The dream

A Story by Brent Skeene

This is a story I wrote, a friend of mine posted it on her site, because I hadn't made an account on here yet. This is a story flash fiction story with a used, but fun twist at the end. Enjoy

It was two in the morning. I was in housing unit with some of my platoon. I was awoken by a dream of being back home with my family. I longed to be back with them, but knew they were still with me. I tried to go back to sleep, but i just couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. My kids were also on my mind; I felt something pertaining to them, something telling me they needed me. But right now I had to focus on getting back to sleep, because I had to wake up in three hours to move to the next town. As I rolled over, I heard a thump, and saw a clump of sand fly into the air next to me. I jumped up, and ran to the darkest part of the tent, and in doing so, I awoke some of the other men in the unit. Only five out of the ten men that occupied the tent were alive. We were lower ranking, so our tent was farther out from the city. One of the men was foolish enough to stick his head out to see if he could see anything, and was shot. Another man thought to dig under the tent, “Its only sand, it will be easy, and maybe if we all do it at once, there will be at least one person alive to go into the city, and tell sergeant what happened.” We all agreed that it would be a good idea; This was the first time a few of us had been put into a combat situation, and that didn’t include me; I was ready.I knew what I was in for when I enlisted. I counted down, “3...2….1, GO!”, and we all started digging. The person that was next to me got out first, and was shot; I heard him hit the ground, and saw blood trickle through the sand. I waited a moment, and sprang out. I started bolting towards the town, and saw another one of the men. I assumed the fourth was dead as well. We were running at the same pace, and we were about to hit the city, when I saw him drop, I saw blood spurting from the back of his head, and I managed to jump behind some crates. I saw a bullet fly through the crate, and narrowly miss my head. I rolled to the left quickly, and suddenly, I was out. When I awoke, I was on the floor, with my head on a dresser, and blood everywhere. My back hurt, as did my neck, and my nose. I stood up, and my back screamed in agony. I then realized what happened; I was dreaming about being back in the desert and when I rolled, I rolled out of bed. The tent, the city, the dead men. It was all a dream….It was all a dream.