The name's Jude Todd.
Today's my birthday. Thirty years on this messed-up planet.
I haven't done much worth bragging about. No medals on the wall that I kept, no house with a white fence, no wife waiting at home. If you saw me on the street, you wouldn't look twice. I'm just another guy in a faded hoodie, blending into the gray background of the city.
Life's been mostly shit.
When I was eighteen, my old man kicked the bucket. He didn't go out in a blaze of glory. He didn't save anyone. He just sat in his recliner and let his heart quit on him while some game show blared on the TV. He left us hanging with a stack of past-due bills and a house that was rotting from the inside out.
My mother held things together for a while. She was a magician with duct tape and hope. She'd work double shifts at the diner, come home with swollen ankles, and still find a way to laugh. I thought she was invincible. I was wrong.
She got sick. Not the kind of sick you recover from—the kind where you're just done. One morning, she was gone. She was sick of the struggle, sick of the poverty, and she just walked out. Left me and my sister to figure out the rest of the rot.
I needed cash. I needed it fast. I wanted my sister, Sarah, to at least go to college. I wanted her to have a decent job, a life where she didn't have to count pennies for bread.
But look at me. I was just a kid fresh out of high school. No degree. No connections. No clue how the world worked.
The answer was simple. It was printed on a glossy poster outside the strip mall. A guy in a crisp uniform looking toward a horizon I couldn't see.
The Army, baby.
I signed up in 2015. I remember the smell of the recruiter's office—stale coffee and floor wax. I felt like a hero the moment I signed the line. I didn't know I was just signing away my soul.
By 2016, I was knee-deep in Afghan dust.
Five long years.
Five years of the sun baking your brain until you forgot what rain felt like. Five years of the rhythmic thrum-thrum-thrum of Chinook rotors vibrating in your teeth. Five years of bad coffee, adrenaline, and the sweet, cloying smell of rotten bodies in the heat.
I got good at it. I got good at being a ghost in the gravel. I learned how to move without making a sound, how to read a room in a heartbeat, and how to ignore the voice in my head telling me to run. I wasn't Jude anymore. I was a weapon.
Then Uncle Sam decided to pull the plug.
They sent us home like it was just another shift ending. One day you're holding a rifle in a valley of shadows, watching for the flash of a muzzle; the next, you're standing in an airport terminal holding a duffel bag, wondering what the point of it all was.
In those five years, the world hadn't waited for me.
Sarah had grown up. She got married. She had a kid. She moved on from the rot we grew up in.
Life kept moving—just not for me.
"Hey, Jude! Put the fries in the bag! What the heck are you daydreaming about?"
The voice cracked like a whip, loud and obnoxious.
"Oh. Sorry, Joe."
My manager, Joe, snapped me out of it. He's twenty-two, has a bad mustache, and thinks he's the king of the burgers or something. He talks to me like I'm a kid, unaware that I've seen things that would keep him screaming for a month.
I didn't tell him I was thinking about the way the dust used to settle on the mountains at dusk, turning the world purple and gold before the killing started. He wouldn't care.
These days, I'm flipping burgers at a McDonald's.
After I got out, I tried the "real" jobs. I tried security, but the boredom made me jumpy. I tried construction, but the loud cracks of the nail guns sounded too much like home. I couldn't sit still. My mind was always somewhere else, looking for threats that weren't there.
So I started picking up odd jobs. Part-time gigs. Whatever paid enough to keep the lights on and the fridge from being completely empty.
I was a ghost again. This time, in my own city.
After my shift, I walked over to the Mart. The air was thick and humid, the kind of night that feels like it's sticking to your skin.
I went to the back to grab a cheap drink. Something cold to wash the taste of grease and salt out of my throat.
As I stood there, staring at the neon-lit glass, my phone buzzed in my pocket.
It was a message from my nephew, Jake.
Happy birthday unc.
I stared at the screen for a long time.
One year ago, I couldn't have imagined getting this close to him. After I left the Army, my life just... stopped. I was drifting. No purpose. No goal.
Eat. Work. Sleep. Repeat.
Six years of that. Six damn years of being a zombie.
I'd stopped calling Sarah. I didn't want to be a burden, and I didn't want her to see the hollowed-out version of the brother she used to know. But she caught me at a grocery store one day. She looked at me, really looked at me, and I saw the pity in her eyes.
She wouldn't take no for an answer. She told me I was coming over for lunch.
And for some reason… I did.
That's when I really met Jake.
The kid was seven, full of energy I didn't understand. He was glued to a tablet, watching some blond-haired punk in an orange jumpsuit throw punches at a guy wrapped in bandages.
"What's that?" I asked, sitting on the edge of the couch.
"Naruto," he said, not looking up.
I stayed. I watched.
At first, I didn't expect much. Just noise for kids.
But the more I watched, the more it hit me.
That stupid show about ninjas, dreams, and loneliness… it was talking to me. It was about a kid who had nothing, who was hated by his own people, but who decided to stand up anyway.
It gave me something to look forward to again.
A reason to wake up. Even if it was just to see if the kid finally got acknowledged by the village. It was a bridge back to the world.
I grabbed my drink and walked to the counter.
The cashier was a young girl, maybe twenty. She had a name tag that said 'Mia.' She looked exhausted, like she wanted to be anywhere else on earth.
"Sir, that'll be thirty-nine," she said, her voice flat.
I reached for my wallet.
Then the door slammed open.
