I woke up with my alarm's unbearably high-pitched sound. 7 pm, I am late today.
I left the bed and stood still in the middle of the room for a minute to clear my thoughts before preparing for the day.
My life is quiet and dull. Everything is programmed and served. It is a life I don't need to do anything.
A life I could only wait until I die without consequences. It is a life I hate to live.
I was once a soldier, a good one of that. I saw my fair share of action and blood, sometimes mine, sometimes friends, but usually enemies.
But who is an ex-soldier to whine about a quiet life? Many of my friends and peers, friend or foe, died with dreams of this in their minds.
My name? Erwin, Erwin Blade, and only a year ago, before the peace treaty, I was a special force soldier fighting on the frontlines and accomplishing missions seen as impossible by many.
But let me go back in time and tell the whole story to clear some confusion. Just enough to reach my childhood.
I was born into a family with deep ties to our country's arms industry and military.
My family held their traditions highly. I started my education with private tutors teaching me the basic steps like writing and reading at the age of four and finished those before reaching the age of five.
Then, until I reached the age of seven, I spent most of my days learning the basic traditions of my house, from fencing to horse riding, which I kept training for a long time after.
But the turning point of my life was at the age of eight. Just like every member of my family, I got sent to a military school.
There, teachers focused more on discipline than raising a healthy kid with imagination.
Thankfully, I had my grandfather. I spent half of the year with him.
My grandfather, by no means, was sane, but he still treated me like a kid, to a degree.
He lived in his private land, a large forest. He taught me about surviving in the wild, hunting, foraging, and what else comes to your mind.
When I reached the age of eighteen, I wanted to do something different, so I took a different path and enrolled in a civil university instead of a military academy.
Funnily enough, it was my grandfather who encouraged me to do so.
Three years later, I finished university with a mechanical engineering degree.
And it started with a tragedy. Roughly fifteen years before, only one year after my graduation, and on my first year working in the family company, a dreadful event changed my life.
Our neighboring country, which we don't have a pleasant history, decided to reignite the ashes of the past and started a war with several surprise attacks, one of which was at a veteran gathering at which my father was a guest.
Everyone who joined that event died that day. I remember the news, how I ride my car faster than ever, and my father's remains, a puddle of mushed-up flesh, bones, and blood on a coffin.
I didn't even have the chance to see his face one last time at his funeral, and I remember seeing my grandfather with a face so desperate that no words could describe his pain.
He looked so weak. That man who survived in a forest with nothing but his trusty ax and his old rifle felt as fragile as cracked glass.
Even worse, he died only two weeks later.
Before this, I didn't really believe the word about people not being able to handle the shock of the death of a loved one and dying, but it was true.
For a long time, I foolishly carried a hatred. My mother died during childbirth, so my father and grandfather were the two people who raised me. Losing them was losing my everything.
With that hatred, I joined the military, and in four years, I found myself on a special forces team.
Promotion after promotion followed me, and with every bullet I shot, every mission I accomplished, and each enemy I killed, people began talking about me more.
Politicians used my loyal squad members and me as a tool for propaganda. The Pack of the Wolf, fearsome warriors of our nation hunting the enemies without the slightest of hesitations.
Of course, their words were exaggerated.
I failed missions, got hurt, and saw my brothers-in-arms die.
But I still pushed forward with these wrong choices.
I even joined parades and gave half-hearted speeches when they asked for it.
And I hate to admit it, but I even enjoyed the attention for a while.
I was a blind fool who failed to see reality. Perhaps I managed to find peace in the eye of the storm by throwing myself on the most dangerous of the battlegrounds.
But the time of peace arrived, and I learned what happens behind the frontlines later. War is not limited to soldiers. The actual bloodshed happens behind the lines where civilians live.
And not all soldiers take it easy as well. After all, war is madness. It can turn the sanest person into a wild beast, doing anything and everything for survival.
Its effects can effortlessly turn a bright young person into a walking corpse, with all the light in their eyes removed by countless horrors they witnessed.
