In The End

Most days in the outpost were boring. Same routine, every day. Get up, wash, eat, report for duty, stare at a forest for several hours, write down in a book that you saw nothing, then eat, wash, sleep. Then same again the next day.

I focused on the date twenty years from my enlistment, when I would get my discharge, my lot of land, and some slaves. That’s what kept me going through those boring days, the thought of what was at the end of it all for me.

Then It emerged from the forest, and my end came due.