The Deputy
Cierra McCarthy
A lingering resentment of old
Nothing tastes the same. It had already been five years since she had got back to the States from the war-torn country of whose decimation she had willingly participated in. Not even the pills she had gotten her hands on helped to drown the memory, not even the strong liquor helped her sleep... she had played with death, mixing the both in hopes of not waking back up from the nightmare she had experienced. In her mind, the memory looped back and forth. She had seen shit... and participated in it.
Counter-insurgency they called it... officially... still now she remembers how the teeths were plucked; eyes stabbed... the genitals plugged into the car batteries and hooks... and nails pulled out of the fingers of those who came into the basement now functioning as a makeshift interrogatio- torture... chamber in the former capital of the dictator. The locals knew, but what could they do? We were the liberators....
The worst of it all was the children ...
She took another of the pills... Clonazepam.. she had already had three. She drowned it with the bottle before she laid herself down onto the couch... she'd slur; feeling how the benzos mixed together with the strong alcohol into a poison in her body... the heavy dose enough to sedate a horse. Enough to cause a human to sleep, even stop breathing... she hadn't sleep for days. The voices of the children still singing in her head. She looked at the pistol next to her, a 9mm round in the chamber ready for lift off.
She'd doze of to sleep, like always after her shift... her free time, and sometimes her work-hours belonging to the substitue that erased the lingering resentment of old.
She had barely slept three hours before her alarm rang... still in stupor from the alcohol and the pills. This wasn't her first time... nor would it be her last. Her blood was always intoxicated; even her colleagues knew. But what could they do? Everyone who came back from there wasn't the same... none of them. And she was a God-fearing Christian, plagued by problems like so many others. Civil life didn't work for veterans like her, she needed the gun... the adrenaline. But now it was the pills and sometimes the bottle... the pills had the upper-hand.
A few hours later, her mind still numbed by the pills; her breathe reeking of the bottle... she didn't mind. She represented the values of the Land of the Free; the land of the damaged and those left-behind.
A detainee from Texas... just another simple pass in the line of duty. She refrained from taking a sip from the bottle she always kept in her pocket. She wanted to keep whatever was left of her focus sharp. The Sheriff wouldn't mind, he was the same as her... just another war, another generation. He understood... folks would call it corruption, but that was none of it here. Just broken souls and hearts.
The numbing of the pills still in effect as she turned the key to the ignition, the motor bursting to life...
Just another day... and soon, she'd be back home again - with the memories..
(FIXED)
