THE LOCAL GHOSTS
When the troops had gone home the ghosts of the fallen stayed to haunt the place where they fell.
When the troops had gone home the ghosts of the fallen stayed to haunt the place where they fell. Unfinished business, tormented souls, the usual story. They sulked around the desert highways where IEDs had halted their earthly progress and watched as the lives around them crawled on. In watching them did the soldier ghosts regret the cruelty they had waged? Maybe. Not sure. It couldn't have been easy to haunt when you died on a rocky bend of nowhere. But they had to, because ghost rules say you haunt where you died. And so that was a torment too. None of the local ghosts wanted anything to do with them, as you can imagine, because they had all expected to live a normal life but ended up as ghosts. So they were lonely as well. Maybe it felt like torment was the point. Maybe it was.
