There are different kinds of ghosts.
There are the ones that hide in your closet when you're a little girl. The ones born from fairy tales and stories, the ones growing big in the dark corners of your imagination. The ones that might be scared away by a night light, but you refuse to have one, because brave soldiers do not have a night light. Instead, you arm yourself with a flashlight. The one your father gave you; the kind real soldiers have. Flopsy the Bunny is there too, close by, he is a good friend. But no night light.
Those ghosts are easy, because time goes by and one day you know for sure there is nothing in your closet except clothes you don't like anymore and last year's shoes. Flopsy the Bunny gets to spend his days on the chair in the corner and not on your bed, except sometimes when you need an old friend by your side. The flashlight retires from ghost patrol and is used to signal your friend across the street instead, secret messages in morse code. Real soldiers know morse code.
Then there are the ghosts that leave marks. Marks on your skin or marks on your heart. The ghosts that took something from you, some things you gave up willingly, and some things you fought to keep. These ghosts you force into the closet too. They rattle the door sometimes and try to break free, but they can't get out as long as you tell yourself they're nothing but bad dreams, that nothing happened, and even if it did, it wasn't that bad. Sometimes denial is the only thing a woman has to hold on to, so you do. Tooth and nail.
There are the ghosts that hover over your shoulder, that follow you around the compound, the ones born from trauma and violence. You can't always tell they're there, but they make themselves known when your guard is down. Footsteps behind you when you're walking to your tent, the sound of combat boots in the gravel. You turn around, but the shadows are only shadows, and the gravel is undisturbed.
Sometimes you do see them, though. Swaying to the music in the O-Club. Among the dancing couples, there are flashes of red, wet and glistening. Right there, among the green, the cerulean blue of a Hawaiian shirt or Klinger's gold lamé.
Maybe they're sitting at the bar, quiet and still. You see them in the corner of your eye, never look at them straight on, but know they're there anyway. You recognize brown curls, or a blonde buzz cut. You know that if you looked closely, you would see the place the bullet entered. What was torn apart. Or maybe you would see a man in a brand-new suit, a man who never made it even halfway home across the sea. So, you don't look, not directly.
Sometimes you raise your glass, though, when you're sure no one is watching. You raise your glass in a toast for what should have been. To the life that should have been lived. And you hope they know you tried. That all of you tried.
You go back to your tent and sit on your bed for a while, stare at the shadows in the corners. At the closet door. Did you leave it a bit ajar? You know there's nothing there, you know that with the rational part of your grown-up mind, but still. Still, there is a twitch in your hand, like it wants to reach for something. Because deep inside there is this part of you, untouched by time and all things rational. Buried deep, out of reach for everyone, yourself too most of the time, there is still a sliver of a girl who once used to reach her hand out and feel the soft head of Flopsy the Bunny. And you wish. Oh, how you wish, he was there to protect you all.
Authors Note:
This chapter is a bit of a strange bird. All letter, no real scene. Some MASH-episodes were "out of the box", so I feel like I'm honouring that tradition. :)
In my mind, it's played out with a voiceover, and we are just following Margaret around camp. It's inspired by "Follies of the Living, Concerns of the Dead", an episode I'm very fond of. I love writing little glimpses from Margaret's past, and the thought of her as a little girl with a very vivid imagination, sitting on her bed with her father's old flashlight and a stuffed bunny just stuck with me.