Do You Have a Last Wish?
By: Omar Gahbiche
Tags: Fiction, Short Fiction, Short Story, Literature, Conversations

“Do you have a last wish?”

I was not sure if that was the right thing to say. I said it because anything would do to break that terrible silent atmosphere. I had only seen similar situations in the movies and series that I used to watch before the times of war came and changed everything forever. I also said it because I thought that’s how things should be.

I was pointing my gun towards the face of a kneeling, handcuffed and unoffensive man. From a third person’s perspective, you wouldn’t doubt that I was the one in the strongest position. I had this man’s destiny on the tip of my index finger and yet, I was the one with a shaking hand and a hard-beating heart.

The man in front of me was calm and able to address a serious gaze into my eyes. I was holding a gun with eight bullets and yet, it was him who was glaring at me with a drilling look.

Snow was falling so densely that my vision was reduced to a 10-feet perimeter. My face was freezing but I didn’t dare use my left hand to wipe the snow from my face as my enemy would get the most of even half a moment of inattention. And I was not going to give him that.

As I stammered out my question, he sketched an amused smile, looked down and said, “You don’t belong here.”

Before I could think of an appropriate thing to say, he lifted up his head again with a serious expression and continued, “I can see it in your eyes. You’re a good man, not a war man. You don’t belong here. And neither do I, to be honest. Neither does any one of my people nor yours that got trapped into this fucking mess.”

From a bird’s-eye perspective, we were two lost figures in the middle of a clearing next to a frozen lake and surrounded by hundreds of trees covered with a layer of white. Grey smoke waves coming from the near eastern battle areas would come through the scenery every once in a while to accompany the falling snow.

“I never wanted to believe them when they started talking about a third world war. I believed that those things were gone with the past of humanity. I thought that this was the era where humans would seek to achieve the peace that we had been longing for for several generations. But I guess it’s not.”

I knew that this was getting more familiar, not only the meaning of his words but also the situation. That’s what they usually do, try to start a conversation, gain some empathy, maybe distract you a little bit and then get the most of a second of weakness to do their quick move and reverse the situation. That is a basic turn of events you would find in an execution scene of an average quality movie. I’d watched hundreds of those and spent hours reading similar scripts.

But this was different. I was part of the script. I was ready to fire a real bullet and take a man’s life. And this changed everything. I held my gun tight in my hand and kept my eyes focused to be able to detect any suspicious movement. I was not going to fall in the trap.

“Do I have a last wish? I can give you many of those. Go back in time and prevent those bastards from signing the goddamn chart and save thousands of innocent lives. Step back from the military and keep on being the person that I used to be. Man, I was so stupid feeling the obligation to “act like a man” and prove myself among my people and my girl.”

I could not remain insensitive to his confessions. I, myself, felt the obligation to step forward and to take part in the war, leave everything behind and defend our land. Before those times, I was the happiest guy but I had not been aware of it. And now, that someone belongs to the past. I could never be that person again. War changes men forever.

Fate had it that I would be the one in charge to execute this man who had infiltrated our division. The fourth identified spy in less than a month. He obviously had a similar path as mine. Each of us had a life. Each of us made a choice to be part of this human stupidity. Each of us had left the life that we had. We both regretted it. Did we really have a choice? I think we all did. Now, he happened to be on the wrong side of the story. Didn’t he?

“Actually, if I am wishing for things, I would wish to go back and relive one of those easy mornings where I would wake up next to her, not worrying about anything, staring into each others’ eyes until we would lose track of time, never getting enough of it, until she would say how lucky she feels for having me. That’s when I would kiss her on the forehead and she would smile but still nag because I didn’t say anything in return. I wish I could go back to being that happy person before I fucked up and gave up that for this.”

He hit the nail right on the head with those words. Similar memories of mine came back. Actually, he made me have one of those waves of missing a person; the kind of waves that when they hit you, you go from not thinking about that person at all to missing them to the point that you feel incomplete.

“I wish I never kicked that first-grade kid when I was in mid-school in front of his classmates because I thought I was a bad guy and needed to show it off. If I could only apologize to him and give him back his backpack. Do you think he’s in the war as well?”

“Well, it looks like he had some experiences as a kid that could turn him into a tough guy. I bet he is in the war.”

“I wish I could go back in time and leave the way to another one of those spermatozoids running for a place in a game not worth playing.”

The sound of a machine gun firing and other bombings filled up the background and brought me right back to our reality.

I had made a decision. I was going to shoot him, but I was not going to kill him. I couldn’t go back to my base with eight bullets in my gun but I could use one and still miss his vital organs.

I was not going to kill that man because he didn’t deserve to die. And even if he did, I wasn’t the one who was going to decide it. I just couldn’t be another link in the chain. I was better than that.

I aimed my gun right to his left shoulder and pulled the trigger.

The gunshot’s crack stopped time as it echoed in the forest.

Dry, sudden and straight.

A warm transcending pain cracked into my back and propelled me forward. I instantly lost my ability to stand. I fell down on my knees and then face down to the ground.

The pain faded as the warmth spread from my back and filled my entire body.

As soon as my soul started lifting, I was able to see my own body lying on the ground with a pool of blood coloring the thick layer of snow around it.

I saw the man looking around him in disbelief and my killer running to the scene. He shot my dead body with four more bullets, set his ally free and ran with him to the South.

I, 84 kilos lighter, flew up through the clouds, in the opposite direction of the feathery snowflakes, happy to be off to a place that couldn’t be worse than the one I had been in. I could not wish for anything better than leaving a world of darkness and going to an undiscovered one.

I always wanted to see our world from a pigeon’s perspective. Now, I might even be able to learn about their thoughts about what we had been doing with the world we share.