• It was just another normal day, with the sun beating down through the window, blanketing my body with warmth, enabling me to forget, just for a moment, where I was.
    I guess I’ll start at the beginning, with me relaxed and hunched over in my seat. The year was 3014 and class was extremely unbearable because of the deadly uninteresting, monotone voiced teacher.
    “Scooter,” my friend Desmon whispered across the enormous room.
    “What?” I answered back in the same low tone of voice.
    “Do you think we’ll be next?” Desmon questioned restlessly. “Because I mean like they’re practically picking teens like us like flowers in a meadow.”
    “Let’s not think about it,” I replied, trying to sound brave and unconcerned with it all.
    Finally the unnecessarily audible siren answered my prayers as it blew for the class to be dismissed. Yes, I thought to myself, another day and Desmon and I got away with it.
    Unfortunately, Principal Lagmore called Desmon and me down to the office, the one place every teen dreads to go, especially at a time like this.
    My heart was racing like horses on a track. Every step brought Desmon and me closer to our demise when, finally, we reached the oak door that led to the office.
    As I pushed open the door, he was awaiting our arrival. Principal Lagmore approached us with regret in his opal eyes and muttered for us to take a load off our heavy feet. Desmon plopped down on the leather coach as I sat down more slowly.
    Principal Lagmore didn’t beat around the bush. Instead he went straight for the target and told us the bad news, saying, “Boys, you two are superb students and I am dreading to say and do this but…” Lagmore paused with sadness in his deeply wrinkled face, “you’re the next ones chosen. Never has this been more difficult for me because you are two of my best students.”
    Desmon tried to man up, and stay fearless. I, on the other hand, expected this all along. I knew it was only a matter of time before we were drafted into the war, so my emotions were inconsequential.
    You see, war doesn’t seem to horrific, not until you’re in one and especially then, when everyday classmates were reported missing or dead… rarely alive and well.

    Instantaneously, Desmon and I were shoved on a plane and sent to Miigele (Me-gel-e), the bloodiest place anyone could ever set their eyes upon.
    Soldiers lay dead, and disembodied parts soiled the ground. There was almost no area where the ground wasn’t stained with the blood of men and women, or the tears of their eyes as they lay wounded, waiting for their misery to end.
    Desmon was shaking like a rat trapped by a vicious cat. I was so timorous that all the emotions just melted away like ice in the desert.
    Once we arrived in camp Desmon was roughly taken from my side and thrown into a Jeep headed for another training camp, leaving me distraught and lonesome.

    Three weeks into training, my body began to transform in ways I never fancied could happen to my used-to-be stringy meatless body.
    My arms became massive, every vein popping out, and every movement made both arms ripple like the ocean waves. These legs I now possess that used to be said as “belonging to The Matrix,” now can carry me quicker than a cheetah racing after its prey with longing eyes, only following the desperate cry in his/her stomach.
    Now was the real test. Combat in the real-life war. My hands and face were like countless waterfalls. Before I departed from camp, “farewell” was the last word I uttered from my mouth to my other comrades and to those new, fresh comrades arriving, jumpy and filled to the brim with uneasy feelings…just like I was.
    Holding in tears of fear, I leaped onto the Jeep that had taken Desmon away, and that was now taking me beyond the camps and bases to a desolate area where only misery is seen.
    The split second I reached camp Desmon greeted me with a warm and friendly hug. Standing back, I took a closer look at my old friend. He too had grown arms with bulging muscles and legs that could be almost as quick as mine.
    More into the war, Desmon explained to me how and what had occurred to him for the last three weeks. I too recounted my adventures, pain, and agony to him.
    With two friends side by side again, I felt like nothing could surpass us until the war got heavier.
    Bodies fell with a thud, screams of horror rang out through the battlefield, and Desmon was shot in the leg. Sadly, the worst was yet to come. I felt beads of sweat, and I was filled with anguish, as I gazed upon Desmon. I knew that this was the end, for even though a bullet to the leg is only a flesh wound, the vast battlefield, with no place to crouch other than the ditches made for us, will surely contain an enemy lurking in the dark, waiting to shell another wounded comrade of ours.
    My thought came true. A grenade came sailing down into our ditch and I fled, only following my instincts, until reality smacked me in the face. Desmon. I had left my friend to be blown up. Now the true identity of war came to me, and my fear of it left my soul.
    Having no one by my side, no teacher to ignore, no life besides this, allowed me to close my mind on all other possibilities and just wait every day, until the brutality steps out of darkness and reaches light to give notice that the war is soon to be over.
    So now, here I lie, every morning, waiting for the sun to rise over the horizon, shedding its beautiful rays down onto the Earth, wiping away the emotions, and hope that someday I’ll be home again. star