thing for lit

In the middle of Autumn, a short while before all the leaves on all the trees were brown foliage, under a cold sky, two soldiers found themselves in a little wooded pocket tucked into the side of a mountain, their shaded enclosure overlooking the military site of where their target was to be assassinated.

They were both very tense. The anticipation of an event that would carry ramifications beyond their imaginings weighed on them with a kind of nervous energy which drained more than it enervated, even though the promised hour lay more than a day away.

Nevertheless, there had certainly been speculation on their part as to what their assignment would contribute to the grand tapestry of history. So long had they imagined history to be beyond the control of any singular person, yet their mission carried massive import in their minds just from the orders they'd been given.

Life, however, had certainly not given them time to contemplate the details in any thorough fashion.

Indeed, if anything, life only seemed to serve a constant stream of obstacles which needed to be immediately traversed and overcome, without a thought to be given as to the overall consequence of their actions.

And so it was in this mindset that the two faced what presented itself to be nothing more than a bothersome but otherwise minor obstacle in the path to their accomplishment of their grand, fated goal: a a rough little shrub, right on the boundary of their sniping spot, in the exact place that would be the best place to take aim.

"Captain," the younger of the two soldiers said, his tone uneasy, as he stood up from his quick inspection of the bush, "this bush is easily removed, but…"

"But?"

The younger man looked up and pointed at the trees surrounding them, more specifically the ones right above them.

"By my estimate, the sun would be at its peak at the time of the military parade, when the target would be in our sights. Were we to set up here and use this exact spot…"

The captain understood. The opposing army was already paranoid enough, even the faintest trace of them being there could spell disaster - the only bother would be the possible brambles and leaves interfering with the rifle's mechanisms…

"Um, there's more to it than that, sir."

Now the captain was intrigued. This young man assigned to him as his spotter wasn't the anxious sort, as previous operations had established. What could be the cause for alarm?

The young, sturdy man looked down at the ground, scratching the side of head, his eyes revealing him to be not entirely sure what to say.

"There's those little flies in there, sir. Fruit flies, sir."

There was a short silence between the two, with the captain simply giving his spotter a confused look, unaware as to how this would be a hindrance.

Little to the older man's knowledge however, word among the younger men of his division generally painted the captain with three distinct colours of character: that he was a skillful man, which no one could claim otherwise; that he was a man filled to the brim with pride, both for himself and for his country, a contestable point of personality; and that he was lastly someone oddly susceptible to sneezing, as many a recruit had reported on when, late night, as they patrolled the barracks and passed his office, they would hear rapid-fire barrages and the occasional explosion issued from their commanding officer's nose.

The young man awkwardly fiddled with the strap of his gun around his shoulder, unsure how to continue.

"Well, what is it?" the captain began, ending the momentary silence, "If you've nothing further to say, then we'll start back."

"...Sir, may I be so direct as to make a suggestion?"

A suggestion? Sure, the captain figured, but as to what the young man was directing his thoughts toward he couldn't be sure what his spotter was thinking. He then gave a slight nod.

The young man pulled the brim of his peaked military cap down over his eyes for a moment, breathed in deeply, and then looked up to face his superior officer.

"I believe it would be best if I were to take the shot, sir. Although you vastly surpass me in experience and skill, sir, and all conditions pointing to the greatest ease in your undertaking, I... I believe that for the sake of this mission and its ultimate success, it would be best to erase any possible chance of error-"

The captain held up a hand, and the spotter went silent. That hand went to cup the older man's chin, and posed him in a look of deep concentration, which was directed away from the eyes of the younger man and towards his boots.

