invigorating, but it just feels sickening. He feels the crown of his head come presently into his mind. It feels like the hair is retreating even quicker. He catches himself in the grainy
reflection of a chrome coffee machine. The loose skin around his eyes and neck remind him of the trenches he watched this morning cutting off the supply lines of the youth he used to take for granted. The pressure in his body keeps building.

Peter bolts up and rushes out of the cafe, smacking his thigh into a table and causing a flat white to fall onto a customer’s lap. He walks past his car and heads straight down the block, either unaware or uncaring of any pedestrians or oncoming vehicles around him. He finally slows down in the middle of a business park, heaving and gagging. He steadies himself on a bench and waits for his body to maintain equilibrium, tilts his head back, and stares at the blue sky, now tinted orange.

The clouds are wispy, but in dusk light they appear dark, rolling across the sky like the smoke plumes of a grenade. He keeps walking, past the glass complexes and chic sandwich shops. He observes his figure in the glass— hunched over, flabby, balding, panting like a dog. He removes the folding knife from his pocket and holds it close to his face with trembling hands, but thinks better of the idea and tosses it into a nearby trash can, continuing his walk.

Fiddling with the zippers on his jacket, Peter weaves through the business park, but is brought to a standstill. In the distance, between two massive glass structures, Peter can hear a faint yelling. Although he can’t make out the words, the tone is clearly aggressive. Peter approaches, and the yelling rises in both volume and aggression. He can clearly hear two men, but their speech is slurred, making it impossible to parse. Peter reaches the alley where the voices
are shouting from, and is met with almost complete darkness. The alley is sealed away from the dusk sun, with only vague shapes struggling to keep a stable form. The figures hardly look human, more like two single cell organisms thrashing against each other. Peter is frozen in front of the darkness, listening to the shouts get louder and more violent. He wants to shout, but he worries for his own safety. What if they’re crazed junkies, or one of them is a killer?

One voice lets out a sharp cry of pain. Peter staggers. The cries get more frequent after the first, and more desperate. Peter unzips the side panel on his jacket, placing his hand on the familiar steel of his Kimber. He presses the quick release on his holster, and the pistol slides smoothly out. The cries of pain are joined by the dull thud of flesh on flesh. Peter points his pistol into the darkness, and fires a shot. Then another, then six more. He presses the magazine release and the empty mag clatters to the ground. He listens. The alley doesn’t respond.

Peter switches his pistol’s safety on, turns on his heel, and walks back from the direction he came from. The whole walk back to his car, he stares down at his empty Kimber. The chrome barrel gleams in the late-day sunshine, as do the polished grips. He imagines the condor swooping down and landing on top of him, picking his body clean, starting with his balding crown. He returns to the men in the alley, and tries to determine what they might have been fighting over. No matter what it was, he thinks, I saved them from it.

For the first time in a while, he allows himself to feel a full-throated pride. The sun finally starts to set as he reaches his SUV and the engine purrs into life. Opening his phone, he composes a quick note of apology to Caroline Sumner, along with an invitation to dinner. The grenade clouds slowly disperse in the auburn sky, and the cicadas buzz like a drone taking flight.