User blog:UnfortunateSon/The Man Who Sold The World

I advise reading this story to this song.

It had been years since the war back in Vietnam. I wearily wandered down a bleak New York alleyway. I still had nightmares about that final helicopter ride. Gunfire from the deep in the trees, but nothing to be seen. Concrete jungle had begun to blend in with normal jungle to me.

It was the end of the war. 1974. One year before it officially ended. We were pulling out. My squadron was on a helicopter, preparing to get back to an airbase on the coast of Southern Vietnam. My best friend Jacob sat beside me. I had seen hell itself during this war. I was excited to get back to the States. Little did I know I would still hear the chirping of jungle crickets through my treks through the night.

I turned over to Jacob. "So, what are you planning to do once we return to the states?" I asked.

Jacob replied with "Maybe travel to New York. I'd love to see the Statue of Liberty."

Before I could reply, the whirring of the helicopter began to turn into an eerie screech. The copter was crashing. I'll save you the details, but most of the squadron didn't make it. There was a few of us left. Luckily, we were merely a mile from the airbase. Unluckily, we had to trek through the wilderness to get there. The Jungle was hell. Gunfire from all sides, but you don't see the source of it. We slowly treked through. It had been night when we crashed, and the sun was slowly rising.

We camped out at the airbase, and slept until 6:00 AM. It was a measly hour of sleep, but we could rest on the Helicopter once we got out of international waters. That's when I woke up. Jacob was missing. They checked his bunk. Gone. They checked under it. Bags vanished. He couldn't have been taken as a POW. There would have been screaming in the night. The only option is that he deserted. But why would he? The Jungle was inhospitable. I left Vietnam with my best friend torn from me by the cruel hands of war. That's when I finally arrived home at my apartment.

I watched through the window when I saw a shape moving outside. A man with an eye patch was wandering the street. That's when I saw something familiar. Jacob had always had a signature scar on his right cheek from combat. I remember when he got it. Combat knife slashed him. I ran outside. I approached him, yelling "JACOB!"

He replied with "Well, it's been a while, hasn't it?"

I said "Where'd you get the eyepatch?"

He said that he got it "while on a boat trip." I was getting suspicious. Not that I already wasn't.

"Why'd you do it, Jacob, why'd you abandon us?"

"I couldn't take it anymore. The Machine Gun Fire in my dreams. I didn't care about veteran benefits. I didn't want bonuses for witnessing hell itself. I snuck out that night with my bags and sneaked through the jungle until I found a port. I lost my eye along the journey thanks to snipers."

"But... Jacob... you were heroic in the war. You saved so many men. I wouldn't be surprised if you were getting the Medal of Honor. You had the world man, you had the world!"

"I had a World that rewarded me for violence. I did not want that world. I just wanted to be free from all the death. Young men coming in, only to be downed by machine gun fire in the first few seconds. I don't want to live in that World. I sold the World."

It was at that moment when I realized it.

I was face to face with

The Man Who Sold The World.