What could be the reason for it, the captain wondered. Was this the glory-seeking nature of the youth he'd heard about from men his age who'd had children? Was this innate arrogance simply something which all people of a young age carried this deeply, to the point of wishing to interfere with the grand tide of history and the world all around them even when things had been so carefully orchestrated for them? Had the captain himself been like this in his younger days, and had not noticed it, or was this another bothersome development of the new age? Whatever the case, the captain simply couldn't understand this sudden suggestion, this grave change in plans, so brashly put forward. Had the young man wished to insinuate that he, by virtue of being younger, was simply inherently better suited for the task? If so, the hint of that was enough to beckon his own mettle and patriotic spirit. The captain, after all, had not risen to his own position simply by association or age, but had instead earned his place amongst the finest of riflemen due his finely tuned skill. To think that one of his juniors would not even know this! Or, even worse, that the young man knew, and still thought himself to be better! How right his parents were, in retrospect, to say how little respect younger people had for the older! It was enough to get him to grit his teeth a little, though he was deft enough to hide the clenching of his jaw behind his hand. Such little stock being put into his skill by one of the very men he had had a hand in teaching was enough to both wound his pride and stir his anger.

But age had provided him enough grace to be able to simply set aside his tumultuous thoughts. The captain simply let his hand slowly drop to his side, raised his head, and said, "No."

"But sir!"

"No buts. How in your right mind were you able to suddenly come up with this ridiculous suggestion? You're not trying to make a joke, are you?"

"No sir, not at all. It's just that-"

"Just what? Tell me, just what would compel you to say this out of the blue?"

"It's not… entirely out of nowhere, sir."

"How so?" The captain folded his arms with a slightly mocking yet bemused look, "We've been together on a few assignments, and I took you for the quiet sort, but this is the first time you've had something somewhat of an opinion, and it's to say this? Do tell, how did you get to that conclusion?"

The spotter gave a quick glance towards the captain, then to the floor, and back once more. As he did this, the wind began to pick up, leaves began to rustle, and dust stirred around their feet.

It was only for a brief moment, but the faintest twitch, the slightest tingle, had snuck itself into the sensitive airways of the older man, whose nose subsequently began to quiver. The captain scrunched his nose, once, twice, and tilted his neck ever-so-slightly back just to maintain himself so as to not interrupt whatever nonsense his junior was about to say, when the young man, after what seemed to be heavy deliberation on his part, simply and briefly said:

"Sir, there's fruit flies in there… You're highly susceptible to sneezing, it would- it would be risky for you-"

Before the young man could finish, blood rushed to the captain's head. To be so belittled and questioned by someone this young for such an inconsequential and nonsensical reason! Surely, this was some kind of joke that younger people must have found funny that he'd simply not been privy to due to his age and older sensibilities. It was still nevertheless quite insulting to his mind, enough to make him visibly grit his teeth, to make his nose and chin shake with the most imperceptible of anger, to steel his anger, his wit, his soldierly sense of… of… of-

At the moment where the old soldier's anger had peaked, so too had the defense of his sinuses broken down. As the stream of multiple angry refutations was about to pour out, what stopped the captain in his rant was instead a thunderous, resounding sneeze.

"What," said the captain, rapidly and annoyedly rubbing his nose with his raiment's sleeve, "do you take me for, young man? Is this some sort of mean-spirited trick, some game, that you younger people play with us older people? Pah! I was like you once, many of us older soldiers were, so I know all the tricks, all the sneaky laughs you have once you've had your little bit of fun at the more experienced, less comical types of people around. To be so young and brash aga-"

He sneezed once more, his nose as irritated as his temper, before continuing on in his verbal onslaught. All the young man could do was patiently listen and take it all in, sighing while a fateful wind blew.

There would be no change of plans. As far as the older man was concerned, tomorrow's undertaking was set in stone, with a guaranteed success.

***

The following morning, something was amiss.

The captain rubbed the sweat off his brow. The sky above was clear, as per their predictions, but the day's temperature was unseasonably hot. This resulted in the older man pulling down the scarf across his face, which he'd brought as mocking reassurance for his partner, with it now tucked under his chin. Upon seeing this, the young spotter shifted uncomfortably in his position besides the captain.

The older man simply gave a ponderous look in response before he turned back to  his rifle. The large body of the gun was nestled mostly in the little bush from the day prior, with the barrel sticking out in the direction of the target, the stock by where he would lay to take the shot. He took a look through the oversized scope.

The vast expanse of the treacherous mountainous valley laid before his eye, the details etched out with extraordinary precision by the magnification of the lens. He could see silvery ribbons looping aaround in the far-off crags and knolls below. Glittering waves of grass flowed all over, notably in-between the forested islands of dark evergreen trees, a light wind the source of all notable movement in the picturesque sight before him.

