Left

Why hadn’t he simply looked left? 
Just one quick glance, no matter how brief, and he’d have seen it. The sniper that had nailed him. The sniper who’d sent this whole mess in motion. The reason he was stuck in Blue teams quarters with another team for company, rather than relaxing with his own in Gold’s.
As Joseph-122 lay on his back, left knee joint held in thick bandages to keep it immobile, as strong painkillers ran through his veins to dull the agony of his wound, all he could think of was his one mistake. The one mistake. The mistake that was why Sheila’s lifeless corpse was in a cryotube, whatever was left of Arthur was smeared on the hulls of a couple of Covenant warships, and Solomon… Well, the particles that had once been Spartan-069 were scattered across the inky black void. Of Course, those were just the Spartan casualties, he hadn’t even gotten around to counting them up, but with his leg hanging together by its tendons, he was sure he’d get the chance.
Above him, Fred inhaled what sounded as though it was half of the prowler's air supply, before returning to the now annoyingly familiar sound of his deep, ceaseless snoring. Further putting any chance of falling asleep to escape his thoughts for a few restful hours firmly outside of his reach. Glancing away from the dull grey of his bunks ceiling, Joseph contemplated an escape to the relative silence of the prowlers mess hall, though even the engine room would have been quieter. But, even with Fred’s deafening snoring, Joseph doubted he could struggle out of the door on the crutches that he’d been given without waking the ironically stationary form of Kelly, who was sleeping in the bunk opposite. Nor could he ask John for help, as whilst he was no doubt awake, he was currently delivering a tactical nuclear present to the Covenant who were about to overrun Miridem’s central data centre.
Joseph wished he was back in Gold teams quarters, at least there he’d be alone in silence to think. Of course, nobody was willing to let him be alone, ever since Arthur and Solomon had bought it, there had always been someone nearby, even going to the bathroom he’d had a minder hovering nearby. Joseph suspected Halsey had asked John, Kelly and Fred to keep an eye on him, for what reason he wasn’t sure, he was fine after all. He wasn’t about to take a page out of Oscar and Daniella’s book, he just needed to think. That and get some sleep. He hadn’t slept since Sheila died, but he’d chalked that up to a mixture of the pain meds and adrenalin of trying to get the ‘good’ doctor back, only for those understandable reasons to be replaced by Fred’s inability to sleep without waking the dead.
Kelly stirred briefly, momentarily offering a respite from Fred’s snoring, but she was just getting comfy again before going back to sleep. How she could mystified Joseph, maybe she was more tired than she looked, or maybe just accustomed to sharing proximity to just over seven feet of heavily muscled sinus. He’d asked her about Fred’s snoring after the second day of being kept up by them. But from her confusion and her statement that, whilst Fred did snore, it wasn’t as bad as he was making out, it was probably the latter.
Sighing, Joseph turned back to the now familiar pastime of studying the brush strokes in the grey paint above him. All the while the same nut, that try as he might he couldn’t crack ran on unending repeat through his head.
Why hadn’t he looked left?
Category:The Weekly
Category:Short stories