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by Miss Chybil
One day, in the land of milk and honey, a Young Man made his way down a leafy, country lane. He was dreaming of his future, and the girl on the other side of the hill. He imagined all ways to ask her to marry him and he even pondered on what their children would look like. “Will they have blue eyes, or brown?”
Upon rounding a bend the Young Man noticed an Old Man perched on a rock beside the road. The Old Man was hunched over, crying, shaking, then flailing and yelling. His pain seemed to eke from his pores. “What’s wrong, Old Man?” the Young Man said. “Why are you so upset?”
“We are doomed, Young Man. The enemy is coming to steal our country and rape our women. He will poison our cattle and turn our rivers to blood. We will have nothing left. He will even steal our God!” the Old Man cried, as he shoved a bag of what appeared to be money down a crack in the rock he was sitting on. “He has already attacked us in the East.”
“What enemy? Will he reach that hill over there, and my girl?”
“Oh, yes, Young Man. He wants your girl. He will take her for his own,” the Old Man said. “He will make her wear funny clothes and sleep with her and make her pray to his god, if he does not kill her first.” The Old Man sat on top of the money bag, trying to wedge it more deeply into the crevice.
“What can I do? Where can I go to help? I must protect my girl and our rivers, our cattle and our god! Tell me, Old Man! Tell me where to go.”
“You can volunteer at the ocean’s edge, Young Man. There you will be given a suit, a gun and a ride across the seas.”
“I thought the enemy was already here, Old Man.”
“Do you want to wait until he gets here? He was here. He is gone. You must go there, before he comes here - again.”
“How will I know who he is, Old Man?”
“He will be the one shooting at you. Be off now, Young Man, you’ve not time to waste! And by the way, if you find any of these,” the Old Man held up a bank note from his bag to show the Young Man, “bring them back to me.”
“I will, Old Man. Be safe.”
“Thank you, Young Man. You are a patriot and a hero.”
The Young Man turned and began walking towards the ocean’s edge. It was a long trip with many perils, but he knew what he must do.
The Young Man arrived in the enemies land and had a very hard time discerning exactly who the enemy was as everyone was shooting at everyone else. There were bombs exploding, blood and oil gushing. He became very confused when he found this enemy was not the enemy that had attacked his own country in the East.
“But, the Old Man, he told me this enemy was coming to take my girl,” he said one night to the Other Young Man who was sharing his foxhole.
“Oh, the Old Man got to you, too? Did he ask you to bring him back these?” The Other Young Man showed the Young Man a bank note.
“Yes! Yes! He did!”
“Send them to your girl. The Old Man is a liar and you’ll probably never see either of them again,” the Other Young Man said. “This enemy was not the enemy who attacked us in the East.” The Other Young Man took a drag off a cigarette and said, “Hey, I found this enemy girl in the village over there. Brown eyes. Real nice. I ordered her some clothes from eBay. The stuff she was wearing was, well, strange. Oh, and is she nice in the sack! You oughta get yourself one. They’re real easy and if you get one that mouths off, just pop her head off and move on till you find a good one.”
The Young Man’s head dropped to his chest in despair, not long before a bullet went through it. His body was returned to his own country and was carried down Leafy Lane between his mother’s house and his girl’s house. The Young Man’s countrymen lined the path. The Old Man clutched his money bag and refused to look at the flag draped coffin when it passed. Many people were sobbing, “Such a nice Young Man…,” but the people standing closest to the Old Man, were hissing, “What’s everybody crying about? He volunteered to go!”
The End
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