The entirety of the world moved in a singular unity, reflecting the captain's intuition that everything that had been done by their army and, more importantly, by their people, had led up to this moment, that the earth itself was in agreement with their end.

And yet he couldn't explain this sweltering heat, which, as he focused on the gray, sharply constructed military compound in the middle of his sights, began to fog up the lens. A quick brush of the captain's sleeve wiped away the bothersome droplets, but it would nevertheless still be a problem were it to arise at an ill-timed moment.

He turned to his spotter, but decided against asking what he had in mind. There wasn't anything to be done about the weather.

"Sir," the young man piped up hesitantly, "look."

The captain looked through the scope once more. Both he and the corporal besides him could see that the inspection at the compound was now well under way, and that their target would soon appear. The pair began to go over the final details, going over wind speed, bullet trajectory, positioning and the planned route of their target, but in the captain's mind this was all irrelevant minutiae. As far as he was concerned, their target was already a thing of the past, this just being a formal necessity to confirm it.

Then, something odd happened. The captain, for no reason whatsoever, felt a tremor at the back of his nose, followed by a reflexive twitch and a rapid rhythm of inhale-exhale-inhale-exhale-inhale-inhale-inhale-inhale…

Unconsciously, he'd scrunched his nose, partially closed his eyes, and tilted his neck ever-so-slightly back so as to prepare for the inevitable. His spotter took no notice at first, instead simply looking through his binoculars at the procession within which their target was located, until he heard the telltale mumbling and labored exhalations prior to a thunderous sneeze. He turned to look at his superior, wide-eyed with concern.

However, nothing came to pass. Instead, the captain simply held his tilted head in place for a moment or two, before finally deeply exhaling and inhaling. To fail to sneeze once one had gone through all the  set-up was annoying, but he took great comfort and pride in the fact he'd been able to easily prove that his junior had nothing but misplaced, childish worries about his ability to control himself.

"Everything alright, sir," the younger man nevertheless asked, one brow cocked in wary doubt.

The captain handwaved his concern away and looked through the scope once more.

There. Dead center in his crosshair. The general of the opposing army, their target. He stood before a division of straight-backed, highly attentive young men in uniform, who all stood posed with the greatest of respect at attention. The wind, as judged by the flags littered around the facility, was still - an opportune time to take the shot, yet the man himself was obscured by another soldier, seemingly of higher rank than the men before the general, who seemed to be talking about something. He would have to be more patient.

"Take the shot, sir," the spotter advised, cautiously.

"Not yet," the ball of the captain's index finger nevertheless began to curl around the trigger, "don't know how that other one might react the next second."

That, and the effect on the soldiers would be dampened, their great general dying casually on the side as opposed to being on the stage before them, his death openly announced.

A moment or two later, the procedural talk between the general and the presumable platoon leader ended, and both advanced to the platform.

This was it, the moments before history would be made, moments which would etch themselves forever onto his mind. The captain slowly began exhaling, emptying his lungs of any unnecessary breath which might throw off his aim, the rate of exhalation almost in precise coordination with each step the general took on his way to the podium atop the stage. As the man would begin his speech, with that charismatic, nationalistic look on his face beaming above the procession, the captain would be at the peak of his concentration, his heart rate at its slowest, without the slightest strain on his lungs or nerves. Training, his unit, his division, his army, the war, perhaps even history itself, had finely carved out this precise moment in time, this fateful display of one nation's might and one man's supreme skill.

Even though externally the captain at that moment was the statuesque image of calm, same as his pulse, his mind was awash with images of glory. His talent would be recognized by his nation, he would be a hero for generations to come, his name would be recognized as supremely important and a model of patriotism - he was in the position many a soldier could only dream of. The anticipation of such accolades and acclaim was almost enough to blind him to the current events which he needed to orchestrate for such renown to be his, even the sagacity his age was able to afford him was barely enough to contain his excitement. Indeed, the enemy general was now just a mere step away from the podium, history would be his for the making!

