Wounds

By J.S. McInroy

Mary Devstenia, is recently returned to Troy, New York from her Army Reserve deployment in Iraq, during which time she was involved in the shooting-deaths of an Iraqi family, including their small daughter. The effects of this incident are most profound, and Mary soon finds herself descending into an emotional Hell of her own creation. Her invisible wounds perhaps are mortal.

Wounds includes a free sample of J.S. McInroy's full length novel, Army Girl.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Slate Run Publishing
• Release date: Apr 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9781513019987

Book preview

WOUNDS

LITTLE GIRLS CAN OFTEN be huge pains, especially those old enough for hero worship yet not adult enough to menstruate. Right into this mold fit little Alita, eleven year-old daughter of Mary’s cousin Marta. Mary had nothing better to do, but still.... In no way would she have agreed to visit Allie’s school and talk about the Army to a bunch of freaky little kids if not for the little one’s pleading and nagging.

If she had her druthers, she would sleep the days away in the comfort of her once bright room, then slip out evenings and sometimes weekends for too much alcohol and explorations of uncharted emotional territory with the eternally surprising and often disturbing Lenard Cohan. Whatever she found in him was becoming more and more important as part of the evolution from who she had become in Iraq to whoever was being created within her now that she was back home. It was a doppelganger at present, but, she knew, her duality, the old and the new, would soon resolve into a single being named Mary Devstenia who no longer would be she who once had born that name.

The process was disturbing her family. Dad had been trying to interest her in something other than pursuing the phantoms she found in her own mind and troubled imagination. Mostly though, he just sat with her, drinking beer and chewing on jerky while she went on and on about nothing at all, making noise to drown out the voices inside her. At times that was enough, but not always. A veteran of Vietnam, he had his own demons, although he never spoke of them, could not share. Sometimes he would nod, allow a rueful smile, but never any more. He was stronger, perhaps made of sterner stuff than his only child, his beloved Mary. Why, she could not keep herself from wondering, knowing all he must have known, had he not in some way prevented her from enlisting, from going off to war? For that matter, why had he stood idly aside when she entered into the disastrous union with that asshole Zach Peters?

She knew it was not his fault. Deep down where she once had never visited, other things, nameless, faceless demons, had driven her and were now pushing her toward whatever end awaited. Her father was doomed to stand off to one side, an impotent observer as his Mary shrunk away, disappearing into the dark tides of PTSD sucking the sand from beneath her feet, clutching midnight tentacles about her defenseless ankles.

And that little creep (thought with a smile) Allie was no help at all, even though Dad and Marta had probably seen the invitation as a positive step, perhaps the first one back for Mary from the edge of an emotional and possibly physical collapse. What their Army Girl had seen or done over there (In Country David would have called it) they could not know. What they did know, however, was that she was slowly eating herself up and scattering the scraps to the dogs circling about her. They had to do something. And Allie might be their ticket to success.

ON THEY COME, HEEDLESS of the warnings, a giant fan of smoke spreading behind into the still, dawn air. Al shouts. Mary feels her ’16 kick against her shoulder. Then again, and again.... Afterward...in the back among the bloody dead of an entire family, curls the little one. A child of three... maybe four.

Mary and Al had been the last line. They had done what they had to do. He had fired as well, but she knew her rounds had done the job. She had blown the baby’s face all to hell in a crimson curdle of brain and slivered bone. No comfort that the dilapidated Suzuki had been packed with C-4 and its occupants had been bent upon their own suicidal plan of murder.

Mary has shot a baby! And her life is lost forever. Her fate sealed.

SHE WAS SO cute, Allie that is, and so excited that her all grown up cousin, a true hero from the Army, was going to talk to her class for Women at Work Week. Cynthia’s mom had already visited. She was a nurse and worked at a hospital. Billy’s grandmother was a cop. She had a gun and had actually given their teacher, Miss Geitner, a ticket once. That was cool. But Cousin Mary was a soldier.