Demoshanu
an excerpt

I am a coward.

The world’s worst, in fact. By the time you finish reading this, you’re going to hate me so much you’ll want to kill me. But as with everything else I’m about to tell you, it is not nearly in the way you’d think.

As you might have guessed by glancing at the cover, I am indeed the esteemed war hero you’ve come to know by a slew of ridiculous nicknames yelled out by national news reporters daily. “Marsh Mayhem!” “The Mighty Marsh!” I’m starting to wonder if anyone knows my real name, Marshall Denlock. A coward? That’s the absolute last word anyone would use to describe me. And yet, that is what I am.

I have but one unifying quest in my life. It’s the same kind of quest that you read about in mythology and history. It is the question: How does one escape death?

And to think I went to war to look for the answer.

What war, you ask? Why, virtually the entire world population is involved in it in some way. It’s happening even as I write this. In a nutshell, it started with a few countries, then representatives from every continent got involved, and it has just convoluted into what I prefer to call “The Nothing War.” Like me, however, it goes by any other name you can think of. It’s also the only conflict that I can truly and safely say cannot be talked about without being blown out of proportion. Ever since it started, the media has had a heyday, blaming this country and that leader and making ridiculous amounts of money doing it. Political funnymen dominate the airwaves.

Mighty Marsh. A coward. Get used to the idea.

In case you didn’t happen to be one of the students forced to write a report about my “heroics”, I want to write about my true life, leaving nothing out. Forget everything you knew about me. I did not come from an impoverished family. I did not take it completely upon myself to read entire dictionaries so that I might attend college. No, my parents were wealthy and paid for every last penny of my education. I also did not enter the war because of any moral decision or patriotic duty. I went to war for many complex reasons, mostly ones involving personal gain.

Never, never did I think that out of all the billions of people on this earth, I would ever come across a person like Namke. Adjectives elude me when it comes to Namke. Looking at him was like looking in a funhouse mirror: I saw the exact opposite of myself. Namke was a storyteller with a powerful and versatile voice. If he knew anything of celebrities, he could have done impressions for a living. His real-life accounts, short stories, long stories, fictions, fables, legends and poetry and everything in between... his mind could have filled volumes. He knew just the plot to entertain and lift everyone’s spirits, including mine when it mattered most.

And I hated him. I made sure he knew that. I was more cruel toward him than anyone I ever knew.

Now do you believe I’m a coward? Though my cruelty toward him was reason enough, know this--it still was not the real reason. I am a coward for a reason that was entirely of my choice and control. It took me years after I finished my service to discover why. Once again, and I shall reveal this several times, it is never in the way you’d think.

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But as we swapped stories of who got what piercing and how to determine how many electrons were in the outer shell of any lanthanide or actinide, we all rubbed off on each other. I learned the most about people when they came and asked me to help with their homework. The first thing they would do is sigh in exasperation and recline on my couch, which told it all: they work four jobs, they’re frustrated with their fraternity brothers, their lab partner ditched.

I’ll tell you, there is a sense in all of us, a weakness if you will, which is of a different degree depending on the person. This sense is how much one is affected by the personal struggles belonging to the people around them. Mine must have been keener than I knew; whenever I think of one of the thousands of people I had met, the first thing I remember is the personal problems they faced.

Mahmoud, hated for being an immigrant, friend of a floormate.
Stefan, stepchild and alcoholic, anthropology class.
Patrick, sexually confused, I’d see him in the cafeteria every so often, nowhere else.
Melissa, academiholic, friend of a floormate, attended McPorton University but came to visit quite often just to complain.

Two things arise from this sense. First, what am I supposed to do about their problems? I can show them how to revolve a function about the x-axis, and that’s all. I couldn’t relate to them at all. I never went through what they did. Not that I wanted to, but it made it difficult to understand people.
Second, why does the mere fact that I know past the surface of their lives come across as me judging them or slandering them? People would tell me what’s bothering them, and then, as soon as I knew, stare at me as if it was my fault.

As I said, my top marks attracted the attention of everyone. Every dean (we had a dean that was actually named Dean) would send me letters which talked of money and success and leadership and other collegiate delusions. Call me cruel, but I would have paid to see the looks on their faces when I made my decision to join the forces. Ironic, too, how I threw this in the face of the very people from whom I learned to despise the war.

But I knew something that the media wouldn’t tell. The war was no longer about fighting. Fighting took place a decade earlier. Now, though we were technically still in a state of conflict, the battles became sparse. Now, to enlist in any of the forces was to sign up for an all-expenses paid sight-seeing tour of the world.