Blur

I sent this in to a literary magazine for my school.

I got a pretty good response from people I showed, but I haven't heard from the magazine yet. It's only been two weeks.


He could taste the gritty sand scraping the inside of his mouth. The air was unbearably hot, but lacking moisture. What little light there was reflected off the beige, sandstone walls. The man heard a rapid series of popping noises. The sound was close, it was loud, yet it was somehow distant and muted. Gunshots, automatic weapon. He tried to fight through his throbbing headache to figure out what was going on. Forming a coherent thought was a step past impossible.

“Come on! You’re not hurt! Return fire!” Came a booming voice from behind. The man tried to turn to see, but was roughly grabbed by the arm and lifted to his feet before he could get a look at who did it. He was shoved to a glassless window, and a heavy weight was shoved into his arms. He looked down to see a large gun. Something in his mind clicked. M249 light machine gun, SAW. He still wasn’t sure who he was supposed to be firing at, but he didn’t want to be shouted at again.

The man pressed himself against the window. He was held a few inches away, and he looked down to quickly learn why. There was a bulky vest that he hadn’t noticed before, pockets neatly arranged into rows on the outside of it. He barely recognized the color as being similar to the walls of the building he was in. He saw that his hands were covered by gloves, and he felt his head to find a helmet with some kind of goggles strapped to it.

The familiar popping sound, the gunshots, became apparent again. This time they were more prevalent, despite the fact that they were further away. He spit out the sand, and pressed the…back? Stock, butt. Of the weapon to his chest without thinking. Some kind of muscle memory took over, and he quickly had the gun in a firing position. The man noticed something moving on the—increasingly clearer—other side of the street. He pulled the trigger, and an unending stream of flame erupted from the gun.