In the Crosshairs

The sniper lay still, like a rock in a stream, allowing life to move around him while he lay as one dead.

He looked through the sights, the world scarred by the crosshairs. His finger was coiled loosely around the trigger, ready to squeeze, not pull.

And he waited.

He waited.

The hours passed.

And then the car came. The sniper’s body tensed, and the finger coiled tighter.

The car stopped. Black and sleek, sunlight danced along the edges of the metal.

The sniper exhaled. The crosshairs moved as the sniper got into a better position, having to move only slightly.

The car door opened and the man stepped out. Black hair, black beard streaked with grey. Sunglasses. The man he was waiting for. The man his orders told him to kill. He did not know who the man was. He did not know what the man had done. He knew only he had to kill him.

Orders.

The man was laughing heartily. He was talking to the people who had come out of the building to meet him. There did not seem to be evil in the man, but what he thought did not matter.

Orders.

The sniper remembered his childhood. The memories came unheeded. He remembered being in a world of giants, his young child frame looking up through the legs of adults. He heard voices long gone. He heard laughter turn into screams. He recalled rubble and dust and a terrible, muffled silence. A childhood ended by war.

And the finger coiled tighter.

The man turned, his whole face filling the sights of the rifle, his forehead ideally placed for a bullet.

Then the man bent down and brought something out of the car. Something the sniper did not expect.

A child. A boy child. Maybe six. Maybe seven. He was laughing, too. The man and the boy laughed together. The young hands pressed on the man’s face, planting kisses like punctuation. And still they laughed.

The sniper inhaled.

His vision became watery.

His finger uncoiled.

And like a breath in the wind, the sniper was gone.