⸎

​

In the youth battalion, due to my slightly above age intelligence, emotional maturity, and technical proficiency I was made a tinker.

 

This entailed fixing things mostly, taking them apart,

generally getting my hands dirty.

​

            Later on, when the olders learned of my penchant for mercilessness, manipulation, and self-survival, I was promoted to a handler.

​

“Handler” – an elegant euphemism for the grisly business it actually involved:  of leading the youngest age group, who we dubbed minecatchers, and whose unenviable task it was to wander enemy territory using their bodies to pinpoint the exact location of active mines, to their merry deaths.

​

________________________________________________________________

​

Here is a list of other nicknames for handlers:

​

            -Pied Piper

            -Dethshepherd

            -Grimguide

            -Softslayer

​

​

 

 

 

 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

 

​

My favorite minecatcher was a boy named Teddy.

 

His story, which is the greater story of the war,

is his own to tell so I’ll leave him to tell it.

 

All you need know is he lived longer than most and seemed oblivious to the many evils (too many) his young life had subjected him to up to the very end.

​

He had been told from the very beginning, like all minecatchers, that heaven was a playground where your mother would be waiting for you, on the other end of a very long slide that unfurled like a giant’s spiral tongue,

but only if you were lucky enough to “catch” a mine.

​

            Soon after he did just that, I decided to retire from the war business forever.

​

________________________________________________________________

​

Bit of advice: don’t ever tell anyone you’re going AWOL.      Just go.

​

⸎

​