It wasn't often he did this. But whenever he did anything major, it was always inspired by madness. Pure madness. Lunacy and stupidity.
Coming back to him made him regress and remember all the hurt and the pain…the life-long suffering that not even the booze hid away (though they'd tried)... The tyranny of the end. He saw it so often in Korea, when hundreds perished under his capable hands. He hated death, oh yes he did- so dirty and cold…but sometimes it seemed like his closest friend, nurturing his other companions so gently for an end to life. Though he himself was not reduced to that, not yet.
He could always remember the good times.
The good times…a laugh with a real, living friend, a drunken night in paradise… a tricky operation with…success! All with one only friend, really. Whose Eden was waiting at home.
(Or at his feet in a letter, stained with ink and messy characters)
It was the end of it all, and he at least owed him this. Coming back hurt, but it would ache more to stay away.
He quickened his pace, gait distorting to fit the unfamiliarity of alien ground. Surrounding him were grey, grotesque obstructions that his head was stranger to…but not providing him haven from the metres of green engulfing him…the green, that shade- so full of life and vitality…back then, more likely to be worn by one lacking either. If it weren't for the irony he would have died.
(So many days his hands had seemed that sickly colour, that or raw pink- digits scrubbed clean from the blood of emeralds and children)
"Green! So sweet and freakish! All the colours!…well…green"
It had seemed funny at the time.
But now, even now, in times of 'peace' his friend was bordered by the ghastly shade.
"And you thought you'd escaped it"
To an outsider, the chuckle emerging from deep within him seemed more like a sob.
He moved on.
Peg had been kinder than he'd imagined. Shyer too. It made him almost wish he'd met more than her handwritten incarnation. Met more than her memory, told scantily by one who should have known her better.
He'd kissed her on the cheek like he did her husband, at times. But without the emotion. Not the feelings that lined her face, like creases from her linen in the morning. All that sorrow.
He always wondered why. "Life is only preparing us for death Peg…I'm sorry".
They never believed him when he said that. Not the patients, the nurses- the families afterwards. Perhaps in this thought he'd been dreaming alone. The solitary believer. But none disputed that he knew death personally. When it'd claimed his mother, his father, his 'quiet nonchalance' with nothing more than a friendly wave…
It was that figure that knew him best. Whose hooded face saw all his feelings and pain. Soon, soon he would have a laugh with him; over a glass of something or other...he still suspected the Reaper's homebrew would have a strangely overpowering aftertaste. Soon it would know him almost as well as it did his friend.
The crunching of gravel reminded him he was living. Whilst courting the dead.
Ah now. There he was.
BJ Hunnicut. Husband, father, uncle and friend. May God rest his soul.
She'd asked him about the last part, seeking approval. He doubted it now.
"Some friend you are, leaving me like this. Again"
He didn't cry anymore. 'twas madness.