I remember a soldier saying this to me in a group therapy session. "Fighting in a war is not as noble as they say on screens. There are no heroes on battlefields, just people out of their minds. People who can do anything to kill you because of the primal instincts of survival we unleash. It is an indescribable horror. It is mindless murder."
But, I also discovered that some souls wear their agony and hatred as a banner of acceptance and march straight to that hell without hesitation because they know they have nothing else left for them. And there are ones who enjoy, ones who can laugh in the rain of blood, maniacs who want the smell of blood and gunpowder. Is there even a term for them?
And I hate to admit it, but I found myself as a maniac who enjoyed the war. A mindless killing machine, spilling blood for enjoyment.
I threw my self-proclaimed noble cause, the avenge of a father, away as if it were a used tissue. My next mission was the only thing on my mind.
Perhaps that was how I coped with how empty my life was after losing everything.
***
**
*
"I am leaving." I left the building from the front door.
Two armed guards were stationed at the family mansion gate by the government.
They said this was to protect me from any revenge attempts.
"Good morning, sir. Are you out for your daily walk." One of the guards asked.
"Morning to you, friend. Like every other day, it is a must for me." I answered with a friendly tone.
Guard nodded. "Be careful, sir. The neighborhood is safe, but you know the drill better than I do. You have many enemies who want your head."
"They can try taking it and join their brothers in arms in hell." I laughed and left the house.
From here, I must do my daily walk around the neighborhood, but perhaps I could skip it today and go for a short walk in the city.
I moved to the bus stop and looked at my watch, gifted by a minister in a press conference. It is five past six. The bus here never misses a minute, so it should be turning the corner.
As I finished the sentence, a bus turned from a corner and stopped at the bus stop at the exact arrival time. It was empty, except for the driver.
I entered the vehicle and tapped a card on the screen next to the entrance.
The driver greeted me as the screen read the title. "Veteran."
"Good morning, sir Wolf. I suppose you are skipping the jogging today." His voice was joyful since the driver was also a veteran who left the army after his entire squad got wiped out in an ambush.
He was a good man who kept secrets to himself. Perhaps he was also assigned by the government.
"Yes, I did," I answered the man and moved to the back. "And if anyone asks, I entered the bus after my walk."
The driver nodded, closed the doors, and the bus slowly accelerated forward.
I sat on my usual seat, a single seat near the window, and opened a small notepad filled with photos, letters, and writings from the past.
I looked at every page until I reached a page with perhaps the most important photograph of my life.
A photo I took inside a military basses cafe, and in it, eleven people, including me, are standing around a table. I stand in the middle, and six people stand on my right while the remaining four are on my left.
All of them were my teammates and the closest I got to having a family after years.
All of them were wearing specially tailored clothes, and each had a badge that symbolized a different animal they earned through their specialty. It was the gimmick of our team.
"Pechman, Ronald, Jim, and others. Half of you are either dead or retired right now, yet with the war ending, I hope all of you found the peace I didn't." I closed the notepad and put it inside my coat pocket.
***
**
*
After a quiet ride, the bus stopped near the city center.
"Have a good day, sir."
"Thank you." I jumped out of the bus.
After recovering my balance, I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cell phone. "Now, what was the number of that man? Oh yes, seven five five..."
The phone rang for several seconds until a man opened it.
"Hello?" A man with a deep voice answered. "Who am I talking to right now?
"Martin, it is me, Erwin. Don't you save your regular patients' numbers to your phone? Anyways, is your schedule empty right now?"
"Oh, Erwin! Sorry, I am using the fixed line." The sound of pages getting turned came from the phone. "Good news, my schedule is free today, and even if it wasn't, you are the only psychopath who thinks about visiting me this early in the morning. You may come anytime." The man answered with a cheerful voice.
"Okay." I ended the call. My destination is an old but luxurious apartment built in Victorian style with neon lights on its front for god knows what reason.
