It was quiet in the Sunni district. The burnt skeletons of cars littered the roads and even the shadows had bullet holes. That was the summer death not only leeched the earth of laughter, but of all sound. Even when we shot our rifles, we heard nothing.
On that day death sent a thick yellow dust to obscure our vision. The dust made its way into our mouths and throats and made us thirsty. We stopped in the shade of an alley to rest. I took first guard while the others squatted and drank deep from their canteens.
My attention was drawn to a bright beryl strip of sky that stretched between the rooftops. Clouds like alabaster strings of protoplasm floated across it. I imagined it to be a transmigration of spirits: deceased animals traveling towards their reincarnation. I saw a cloud in the shape of a dog, and then one in the shape of a cow, and then an elephant.
It was when I watched the cloud spirit of the elephant, its wispy trunk moving up and down, that something ricocheted off my helmet. I saw the attacker in my vision's periphery, crouched down at the end of the alley. I turned in a fluid motion, pulling the pin on a MK3A2 and throwing it. The Earth shook and the child evaporated in a red cloud. He would not throw rocks again. I remember hoping death would be satiated and turn his terrible gaze away.
I remember wondering if that boy's spirit would float across the sky. I looked for it, but I could not find it.
Joseph Cameron is a recent graduate of the MFA program in Creative Writing at UNLV. You can find his prose at Thieves Jargon, Monkey Bicycle, 3:AM Magazine, why vandalism?, and in the August issue of Shakespeare's Monkey Review.