The sound was unmistakable. The kick of a heavy boot against glass and metal. My body recognized it before my brain did.
"Don't move! Don't try to be a hero!"
Two guys. Ski masks.
One had a revolver—old, pitted with rust, but lethal. The other had a machete. It was shiny, brand new. Way too clean to have seen real use.
They moved fast, fueled by the kind of messy adrenaline that makes people dangerous. They yelled at Mia to fill a bag with cash.
The poor girl's hands were shaking so badly she could barely hit the buttons on the register.
I didn't move. I didn't say a word.
I just stood there, the cold bottle sweating in my hand.
I'd seen worse than this. I'd seen IEDs turn armored trucks into scrap metal. I'd seen men lose their minds in the heat of a firefight. This? This was just a desperate play by two kids who didn't know what they were doing.
Money wasn't worth dying over. Not for me.
So I waited. I watched.
The gunman was the problem. He was pacing, breathing hard through the wool of his mask. His finger was tight on the trigger. He was a second away from a mistake. The machete guy was the backup. He kept glancing at the door. Rookie energy.
They could've just taken the cash and left.
But they didn't.
The gunman reached over the counter and grabbed Mia by the hair, dragging her toward the exit.
"Come on, sweetheart, you're coming with us."
Mia let out a small, broken whimper.
That's when something in me snapped.
That soldier reflex—the one I thought I'd buried under six years of burger grease and apathy—came roaring back.
My heart rate didn't go up. It went down. Everything became very, very clear.
I gripped the bottle tight by the neck.
"Hey," I said. My voice was quiet, but it cut through the room like a blade.
They both turned.
The gunman started to swing the revolver toward me. He was too slow.
I closed the distance in two steps.
I grabbed his wrist with my left hand and twisted. I heard the joint pop like a dry twig. The gun hit the floor.
Then I swung the bottle.
I didn't swing it like a club; I swung it like a hammer. It shattered against the side of his head. He went down like a light switch had been flipped.
"Motherf—!" the machete guy shouted.
He lunged. It was a wild, overhead swing. Desperate.
I tossed the broken neck of the bottle aside and sidestepped. The blade hissed past my ear.
I grabbed his extended arm, stepped inside his guard, and dropped my shoulder under his.
With a grunt, I pulled.
The "over-the-shoulder" throw is basic, but on concrete, it's devastating. He slammed into the floor. The air left his lungs in a wet groan.
I didn't stop. I kicked the machete away from his reaching fingers.
I turned back to Mia. "You okay?"
"Y-y-yeah…" she stammered. She was white as a sheet.
Then, a scrape of boots.
The gunman. He was tougher than he looked. He'd crawled over to the gun. He had it in his hand. He didn't stand up. He just sat there on the floor and aimed.
"Look out!" Mia screamed.
Bang! Bang!
The sound was deafening.
The first shot hit a bag of chips. The second shot hit me.
It hit my lower stomach.
It didn't feel like a movie. There was no "thud." It felt like someone had taken a red-hot branding iron and driven it straight through my spine.
I stumbled back, my boots skidding on the linoleum. I clenched my teeth so hard I thought they'd shatter.
He kept firing—click, click, bang—but his hands were vibrating. He was sobbing now, terrified. The bullets missed, shattering the glass of the soda coolers behind me.
"Damn it! I can't aim!" he yelled.
He threw the empty gun at me in frustration. It bounced off my shoulder. He scrambled up and snatched the machete from the floor.
He walked toward me, his face twisted with fury and fear.
I was leaning against a shelf, my hand pressed against my stomach. I could feel the heat soaking through my shirt.
He reached me. He used the flat of the blade to tilt my chin up.
"Look what you made me do!" he hissed. "I'm done! My life's done because of you, you son of a bitch!"
I looked at him. I didn't feel fear. I just felt tired.
I laughed. It was a wet, rattling sound.
"Is that it?" I whispered.
He flinched. That was the opening.
He cocked his arm back to finish it. I didn't wait.
I lunged forward, using the last of my momentum.
My left hand clamped onto his wrist. I torqued the hilt, wrenching the blade around until the edge was facing his own chest.
I didn't have much strength left, but I had enough. I slammed my right palm against the back of his hand, driving the steel forward.
It slid in. Easy. Like a knife through paper.
Right where the heart should be.
He froze. The anger left his eyes, replaced by a dull, confused blankness.
He went limp. The machete slipped from his hand, and he collapsed into a heap at my feet.
The silence that followed was heavy.
I couldn't breathe. Every time I tried, it felt like my lungs were filled with broken glass. The world was starting to fray.
Mia rushed over to me. She was crying, her hands fluttering over my wound.
"Hang on! Please! I'm calling an ambulance!"
Fuck… I've gotten old, I thought.
Back in the Afghan valleys, I took hits like this on a daily basis and kept fighting for hours. But my body wasn't a weapon anymore. It was just a tired, thirty-year-old shell.
My knees gave out. The floor was cold. It felt good.
Everything started fading. The fluorescent lights started to dim. The sirens in the distance sounded like a lullaby.
I guess I don't have much time left.
Damn.
I never got to watch what happens in Naruto Shippuden.
Then another thought hit me. Sharp. Heavy.
Jake's gonna be sad.
He was waiting for me. We were supposed to see the end together.
I closed my eyes. The pain started to drift away, replaced by a deep, heavy darkness.
And then, the lights went out.