The Hard Stuff Rules.

By Michael Miles-Coccaro

He’s hit the ground, hard, and he’s running, running so fast it hurts. Explosions. He’s running hard towards fellow’s he’s never met. He’s to kill them, they’re to die (or was it the other way around? It doesn't matter). Flanking him are his friends, his comrades-in-arms, they’re running, but not as fast as he.A leap into the void and he’s hit the ground, again, and is on a knee, pointing and clicking at the surprised. Comrades-in-arms stream over the walls following him, mimicking his every move, their hard knees clacking on the ground. A series of thumps is to follow, with sighs of demise issuing from mouths that’ll never love again. Drops of red that’ll soon turn to black and brown, what a way to go.

A breath. A thought. A pause. They all take too much time, he must get going.

Too late, someone else has taken the lead, he follows and catches him. Together now, they work like machines, doing what they’re here to do. It is an unsightly thing, their collaboration, but it is what it is, and they don’t dare to dwell on it. All they hear are the hard-hitting notes of war, beautiful and terrifying to the soul.

By now their clothes are torn and dirty, the rubble is thick and hard to walk on, a fear of falling suddenly catches him by surprise (“if I fall, I’m going to break something,”), beyond that horror lies awe and wonder (“this place must’ve been beautiful before all this,”) but they are quickly consumed by duty and a job that’s never finished (“ours is not to question why, ours is but to do and die”).

A house. Crouched outside of it for some time now, taking cover from a funny joker a few hundred yards away (“they’re all playing hide and seek,” the funny man thinks to himself, “those found will be shot, survivors will be shot again”). What a funny man he is, he wants to tell them all a joke, but no one will listen, and all he can think to himself is “don’t these people know death is just a joke?”

A call. Distressed by what’s occurring, he and his partner make their way across the dance floor, if you will, to the funny man, such a funny man they think, what with his big gun, little body, and eyes that can see forever. They toss him a present and make sure he opens it. Such a funny man, such a funny face (who says you can’t have fun in a firefight?).Rubble in the streets. Some are crowned with flames, some are adorned with bodies.

“Boy it’s good to have a friend,” he thinks as they dance their merry dance across the wasteland of the pride of a civilization, “It’s all you can really count on in these troubled days.”

And yet another walks among it all, thinking to himself, accepting the good with bad. Seeing the world as a glass that is both full and empty, he merely observes the going-ons of this little skirmish (though it took a world to stage it) and relishes in it all. I mean, how can’t you? Everything is beautiful, don’t you know? Everything is beautiful.

A rainfall. It makes everything muddy, and ruins the dancing floor with its’ tracked boot prints. Now it’s hard to hide and easy to stay cold.

The rain. He loves to watch it fall. It hits the roofs and streams down into the air so that it may hit the ground, just like him. He waits a moment and watches it all fall. The city, all of it, looks beautiful. He is standing high, high above the ground, and without fear of reprisal from those who oppose him, he watches the rain fall. Peace on a battle-field (may last only a minute).

Today is an odd day for the child of a dead man. Men in strange clothes came to the city today and insisted on destroying everything. His father has been gone for hours now, and his mother can’t help but hold onto him, insisting that he not look into the streets. Eventually he gets away for a minute and looks out into the world he knows. “Things have changed,” he thinks, upon a review of his stomping grounds. He’s scared to death, as only a child can be, but he falls asleep in his mother’s gentle arms. His thoughts are confused, obscure and full of dread. But one thought sticks out from the rest: what will they end up building when they decide to stop with this foolishness?

The city has stood for generations. It is a testament to the people who built it. It was beautiful, but it had begun to decay, and now it stands solemnly while a cancer eats it away from all sides. If a city could think, then this one does, and it’s eager: it will be rebuilt, and for the better. Always for the better.

An observation: “When I was a child, I thought that rain was God’s tears, and that thunder was God slamming his fist in frustration as he could not stand what we did to ourselves and our world. He was frustrated by the choices we made. As I grew up They told me that it’s just condensation in the clouds and that thunder is ionized electrons discharging their loads and it kind of took the mystery out of it for me.”

The night. They had been dancing for hours now, and it could not be denied, they were truly beautiful. But now it was time to rest, and for that, he couldn’t help but being joyful. He was so glad he was alive. God he was so happy to be alive. He had never been so sore, but it didn’t bother him, he was alive, and with his friends. “Nothing’s worse than being alone,” he thought to himself. With his comrades-in-arms and an enemy all but gone he could sleep peacefully that night. So he did.An observer, whom we have already met, now takes the time to listen to the scenery that his position affords him: dark night, black boots, rainfall, pools of red, thunder claps, cannon fire, lightning strikes, explosions, orders shouted, death being rattled and the ever present prattle of automatics combine together to paint a symphony of war. “It’s beautiful,” he thinks. “Everything is beautiful.”

Michael has been one of my closest friends for as long as I can remember. He is a creative writing major currently attending Loyola University in Chicago, IL, and is one of the most intense, passionate, and honest people I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. Selections from his writing, prose, and poetry will be commonly featured here on the sleepless.