Song of Soldiers

>"He was just a rookie trooper and he surely shook with fright~"
>"He checked off his equipment and made sure his pack was tight~"
>"He had to sit and listen to those awful engines roar!"
>"He ain't gonna jump no more~"

>Husk sang heartily as he wiped down his bar
>His claws occupied with the chlorox-y smelling rag, he used his tail to snatch a bottle off of the shelf behind him and slop another dose of hooch into his drinking vessel
>He filled his glass, knocked back a fresh measure of milk-of-amnesia, swabbing his cloth across the plank with unerring meter

>Charlie watched and listened with nervous, thumb-twiddling, I'm-sure-there's-a-silver-lining-to-this discomfort
>She'd been so happy when she'd overheard Husk beginning to sing
>It seemed like such a positive sign for them to get along
>She liked to sing, he liked to sing
>A perfectly lovely common ground
>A place from which she could reach out to him and try to pull him toward redemption
>Then she'd started paying more attention to the lyrics of his song

>"Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die~"
>"Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die~"
>"Gory, gory, what a helluva way to die~"
>"He ain't gonna jump no more~"

>It was a story-song
>A cautionary tale for a certain type of soldier from a certain number of conflicts that had defined the era he'd lived in up in the mortal realm
>It didn't have a happy ending, and that fact became more apparant with every verse
>And yet he sung it with such glee, wearing an embittered-ly gleeful look on his feline features as he recounted the unhappy fate of the so-called "rookie trooper"

>" 'Is everybody happy?' cried the Sergeant looking up~"
>"Our hero feebly answered, 'yes' and then they stood him up~"
>"He jumped into the icy blast, his static line unhooked~"
>"And he ain't gonna jump no more~"
--
>Husk belted out the word 'hero' with such thick irony that Charlie could almost taste it, even sitting as far from Husk as she was, before diving back into the chorus
>She'd learned through the grapevine that he'd been a soldier of some sort when he was alive
>The conflict he'd fought in had evidently been a rather nasty one, from the way other mortal souls talked about it

>"He counted long, he counted loud, he waited for the shock~"
>"He felt the wind, he felt the cold, he felt the awful drop~"
>"The silk from his reserves spilled out, and wrapped around his legs~"
>"And he ain't gonna jump no more~"

>She tried to stay positive as he continued to slur out his baneful anthem and jumped into another round of the 'Gory Gory' chorus and then into the next verse
>Maybe this was somehow cathartic for him?

>"The risers swung around his neck, connectors cracked his dome~"
>"Suspension lines were tied in knots around his skinny bones~"
>"The canopy became his shroud; he hurtled to the ground~"
>"And he ain't gonna jump no more~"

>Gosh, what a gruesome lyric

>"The days he'd lived and loved and laughed kept running through his mind~"
>"He thought about the girl back home, the one he'd left behind~"
>"He thought about the medic corps, and wondered what they'd find~"
>"And he ain't gonna jump no more~"

>Charlie had to admit, she didn't understand what a mortal soul went through when they faced their own mortality
>She'd been born on the far side of mortality, right here in Hell
--
>"The ambulance was on the spot, the jeeps were running wild~"
>"The medics jumped and screamed with glee, they rolled their sleeves and smiled~"
>"For it had been a week or more since last a 'chute had failed~"
>"He ain't gonna jump no more~"

>Yet still, to hear someone sing of such a terrible, painful, avoidable fate with such joy

>"He hit the ground, the sound was "SPLAT", his blood went spurting high~"
>"His comrades, they were heard to say 'a hell of a way to die!'~"
>"He lay there, rolling 'round in the welter of his gore~"
>"And he ain't gonna jump no more~"

>It unnerved her

>"There was blood upon the risers, there were brains upon the chute~"
>"Intestines were a-dangling from his paratroopers suit~"
>"He was a mess, they picked him up, and poured him from his boots~"
>"He ain't gonna jump no more~"
--
>Husk stumbled about as he finished his work, snickering to himself at his own increasingly ragged, jagged, drunken singing
>He slid the last few bottles of syrups and bitters back into their places
>He slung one more, over-generous dose of gut-rotting liquid into his glass
>Then he dropped the bottle, along with the many others he'd pulled out to make sure they were free of any nastiness that might put off a patron, back into the well
>He slowed his singing as he reached the closing chorus, swaying back and forth in time to a metronome only his drunken mind could hear

>"Gory, gory what a helluva way to die~"
>"GORY, GORY, what a helluva way to die~"
>"GORY"
>"GORY"
>"What"
>"A"
>"Hell"
>"Of"
>"A"
>"Way"
>"To"
>"Die~"

>Husk flicked his wings in bitter, drunken delight and slapped his cleaning cloth on the bartop

>"AND HE AIN'T GONNA JUMP NO MOOOOORE~!"

>The feline demon had just enough time to steady himself on the bar with his hands before his legs gave out and he went toppling to the ground like a felled redwood
>Niffty came zipping over to him from wherever she'd been this whole time, maybe on the far side of the lobby, to keep him from cracking open like the 'hero' of his song
>She didn't seem particularly surprised by this turn of events
>Charlie sighed to herself as she watched the little demon attend to the oversized one
>Trying to help these poor, damned souls might prove a bit harder than she'd thought it would be
-end-