fact or fiction
Is it fact or merely fiction? Fact or Fiction explores the myths and beliefs we hold about the military and the physical, logistical, emotional and moral obstacles involved.
Best Friends
James Levy sat at the folding card table that he used to eat his meals, read, and write. A stack of seven legal pads with clean, crisp white pages sat in the top left corner of the table, nestled against the wall. James used the pads for everything: journaling, therapy notes, gratitude lists, and incomplete stories. Seven ball point pens with black ink waited their turn in a dingy coffee mug next to the legal pads. The banker's box under the table housed hundreds of pages of James’ writing, organized by subject and date. A pocket-sized black Moleskin notebook was open to a handwritten page titled “Week of 12/11/16.” Today was Sunday. His sole obligation was to get groceries.
By Takeia R. Johnson5 years ago in Serve
The Murder of Xalapa (Part I)
The most beautiful man of the English-speaking world is about to do the unthinkable. He is quite mad, but he is more sad than angry. He is tall and has the perfect tan sin of the Caribbean and the Mediterranean Sea. He just lost a good friend and his first friend, Mr. Yépez.
By Arnoldo Alonso5 years ago in Serve
Home Too Soon
In my short adult life I've been known as many things. A mistake, a blessing, a compeer, corrival. The love of someone's life, nothing... a beggar, a thrull, half live or partially undead. living off the bits and pieces from the few civilized who chose to spare it. Hunger pangs rock me in an out of sleep, like an angler's line on an empty tarn. "These train carts sleep a lot better when ain't nobody on em". I heard in the distance Another exclaimed as he adjusted himself in recumbency. Homelessness mustn't suit me well I thought, 7 months in and My pride still thwarts my reality. Unfamiliar with the uncertainties each night brings, let alone the encroaching city air; a nightly reminder that i'm not at "home". Wherever home is. A veteran, not gone long enough to be a hero, home before it was okay to be forgotten. Here I sit. Existing In a non essential existence. "Existing"I glanced one eye to see 8bit sand draining from the digit hourglass on the platform display. "This is home for the night." I told myself as The hour neared 3am I found safety in that thought.
By Devin Moore5 years ago in Serve
The Citizen Journalist
For Nour, technology was critical, but there was only power for a few hours a day at most, and online she was hunted and traceable. She frowned wondering how much they knew - she wasn’t a big fish, but she wasn’t small fry either, people had been killed for less. Right now the roads out were kill zones, bombed alleys of death, then there was Aleppo city, now home, being pummelled by the Syrian regime, with it’s Russia Hezbollah ‘Axis’, fighting rebel and religious factions, the civilians, forever in the crossfire, now huddled together at night, with the eerie advantage of understanding exactly what lingered in the skies above. Barrel bombs - oil drums and fuel tanks filled with explosives and metal fragments fell from helicopters with indiscriminate targets. Cluster munitions with their baby bomblet cargos and white phosphorous, rained down, targeted hits on hospitals and aid convoys, all apparently illegal internationally, it was 2016, after five years of war the whole world knew what was happening in Syria - Nour could never understand why nobody made it stop.
By Rebecca Smith5 years ago in Serve
Memory of Something Almost Lost
The crooked smile of a crescent moon hung over the gutted skeleton of the place once called ‘Boston’. Even at this hour Rusty could hear the shrieks of the things that still lived here but they were far enough into the Commons now to safely make camp.
By Stan Toyne5 years ago in Serve
Inside Leningrad, 1941
PROLOGUE 21ST, JULY, 1941. The overwhelming sense of air that had been thrown off of it’s course made itself far from silently known, as it passed by the once muffled eardrums of a courted soldier, lining his back up behind the substantial bags of sand that seemed to become their fortified blockages over time of what was genuine defense being used for the centric blockades around the city. Though, it seemed to be what he once mistook for the angers of Mother Nature, were the graces of lead that their rival formalities found so comforting in their times of need. With the quick motion that ducked his head behind the fortifications, he instinctively courted the rackety SVT-40 of a fallen comrade closer to his chest-- a quick breath in, and a longer one out-- bringing him back from the chastise of slowed fantasy, and into reality.
By Tyler Barry5 years ago in Serve
A room on the Moika
The room was filled with the sweet smell of candle smoke. Despite the tall, broken windows offering grandiose views of decorated façades across the Moika’s frozen waters, the high-ceilinged room was dark. The sun had set long before dinnertime, and Oleg’s candle was the sole source of light.
By Sébastien Mouret5 years ago in Serve
Over the Panj
“What do you know about Matthew McCann, Lieutenant?” Lt. William Fox heard the colonel’s voice over the shouting gale of the wind and the propellers. He held onto the strap above, by now all too used to the heat and the dry air that buffeted into the helicopter.
By Gordon Hawkins5 years ago in Serve
100 Little Black Books
Mrs. Bernice Pink always carried her little back notebook with her wherever she went. Even her husband Chester, known to all as "Chester Pink the Mattress King," couldn't pry that little book out of her thin, pale hands that very special sultry evening in Chicago when he knelt on one knee with a heartfelt proposal at their favorite Italian restaurant.
By Melissa G Wilson5 years ago in Serve
Disillusionment
The dark splodges of ink sprawled across the pages of the journal arrest my attention. Pitch black, their meaning engulfs me and I marvel at their dazzling intensity and depiction of the horrors and triumphs of war, exuding sorrow, hardship, loss and suffering. As my eyes hungrily devour each syllable on the page, I am swept away by the depths of its message, transformed by its profundity. Inexplicable darkness pervades it, yet it is laced with hope, the simple musings of a young man caught in the throes of war.
By Tahlia Hunter5 years ago in Serve
