After The War

The barracks room was small.

The young man sitting on the bed looked around the small confines of the four walls.  There wasn’t much in the room.  A bed, made neatly and tightly.  A quarter bounced on it would nearly hit the ceiling.  A wardrobe and a dresser, both full of uniforms and a few civilian outfits.  All were neatly folded or hung, with no creases in evidence.  A small television, a desk with a laptop computer.  A phone sat on a nightstand by the bed.  On the dresser, there was a tray, and on the tray were an ice bucket and a bottle of scotch.  A tumbler held a couple of fingers of golden liquid, the bottle not much more.  Their reflections showed in the spotless mirror behind them.

All in all, it wasn’t the worst place the young man had been.  Far from it.

He looked around the room again, taking in the meager surroundings.  Then he rose from the bed and picked up the glass of liquor, taking a sip, then another, longer one.  Finally, he set the glass back down and made his way to the phone, stumbling a little as he rounded the bed.

The number he called was on a card next to the phone.  It was like that on every military base he had ever been to, and this one was no exception.  It was not, however, the number for room service.  Barracks rooms didn’t have room service.  The occupants were expected to see to their upkeep themselves, and usually did a better job than any hotel staff.  No, the number on the card was there for another, more important purpose.

The man picked up the phone, blinking at the card.  He dialed, missing the last two digits.  A message telling him that his call could not be completed as dialed.  He placed the handset back on the receiver to hang up, picked it up again.  A finger punched digits with exaggerated care.  This time there was a ringing tone on the other end of the connection.

With a click, the call connected.

“Hello!  You’ve reached the Goddess Technical Help Line!”
The young man blinked and opened his mouth to reply, only to be cut off again.  “We will be there in just a moment to grant your access request.”

The call disconnected before the young man could make any kind of response.  Shaking his head, he put down
the phone and made his way back to the dresser to pick up the whisky.  He turned away from the mirror to take a gulp, then turned back to refill the glass.  And came face to face with a woman.

He didn’t jerk back or otherwise panic.  He was a well-trained man, and not quick to panic.  He did wonder how she had gotten into the room.  The door was bolted, and he was relatively sure she hadn’t been there earlier.

With a sigh, the young man sat down heavily on the bed.  While he wasn’t prone to hallucinations, he had had rather a lot of whisky, and the effects of alcohol were well known to him, if not quite in the copious quantities that he had imbibed this evening.  He therefore took this time to study the non-existent woman.

She was tall, perhaps five feet nine inches, maybe a bit more.  Her hair was a honey blonde color, and it was long, spilling down her back.  She wore a gold necklace and earrings, including some odd clips on her upper ears of a kind he had never seen before.  She wore an odd robe-type garment, blue and white with yellow accents.  Oddest of all, perhaps, was her face.

It was absolutely beautiful.  The lines long and classical, but she had some kind of markings or tattoos.  Two of them were triangular, and were below and slightly outside her eyes.  The third was a long vertical shape on her forehead and centered between her eyes.

The woman glanced around the room, and then, smiling, turned to him.  “Hello!  I am the goddess Belldandy.  We received your system request and I have been dispatched to grant it.  Here’s my card.”
She handed him a gilded card, gold colored with ornate scrollwork and printing on it.  The card stock was thick and the printing raised.  On the card was the name “Belldandy”, with a smaller line of text below.  This said “Goddess First Class, type two unlimited”.

The man stared at the card.  What the hell, he thought.  Might as well play along.  “Okay, Belldandy,” he said, the words coming out mostly unslurred.  “Why don’t you tell me why you’re here?”  He sipped the whiskey, and then remembered that it was empty.

The hallucination smiled at him.  “I am here from the Goddess Relief Office to help you.  We goddesses occasionally get phone calls from people like you that are in difficult situations, and we are sent to grant one wish to help those people.”

She turned in place, taking in the layout of the small room before she continued.  “I do have to inform you that we are only allowed to grant one wish.  If you want to be rich, we can make it happen.  If you want to destroy the world, well, we can do that too, though we would prefer not to work with that sort of person.”

Turning back to him, she graced him with another brilliant smile.

***

Belldandy had been dispatched to a great many people in her time with the GRO.  She had dealt with people that wanted to rule the world, people that wanted to fall in love and even one person that simply wanted to be a world-renowned cellist.  Never in all her millennia had she ever encountered a person as crushed by despair as this young man.  It had taken a conscious effort to keep the smile on her face as she read his aura and realized what he had been feeling when he dialed the number on the card.
She had expected another common call.  Help someone find their life’s love, make them talented, give them riches.  But this young man didn’t seem to want any of those things.  As she continued reading his aura, she started to get glimpses of his past.

They were horrifying.

She fought back tears as she turned her full attention on the person that had called her down here.  He was sitting on the bed somehow holding himself upright.  From what she knew about the effects of alcohol, this was a feat.  He was wearing some kind of uniform, made up of small squares in greens and browns and blacks.  There was a nametape over his right breast pocket on the top, and another over the left pocket that said, “U.S. Marines.”

