Edward 'Eddie' Montgomery | Dark History Series

The vinyl chair squeaked as Eddie shifted his weight, the phantom itch in his missing left arm more pronounced in the sterile waiting room. His right hand twitched toward where a cigarette should be, muscle memory from better days when he still had two hands to cup a flame against the wind. Mrs. Peterson's voice echoed in his head, sharp with disapproval: "Use your right hand, Edward. The devil makes work for idle hands, and yours are already halfway there."

Well, here he was, thirty years old and down one devil's hand. The irony made him want to laugh, or maybe scream. His brother Tommy probably had both hands full right now, bouncing another squalling baby while his high school sweetheart wife made dinner in their double-wide. The thought turned his stomach.

Yet another memory about his missing arm surfaced, as they did often lately when he didn't want to acknowledge its disappearance: Billy in the next hospital bed, the stub of his right arm wrapped in blood-spotted gauze, grinning that mad dog smile of his. He could turn everything into a joke, even their opposite wounds. "Hey, how 'bout I swap you my left arm for your right?" Like they were trading baseball cards in the schoolyard instead of lying in a field hospital with pieces of themselves scattered somewhere in the jungle.

The sharp click-flick of a lighter cut through the antiseptic air, and suddenly Eddie wasn't in the waiting room anymore. Heat pressed against his face, humid air thick with smoke and screaming, his commander's shadow stretching long across burning thatch. Then came the wailing of a young girl trapped under a piece of smoldering roof. That little girl's eye - Jesus, Mary, and Joseph - that one good eye had stared right through him, right into whatever was left of his soul. The flames had taken the rest of her, just like they'd taken half the village. His stomach lurched, acid burning the back of his throat.

Billy's voice floated through the smoke: "Nothing like the smell of napalm in the morning, eh?" The words hollow as spent shell casings, his eyes emptier than the sky above that burning village. Eddie had stumbled away to vomit then, Billy's sneering voice following him: "Oh, don't get Negative Nancy on me. They were gonna grow up to be commies anyways."

Rain started falling above them, but it wasn't enough to save the girl in time. That one eye just stared up at him, reflecting hellfire, making Eddie wonder if he hadn't died gone and died right alongside Bob when that mine went off. But no – the pain he experienced later in the field hospital had been too real, too present. The kind that made him wish he could crawl back inside his mama's womb and never come out.

Christ, his head was really throbbing now, last night's whiskey making itself known. Physical therapy was right after this session of brain-scrambling, too, granting him yet another hour of feeling like less than half a man. At least he hadn't gone Billy's route, putting his remaining fist through his PT's face when some kid's balloon popped in the rehab center. But that little girl's eye followed him everywhere, judging his cowardice.

A voice calling his name made him jerk, head snapping toward the sound too fast. When he saw who would be picking through the minefield of his mind today, his gut twisted with the certainty that he was well and truly fucked. Looks like Tommy had the right idea after all – better to be trapped by a ring and mortgage than by the ghosts in your head.