He awoke in a dugout, one of the deeper ones in the trench, but other than that he didn’t know much. He wanted to sit up, but he was too weak, and his feet hurt badly, as well as his shins; they ached as if splinters of someone else’s bone had been driven into them at random angles. If a foot could have a headache, and did ever a pair of feet have a migraine, his feet had them beat. He also felt dizzy, and cold. No one should be cold on a warm night like this.
               He hadn’t even been hearing or listening, until a fellow soldier looked at him and paused only long enough in his card game to call to someone, “He’s awake,” and then make another trick.
               He had just begun listening to the sounds of gunfire, dropping shells, and other war sounds around him when he looked down the length of his body towards his feet; they hurt so much. Something was wrong. He sat up and scooted towards the wall of the dugout for support. He grew even dizzier as he saw that he had no feet; in fact, he had hardly anything below his knees. Belts were strapped tight just above his kneecaps like tourniquets. He recalled a shell landing in the trench. Why hadn’t he been in the dugout? Then he remembered--one of the young recruits had begun to get claustrophobic and leave the dugout. He had chased the recruit and tried to catch him to get him back. He had sensed a shell coming (as a soldier always could; they wouldn’t see or hear anything, and suddenly they’d be running or ducking), and tried to turn back, but hadn’t quite made it. The recruit had been reduced to thick, meaty, bloody nuggets and bits of uniform stuck to the side of the trench. Then he had passed out.
               He looked in shocked awe at the stumps that were his lower legs. As he watched them, a small froth of blood bubbled out of the right one amidst the fresh, weak scabbing. The skin around the belts was black and blue. The skin at the ends of his legs was mildly ragged, but for their state seemed to be amazingly clean cut. His head swam and there was a tingling in his cheeks like he was going to be sick. He thought he must have the most realistic imaginary limbs out of anyone.
               He slid himself down so that he was lying on the ground again. He thought desperate thoughts. Maybe an angel would come save him, a girl--one with soft dark doe eyes or maybe one with bedroom eyes, yes, maybe blue ones? The kind of eyes that would show him all kinds of colors that might mesmerize him into numbness if he looked deep into them, with thick lashes that were blonde at the tips. He closed his eyes and thought about her crouching next to him, looking down into his face. She liked his nose, it was a nice nose; everybody liked it. She would--
               Suddenly, she seemed to flit away into the depths of his mind. Damn, running from a man with no legs sure was shitty. The girl had constituted the first thoughts of love or lust he’d had in months, if ever. He had hoped she would come back again, to show him through to heaven, where, hopefully, legs were not entirely necessary. Or was she only a one-night stand of the imagination?
               He opened his eyes and started. The dirty face of a soldier was staring down at him, not the girl. The soldier straightened his helmet on his head as he knelt down. Bright blue eyes peeped out from among the dirt. They looked cheerful enough (probably to try and restore hope to the legless-wonder), but were strained at the edges. “Reiner,” said the soldier. His eyes seemed like the closest thing he had seen to the ocean in months.
               His eyes slid lazily towards the blue-eyed soldier. Reiner? What’s Reiner?
               “Reiner!” the man repeated.
               He lifted a shaking hand in acknowledgement, realizing he was being addressed.
               “I’m going to see if someone can get you out of here soon, okay?”
               Reiner nodded.
               The soldier hiked up his pants as he stood; his belt was missing.

              When Reiner woke up again, he was still in the dugout. He was alone, save for the blue-eyed soldier sitting to his right. He was shaking ever so slightly, like a low electric current was constantly running through him. Blood seeped from somewhere near the base of his head, where it joined with his neck. His helmet was crooked again, and Reiner straightened it after a moment. “What happened?” asked Reiner. “Is the bombardment over? We’re on the offensive now, aren’t we?”
               The man did not reply, only looked at him with desperate, glazed eyes. The eyes asked nothing from Reiner; they did not even hold him to the debt he owed him. Yet they spoke of every love, triumph, and hardship, in the man’s heart; they seemed to tell every secret, sweetness, and threat ever whispered in his ear.
               Apparently the moving of his eyes hurt him; he attempted to grimace with pain. He shook a little harder, and his helmet fell crooked once more.
               Reiner became worried. He leaned forward as best he could (pulling up the waist of his pants a little as he moved, because they were loose for lack of a belt), so that he could observe the other soldier’s face. A scrap of meat trailed through the muck as the stumps of his legs moved. The scrap hadn’t been so lengthy before; one of the fat, hungry, watery-eyed rats had probably been working on it.
               The soldier’s face was glistening, as was his own, with sweat, but there were also tears running from the other man’s eyes. Reiner realized what had happened to the man. “Your neck, it’s…” he decided against announcing it was broken. “It’ll get better,” he lied.
               The soldier shook harder still; his head hit the side of the dugout unchecked. Reiner put his palm against the bleeding bump on the back of the head. The man made a sound of pain and Reiner removed his hand. The soldier’s chest threw out a little and the muscles under his sternum clenched; the cords in his neck showed.
               Reiner tried to distract him, so maybe he wouldn’t fight so hard; it might ease the pain. “You’ll go home, it’ll stop,” he grew more desperate with each word. No one would be able to save the soldier, and if they could, he’d most likely be paralyzed.
               The tears flowed faster. Why wouldn’t the man quit shaking?
               Reiner tried to make it sound as if he thought the soldier would survive long enough to go home. “You can lay in bed, with--”
               “C--Cat, an--” The soldier’s eyes shut tightly.
               “Yes, with your cat, and your girl…”
               “Go--ing to,” he choked. “Mar--”
               Reiner raised his eyebrows casually, and picked at his nails as if nothing were wrong. What an actor he was! “Marry her, yes; she’s a lucky girl, I’m sure of it.” He paused. “Fish, does she like fish? You could get her a bowl and put some nice little fish in it. Wow, she sure is lucky--everyone likes fish.”
               “I--I’m luck…lucky…?” It almost sounded like a question.
               Reiner turned his head towards the suffering man. He removed the perpetually crooked helmet as the soldier’s striking blue eyes disappeared into his skull. He ran his hand through the exposed, thick brown hair, comfortingly and encouragingly, as if his hand there would help convey the meaning of his words. He felt a louse move underneath his rough palm. The soldier drew in a ragged breath. “Home,” said Reiner. “You can go home--I’ll make sure you get there okay, make sure you get there just fine, you can get better and marry her,” he thought of the girl in his dream; the one who was supposed to come and take him away but never did. “You can marry her; she’ll like that. Your cat will purr; it’ll be glad, too. ”
               He put the barrel of his pistol to the man’s temple, but didn’t quite touch it. It shook just close enough to the head that it tickled the hairs there. A spasm went through the man. “The wind,” said Reiner. “That’s all.”
               He pulled the trigger.