He had short hair and a jagged scar on his left cheek.  He also was starting to show a slight beard, as if he had shaven early that morning.  His eyes were concerning, though.  They were a bit glassy, and she gathered that he might not be speaking with all his mental faculties intact.

Belldandy couldn’t very well let him make a wish in his inebriated state, so with a gentle motion of her hand and a whispered incantation, she slowly pulled all the alcohol out of his system.

The young man felt something strange happening to him.  He couldn’t really describe it.  It wasn’t necessarily unpleasant, but it didn’t feel good either.  He felt his head slowly clearing, the muzziness fading away as a morning fog burned off from the shore.

He looked up at the woman, expecting her to fade away too as the effects of the booze left his body.  He stared hard at her, looking for the first signs of her disappearance from his addled mind.
She remained, looking calmly at him, if a bid concernedly.

As the last of the alcohol left his mind, he kept his eyes on the woman, his thoughts reeling as she didn’t vanish.  There was a woman in his barracks room.  A woman that had gotten in through a locked door with no possible explanation as to how.

He scooted back on the bed, reaching into a nightstand for a knife he kept there.  He wasn’t sure how this person had gotten into his room, but he felt better with a weapon in his hand.  “Who the hell are you, lady?!”

Belldandy didn’t give any indication of fear, but internally she was shocked at the man’s behavior.  This mortal was brandishing a weapon at her.  Worse, he felt threatened by her.

She spread her hands in a placating gesture.  “Please, listen to me.  I’m here because you called the Goddess Relief Office.  I’m here to grant you a wish.”  Her voice was low and calm.  It wasn’t that she was worried about him hurting her, but more that she was worried about him hurting himself.

Slowly, the hardness in his eyes faded and he lowered the knife, putting it on the nightstand.  He sat on the bed, eyes still on her.  “Okay.  Let’s start over.  How did you get into my room?”

The woman stayed where she was, her hands lowered.  “I came through the mirror.  That’s how I get between places quickly.  Watch!”

She suddenly floated a couple of feet in the air and moved towards the mirror on the dresser, miving into it as if it was made of air.  The last of her flowing hair disappeared through it with a slight glow.

A moment later, she came out of the bathroom, having transported through the mirror above the dresser.  As she entered the room, she saw that the man was back on his feet.  The knife remained on the nightstand, and his eyes were as wide as saucers.  His mouth was hanging open.  “What the hell are you, lady?”

She smiled at him, and he felt his fear fade a bit at the absolute sincerity in that expression.  “I’m a Goddess.  And I’m here to grant you a wish.”

The man thought it over, his mind racing.  Ordinarily, he would have written off what he had seen as an effect of the copious amounts of scotch, but he felt stone-sober at the moment.  He also felt stone-cold sober, and he eyed the half-empty scotch bottle on the dresser.  He had bought that bottle earlier today, and he sure as hell hadn’t poured it down the sink.

Then the woman had just… floated through the mirror.  He had watched, transfixed as she just moved through it life it wasn’t there.  Then, as the last strands of her hair had disappeared the door to the head had opened and she had floated out, coming gently to the carpeted floor.

The craziness of the entire situation had shaken him.  But it had also made him think.  Maybe it was real.  Maybe she really was a goddess, here to grant him a wish.  He smiled bitterly.  ‘If anyone deserves a break, it’s probably me.’

He sat back down on the bed, looking intently at the woman.  Her behavior, her strange dress, and the impossible things that had happened made him lean on the side of believing her.  So the question was, what to wish for?

He dismissed riches and fame.  He had seen too much of the poorest parts of the world to think that those things would bring him happiness.

The young man closed his eyes, thinking hard.  He might as well make it something worthwhile, something that would make a difference in his life.  Lord knew he needed something to change.

His eyes opened and he stared at the woman and he came slowly to his feet.  The young man pointed at her and spoke

“I wish for a Goddess like you to stay with me forever!”

He dropped his hand and smiled ruefully.  “Some wish, huh?  I’ll bet—“

He moved a step back with no recollection of having made the decision to.  The mark on her forehead was glowing white, and she floated slowly above the floor, her head tilting back.  A soft blue glow enveloped her body, and he felt himself pressing against the wall as a beam of light exploded from her forehead, blasting a hole in the roof and reaching skyward.

The woman floated there for a few seconds, her hair spreading around her as if she were underwater.  Then the light went out and she fell to the floor in a heap.

The young man rushed to her, holding her as her eyes fluttered open.  She looked at him, and then her eyes went wide and she came to her feet in a flash.  “I need to use your phone!”

Belldandy rushed to the phone on the nightstand, picking up the handset and dialing quickly.  After a moment the other end picked up.

“Yes, this is Belldandy….  Yes, I’m calling about that last transmission….  What do you mean it was approved?!?”

A few more seconds passed and she nodded slowly.  “I understand.  Thank you.”

She hung up the phone slowly, turning to the young man.  “It looks like your wish was approved!  I am to remain with you forever!”

It was too much to take in one night.  Sergeant Keiichi Morisato, United States Marine Corps fainted, sliding down the wall and coming to rest in a boneless pile on the floor.