Aaron on his Jack Jones

For the first time in days, Aaron was finally alone. Properly alone. No backup, no support, not even someone to talk too. The isolation was starting to pick away at his thoughts; bring up bad memories. He closed his eyes and let out a long breath, desperately trying to ward off the painful thoughts threatening to emerge – thoughts he had spent years trying to hide away in the recesses of his mind. He wanted to scoff at himself, after all, it was him, and him alone, who had decided to volunteer himself for sentry duty. He knew it was a one-man job, watching the northern edge of camp, but he still went for it. Perhaps he thought he was ‘testing the waters’ a bit – see if he could last the night.

He was sat on an old garden chair. Beside him was his fully-loaded rifle, propped up against the old, yellow beer crate. There were initials carved into the wooden stock of the gun, but they weren’t his own. The three small letters stood out as pale, jagged lines against the dark, stained material it had been carved into. Reaching forward, Aaron picks his flask up, off the crate next to him, to take a swig of his coffee. Holding the container with both hands, he glances over the dry and cracked skin of his knuckles. He had so-called ‘workers hands’, according to Danny: made for labour and hard work. The memory made him smile. It didn’t last long.

It was almost too easy for him to imagine his knuckles being a bloody and broken mess, and as his eyes fell on the world outside his vantage point, Aaron’s bad memories hit him like a bullet and just like that he was back there: The rain that fell was sickly-warm, drenching his clothes and soaking him to the bone. He was sure the people around him were just as peeved as he was, but no one made a sound. Even breathing was kept to small and quiet intakes of breath, just enough to keep them conscious. One wrong move: a snapped twig along the forest floor, a word uttered under someone’s breath. That’s all it would have taken for all hell to break loose.