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My brain, simply put, aches. It feels like I’ve been away from everything for such a long time. I made a paper flower today. The whole paper ball-kusudama thing didn’t go as planned. I bought a binder today.
So tired, my brain feels like it’s going to explode. Touching it hurts. Boom. Boom. Boom.
Welcome to the Renaissance.
The sniper makes his home in the last remaining tower of a crumbling church. The church sits, as the architects had intended, above the town, the landscape dominated by its remaining spire. There is a hole in its arched and painted ceiling, letting in a small drizzle. Shallow pools of rainwater gather between the pews as the rain drums against the masonry.
The sniper sits in a damp corner of the tower, back against damp stone, eyes lingering on the damp sky. In one limp hand, he holds a half eaten piece of bread. His canteen lay open and almost empty by his side. His rifle, a scoped Karabiner, rests in the crook of his arm as he is in no rush to shoot. Consuming the rest of his bread, the sniper falls into a reverie.
The smell of freshly baked bread, warm and sensuous, fills his nostrils. Involuntarily, the sniper closes his eyes and rests his head against the wall. He sees his young wife by the oven. Her apron catches in a knot at her waist, her long lashes lower as she slices the loaf.
Artillery. Instantly, the sniper jolts up, knocking over his canteen as he raises the scope to his eyes, the rifle pointing out of the tower window. The reticle zooms from street to street, house to house. Another shell demolishes a bakery. The scope moves east. He spots a Sherman, emerging like a lumbering beast, from beyond a hill. Its treads raises the dust and sand of the road, the turret pointing upwards uselessly as it flattens out at the apex of the hill. Friendly artillery returns the greeting.
Enemy infantry snakes it way into the town, under the cover of tanks. A solitary Panzer fire at the advancing column, its shell sets the lead Sherman ablaze. A beacon, almost, of fire in the gray drizzle on the outskirts of town, a flaming symbol of hope no one has for the dying Reich. It simmers. The remaining ammunition in the tank explodes at interval.
He is a good sniper, not an excellent sniper, simply one that knows his M.O. If he lives to see the end of this war, they will not talk about him. They will not remember his name and his kill count. They will not remember his face. The sniper knows this; he is not in it for the glory. There is no glory. Glory dies in the face of reality, repelled by the gray, the smoke, the prickly August drizzle.
The tip of the black needle finds the helmet of an enemy; the sniper leads the target a little. He pulls in the trigger, the stock drives into his shoulder as he pulls back the bolt. The casing spins and clatters to the floor of the tower. He does not need to see the corpse of the man to know that he is dead. He is not arrogant, but he never misses. Ribbons of red mix with rainwater in the cobblestone streets below.
Shells whiz by with stark accuracy. The screams of men, of artillery, of dying vehicles, of rifles, of battle fill his ears. He listens carefully. It is a sound he forces himself to remember. It is a sound that keeps him awake at night, but he is not frightened of it. He will learn to embrace it. The bolt ejects another case.
When the sounds of battle dim and the gray sky gives way to darkness, when the smoldering wreckage of the Sherman ceases to burn, when death perfumes the town and rainwater in gutters are tinted pink, when the world is still—a moment of silence, when the sniper makes his home in the last remaining tower of a church, he does so with regret, he does so with remorse, he does so, regardless. How he loves wars.