And then, the enemy general stopped dead. The wind, for reasons which no one could fathom, had picked up for the briefest of moments, a sudden blast which caused the general to turn around, just to shield his eyes for a moment, a moment which lead to the captain to be entirely without breath before his target could reach the podium - not a bother, really, only that it meant the beginning of the ever-so-slight buildup of pressure within the captain's chest and sinuses, his heart measuring the seconds, the moments, before his finger would twitch with the faintest of movements and eternally sealing the deal.

And it was in these fateful milliseconds that history had decided, unbeknownst to the captain, that the world would not orientate itself to either his or his nation's whims and desires. For in the moment that familiar tightness had reared its disciplined head within the captain's system, the pressure it brought ballooned unexpectedly within the next. The dryness of the inside of his nose was straw-like, but the anxious sweat on his slowly creasing brow hung like icicles in nervous realization of what was happening.

In the dead silence of that time, the older man had missed a sound that otherwise would be inaudible, except for in that eye-achingly quiet moment.

It was the sound of a common, unsuspecting fruit fly, who, as per their usual uncaring way, had flown around here and there mindlessly in their little sphere of life, and like many a times before when it came to the big standing apes that found themselves wandering around unknowingly interrupting the endlessly complicated cycles and pathways cut out by these miniscule insects within the air, this particular fruitfly found itself snugly within a nostril of the old captain, resting indifferently on the sensitive membranous walls within the man's nose.

The signs of that sneeze which had disappeared moments ago, seemingly permanently expelled, returned in full force, swarming the man's senses entirely. His nose quivered like a taut bow moments after an arrow had flown off its string; his brow creased as though a gale wind had blasted itself into his eyes; the air in his nasal pathways and lungs was at its explosive limit, a bomb seconds away from detonating. It was taking the combined might of an army within this single man to hold back that dangerous sneeze, a sneeze which threatened to render the entirety of their war useless. Luck truly must have been on the captain's side for that moment, for the fruitfly didn't move at all, and above it all he'd managed to suppress that reflexive sneeze.

"Captain!" the spotter exclaimed, glanced at his superior from his binoculars for a moment, confused at why the general was now beginning his speech, "what's going on, why aren't you-"

A massive explosion rang out. Halfway in having turned away, alarmed at the suddenness of the noise, the young man quickly returned to his binoculars to assess the situation.

There was panic, disarray, confusion among the parade. Soldiers left and right  rushed around, some preparing to retaliate, others attempting to locate the source of the gunshot. The corporal focused his sight onto where the target would be-

The general was hastily being lead off stage, the man himself perfectly fine. Not a trace of a wound. The spotter's eyes widened in surprise. He was beyond confused, hadn't the captain aimed perfectly? Hadn't everything gone to plan?

Unbeknownst to the younger man, however, two things had happened.

The first was that something, something, in the way he'd urged the captain to fire had set the captain off. Maybe it was the precise frequency necessary for the captain's biology to grow to the most irrationally irritated one could be from one moment to the next, his pride wanting him to bark some trivial insult, some petty pulling of rank, to soothe his mind, which caused him to clench his teeth, flex his jaw, and draw tight his facial muscles, setting him atop an uneasy balanced tightrope which he could barely keep himself composed upon.

The second thing to happen occurred as both a result of and nearly within the same instant as the first happening. Because the old man's facial muscles had contracted so suddenly, so too had his nostrils. The idle little fly on the sensitive, dry nasal walls within was tossed off the perch it had decided upon for itself, and was launched into the wall opposite. The frantic motion caused the insect to panic, causing it to beat its minuscules wings and limbs against wherever it had landed, resulting in an extremely ticklish feeling straining atop the captain's already precariously balanced senses.

And in that instant, the two happenings combined to result in the loudest, angriest, most cataclysmic sneeze the captain's nose had ever faced, a storm that instinctively caused him to hunker down in defense, and cause his entire body to tense up. Unfortunately, it was all his finger needed to pull back the trigger completely.

And so, the fateful gunshot missed its target by a wide, wide margin. The official report by the two soldiers noted the wind to be the cause of the shot's inaccuracy. All the older captain could do was sigh miserably and grumble - the gunshot, if it was any consolation, had masked the sound of his sneeze, saving him any further humiliation.