The Window
By: Alejandro Balli
As the sun crept over the barren desert sands, it soon found its way into the army encampment, creeping around corners and peering through windows and overtaking buildings. Like a snake it slithered across the bunk tents floor, slowly climbing up the legs of the cots until it was poised like a viper to strike at the eyes of its first victim. As the sunlight hit his eyes he slowly came to, he then began to achingly rise. He put his bare feet on the cold wood floor of the bunk tent, he began to stand, and as he did he groaned and whined like a decrepit old man. As soon as he stood erect he slowly shuffled his way over to the other side of tent across its makeshift floor, when he got to the window he began to attempt to untie the window flaps, his first attempt failed and he rubbed his still asleep eyes in an attempt to rouse them. After a few moments he succeeded in closing the window and began to make his way back to his standard issue cot, which to him looked like a bed in a five star hotel. As he reached his cot he then proceeded to drop himself upon it, but to his dismay he missed by a mere inch and hit the wood floor with a crack. Suddenly the entire camp was awakened by the high pitched cursing coming from bunk tent three. As the MP's walked into the tent to see what was wrong they ducked just in time as they were nearly decapitated by a cot as it flew over there heads and out into compound, and there standing a few feet from the MP's was a tall dark haired solider, cursing like there was no tomorrow. He was franticly through everything in his path, and when he attempted to kick a box out of his way, he forgot he was not wearing shoes and broke several of his toes. Instead of tending to his wounds he simply got even more infuriated and picked the box up and again through it in the direction of the MP's. By this time everyone in the tent was awake and in an attempt to stop this rouge solider they jumped and tackled him to the floor. Several days later after his wounds had healed for the most part, a military interrogator asked why he had tore up bunk tent three and attempted to assault two MP's, in cool calm voice he said " I hate closing the damn window."