Toy Soldiers

pretty soft. That general softness rewarded his actions with a soft patter as three digits, severed by the closing of the door, tumbled lightly on to the carpet where they twitched once each, then went still. Shuddering, he thanked whatever thing up there looked out for people that they weren't the rare kind of fresh ones, and returned his attention to getting out of the house without having to fight his way through the nest he'd just disturbed in the innocent-looking bungalow opposite. He hefted his weapon of choice ahead of him, ready for any more crusty ones still hidden and dormant within. Dormant, that was, until some idiot burst through their front door to get away from the dozen or so other things outside. Finding that the downstairs of the house was empty, he decided to get the hell away from it without raiding the cupboards, before the crowd out the front flowed around the sides like water, and cut off any chance of escape. Minutes later, jogging uncomfortably with the sole of one shoe flapping noisily with each awkward step, he thanked that same unknown deity for his managing to escape another bloody situation that should have killed him. I guess I was just lucky, he told himself, but to know just how lucky, he supposed he should start from the beginning. Chapter One 1989 Living on a farm in what was basically the arse-end of nowhere had its perks for a boy of nine. His older sister said she felt trapped there, but he thought it was the ultimate freedom. A few years after moving there, he thought he'd learned enough about life to know that her feelings of being trapped were nothing to do with the geography. There were some surrounding villages, and a dozen or so other places in sight if you climbed on top of the biggest barn, but other than that, it was totally isolated. He thought the farm was the biggest single place on earth, but then again, he was young when his family moved there. He'd been in that happy bubble of childhood ignorance for years, right up until he noticed that things had begun to change at home. He and his sister had to walk just under two miles to the main road, where the bus would take them towards the bigger towns along the south coast, and their schools were not on army bays. This was another happy note from way back when in his mind, stopping lessons and being allowed to run to the window to watch a convoy of chieftain tanks roll by with an impossibly loud roar, caused by their heavy tracks. Hundreds of tons of armour screeching passed on their way to the training grounds, feeding the fantasies of the children. Some of the other boys bragged about how they bet their dad was in one of them, or about how their mum did something else equally heroic. He remembered one particular time that happened, when he re-took his seat with a sudden shroud of realism, of unhappiness, and he finally saw the difference between him and the other kids. His dad wasn't driving a tank. If he was driving anything, it was a tractor on the farm, and his mother didn't work because she... well, he didn't know why. All he did know was that if she didn't get her glass bottles with her special water in that he wasn't allowed to touch, and if she ran out of her cigarettes, then all hell would break loose in the house. With that cloud of realism descending permanently on him and never leaving, he suffered the taunting of other children as he cried in the middle of the classroom. The truth was, he had been shielded from a lot of the bad things that went on under the roof that had been provided for him, a refrain he had heard shouted so often, like a roof made anything better. His sister was the one, he realised, much too late, who had protected him. It was she who threw herself in front of their parents to take the punishment he had apparently earned, and she did it tight-lipped, so she couldn't cry out and give either of them the satisfaction of knowing they had caused someone pain. That only made things worse, and by the time he knew something was truly wrong and his behaviour invited more punishments, she had already hurt herself once too often to cope with the pressure. To that day, despite every unfathomable insane thing that had since transpired, he could still see the vivid images of his sister being taken away to hospital, screaming his name, telling him to be brave as she kept fighting all the way until the van door slammed shut to muffle her voice. "'Good bloody riddance!' his there mother spat at the white ambulance as it shrank in to the distance, until finally rounding a bend to be swallowed up into the green surroundings. Ungrateful little cow never knew which side her bread was buttered. With that last, cruel and callous remark, she lit another cigarette and scowled down at her son, smacking him hard across the back of his head. He looked back up at her and was careful to keep the rebellion out of his eyes. He could tell that she was desperate to say something.