You know, I joined the army thinking I was going to be the good guy. I wanted to be Gabriel. I wanted to blow my horn at any sign of evil's shadow and rip down the thorny walls of tyranny. I wanted to illuminate the world and let them know they are safe. I wanted to lead the oppressed down the path of righteousness and self sacrifice to show them a world that they would never imagine. Well, I guess in a way I got my wish. Now the places we leave are illuminated by the fires we left. We were told there were rebels in the town, so we had no choice but to burn it down. We certainly tore down their walls, but there were no cheers and trumpets to signal our victory. There were moans and gun shots and the broken sadness of lone children. So we take them, in hand, down the road. Intelligence says they might be suicide bombers. I look at one of the kids hands I'm holding, I just killed his mother and his father, and now I'm told to kill him as well. He doesn't look like a suicide bomber. But we are told by our leader and our God to protect the weak and innocent, and if this boy has wasps in his heart, we have to send them out the only way you can clear out a hive... with smoke and fire. We lead them all down the trail in silence. We called ourselves angels, but I saw no wings. Where we walked, we left hoof prints and ashes where we trampled "threats" and sent them to hell with napalm and kerosene. We're each rationed a certain portion of water while on vacation here. I'm not thirsty, but I convince myself of any reason I can to keep my water to myself. And even though their tongues swell and choke their throats, and their eyes cry blood, I offer no charity to the impure. The boy is dying. Better here than there. We stole the nickname "The Killing Fields" to where we do our cleansing. These people's names will never be known unless there is a man out there that speaks the tongue of ash. Those who die along the way are loaded into a wagon and carried to the fields. And those that make it dig their own graves, bathes rather, of gasoline. We command them all to sit in this troth of potential fire, and we say a prayer for their souls. We tell them that everything will be alright and for the moment before the match hits, they believe us. Death settles in their eyes like a tired child and their souls can be seen leaving if you look hard enough. Death is not that moment when the heart stops beating. Death comes before your body goes, when peace settles in your heart before flame settles in your lung. When they scream, they are already dead for their soul has already left, but their hearts bellow on in sadness that they cannot come. I used to think that we were doing the wrong thing, so I stopped thinking. Now, we are angles of peace. And when I look back, I can see naked crows coming to collect our feathers. Sometimes I think they may be the souls of the men, women, and children we killed. They follow us, and sing us songs. They caw for the morning light, the glowing moon, and when we send mortars over the hill. They sing for our cause and dress themselves from our broken wings. They tend to their dead and pick up what's left after their souls to take their bodies to the afterlife. The child is dead now, and for a second my throat chokes up. I have delivered more souls to God than the Catholic church, and I am one hundred percent efficient. In death, the child is pure. His evil has left him, and as I lower his body to the long road home, just outside the killing fields, I give his pale lips a sip of water. It runs down the corner of his lip, mixing with dust and blood, carrying with it all of the unspoken words of the painful lessons of age. With closed eyes, I toss the boy into the pit and grasp my rosary tightly. As the fire warms my face, I remember what we are fighting for, we are illuminating the world with reason, peace, and gasoline. Angels often hide in the shadow of fire for they know not that they burn. They smell the charring of flesh and see the bodies about their feet and think that they triumph where others fail. But they too burn by the same flame they cherish, screaming the words they forged from a mute God, damming the fire they fueled. But when the flame settles, and the last feather hits the ground, the world learns that even angels burn.
-Forrest Gordon