***
**
*
I reached my destination after a short walk. Martin's assistant was smoking right outside the door. "Good morning, sir. Dr.Martin waits for you."
"Good morning to you. Aren't you too early today?" I greeted the assistant back.
"Oh, my graduation is coming closer, and Dr.Martin was helping me with my final thesis."
"Then good luck with your work." I entered the elevator built at the end of the building's entrance, pressed the button for the highest floor, and watched its door close.
The elevator slowly climbed to its destination, a floor with nothing but a single door with this written over it. "Great Psychiatrist Martin."
I entered the room in front of me. Martin was waiting near the therapist's couch in the middle, reading something from a book.
I knew the drill, so I lay on the couch and tried to empty my mind.
This gentleman is Dr.Martin. He is a little goofy but a master of his work.
"So, how the peaceful life is going for our country's strongest war machine? Any assassination attempts lately."
"Dull as ever. At this point, I am begging for an attempt on my life to feel some adrenaline." I exhaled. "That same feeling, the void is still there. I suppose the word is true. Once a soldier, always a soldier."
The doctor nodded and moved his fingers like he was scribbling something. "You are more positive than ever, Mister Erwin."
He sat down. "This emptiness, my favorite headache, the emotion you cannot fill no matter what you do. Could that be your constant desire for adrenaline? Have you tried roller coasters? I know a good amusement park in the next city, and I heard about a rollercoaster that can reach speeds over a hundred miles recently opened there."
"No. I prefer not to."
Martin got up from his chair and circled me. "Look, Erwin. We are a doctor and patient here, but more importantly, two friends, and I will be honest with you. You are an odd case between all the odd cases I usually get. Almost two decades of never-ending warfare you endured and your childhood, which you spent with your grandfather, who taught you how to hunt and survive in the wild until you reached the age of sixteen. It is normal for someone like you to never adapt to the quiet civil life people usually experience."
"I know that much. We've been seeing each other for a year at this point."
"Look, you are now a level-headed and civil gentleman, but when you find yourself in a situation reminding you of the past, you go batshit, no other words, complete madness, as if you weren't a civilian but that soldier fighting deep inside the enemy territory." He sat on a chair next to me. "Look, I know I told this to you a million times, but old habits die hard, Erwin. Of course, unless you want to take hundreds of medicines with god knows how many different side effects, that will be another story."
"So more walking and doing nothing." I got up in frustration. "It's not like I don't want to adapt to it, but it's hard. Even though all I want is to get used to this life, it's not easy."
"Yeah, maybe start your little zen garden, maybe take care of a bonsai tree, or do those weird meditation things people do with candles, but keep yourself away from anything that would bring you back to the past. No fighting, no guns, nothing that will give you an adrenaline rush!"
I nodded and exited the room but turned back inside to say one more thing. "If it was only that easy." I entered the elevator and pressed the button for the ground floor.
Again and again, even now, something inside me tingles and says something destructive will happen at any time, and I feel excited about it.
Damn it! I exited the elevator and began quickly moving towards the exit.
While walking out, I noticed Dr. Martins's assistant was missing, but she could be on a break, so I didn't care about it and jumped onto the street.
Today wasn't very productive. I wonder what fate will bring to my hands.
A man loudly called my name. "Sir Erwin, the Great Wolf, I am a fan. Let's take a picture."
"Sorry, I get this a lot, but I am not him." I immediately spit the lie I told countless times before.
The man grinned. "Sorry for disturbing your alone time." He reached into his pocket. Somethings wrong.
"But my dead brother's avenge can wait only so long!"
It was too late. I knew something was wrong, and my instincts warned me, but I missed the message. The man was a suicide bomber.
***
**
*
"How heartbreaking. Such a good piece, dying out like that." A divine voice that resembles a goddess echoed through the endless abyss.
"Maybe?" She added with a curious tone. "We may have a little place for this wonderful sinner in our little game."
"Yes, we should." A new voice added.
"Then do it." Nine more new voices jumped into the conversation."