This was an assignment for my English class, but I think it's a fair story that deserves to be shared.

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Blood. Dust. Smoke.

A leaflet. Figures in bold, red serif typeface screamed, “₽700,000 upon enlisting.”

His childhood crayon drawing of a stick-figure soldier still hung beside his uncle’s medals. He remembered drawing it and meant to recreate his dream of fighting on a battlefield like his uncle did.

At the dinner table, his lips eventually murmured a few scattered words, “I’m enlisting.”

A slam in his face as he expected.

He dragged himself back to his room, staring at the painting — one of the few sources of colour in his vision. Natural inclination towards violence, hormones demanding offence, childhood dreams of returning with glorious victory cannot be denied at once with a slam, he thought.

The officer did not question his age nor the reason why he came to the enlisting station at 3AM. On the paperwork casually filled, he signed his name.

He was dispatched to Druskva, where his commander demanded his squad to infiltrate an outpost lost to their enemy. Dust painted the entire sky into an alerting yellowish shade, rendered the Sun as if it were bathed in blood and flesh, and allowed him minimum intake of air. His lungs must taste like rust, he thought, but continued to crawl forward. Exactly what he loved. Exactly what he dreamed for.

The drone strike came before he fired a single shot. Then perfect silence.

Maxim recovers from temporary blindness as an ominous, sharp noise continues to erode his mind. He is startled to see one of teammate’s skull slowly rolling across the path the came from, but then gets more shocked when he feels his left arm turns… no, it is no longer existent. He sees his left arm, bones exposed to dusty air, barely attached to his shoulder with thin skin. He never dreamed about this.

The pain was a living thing — gnawing his thoughts, searing his sanity, devouring his will. His vision pulsed with his heartbeat, darkening at the edges, threatening to drag him into void. He tried to move his fingers – nothing – a phantom limb already, though the wound still dyes the dirt underneath him crimson. This isn’t the glorious pain of battle he imagined as a child. This is humiliation. This is failure.

Footsteps. “Droog, medic.”

A man, whose white coat is covered with permanent stains of blood and dust, follows Maxim’s moans in agony. Without anesthesia, the medic slices through the last sinews of Maxim’s ruined arm, the bone saw screeching like a wounded animal. No painkillers? No warning? Maxim’s thoughts rage, his teeth biting into his own tongue until copper flooded his mouth. Butcher. Butcher. Butcher. Droog tightens the tourniquet with a clinical detachment that makes Maxim want to scream. Does he even see me as human?

“You are the very first living creature I met this afternoon,” says Droog as he carries a sympathetic smile, “but unfortunately not one with four limbs anymore.”

The medic’s hands move with practiced brutality, as though limbs are mere inconveniences to be discarded. This isn’t healing — it’s salvage, he thinks, bile rising in his throat. Droog’s eyes, though, betray a hollowed-out resignation, as if kindness had been ground into dust long ago. He’s not cruel. Just … empty.

Droog brings Maxim to a temporary shelter and offers Maxim some water in a bottle. Noticing the awkwardness of silence, Droog says, “Let me guess. Childhood hero complex or the ₽700,000?”

Maxim smiles bitterly. “The former. I drew pictures of it. Now I’m the one in pieces.”

Droog presses a backup GPS device into Maxim’s only hand. “Before this, I was pre-med. Wanted to join Doctors Without Borders. Now I just patch up kids like you so generals can send you back out,” Droog says with a low but steady voice. He wipes his hands on his white coat, leaving fresh streaks of red. “Thought I could patch up kids in war zones, maybe even stop a few wars by showing people what they’re really doing to each other.” He laughs, dry and hollow. “Now I just stitch up boys like you so they can go back out and get blown apart again… Alright, enough of chit-chatting. Go, before another drone finds us.” Maxim nods in reply, and silently leaves as if he had never been there.

Visibility becomes better as the area nearly froze after the incident. Maxim staggers slowly on his way back, until he sees another flash…

Startled, Maxim glances back.

He sees the medic’s shelter burning ruthlessly like the Sun.

The 30-minute path to the controlled outpost stretches infinitely. Each step jarring his mangled shoulder, his remaining hand clutching Droog’s rust-stained water bottle. He stares at the fire, half-hoping to spot the medic’s bloodied coat trailing behind, but only crows circle the ruins. The GPS, still blinking in his palm, feels like a eulogy. By the time he reaches the outpost, he can no longer say a complete word.

The commander does not question about Maxim’s silence. Paperwork casually proving his injury filled, and a train ticket back home offered. “Thank you for your service,” the commander says without looking at Maxim at all. A ₽700,000 transfer to Maxim’s bank account is made immediately after his departure.

Three months later, the war still rages — but Maxim’s television chirps with false cheer. The news anchor’s voice drips honey: “…minimal casualties, a strategic withdrawal…” Then the screen splits: the president’s smirk beside Droog’s faded ID photo. “Heroic martyr,” the caption declares.

Maxim’s fist clenches. Martyr. As if Droog has chosen to die. As if his life is currency to be spent. What is the point? Not of war — war has a point, for the men in their polished offices. It is power. It is territory. It is ego. But what is the point for the ones who bled for it? The ones who believed in something bigger?

Droog has wanted to heal the world. Instead, the world burned him alive. And for what? So some general could add another star to his lapel? So some politician could wave a flag and call it a “tactical retreat”?

Nice people killing nice people. Idealists dying for liars. Is that all war is?