Veteran Story
My name is Edward Masen and I have just come back from the battle and am visiting the family home. My mother does not know what I look like anymore and I will not recognize me when I knock on the door for her once handsome son is now a deformed prince of the wheel chair.
My once shiny gingery-brown hair has now become dull, limp and brown without any life whatsoever, where hair exist anyway since most of it fell out in clumps on the ship back home. My stormy green eyes that used to be so expressive and bright now only show the sadness of a man that has seen too much. My body, oh how my body has changed – the lovely built muscles that attracted the ladies now are lanky and have no muscle in them. The left side of my body now useless and paralyzed forever.
What women would want a man that was disfigured and could no perform in bed? I am done for!
My friends from the war are all dead and there is no one I can talk to. I have no one who has seen the pain and suffering that I have. I should have died. I want to die.
I don't want my childhood friends to see me and pity me or worse, look at me and decide that I am not worth it. I don't know what I would do if the only refuge from the dark abyss of self loathing I had created for myself left me.
I dread going home and see my mother open the door and her not know who it is. Not know that it was her son that was on the doorsteps of a strange house he used to call home.
What if my high school sweetheart Bella was there? What if I see on the way? Would recognize me? Her first for everything. Her first kiss, first boyfriend, … First lover.
I am now stuck in a wheel chair and the left side of my body burned and scorched like the phantom of the opera. You know I really should get a mask. My skin looks puckered and wrinkled with the skin of my thigh now on my stomach. Scars of war mark me forever and if I know one thing it is that there are no heroes in war.
