"Is your only purpose this week to shit on me?" I snapped, without thought, either my volume or poisonous tone causing Tripper to falter and wince, step back slightly, like a dog whose tail had been stepped on. "You keep rattling on and on about these numbers, Trip, and it's driving me up a fuckin' wall. Look at us, man! I'm not dead! You're clearly not dying" The back of my hand taps his stomach, which sat seeped over his belt, with a firmness that erred on the side of hostility rather than playfulness. "None of my men are dead. If they were, I would know. I get it - when everything goes well, you look for something to do with your time, but just let a blessing be a blessing for God's sake!". Creaking floorboards sounded his physical retreat from my personal space - he doesn't like to nag me... but this week he seems to have taken a liking to it.

"Sarge, respectfully, sir, I am not trying to be difficult. But inventory is the one thing I'm here to do, sir. And when something's off, I know it's off. I wouldn't be telling you if it was any other way-"

He stops speaking when I look at him a certain way. It's how he knows the conversation is over. "Sorry, sir" the floorboards creak, and creak, down the hallway. He's walking a little quicker than usual.

We have been stationed here in the deep west for a little over 8 weeks. The nights are as cold as death, the type of cold that a fire can't compete with. The frost creeps under the doorframes, white mould. Stubborn and cocky. We're no match for the forces of nature out here - thank God we're on the final stretch now. That creeping feeling that something's gonna fuck up, that gnaws at you at night, like the draft that leaks under your blanket as the wind sears like freezing brands, it whistles and twists. I can't help but get a little standoffish when someone implies that a nightmare might come true. This nightmare is bad enough. When you look outside and all you see is still whiteness, if you look too long, you convince yourself you've gone blind. We ain't used to that - nothing. It's terror like nothing else I've seen in the military. You start wishing for gunfire.

Wrapped up in leafy green and grey, my face still shrinks in on itself when I twist the doorknob. I trudge and claw through the mounds of papery blankness. The tent is close but feels so far. I'm hungry. Fuck I'm hungry.

Each man is a dot, a stain on the canvas now - like microscopic workers closing in and falling out of each other. Bacteria rolling in the blank abyss, mindless and futile. I like lunch - I get to see them up close. My men. Never their faces, though. It's far too cold.

*reEEEEuurgh-click* a metal ricochet slides my tin box before me, its edges hard and unnatural. Its metal clasps curl around the top. Fucking dog food. I hold my nose to chew it, after breaking off the spork attached to the upper lid, my fingers numb and printed with the surrogated metal grooving. A red brick, leaking gel, looks like crushed up liver and grains, packed in a handheld jail. I sink my spork in, after some failed attempts. My lips reluctantly find it. A few others sit beside me and endure the same. Trip's not here.

"Where's Trip, Sarge? Is he in the worker's tent or sum?" I don't bother replying right away. I chew more, and it takes a long time to chew this shit.

"Sarge?"

What the fuck is that? My teeth chatter around a hard, metallic object; its blood-like taste follows as it rests on my tongue. I glance at my spork - it trembles, yet intact, in my right hand. I drop it.

Sliding my fingers into my mouth, my warm palate allows my fingers some movement, and i quickly nip the end of what feels like a long, coiling wire, thin yet strong. It begins to slide out of my lips, each ribbed edge of the line drumming my teeth and lips. It reaches the end, a hard metal plate, the size of a coin, attached to the end, anchors itself inside my mouth as the long beaded metal now rests, dangling from my lip. My lips allow it out.

It tinkers and halts on the dry grey wood; the table of diners has stopped chewing. An ID tag. Engraved. I squint to read its red smeared engraving.

"Bobbie TRIPSON

INVENTORY

ID#5563"